Slashdot Mirror

An anonymous reader writes "Consumers seem to be paying more attention to the possibility of fixing gadgets instead of sending them to the landfill. It may be because 10gb in your iPod is more than enough for any normal person, it may be a deep, abiding love for the environment or it may just be the price. A New York Times article explores how new sites like FixYa and old standbys like Macintouch can aid the average user in restoring their 'slightly used' gear. Practically every gadget has their own website devoted to helping owners help each other deal with problems that arise. I personally like AVS Forum for my living room needs. From the article: 'Most other gadgets come with batteries that are easy to replace without custom tools. Replacement batteries for cellphones are often marked up by the devices' manufacturers, while third-party replacements are often available for 60 percent to 80 percent less. Companies offering replacement batteries for iPods often offer better batteries with higher capacities and longer lifetimes. Ipodjuice.com, for instance, sells a 1,200-milliamp-hour battery that will replace the 600-milliamp-hour battery that shipped with a fourth-generation iPod -- an improvement that lets the Web site claim that the repaired iPod will "last 100 percent longer."'"

Nikopol writes "The venerable Macintouch site recently released the results and analysis of a survey on Apple laptop reliability." From the article: "Our survey spanned every laptop capable of running Mac OS X, encompassing 41 models sold over seven and a half years. A challenge in ascertaining the reliability of any device is that more time gives them more opportunity to break, so new devices should always look more reliable at first glance. Our survey asked participants when their laptop first needed a repair -- 'first year', 'second or third year', and 'fourth year or later.' These correspond to the duration of Apple's standard one-year warranty, the AppleCare extended warranty program, and any repairs that might happen outside any warranty coverage period. We also asked participants if they purchased AppleCare for their laptop."

brjndr writes "A MacInTouch poster has found that certain Sony CD's also contain a smaller extra partition for 'enhanced' content. Running one of the applications found within this partition installs kernel extensions containing DRM software by SunnComm. In Sony's defense you're told what is being installed within a EULA which pops up when the program is loaded. Thankfully we all read our EULAs completely."

An anonymous reader writes "In the wake of the judge's refusal to extend journalist protections to Think Secret in its case against Apple, the Net is abuzz with commentaries coming to its defense. MacInTouch points to three of them, from CNET's Declan McCullagh, MP3 Newswire's Richard Menta and grassroots journalism pundit Dan Gillmor. All agree that Apple went too far with its case and question the court's decision that Web journalists don't count."

spamguy writes "MacInTouch reports that Steve Jobs' January 11th MacWorld Expo keynote address may not be broadcast live in any way. If you were hoping to watch Stevie present the rumoured sub-$500 Mac, the Motorola phone, the Flash iPod, and/or the office suite, you now have no choice but to buy your plane tickets to San Francisco ASAP."

the_webmaestro writes "Macintouch.com is covering the "opener" malware, a new and potential vulnerability which affects Mac OS X. If true (it's not on HoaxBusters yet), this could become a Mac user's worst nightmare... Worse even than Microsoft Word macro viruses (heretofore the only real 'viruses' which threatened Mac users)! Normally, when ever I'd see virus alerts, I'd revel in the fact that as a Mac user, I was immune (except for the slow-down of the net, the loss in productivity of my colleagues, and the increase in SPAM--often coming from my friends and colleagues). [Sigh] Perhaps, my days of telling friends and family that there are no viruses for Macs may be coming to an end. There have been stories."

the_webmaestro writes "Macintouch.com is covering the "opener" malware, a new and potential vulnerability which affects Mac OS X. If true (it's not on HoaxBusters yet), this could become a Mac user's worst nightmare... Worse even than Microsoft Word macro viruses (heretofore the only real 'viruses' which threatened Mac users)! Normally, when ever I'd see virus alerts, I'd revel in the fact that as a Mac user, I was immune (except for the slow-down of the net, the loss in productivity of my colleagues, and the increase in SPAM--often coming from my friends and colleagues). [Sigh] Perhaps, my days of telling friends and family that there are no viruses for Macs may be coming to an end. There have been stories."

MEW writes "According to this article, 'the semiconductor industry began using red phosphorus as a flame retardant instead of the Br-based compound it had used for years,' due to environmental concerns. By July 2002, 1000 tons of the stuff was used for about a billion chips, when they stopped due to high component failures. In particular Sumitomo Bakelite caused rampant failures in Fujitsu disk drives. There's still a lot of Sumitomo Bakelite out there, and we may see the worst of it soon, as components start to fail prematurely. This was posted by Spaceman on Macintouch who says that the bad material accounts for 'half the world's supply of 'IC Plastics'' and can result in 'sudden or premature end of life.'"

zachlipton writes "Computerworld is running an interesting interview with Dave Russell, director of product marketing for portables and wireless at Apple. Russell comments on the white spot issues that have plagued the new 15" PowerBooks (Apple has been very responsive about fixing mine at least) and he has this to say about a G5 PowerBook: 'We certainly want to do that, but it's going to be a while.' Russell also comments on a lot of other ideas related to the PowerBook and iBook lines."

