Slashdot Mirror

crazyj was among several Slashdot readers who, knowing my obsession with the greatest band of all time, submitted that The Who's John Entwistle died. His death occured one day before the start of their summer tour. The Ox was an amazing bassist, and I'm glad I got to see him play. Those fingers would just fly up that fretboard. He'll be missed.

MacSlash's Robert Daeley writes in to tell us that the domain name for MacSlash, the Mac news site, is incorrectly pointing to a generic "Dotster" page, either by accident or by malicious domain theft or squatting. They have registered macslash.net and hope to be back up again soon, and have as yet been unable to get word from "Dotster" regarding how this all happened.

Robert Jung writes "Is Epson waging a coordinated discrimination effort against Mac users? MacSlash reports that Epson is refusing to honor their $50 rebate coupon if the printer was purchased at an Apple retail store, and Daily Mac notes that if you want Mac OS X drivers for Epson scanners, you must fill out a form, fork over $4, and wait for the mail to arrive -- while Windows users are able to download XP drivers for free." Apparently, Mac OS (Classic) users can also download the drivers for free. Maybe they assume Mac OS X users don't have Internet access?

daeley writes "NewsFactor has published an article, Cult of the Mac - Why So Many Mac Fanatics? -- looking for answers to '...what is it about the Mac that commands such loyalty? An even better question might be, what is Apple doing right?'"

MacSlash writes "There's an interview over at MacSlash with David Pogue, the New York Times Tech columnist and author of lots of stuff, including the best-selling Mac OS X: The Missing Manual and his brand new Piloting Palm, The Inside Story of Palm, Handspring and the Birth of the Billion Dollar Handheld Industry. The interview deals with subjects like the future of Mac OS X, how Unix programmers are providing some of the best new stuff, and even why Pogue uses Windows to write his books."

MacSlash writes "There's an interview over at MacSlash with David Pogue, the New York Times Tech columnist and author of lots of stuff, including the best-selling Mac OS X: The Missing Manual and his brand new Piloting Palm, The Inside Story of Palm, Handspring and the Birth of the Billion Dollar Handheld Industry. The interview deals with subjects like the future of Mac OS X, how Unix programmers are providing some of the best new stuff, and even why Pogue uses Windows to write his books."

HiredMan writes: "Wired is running an article comparing the set-up and admin of Linux Beowulf clusters versus Mac based clusters. Slant of the article is that the Macs are easier to set-up, maintain and are more flexible. They note that the Linux "how to" manual is 230 pages while the corresponding Apple document is a 1 page PDF file. Dauger Research of former Appleseed fame is mentioned as well, of course. MacSlash is also covering the article. Let the on-topic (for once) Beowulf comments fly..."

Anderson Silva writes "I just found this piece of news on MacSlash, and since I live in Maine, and I own an ibook, I thought I would pass the word along: The Maine Learning Technology Endowment has announced today that Apple has won the bid to provide Maine 6th, 7th and 8th graders with Apple iBooks and Airport wireless connection points."

AxsDeny writes: "It looks like Macslash is also reporting this, but Trolltech is now offering Qt for OS X. Long live cross platform development." Doesn't look like there's a Free version, but there is a non-commerical license called the "Qt Academic License," which "Allows schools and universities to acquire and use Qt for free in relevant courses."

acaben writes "Jason Haas, co-founder of LinuxPPC (and a semi-frequent topic of discussion on Slashdot) has announced he is resigning from the company to pursue a college degree and a life a little less hectic. Haas explained he was burned out, and that "Three or four years of trying to do as much as humanly possible will do that to you." There's more information available on his depature at MacSlash."

So, now that OS X has been out a few days and people have had a chance to put it though its paces, let's take a look at it. Upside.com wonders if the new OS was released half-baked. Ars Technica puts it through its paces with a very thorough review. O'Reilly plans to release tech books covering OS X, so if your bookshelf isn't full yet, you can add a few more. Certain major software projects are already being tried on OS X - look out Adobe. And finally, we know it's not April 1, but we thought the picture of OS X on a Visor was cute. Any other good links to reviews? Post them below.

AcaBen writes: "MacSlash's Les Harris did an in depth interview with Jason Haas of LinuxPPC about their upcoming release and enhancements. It also includes some news of his recovery from the bad auto accident (covered by Slashdot) he was involved in, and provides details about how LinuxPPC will compete with MacOS X."

