Articles


E Ink announces flexible screen

E Ink is showing a prototype of a flexible screen with a black and white resolution similar to that of today's laptops. The screen can be rolled into a tube approximately 1/2" in diameter and then rolled back out for use. Although the refresh rate on the device is …

Is the common cold a cure for brain tumors?

Researchers at Houston's MD Anderson Cancer Center have announced that they have successfully used an engineered "smart virus" made from the common cold to destroy brain tumors in laboratory rats (which I've always thought were pre-disposed to cancer...). An article from Wired provides some cautionary comments from throughout the health …

Earthlink wins $16M SPAM award

No, they're not getting $16.4M for being purveyors of fine spam. Instead, they have received a judgment in that amount from Howard Carmack (no relation to the games developer) from Buffalo, NY who reportedly sent (with his "ring" of spammers) some 825 million pieces of spam using EarthLink's …




Improving OS X NFS performance

For those of you who use NFS (the Network File System) under OS X for file sharing, here is a hint from MacOS X Hints that describes how to improve performance. The key is an old unix trick of doubling the number of NFS daemons running on the machine in …

Direct consequences of the DMCA

Another example of the DMCA hard at work can be seen today at MacOS X Hints. The author has wisely chosen not to take on the RIAA or Apple, by flouting the DMCA and publishing information on how to circumvent the copy protection scheme used on the tunes downloaded from …

Gates talks about Palladium... er NGSCB

An article from the Associated Press, appearing on Yahoo covers an interview with Bill Gates of Microsoft about the Next Generation Secure Computing Base (formerly known as Palladium, FAQ Here). Key questions were whether the system would require users to use it for all documents (his answer: no, but they'd …

Caffeine content of various beverages/drugs

I went searching for this information this morning and found an excellent table from The Vaults of Erowid containing comparisons of the amount of caffeine in various beverages and drugs. Important safety tip, espresso is about 3 x the amount of caffeine as diet cola.


Norwegian TV2's US flag burning could end up in jail time

This little gem of a story comes to us courtesy of Aftenposten (a Norwegian newspaper with English information). It seems that in February, a TV2 comedian burned a US flag in the background of his monologue. Unfortunately for Mr. Jespersen, this appears to be an illegal act under paragraph 95 …

Radio station uses iPod as backup to satellite

An interesting article this morning on MacCentral details the rather complex set up for using an iPod as the backup for an FM radio station that has intermittent problems with its satellite feed. The basics are that they installed the 5GB iPod as an on-site backup at the transmitter so …

Atari to rise for the ashes in France

A Reuters story appearing on ZDNet UK announces the renaming of the French/American games manufacturer Infogrames under the Atari name. Read the article for the sordid details of acquisition and sale that brought the world to this point.

Apple updates eMacs, releases 10.2.6

Apple has updated the eMac computers (the only models with CRTs) today. The new machines run from $799 (800MHz G4/128MB/40GB/CD) to $1299 (1GHz G4/256MB/80GB/DVDR) for the standard configurations with up to 1GB RAM available in build to order. The new machines are also Airport …


Infoworld author seeks to switch to Xserve

After switching to an Apple PowerBook last year, InfoWorld reporter Tom Yager is planning on making his switch permanent and following it up with a change in servers. His plan is to move to an OS X-running XServe, followed by adding a second one in a cluster. According to Yager …

Car pricing web site disparity

I received an interesting call today from my father, who is currently looking for a new car. It appears that the local dealership near them was getting a substantially lower value for his trade-in than he was expecting (20% or so). When asked, they indicated their source was Kelly's Blue …


MacWorld reviews external DVD recorders

Those with Macs that don't have SuperDrives may be interested in the review from MacWorld of a variety of external (FireWire) DVD recorders. All drives are between $350 and $399, but there are some significant differences, especially to the Macintosh user, who will need to find appropriate DVD content creation …