peel asks: "In the endless effort to get organized I'm looking for an alternative to signing up for a .Mac account that allows me to sync iCal and the Address Book between multiple computers (mainly work and home). I found iSyncCal to let me sync calendars, I can also publish them using my personal server setup with WebDav. I haven't found any such utilities for addresses. What I really want is something that works more like .Mac but that I can run at home on my server without paying the monthly .Mac fees. What are some solutions people are using for syncing contact info for people stored in multiple places (Palm, cell, work computer, home computer, laptop)?" There was a similar discussion over on MacInTouch, although the alternatives offered cover more basic needs, the information may still prove useful for those looking for "a cheaper .Mac".

peel asks: "In the endless effort to get organized I'm looking for an alternative to signing up for a .Mac account that allows me to sync iCal and the Address Book between multiple computers (mainly work and home). I found iSyncCal to let me sync calendars, I can also publish them using my personal server setup with WebDav. I haven't found any such utilities for addresses. What I really want is something that works more like .Mac but that I can run at home on my server without paying the monthly .Mac fees. What are some solutions people are using for syncing contact info for people stored in multiple places (Palm, cell, work computer, home computer, laptop)?" There was a similar discussion over on MacInTouch, although the alternatives offered cover more basic needs, the information may still prove useful for those looking for "a cheaper .Mac".

usr122122121 writes "A Macintouch User has discovered that iTunes maxes out at 32,000 songs." I did test this myself (a one-liner perl script to give each file a unique artist/album/title), and it's apparently true. How much it matters is an exercise left to the reader.

gsfprez writes "It seems that the general consensus is that iMovie 3.0.1 really sucks bad. Compaints range from randomly splitting cuts when importing, audio/video syncing issues, random crashing, and most common - performance issues so bad that capture and playback at full framrate is unattainable - and that's on DP machines. My experience is all this and worse on my previously very useful iBook 800. One can only wonder how galactically awful iMovie 3.0.0 was. Can anyone give a positive report on iMovie 3.0.1?" It looks nice. I just wish I could use it without it crashing.

MatthewRothenberg writes "Apple has announced that as of January, new Macs will boot with Mac OS X only, but now MacInTouch reports that there might be a reprieve in the works for booting with Mac OS. According to one reader, a Quark representative has been calling pro publishers to ease their worries about the lack of a Mac OS X-native version of its QuarkXPress DTP program; after talking it over with Quark, Apple has agreed to move back the Mac OS X-only deadline until June." I can imagine that conversation with Jobs: "Why don't you just finish porting your freaking product already?"

sg3000 writes "A friend asked me a question about setting up shared address books with Mac OS X, but I have no idea how to solve this. He wants to set up an address book that can be accessed by different user accounts on the same Mac or by different Macs in the same household. This would be useful for having a single place to put contact info for family and friends. His first thought was to move the Entourage user folder to the Shared folder in Mac OS X and just move aliases of that folder to each of the users' folders. This way when they open Entourage they would see the same address book and both can make changes to it. The downside? Well, you're stuck with Entourage, it will work only on a single machine, everything is shared between the users (all contacts not just a subset, calendar, email, to-do list, etc) and it won't work with other mail clients. I know with the new Mac OS X 10.2, you can share calendars between people using iCal. Is there some way to do this with the new address book for Jaguar too? Since 10.2 is basically shipping now, you can throw NDAs and caution to the winds!"

"My solution was to set up a FileMaker Pro database and put the file in the Shared folder. The downside is you couldn't do a simple lookup from the email compose window like you can with the integrated address book.

So finally I thought, what if you set up an LDAP server running on one Mac in the house, and then just set up your email clients to access those. Easy, except other than what I just described I know nothing about LDAP.

LDAP looks like it's a lot more than the shared email list that you see in a mail client. And I couldn't find an LDAP server for Mac OS X. It looks like OS X Server has something but that's overkill; we're talking about sharing addresses among five people, tops. Mac OS X has something called Directory Setup that looked kind of right, but Google returned no info on how to do this."

gwernol writes "Macintouch is running an interesting section on the end of HyperCard at Apple. The original discussion was on alternatives to HyperCard but several ex-HyperCard engineers have come forward to describe the 'Steve-ing' of the project. It's an interesting insight into the workings of this company and the fate of Bill Atkinson's revolutionary piece of software." And lamz writes, "Thousands of people still use HyperCard but it has stagnated under Apple's stewardship. Is it time for an Open Source HyperCard? Great article at Wired." My first Mac programming was in HyperCard. Those were the days ...

MaxVlast writes "Macintouch is reporting that Apple is extending the Mac OS X Up-to-Date and Mac OS X Server Up-to-Date programs to include Jaguar Server upgrades for just $19.95 in response to intense criticism. This is good news to people who just bought an expensive XServe with expensive Mac OS X Server who don't very much want to pay the full upgrade price." Apple also added that people who bought Mac OS X 10.1 retail, by itself, can get an upgrade if purchased July 17 or later.