AcaBen writes: "MacSlash's Les Harris did an in depth interview with Jason Haas of LinuxPPC about their upcoming release and enhancements. It also includes some news of his recovery from the bad auto accident (covered by Slashdot) he was involved in, and provides details about how LinuxPPC will compete with MacOS X."

acaben writes: "On MacSlash, we're running a story that gives more information on the Unix-ness of MacOS X, expounding on recent articles from MacWeek and Slashdot. With insightful commentary running from packaging applications to using X-Windows on the MacOS X Beta, we hope to shed some new light on the Unix aspects of the Public Beta."

acaben writes: "On MacSlash, we're running a story that gives more information on the Unix-ness of MacOS X, expounding on recent articles from MacWeek and Slashdot. With insightful commentary running from packaging applications to using X-Windows on the MacOS X Beta, we hope to shed some new light on the Unix aspects of the Public Beta."

acaben writes: "On MacSlash, we're running a story that gives more information on the Unix-ness of MacOS X, expounding on recent articles from MacWeek and Slashdot. With insightful commentary running from packaging applications to using X-Windows on the MacOS X Beta, we hope to shed some new light on the Unix aspects of the Public Beta."

acaben writes: "At MacSlash we've got a story about the differences between the different distros of Linux available for PowerPC architecture. We've invited developers of each version to stop by and respond to comments, and already the debate is raging." Considering the power of Apple's newest hardware, this is an especially interesting topic; readers are weighing in about ease of use, hardware support and other things. I wonder when Web pages devoted to Linux on The G4 Cube will start showing up! :)

acaben writes: "At MacSlash we've got a story about the differences between the different distros of Linux available for PowerPC architecture. We've invited developers of each version to stop by and respond to comments, and already the debate is raging." Considering the power of Apple's newest hardware, this is an especially interesting topic; readers are weighing in about ease of use, hardware support and other things. I wonder when Web pages devoted to Linux on The G4 Cube will start showing up! :)

Welcome to another episode of Slashback, laden with bits about the psychology of the Apple Cube, damage-control parity among handhelds, mourning the passing of a Linux-friendly ISP, technicalities of credit, and aliens. Can you ever read enough about aliens, anyhow? Enjoy.

Its maddening combination of color and shape drive one completely in -- No, wrong cube. Savage Henry Matisse writes: "There's a really super article analyzing the psychology behind Jobs' most recent flight of fancy, posted here. The thrust of it is that, rather than being a replay of the NeXT FUBAR or another instance of being too-far-ahead-of-his-time, the CUBE is really a very sly piece of manuevering meant to shoehorn Macs into the corporate compu-hierarchy from the top down. Very insightful-- an analysis kinda along the same lines as Neal Stephenson's In the Beginning was the Command Line" And for those who prefer the practical to the theoretical, RevAaron writes: "Many of us have been wondering about some of the details of Apple's newly released Power Macintosh G4 Cube, including whether or not it has an AGP slot or just a chip soldered onto the board. Listen to the story from the lead designer of the cube here at MacSlash."

Well technically, they'd still block excess light from your eyes ... FroBugg writes "Handspring has just released an OS upgrade for all their Visor handhelds, which is supposed to fix the DRAM problem that caused crashes and data corruption. Go get it here." This is the same RAM Problem Palm devices have as reported a few weeks ago, at which point no fix was out for Visors.

The end of a (very brief era): dubious_1 writes "The free internet service provider http://www.freewwweb.com has ceased operation. The service provided by freewwweb used ppp and pap authentication for its dialup making it available to users of any operating system. Users of freewwweb agreed to set their web browsers home page to a page used by freewwweb, to allow them to support the service through ad revenue. According to the web page you are redirected to when accessing the previous freewwweb.com site, the service lost by the demise of freewwweb is now being filled by Juno however, this service is only available for users of MS Windows 9x and nt. Unlike freewwweb, Juno uses a proprietary front end to authenticate users on their service. The web site specifically says that this client program is not available for either Linux or MacOS."

One recurrent Ask Slashdot question is about this very issue -- Where are free ISPs for Linux users? I wonder if there are any good answers now that freewwweb has snuffed it. Surely if billions of dollars are there to be made with free-for-the-viewing television programming, there's no reason that ad-supported ISPs should be uncommon. Can you say "target market"?

Credit where credit is due. We mentioned a fraudulent site established to mimic the look of online personal credit-card site PayPal. Jawed Karim writes, "You incorrectly mention that your credit card can get stolen by becoming a victim to the fake PayPal site. This is not true. The credit card is not exposed when you log into your PayPal account. Just wanted to make this clear. (The same correction has been made to the MSNBC article, at the bottom of it)"

Well, isn't the danger that customers lulled into thinking they were on the right site would be also lulled into giving their information away? Someone sure wants to steal credit card information with this site, but yes, it's more of a social engineering trick than an automated number grabber.

Yes sir, we know that the damn cat is still in the box. Swede2048 writes: "Lots of people think that SETI is a hopeless adventure, and mostly a waste of time and processing cycles. [including many who read yesterday about the "SETI-on-a-board product" ;) -- t] For those who haven't read it yet, last month's Scientific American had a great article describing the results SETI has already provided. By NOT finding e.t.life in the searched sky, SETI has placed some restrictions on what kinds of e.t life can exist."