Boy time flies! Sorry I didn’t have a post up here earlier, but just to let everybody know, June’s meeting is a go for tonight - June the 9th.
While I haven’t talked to Meg directly, I’m sure she will want to do her Mac voice recognition software demo. Sounds interesting!
I thought I’d do a bit on Bittorrent and the Transmission client.
As always, bring your questions and we’ll see what we can figure out together!
See you tonight - same great place - don’t forget your chair! (or we’ll feed you to the mosquitoes)
Apple’s released a whole pile of updates lately - including a massive 10.5.3 update weighing in around 400 meg…. I don’t know what they expect dial up users to do - that’s not practical for them.
It’s worth noting that many people have reported a hang at ‘Configuring’ when the try to install the update (myself included).
The fix is apparently run ‘Repair Permissions’ then download the Combo Updater and use it instead. That’s a measly 530 meg 
I’ll let you know how I make out…. Anybody else having issues?
Bill pointed out a while ago he had some issues getting his printers working properly in Leopard.
Now that I’m migrating some users here at work, I’m having printer issues too. In our case we are using a number of different Lexmark laser printers - like the Lexmark T642, T630 and C532n models.
I knew Bill had had some problems, so I did my homework. Lexmark does have Leopard drivers - both on the install DVD and on their website. As I understand it, the drivers on their website are even newer than the ones that came from Apple.
There were lots of comments on various forums about Leopard and Lexmark printing issues, and apparently Lexmark was even having trouble on their website by posting old drivers under a new link and thoroughly confusing matters. But, since the newest drivers were reported to fix most problems, and most of the problems were with ink jets anyway, I felt safe (and perhaps just a little smug) downloading the latest drivers from Lexmark and installing them right away. That’ll teach me.
There are two issues I know are caused by the current Lexmark drivers.
One - The print resolution setting is ’stuck’ on 1200 dpi. You can change it manually for each and every print that you make and that works fine, but it goes right back to 1200 dpi - regardless of the printer default setting. This is extra confusing because at 1200 dpi Lexmark slows down the printer to ‘half speed’ to improve the print quality. The end result is each time you print it takes for ever, and the paper doesn’t even eject out of the printer very quickly. When you’ve put thousands of pages though one of these machines and seen them shoot out the paper ever time, one running at half speed is rather off putting….
Two - I have several documents that don’t print properly. Some documents little or none of the text is printed on the page at all, even though the cell grid is there… Some fonts are being substituted on others.
There is a work around for my case - switching to the ‘generic postscript’ driver gets me fast prints with all the text using the printer’s own default settings. Using the generic driver means I don’t get the fancy printer options like print and hold, or confidential, but otherwise seems pretty solid.
Lexmark’s support has been, well, mediocre. The first person I dealt with wasn’t any help at all. The ‘live chat’ option on their website was frustratingly slow, and it took a while to get them to clue into what I was saying, but eventually they admitted it was a driver issue. They say new ones are due out in the next month or so and reassured me it would make all my problems go away…. I’m not holding my breath
In summary, if you are looking at a printer for Leopard, I’d do some homework first - even if it worked fine in Tiger.
I’ve got a new portable mp3 + video player to replace my dead iPod mini.
It’s a Cowan D2. It’s got a touch screen, and video looks quite good on the small screen. I’ll maybe post a better review of it another day.
What’s been frustrating is trying to get files out of iTunes and into the Cowan. (pronounced “co” “wan” not “cow” “an” if you’re curious)
I’ve made a simple ’smart’ playlist that just selects 250 random songs. I’d then drag and drop the songs from the playlist into the Cowan.
It would start the copy, then fail after preparing for while - but only sometimes…. Selecting a smaller subset of files at a time would usually work - but not always….
I finally figured it out after playing about with it for a while. If there were two songs on the list that had the same file name it would blow up. If the song was already there in the destination it’s fine, it just renames them like any regular Finder drag and drop. It just can’t deal with copying two different files with the same name at the same time.
If this were linux I’d file a bug with the maintainer. Anybody know the equivalent process with Apple? and can someone try and reproduce this using Leopard?
Hope this solves someone else’s confusion.
There’s been a stir on the Microsoft side of computer news lately.
An Australian anti-virus firm started claiming Windows Vista (the latest and greatest MS OS) is less secure than Windows 2000.
May 10 Vista security credentials tarnished in malware survey “Windows Vista is better at protecting against malware than XP but more easily infected than Windows 2000, according to a study by Australian anti-virus firm PC Tools. [...] Recent research based on malware scans of more than 1.4m PCs running PC Tools’ ThreatFire security technology over a period of six months turned up 639 threats per 1,000 PCs running Windows Vista compared to 1,021 threats per 1,000 Win XP boxes and 586 for 1,000 machines running Windows 2000.” — writes John Leyden at The Register.
Other people have fired back arguing about the methods they used to collect their data, and the reasons why the numbers appeared skewed towards Vista.