Durindana writes "MacInTouch is quoting a Roxio representative saying the new EULA doesn't mean Toast for Mac includes DRM, only that it's the same one used for Easy CD Creator, which does."

gsfprez writes "Apparently, demanding future DRM installations isn't just for Windows anymore. Roxio has added a very Microsoft-esque paragraph to the Toast 5.1.4 upgrade. In part, if you install it, you 'may affect your ability to copy, display and/or play Secure Content through the Software or other applications that utilize the Software.' I'm sorry, but this is a big reason why I'm sticking with Apple, but looking for new CD/DVD burning software..." Let me know when you find it.

foobar104 asks: "Macintouch posed an interesting question: is there any MPEG-2 streaming client software for the Mac, either for OS 9 or OS X? According to Kasenna, maker of the MediaBase streaming video platform, there isn't. You'd think Quicktime 5 would be able to stream MPEG-2 content, but sure enough the data sheet lists MPEG-1 only. Is Kasenna right?"

"Because I can't seem to figure out how to link directly to a story on Macintouch, here's the entire question.

David Hannah asked this interesting question about streaming video support on the Mac:

'I am a developer for the SGI and Linux Platforms, and have begun working with a product called MediaBase from Kasenna; it is a MPEG 1|2 Streaming Server. They are preparing to release MediaBaseXMP, which will support MPEG 4 as well. I was told by them that they do not support MPEG 2 streaming on the Macintosh, because there is no existing player that will accommodate this, including QuickTime 5. They said that QuickTime 6, when it releases will support MPEG 4, but until then, I cannot stream to a Macintosh without also having a QuickTime streaming server like the one provided by the Darwin project. Any truth to this? Are you aware of an MPEG-2 capable player that will stream on the Mac?'

Since there are a number of MPEG-2 software decoders for Windows, some of them plugins for Windows Media Player, it seems reasonable to think that something similar would exist for the Mac. Can anyone help?"

nbvb submitted what I'm pleased to say is our first apple.slashdot.org story. We'll be posting more news for our sizable Apple population there in the future. Anyway, He says "Apple today released Mac OS X 10.1.3. Be sure to click your "Software Update" and "Install" buttons! (Hey, if we can get an announcement every time a new point rev of a development kernel hits the FTP sites, can't we hear about Mac OS X?)" As usual, user reports of the new release have been both positive and negative.

Several readers, like this Anonymous Coward, have written with links to a letter from Cliff Crouch on macintouch.com. "I stumbled across this letter submitted to a web site I frequent. Apparently Microsoft has promotional displays with free WindowsXP promotional software in U.S. Post Offices."

Brad Lucier writes "Macintouch is reporting (go down the page a bit) that Internet Explorer 5.1, which comes preinstalled on MacOS X 10.1, has a huge security hole---when it downloads arbitrary programs encoded in the Macintosh's standard BinHex (.hqx) format, it automatically executes them. " Well I guess thats one way to make Unix insecure. Can anyone actually confirm this since it looks kinda sketchy. I wonder what someone's rationale would be for that:"Oh this won't hurt anyone, and saving that extra 'OK' click will be great!".

Brad Lucier writes "Macintouch is reporting (go down the page a bit) that Internet Explorer 5.1, which comes preinstalled on MacOS X 10.1, has a huge security hole---when it downloads arbitrary programs encoded in the Macintosh's standard BinHex (.hqx) format, it automatically executes them. " Well I guess thats one way to make Unix insecure. Can anyone actually confirm this since it looks kinda sketchy. I wonder what someone's rationale would be for that:"Oh this won't hurt anyone, and saving that extra 'OK' click will be great!".

madburn writes "MacInTouch has a blurb about a device from Boost Technology called the Tracer. It appears to be an almost-affordable head-mounted "mouse" with the features and performance needed for serious use, including 360-degree field of view. It supports USB and PS/2. I wonder if this will make the Quake experience more immersive?" The girl in the picture looks kinda stoned, but I can imagine that this could be useful for the handicapped, and fun for someone looking for a different input device.

enkidu writes: "Over at this article on macintouch there are some people who show how to extend Apple's airport range to 7km using legal signal boosting antennae. Connections at 50km+ are also mentioned. With enough base stations, you could even build your own private ricochet network in your neighborhood. " This should work with any WaveLAN cards ... looks like a fun hack.

enkidu writes: "Over at this article on macintouch there are some people who show how to extend Apple's airport range to 7km using legal signal boosting antennae. Connections at 50km+ are also mentioned. With enough base stations, you could even build your own private ricochet network in your neighborhood. " This should work with any WaveLAN cards ... looks like a fun hack.

