Macintosh

“Thirteen-year-old Jeremy Harmon says that learning on a laptop computer is more fun than just reading a book,” writes Tess Nacelewicz for the Portland Press Herald. “‘You can be more involved with the work and we can do a lot more stuff, like spreadsheets,’ the seventh-grader at Portland’s Lyman Moore Middle School said Thursday. His comments echo those of other seventh-graders who participated in a state study of the impact that Maine’s unique laptop computer initiative is having, halfway through its first year. Among the findings were that 88.5 percent of students agreed that laptops make schoolwork more fun.” [Mar 14] [Apple Hot News]

I’ve posted a full review of my 12″ PowerBook G4. [MacMegasite]

From MacDailyNews:

“George Doughty hung his latest hunting trophy on the wall of his Sportsman’s Bar and Restaurant. Then he went to jail. The problem was the trophy was Doughty’s laptop computer. He shot it four times, as customers watched, after it crashed once too often. He was jailed on suspicion of felony menacing, reckless endangerment and the prohibited use of weapons. ‘It’s sort of funny, because everybody always threatens their computers,’ said police Lt. Rick Bashor, seconds before his own police computer froze at police headquarters. Doughty was released Monday evening after spending a night in jail and is due in court Wednesday. In police reports, Doughty said that he realized afterward that he shouldn’t have shot his computer but at the time it seemed like the right thing to do,” reports The Associated Press.

According to the Boulder Daily Camera, Doughty, 48, owns the establishment. He entered the bar from his office, announced he was going to shoot his computer and returned to his office. After 30 minutes, police said, Doughty set his laptop on the floor 4 to 6 feet away from him, warned two customers at the bar to cover their ears and fired away. The computer took all the bullets and no one was injured.

Unfortunately, they left out two important bits of information of interest to MacDailyNews and our readers.

Paul Schultz, Lafayette’s Chief of Police told MacDailyNews that the laptop Doughty shot was a Dell. Lt. Rick Bashor’s police computer that crashed during his comments to AP is a Gateway. Did somebody say, “switch?”

“Just six months after Maine began a controversial program to provide laptop computers to every seventh grader in the state,” writes Sarah Mahoney in the New York Times, “educators are impressed by how quickly students and teachers have adapted to laptop technology.” She quotes school principal Chris Toy, “We don’t have a pencil lab or put eight pencils in the middle of the room and have kids take turns using them, Computers are tools, and when every child in every school has one, it levels the playing field.” [Mar 5] [Apple Hot News]

How do I enable user web sites in Mac OS X server? When I was running 10.2 on my G3, users were able to access their site as http://localhost/~name but now when I try to access a user site it now attempts to connect to port 16080 for some reason.

BTW, I installed Server 10.2.3 as an upgrade over Jaguar, retaining the user account info & directories.

I’ve spent most of the day installing & configuring Mac OS X Server on my G3.

Seen at MacWhispers:

MacWhispers was launched as an experiment, to see if information gained from OEM and ODM suppliers to Apple could be successfully converted into reliable advance product information. In other words, we wanted to know if tidbits of data picked up in conversation with people who work in Apple’s behind the scenes supply chain could be used reliably to predict Apple’s product releases. After a month, the answer seems to be a simple, “No.”

Because of the seemingly unreliable system we have been using to generate “rumors” here, and the near-absence of accuracy from that system, we are stopping all efforts to analyze Apple supplier information, and to convert that information into product release predictions. As counterintuitive as it seems to say that the people building Apple’s parts are not reliable information sources, that seems to be the case. So, we’re leaving the rumor game, and are proclaiming our month-long experiment as now completed.

Going forward, MacWhispers will remain as an opinion and discussion destination for anyone interested in dropping by the site. And, when some bit of information does come our way from the Apple supply chain, we may simply publish the information in raw form, drawing no conclusions of our own.

The reality is simply that, even if we had videotaped evidence that, for instance, 50,000 new iPods were sitting in a California warehouse, ready to ship, that fact would not guarantee that Apple would choose to announce or ship them on any particular date. Without being privy to actual Apple Computer information, no amount of third-party information can reliably predict Apple’s actions.

So, we offer a sincere thanks to all MacWhispers visitors. And, we hope you will continue to stop by from time to time as our content shifts away from a rumor-focused editorial scheme.

I see I missed the deadline for $450 MacHack registration, which ended 2/28.

I didn’t register yet since there’s a chance I might not go if I’m moving around that time.

As I was sitting here and working on my new 12″ PowerBook G4, the period key just fell off.

Does anyone know how to fix it?

Update: it snapped back on very easily and feels as if nothing happened.

Here’s the article. All this from the company who realized the floppy drive was deceased long after the blow flies had moved on. Maybe they were so embarrassed about that that now they’ve decided to be the first to reveal the mortality of one of the most stable platforms…one that Dell relies upon to manage its supply chain.

Option-Shift K Apple Hacker Swag! [MacMerc]

Yet another example of Dell’s arrogance & cluelessness.