I think it is very dangerous delusion. First of all, the difference between 639 and 586 is not big and can be easily explained. Here is my logical sequence of simple assertions: * Nowadays the easiest way to get infected is to catch some trojan/spyware/etc. via the browser while surfing the Internet or via the mail program. * Internet Explorer is the most popular browser and Outlook is the most popular mail agent among Windows users. HTML parsing engine of Outlook is based on IE. * Latest version of IE is much more complex than the earlier one. This means there are more possibilities for hackers to compromise it. * Newest web-intrusion techniques are mostly intended for the latest version of IE. * Users of Windows 2000 cannot install IE 7.0. Some of the security work in IE7 relies on operating system functionality in XP SP2+ that is non-trivial to port back to Windows 2000. In other words, there is no version of IE7 for Windows 2000. * All above means the newest zero-day and other threats which can be found on the malicious web-pages or in HTML-formatted emails are not so “popular” (though they can be much more dangerous) for Windows 2000 SP4 (with all updates) users. Hackers do not stay on one place, they are inventing new and new methods to break the latest protection mechanisms. They will not spare their efforts on the outdated and not supported since 2005 operating system. Secondly, a lot of immaterial trifles are often included to “malware” notion. Really serious threats which can lead to complete remote control of a target system by an attacker, should be considered at first place. As a rule, they are installed on system kernel level and require administrative privileges. Most Windows 2000 users work as administrators by default, so they are vulnerable to any kind of threats. In Windows Vista this vital problem is solved by User Account Control technology. So Vista is definitely much more secure than Win2000 and I don’t understand PCTools’ attempt to overthrew this axiom by far-fetched conclusions in their survey.
But my goodness - step back and look at those numbers!
Out of one thousand MS Vista and Windows 2000 PCs, roughly 500 pieces of malware are running. For Windows XP the number is over 1000 !!!
Yeeesh….
Due to several people letting me know that they will not be attending this meeting and due to the fact that I, Meg Jordan, have a very important meeting elsewhere which I was going to sacrifice for the sake of MMUG. After some soul searching however, I have come to the conclusion that this is one sacrifice I do not wish to make. Therefore I am cancelling the meeting tonight. The main presentation of the evening was going to be a demonstration of MacSpeech Dictate by yours truly. For those of you who are devastated that the meeting has been cancelled and were looking forward to learning more about MacSpeech Dictate–here is a link to some U-Tube videos that will give you a pretty fair idea of how it works. I have to say that I am impressed and am beginning to use Dictate as an additional productivity tool in my daily computing life. Hopefully I will see you all at the June meeting–Monday June 9th. Cheers, Meg
One of the most hotly anticipated releases for the Mac well, by me anyway is almost out!
Open Office version 3 for Mac is now (finally) a regular Aqua interface program. It’s still in beta (and probably will be until August or so) but it’s looking good.
This software package is the only real equivalent to Microsoft Office that’s free software. It’s very full featured, and will do pretty much anything you can do with MS office. It’s not as pretty or easy to use as the Apple iWork suite, but it will open MS Office documents more faithfully including the new 2007 format!
A more detailed guide to the features can be found on the website.
One of the biggest benefits to Open Office is it’s truly the most cross platform office package - it’s available in hundreds of languages, for Mac, Windows, Linux, BSD and others, and it’s files are created according to an official ISO standard, so other programs like Sun’s Star Office, IBM’s Symphony Suite and KDE’s office suite all exchange documents freely.
I wouldn’t count on it as your only office package until it’s officially released later this year, but it’s worth downloading it now and trying it out. It’s a big download, so be prepared… think 168 meg…
Let me know what you think!
I’ve changed both the look and updated the back end of this website.
I’m not sold on this theme, I may revert soon
On the other hand, the back end update is great. Log in and check it out - it’s easier and more obvious to post, insert pictures etc. than it’s ever been before.
Feedback appreciated….
Here’s another one of those computer messages that make you go ‘hmmm…..’
Let me see, 4096 Gig = 4 Terabytes, in a laptop….. Call me in 2012 or so and I’ll see what I can do.
Some random musings….. vaguely formed.
Windows and Mac users have long since grown accustomed to a ‘GUI’ - a graphical user interface. They are kinda like comic books, easy to pick up, easy to figure out the plot line, but it takes an awful lot of paper and ink (and artist’s time) to tell any sort of story!
Command line interfaces (CLI) like that used in Terminal.app are more like novels or poetry. Tightly woven, lots of meaning in every letter - they convey a lot of information quickly, and the authour can produce more output faster. On the other hand, they required concentration, imagination and effort to grasp just what the heck the authour is trying to say.
So, since we’ve got books and novels - where the heck is the ‘Movie’ or ‘TV’ interface? Take a look at modern games and virtual worlds like Second Life - spun the right way they could easily become the ‘TV’ equivalent interface to your computer.
I wouldn’t be suprised if in another 20 years all three interfaces are still going to be with us, just like TV and comic books didn’t replace novels and poetry. On the other hand, the next time someone mentions using Terminal.app to do something - don’t just throw it out as ‘old fashioned’ or ‘backwards’…