Aaron Greenberg asks: "On Macintouch today, they've linked to a page explaining how Mac users not running MacOS 9 can utilize some of Apple's recently announced "iTools". Among iTools more interesting features is 20 MB of free remote storage via AppleShare IP. This service would be available to Linux users with AFPFS - an implementation of an AppleShare client for Linux that is only alpha quality and currently not being developed. While 20 MB of remote storage isn't something to go nuts over, I was wondering if it might inspire someone to continue work on AFPFS? Does Apple's open source release of MacOS X (Darwin) have code which would help further this project? For someone who works with Macs and Linux on the same network, it would be a nice tool to have. To those who might be quick to suggest netatalk - NOTE: netatalk only allows Linux/*nix users to serve files to Macs, but will NOT mount remote Mac servers using either classic AppleShare or AppleShare IP."

puck13 writes "According to MacInTouch "Apple has reversed the cancellation of existing Power Mac G4 orders, according to impeccable sources, and is calling back customers to explain. The Apple Store will honor existing orders for the previous configurations at the previous prices. People who ordered the G4/500 model that cannot be produced due to Motorola's production issues, will be offered a choice of the original G4/450 configuration at the original price or a discount on their G4/500 configuration, as if it had been ordered custom-built with a 450-MHz processor selected. " Check out yesterday's story for more information.

Aigeanta writes "According to MacInTouch, Apple just reduced the processing speed of G4s by 50Mhz, without a price reduction or change in configuration, and cancelled all outstanding orders. If you still want one, you have to reorder with a slower processor. "

J. FoxGlov writes "Macintouch reports that v0.3 of Darwin, the open-source foundation for Mac OS X Server is available on Apple's Public Source site. Apple Developer Connection members can get it on CD for $29. Check Public Source for more about the Darwin SDK and the new Darwin. "

JD Fant alerted us to an article appearing over at macintouch that claims that the new R5 of LinuxPPC was released with a benign worm on it. Apparently it can't spread, but it is there (the page has comments from Jason Haas)

Like many of us, Justin Beech struggled with the age old quest for high bandwidth. He's submitted a quite interesting feature which discusses issues surrounding many of the options (Sat, Cable, DSL, Modems) and where he ended up. It is a little different than typical Slashdot fare, but I think you'll like it if you've thought about DSL, but wanted more data to get started. You'll just wish it had a happy ending. The following feature was written by Slashdot Reader Justin Beech

I wrote this is in an effort to purge myself of experience in getting DSL service, and in the hope that it helps make us DSL consumers a little more informed about the machinations behind those slick adverts that are popping up around the US. (Disclaimer.. this is only a local interpretation of my efforts in new york, maybe some of this doesnt apply in your area.. however, 2 years ago, I had an even more troublesome experience trying to get DSL in Singapore, so the trials and tribulations below dont seem confined to just NYC!).

PART I: THE BACKGROUND. Ok.. lets begin at the beginning. I had assumed, before trying to get DSL, that ordering it was straightforward. After all, DSL is a technology that has been discussed endlessly in the press and on the web, and there are adverts around the place saying you can get it.. Concentric DSL and Red-Connect are marketing to NY pretty well, and Flashcom is in the national newspapers... but now I realize that almost nobody has DSL. probably a fraction of 0.1% of all internet accounts are travelling on DSL. Getting DSL, from a customer point of view, I now now believe is equivalent in difficulty to, say, rebuilding your car engine over the summer, you will learn more about phones, telecommunications companies, and equipment than you ever wanted to know, pretty soon you will start to hang out in DSL techie mailing lists listening to opinions on the differences between redback and assured access equipment and chatting to Bell vans in the street hoping to get the inside scoop on upgrades to your local switching centre. If you dont believe me, check out some of the previous tales from the frontline, for instance this article about the guy who tried to get DSL from Bel for his power mac...

For some, however, maybe DSL is a simple experience, probably the same kind of people who order from a catalogue then forget about it and are pleasantly surprised when a parcel arrives 2 months later...

The big 56k lie.. in some areas, regular, quality, modems connected to regular, quality, ISPs, will not do more than 26400 (half their promoted speed). This is NOT because of bad wiring in the building etc, it is because your calls go through two digital/analog conversions, apparently this is not un-common in high density areas. Here is the scoop from a tech in the industry that I emailed to ask why my modem wont go faster than 26400, and the Bell guy told me I am on high quality "lightspan" fibre.

1. "..... Bell is bringing analog lines out of the digital switch like they would on a standard phone line, then they re-digitize it, send it down to the equipment in the neighborhood(the SLC), and the equipment converts it back to a standard analog phone line. The loss from the D>A>D>A conversions kill anything above 26,400.."

Ameritech apparently has the same problems with some of their configurations. Failure to get more than 26400 on what sounds and looks like a good line, is a classic symptom ... to fix this, you can request your line gets moved to "old" copper, which they keep in reserve for "internet whiners", although, calling up your local Bell service operator and mentioning any problem relating to data will not get you far.. they read you the riot act on how your phone service is guaranteed for voice, not for fast data transfer etc etc, but if you do get a friendly repairman to visit on some other pretext, he can be more flexible.

