News for Tuesday, 27 January 2004

Gp was "lucky" enough to test WinPLOSION soft for Windows (former WinExposé) which is supposed to duplicate exposé's function, under XP.

My configuration is a "good office work machine" (as it is its main purpose) : AMD XP 1800+, 512Mo RAM, GeForce4 MX440, Windows XP Pro. The installation of the 500Ko or so software lasts a few seconds, then all there's to do is configure keyboard shortcuts or screen corners, quite exactly like you'd do under Mac OS 10.3 Panther. Being done, my working environment won't be a very crowded one : some windows of Word®, Excel®, Outlook®, my management, my ICQ, etc. That's not much compared to what Exposé has to manage for me on my Mac. Well it happens to be… unusable! Sending the mouse to one corner of the screen to see all the windows creates a weird, psychedelic like effect, before every one, poorly animated by the way, reaches minimized status. Moreover, it seems the soft stores in cache the windows from the latest "Exposition", as if some come to be closed meanwhile, they'd still be seen when minimized (so illogical !). As a conclusion : I don't know if this comes from my configuration, or if a (really) more powerful graphical card would allow better results (as the wait time before the real "Exposition" thing is quite unpleasant), yet in its current state it is perfectly useless. The CPU gauge is stuck on 100% for a moment, which accounts for the difficulty to introduce low level Apple technologies (Quartz/OpenGL) to the Windows user level (no DirectX nor Direct3D for Windows XP GDI+ interface). This is really sad, as I wished every day I could have an Exposé function on PC, so I rejoiced to the idea I'd have one. The "Add/uninstall programs" panel was eventually merciless.

Though we aren't directly concerned, from this morning on, a big viral attack has started on PC.
A worm called "Mydoom.A" is responsible for that. It is spreading through mail attachment, then replicates by sending messages itself.
On a PC, it opens a port allowing ill-intentioned people to gain remote control of the machine. It has also been programmed to launch an attack against SCO site on February 1st.
But this is also a bit of a concern to us, as my mail box is overflown with contaminated messages (over 150 since this morning).
As this virus will also usurpate the identity of one of the infected person's contacts, you'll also receive automatic messages from anti-virus software's and delivery failure messages from mail servers.
Hence our mail server is lagging and is a bit irritated like we are.
PS: while writing this news, I have come to 160 msg :((

The French site www.promusicfrance.com aims at telling the public opinion how perverse are the effects of illegal downloads on the Web, hence showing the reader the way to legal d/l sites. This educational initiative is to praise and would be even more if any of the latter were compatible for the Mac.
At the same time the Syndicat National de l'Edition Phonographique [National Record Editors Syndicate] claim they wish people who d/l music illegaly would start to be sued in France. Our minister of Culture seems to agree with their point of view.
We voluntarily proposed you those two infos in that order. In our view it is better to start changing people's minds, then punish if it fails. We are quite persuaded the recording industry has paid so high a price because they didn't move in tome. They've been refusing for years to consider online d/l, hence encouraging illegal d/l.
We hope to have a Europen iTMS soon enough, so Mac users would gain access to a (quality) legal online music service.

It is now official, Virginia Tech will replace its PM G5 by the new G5 xServe for its supercomputer cluster.
Advantages :
- surface occupied divided by 3.
- power consumption will decrease.
- heat release will be lower.
Price of second hand PowerMac G5 might decrease with the sudden arrival of 1100 machines on the market....

One of our sources, who works for an Apple dealer, experienced what we'll -for now- call a coincidence...
On the same day, three customers brought back their G5 dual, strongly smelling of burned plastic. It seems that, in each case, one of the two processors simply died.
We'll try to get our hands on the machines' serial numbers.

[update]
another Mac reseller, not located in France but from another European country, is also reporting to us a recent "burned" PM G5 Dual. In this case , it was necessary to replace most of the computer (PSU, Processors, motherboard,...). The serial number was YM345xxxxxx, corresponding to a PM G5 built between November 3rd and 7th, 2003, and delivered few days later.
Stay tune we will update as soon as we get additional info
[update 2]
hereafter are the serial number of PM G5 which were affected by this "burning phenomenon"
CK347xxxxxx
CK341xxxxxx
CK344xxxxxx
So far it is affecting only PM G5 Dual. The last 3 serial numbers were assembled in Cork Apple Plant (CK, Ireland). It also reports that affected models were over weeks 41 to 47 2003.
But be careful, we need more similar reports before concluding that it is statistically significant and that there is a real manufacturing problem with the PM G5

A new security update is available through Software update:

Security Update 2004-01-26 delivers a number of security enhancements and is recommended for all Macintosh users. This update includes the following components: Apache 1.3, Classic, Mail, Safari, Windows File Sharing Additionally, Security Update 2003-12-19 has been incorporated into this security update. Those components are: AFP Server, ASN.1 Decoding for PKI, cd9660.util, Directory Services, fetchmail, fs_usage, rsync, System Initialization

Update: the software can now be downloaded from Apple's website:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=120301

A new version of the Airport software (3.3) is available through the Software update:

This software update provides improved AirPort wireless networking software, and is recommended for all users with an AirPort Extreme and AirPort enabled computer or an AirPort Extreme base station. New AirPort Extreme Features: This software provides support for the Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA) specification for the AirPort Extreme base station and AirPort Extreme and AirPort clients. Please see AirPort Help for more information on WPA. Also included in this release is v5.3 of the AirPort Extreme base station firmware. Instructions for updating the base station firmware can also be found in AirPort Help. The AirPort Extreme base station and AirPort Extreme client are Wi-Fi Certified™ for 802.11b and 802.11g interoperability.

Update: the software can now be downloaded from Apple's website : http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=120299