Cable modems, in many areas, are 1-way data. Ie, you have to use a phone line for up-channel. In addition, cable modems are a shared pipe, you share it not with strangers, but with other rabid netsurfers, warez vendors, porn freaks, and quake server operators in your building or street. Your download speed, therefore, varies vastly and CAN be as bad as a modem at peak times in certain areas. In addition, the feeling amongst the isp operators seems to be that this is likely to get worse, not better, as more cable users come on line. Your cable operator has a number of potential bottlenecks that all must be managed correctly to give clean constant speed. In contrast, DSL providers merely have to do the math on backend bandwidth versus incoming DSL lines. DSL providers are pleased that the bandwidth hogs are all jumping into cable.. but you as a cable customer may not be as happy.

Radio and other wireless IP is not anywhere yet, at least in NYC, although there is at least one high speed data net coming on stream, probably designed more for mobile phone use than home internet. There are special exceptions, for instance there is a company that beams down data from empire state building, if you are line-of-sight.

Satellite, for example internet via digital satellite-TV dish, is also an option, but the latency (long ping times) makes less attractive, especially for interactive internet applications (like games) and there is only down-link. Up-link is via your good old modem again... Nobody can fix long ping times due to geographic distance... there is no intel chip in the works to increase the speed of radio waves or electrical signals in conducting materials!

DSL. This is what was left in the bag for me, and with my 26400 data rate thanks to Bells "super duper" optical fibre system, RCNs one-way shared cable modem offering, and time warners non-existant option, and my non-view of the empire state building.

PART II: CONCENTRATING ON DSL

There are two basic types of DSL around now for consumers, ADSL and SDSL. The first is asymmetric, ie, assumes you do more reception than sending. Typically uplink rates are 128 or 384kbps (ie, 1-3 times dual ISDN or 3-9x an average modem speed). Downlink rates are up to 784kbps or even higher. Potentially. Ping times are fast (thats good), probably 40-100ms versus 150-300ms for modems. Basically, this rocks compared to ISDN or any regular modem.

For any DSL service, you are tied to THREE parties. One, the ISP, which typically is your only point of contact, and the people who bill you. Two, the CLEC, ie, Bell Atlantic, which owns the rights to access your house and the wires into it. Three, the DSL carrier, which will be one of several national DSL companies who dont like to field calls from customers, and like to deal with either CLECs or ISPs, but carry your data, and are where 40-80% of your monthly bill goes. In the case of Bell Atlantics own DSL service, they are all three.. the CLEC, the ISP and also the DSL provider!

For all DSL types, your home modem needs to be less than roughly 20,000 feet from the "DSLAM" (DSL Access Muptiplexor), which I think is installed next to the SLC (subscriber loop carrier) equipment, en-route to the phone company CO (central office), and you must be even closer, down to 10000 feet, for buying higher DSL rates. Some DSL vendors can tell you on the phone how many feet you are from their equipment if you give them your phone are code and first 3 digits, and zip code. @work was helpful to me for that (the business side of @home).

There are three reasons why DSL might not be an option for you: One is you are too far from any SLC, therefore you will never be able to get DSL, unless your CLEC (competitive local exchange carrier), builds a new node closer to you. Two is that no DSL provider has yet installed equipment in your CLECs facility. Three is because your physical copper phone line(s) prove to be too old to be handle DSL modem signals reliably. If you pass on these three items, you should be able to get DSL now.

In NYC, www.redconnect.com is building their own network that you get to via Bell (of course). They are offering ADSL. Unfortunately, in my book, their marketing is ahead of their deployment.. they are happy to accept your DSL request, but then put you on analog 56k until the zone around you "lights up"... which may be next week, or next month, or next....? finding out "when" is almost impossible, so signing up is a matter of blind faith.

They are also firmly residential oriented in terms of using DHCP, limiting the number of IP addresses, and having an upstream cap at 120kbps ... Why is this a problem? well DHCP means your IP address changes, typically, about once every few weeks, but if you ever fancy serving any digital data, (http, ftp, or whatever) you dont want a dynamically changing IP address!

Do any DSL search in dejanews, and you will hear about FLASHCOM. An agressive sales oriented company offering DSL nationally via at least Covad and Northpoint (two big DSL networkers that resale their networks to "ISPs" to on-sell to the customer). Flashcom has, on the face of it, the best prices for residential DSL access, and will sign you up over the phone with a fast talking no-worries type sales guy. Technically, however, they are non-existant. They seem to out-source all the services you will be depending on (DNS, DHCP, news servers, pop3 mailboxes) to subcontractors with little accountability to you the customer, and no incentive to provide good service, and the terms and conditions of the contract are a straitjacket.. read the fine print first! They also have an explicit NO SERVERS rule which means if you do decide to get technical and run any kind of mini web server, remote access server, game server or ftp server, you are jeopardizing your whole contract and could be up for termination and end up owing them penalties. I read the fine print and decided I didnt like the tone, and found that backing out was almost as hard as getting in was easy. Trying to raise them again to accept cancellation (which the T&C says clearly can be made within the really super generous cooling off period of 24 hours and zero minutes), was impossible. Of course they ignored my cancellation attempt and placed the order with Northpoint anyway, so I had to tell Northpoint themselves it was supposed to be a cancel, and go back to Flashcom accounting department to find someone to re-do the cancellation... (flashcom reappear, like a reanimated corpse, later in my story) for me, anyway, Flashcom was NOT a pleasant experience. One positive.. in the process of "almost" getting caught by flashcom, I found out that Northpoint was the SDSL provider that covered my area, and that Covad (the other biggie) had not reached it yet (I already knew that redconnect hadnt reached it yet either, although finding that out for sure was very difficult).

Finding an ISP that would give me SDSL from Northpoint was my new mission, and armed with that, it became a bit clearer.. the northpoint website www.northpointdsl.com, allows you to find the list of "partner" ISPs in your area, and the next job is just one of elimination... visiting each website in turn checking dsl info and options...

Prices and DSL install fees vary incredibly for the same data rates! You can go from, literally, zero install cost and a low red-connect or flashcom type of price, to at the other end of the scale, $800 for install and four times higher per month price!

A lot of this may be because of out of date website info.. prices are changing fast. However getting someone on the phone to talk about DSL at the ISPs I tried is hard.. numbers dont answer, or there is voice mail that is never returned, email enquiries dont get answered either.. The better websites ask for your phone number, at least the first 3 digits and the area code, and produce a list of prices and/or even providers and speeds and availability dates. These automated facilities are very helpful in getting an idea of what is happening behind the scenes in your area!

Oh at this point, I should talk about the phone company... Bell Atlantic is trying to build its own retail DSL service, and they have some nice looking web pages on it, (it is called InfoSpeed DSL). However, the DSL number to call to ask them is as impenetrable as the smaller ISPs.. info I can glean on dejanews and mailing lists shows that they are lighting up areas, but the chances are they are not in YOUR area for another "few" months.. there is also the worry about your phone company (in the "we only understand voice" sense) operating an ISP type infrastructure reliably, and getting them to fix a problem if it occurs..

PART III: ORDERING DSL

So now, I found an ISP (i wont say which) to get me SDSL via northpoint, without caring about bandwidth used or servers, and at a price better than flashcom. So here is the process for northpoint and NYC and ISP XYZ.. You order it from the ISP, and fill in forms, pay money, and then wait. After a day to a week, depending on how lazy the ISP is, they contact Northpoint with the order. It then goes into Northpoints system and 48 hours or so after that, a "local loop" request goes to Bell Atlantic from Northpoint (ie, please link customer X to our equipment at your switching centre number Y). At this stage, there is a wait that seems to vary depending on the phase of the moon.. some people say weeks. This is a delay you cant check up on, for Bell need a work order number before they give out info on where you are in the queue, and your ISP is 3 steps removed from knowing that number. For me, I had an order for a 2nd phone line via RCN in the queue anyway, and the visiting bell guy saw the DSL request in the system also, and did both on the spot! The time for me between Northpoint getting the order from the ISP, and me getting a socket on the wall (looks identical to a phone socket by the way), was about 3 days! What is supposed to happen, though, is Northpoint gets some warning, and comes by to do the "inside wiring" and test the install. Inside wiring takes the line from where Bell left it, to the room you want it in. In my case, Bell Atlantic kindly did that also.

Equipment: for DSL, you need a "DSL MODEM", and a PC network interface card of some kind. The other option is a combined dsl-modem- router-hub, I think, which is better for small offices. DSL deals now usually allow you to rent the modem, or buy it outright.

For my case, I was presented (for my $20/mth), a 3COM DSL modem (they only make one, its on the 3com website). This is apparently supposed to magically appear at your doorstep, from Northpoint themselves, but in my case, I went to the ISP to pick it up, as this home modem delivery system from Northpoint hadnt really started yet. The modem is simple: plug it in and watch "das blinken lights". There are no local configuration options or diagnostics with this modem.. either green DSL light means go, or red means problem.. (I wonder if redconnect swap the leads on the LEDs ;)?

You also need a NIC, as I said, which you can buy for $29 to $100 from any decent PC store. Try to buy a popular one, because if you ever have any problems you are more likely to see other people on the net posting about it... you need a NIC because out the back of the DSL modem comes pure 10mbps ethernet, just like you have in your office.

Setup. Tthere are two important things here. One is the MAC address.. this is a unique number allocated to every IP card in the word... equipment makers get ranges, and then allocate them to equipment they produce. Amazingly, no equipment has the same MAC address.. but in reality, I believe, manufacturers re-use them, either by accident or plan, so conflicts on the same LAN do happen. The MAC address needs to be given to your ISP, so they can track you as you, and also, probably unblock your circuit... The IP address is the other important thing, or rather, whether or not your ISP is going to automatically configure your network options via DHCP, or statically allocate an IP to you. For my case, they gave me an IP, a subnet mask, and a default gateway, and a DNS server.. basically the same stuff as anyone who has configured networking for an ISP by using the windows control panel knows.

So now, you have a DSL socket on the wall, a green DSL light (hopefully!.. some people get this far to discover the line isnt good enough after all and have to unwind the whole order), and a NIC and a PC plugged in, and you can send packets to the modem by pinging your default gateway... if you are very lucky, you even get a ping reply and your machine is now active, live and on the web, and will probably get hacked by somebody because you know absolutely nothing about IP security... this DSL line will be up and running 24 hours a day, 7 days a week (hopefully), and you have loads of bandwidth available should you need it, and a fixed monthly bill. For my case, I pay $139/mth for 416k SDSL, plus $20 for the 3com modem.. and thats basically it. Its expensive compared to AOL or a 56k ISP, but I will be able to work from home.. how much is that worth to you?

Part IV FOLLOWUP

Although the green light is on, I cant ping anything. After poking around with my PC and doing everything else to prove it wasnt my problem, I have to query the ISP on what the problem could be. Here is where dealing with 3 companies really slows you down. The ISP says, basically, its NPs problem, and they, like me, leave a voice mail for NP. (-getting- northpoints number in NYC was very difficult anyway, I expect its classified information...).

After a week of effort to get in touch with Northpoint local technical guys, they finally come through and tell me the reason I have a DSL line, and a green DSL light, so quickly after application, is that it is connected via Northpoint to flashcom!!! the buggers didnt cancel the workorder with Bell! Northpoint confirmed this was not my fault, and are now looking to switch me over to the local ISP that I chose, rather than cutting me off, and having me start again. I am hoping this can happen in relatively short order.

After deciding over a month ago that DSL might be nice, I have got this far. I estimate I have picked over about 20 websites, read about 30 dejanews articles, joined several DSL mailing lists, written about a dozen emails, made about two dozen 1800 calls, listened to the sentence "for quality assurance purposes, this call may be recorded" about four dozen times, visited the new ISP twice, bought and configured one piece of equipment, installed a modem, written a cheque for $220, and so far, I still cant ping anything.

But I am still hopeful!

webslacker writes "According to Macintouch, several Apple sources are denying that Quicktime will actually be opensourced. It could just end up being a simple confusion of Quicktime viewers and Quicktime server, seeing as how news.com made it sound as if all of Quicktime is going to be opensource. " Here is Yesterday's Story on the subject. Update: 04/19 06:17 by H :Apple has said, however, that the newly unveiled QuickTime Streaming Server will be included under the Apple Public Source License.

Zasteva writes "MacInTouch reports that GameCode, a cross platform (Windows and MacOS) C++ class framework for game development, has just been released by Metrowerks under their MWPL." Apparently a Linux version is in progress. Documentation is online.

Breakdown writes "About a month ago Slashdot reported on Steve Godun attempting to get Bell South to provide ADSL service to any type of Macintosh. At the time Bell Atlantic released a statement saying that by mid-February they hoped to have some sort of Macintosh ADSL solution. The mid-Feb. date has come and gone and Godun has ended his crusade. You can read his 5th and final installment of articles relating to his Mission. "

Lord Kano-The Gangster Of Love writes "A head to head to head comparison of PowerPC G4, Intel Pentium III and E2K ( CT : that russian chip) can be found at macintouch. This has all of the makings for an interesting year, indeed."

jpatters tells us that Micro Processor Report is reporting (via MacInTouch) that a russian company (Elbrus International) claims to have a CPU design that achieves 135 SPECint95 and 350 SPECfp95. This compairs to Merced's scores of 45 and 70 respectively. It is claimed to run in a 0.18 micron process at 1.2Ghz consuming only 35 watts and 126 square millimeters of silicon. It includes a 256 Kbyte of on-chip L2 cache. It should also be both x86 and IA-64 compatible. Elbrus 2000 seems to exist (look at what Shevtsov is working on now), and seems to have had some history. Here is Shevtsov's FPU patent. S : I've tried to verify this story, but can't find the copy of MPR -- anybody else have it? Anyone care to speculate how it was done? Assynchronous logic? 256Kb L2 seems rather low though unless they're using a special point-to-point bus. From an Anonymous Contributor

"I get MPR. I've got about 7 minutes before I have to catch a bus, but, from the MPR issue itself:

The processor uses EPIC. The Elbrus team has been together for 40 years, originally designing supercomputers for the Soviet defense establishments. "They've developed computers based on superscalar, shared-memory multiprocessing and EPIC techniques long before papers on those subjects appeared in the West". MPR claims that the lack of a good semiconductor Fab has been what was holding them back. MPR says that the claims would be unbelievable except for the credibility of the team.

The X86 and IA64 compatibility rely on binary compilation assisted by emulation hooks, similar to what Transmeta is apparantly doing. Supposedly Dave Ditzel spent several years while at Sun working with the Elbrus team.

The processor exists only as an executable Verilog database. However, the E2K design is based on the Elbrus-3 processor that was fabricated in 1991. The Elbrus-3 was built in an "ancient process", used 15 million transistors in about 3000 LSI and MSI chips, and delivered twice the performance of a Cray Y-MP."

Some more he sent later:

" It is actually quite a long article... 6 pages plus the cover, I'm about two thirds through it. The architecture is in fact pretty stunning, and very similar to the Merced and the SPARC in several ways. It has a 64K, 4-way instruction cache: one i-cache only. It has two identical, synchronously-loaded 8K L1 data caches, and a 256K, 2-way, 4-bank L2 data cache. In addition, it has a 4K array pre-fetch buffer for use in loop overlapping. There are two regions, each with an L1 data cache, a 256-entry register file, and three ALUs. The regions are symmetric except that only one region has a divide function.

A great deal in this processor is left to the compiler, a fact that is demonstrated by the single, 64K i-cache; this will only work if the compiler does its job. Much also depends on the compiler's ability to identify instructions that can be executed in parallel. With an optimal instruction load, the multi-ported caches can provide a potential operand bandwidth of 288 Gbytes/sec at a processor clock of 1.2GHz. Much effort is expended to avoid branching; extensive branch prediction support is provided, and in some cases it will actually just go ahead and execute both sides of a branch to avoid doing the branch at all; with so many parallel execution paths, the cost of doing so is much lower than what would be the cost of branching.

When loops are identified, an effort is made to overlap the loop execution, taking advantage the same mechanism as used for the sliding register windows. The 4K FIFO Array prefetch buffer helps to feed data to the overlapped loop. In loop mode, for perfectly optimal code, the processor can rates as high as 23 operations per cycle.

Much of the processor is designed in standard static CMOS gates, but some of the critical paths through the processor use self-reset gates, which do not have a clock but rather are triggered by the completion of cycles in previous gates. According to MPR, these are estimated by Elbrus to run 10-15% faster than static CMOS gates.

Just a couple more facts about Elbrus: The Elbrus-1 computer was a "...superscaler, RISC, processor with out-of-order execution, speculative execution, and register renaming..." This machine was designed and built... between 1973 and 1979!! They dumped superscaler designs becuase they were too complex for the payoff. The Elbrus-3, built between 1985 and 1991, used "an EPIC-based VILW CPU", implemented as a "16-processor shared memory system"

They started working on the E2K in 1994, and it is now at Verilog RTL stage, with compilers and binary-compilation software written. MPR expresses great doubt that a home will ever be found to build the processor, what with the Russian economy as bad as it is, and most capable semiconductor houses already in the midst of implementing their own designs or just not wanting to compete with Intel."

Aleks writes "MacInTouch.com has an absurd story about BellAtlantic ADSL and its non-sensical policy about supporting only Windows machines (and only iMac). If you wanna see an excercise in human innanity and corporate logic, read it at here " It pained me to read this. I can't fathom the world we live in sometimes. Anyway this is amusing enough to read, but you might suffer sympathy frusteration.

pavewrld sent in a couple of links. The first is over at MacWorld Online and announces the new PowerMac G3's, which look similar to the iMac. The second announces the new iMac's, which now come in a variety of colors. Also in Apple news, NikT wrote in to say that Mac OS X server was announced, and it will include Apache and BSD 4.4. Finally, Ethan Butterfield wrote in to let us know of Steve Jobs' keynote address at MacWorld Expo. Apparently Apple has licensed OpenGL from SGI, and John Carmack demoed Quake 3 Arena on one of the new G3's. You can read more at Macintouch. Phew! With MacWorld Expo going on, the Apple news is nonstop.

Ximenes Zalteca writes "According to a recent MacInTouch article, "cache-computing" has derived or simply copied Linux/PPC code licensed under the GNU GPL and replaced the existing copyright with one of their own. The article can be found here. It's worth noting that this is far worse than the controversy over BeOS, because the InfiniteOS project has done more than simply not follow a tenant of the GPL it has replaced a copyright illegally. This is likely due to the common misconception that "free" software under the GPL is public domain. "

Ximenes Zalteca writes "According to a recent MacInTouch article, "cache-computing" has derived or simply copied Linux/PPC code licensed under the GNU GPL and replaced the existing copyright with one of their own. The article can be found here. It's worth noting that this is far worse than the controversy over BeOS, because the InfiniteOS project has done more than simply not follow a tenant of the GPL it has replaced a copyright illegally. This is likely due to the common misconception that "free" software under the GPL is public domain. "

This is a sorta different thing for me to post, but bear with me. Curtis Wilcox sent us a note saying that "">Macintouch would like to hear from anyone successfully running Linux within Connectix's VirtualPC 2.0. Email them at notes@macintouch.com " If anyone has pulled it off, they definately should let them know. And if anyone has a lazy evening, maybe they should try to pull it off... Update Thanks to the 50 of you who warned me about the (now fixed) typo that was once above, all naked and exposed to the whole world *grin*.

Benjamin K. writes "Apple seems to have created a very intrusive license agreement for Quicktime 3. It is creating quite a buzz in the Macintosh community. The license requires that to distribute QT3, a developer either pay $1 per copy of the program, or must copy an advertisement to the desktop EVERY time the program is run. This could be bad. Furthermore, the new movieplayer has fewer features (in the free version) than the old version. I wonder what Apple was thinking!" With Microsoft's new video formats coming out, it seems like now would be a good time for Apple to try to gain market share instead of doing stupid stuff like this.