News for Monday, 17 May 2004

CyVice sent us an article from the Figaro dated Saturday.
It would seem Steve Jobs would have liked to be part of the debate on piracy which was to take place during Cannes festival.
Yet the organization declined his offer, hoping that creators alone talk.
Of course, they are the ones who lose money out of piracy. Yet turning your back on those who tried to bring any part of a solution isn't necessarily very clever.
What other alternative is there to piracy, which gives such an easy access the works, other than a fair solution that retributes artists ?

Source : Arstechnica

Merci à Fredouil pour l'info.
While most European countries would promote bills allowing software patent, Germany decided to be a firm opposant to this.
They'll certainly be trouble makers in commissions of the European institutions.

N&B, member of the Macbidouille community, had trouble when playing too long on his G5. The video card would freeze.
Actually Apple's 9600 has a radiator but no fan as opposed to the PC version.
While this choice makes it silent , in some cases things will turn sour.
N&B decided he'll promote an active cooling solution for his card.

He installed a Vantec ventirad and radiators for graphic chips.
And the card is now cool and fresh.
http://homepage.mac.com/nicvv/PhotoAlbum2.html

It's Kang talking.

Here's a demo of another security leak under Safari,which will allow to execute almost any action on a surfer's machine. You may d/l it here: http://www.insecure.ws/article.php?story=2004051612423136 Nothing dangereoux with it, all the stuff is in the .dmg, and what it will do is explained (will write a text which will open via textedit) It's up to you to publish it or not, as the demo is quite impressive, which may scare some. The leak was made public very recently, or else I wouldn't have revealed it before the fix from Apple has arrived (as I usually do) It is of course possible to deactivate the automatic opening of files via Safari, or for instance to change the "help" tags handler to something else than Help.app from InternetConfig2 (there are freewares on versiontracker to do that under MacOSX)

The leak was made public on 05/10/04. Apple was informed on 02/23/04. No patch was released ever since.
No need to panic, or even to launch the demo. Yet Apple shall solve this issue before anyone would use it.
If you wish to fix it yourself, Kang explains us how to do it:

http://www.monkeyfood.com/software/moreInternet/This is a prefpane, just change help to anything, Why not an applescript with a display alert "Caution, call for help detected"

You may use this solution until this leak is fixed.

Who hasn't looked into the possibility of changing the video card of an aging laptop ?
Well, lots of people, given the popularity and the recurrence of that question on the forums. So far the answer for an iMac, iBook or eMac is still a firm no.
However things could change. NVidia introduced a prototype of a replaceable video card for laptops.

The interface between the logic board and the video card is based on PCI-Express. There would eventually be 3 variants corresponding to the graphic card's power consumption. The first PC products carrying this technology should be ready by the beginning of the fourth quarter.
Apple could certainly use those upgradable cards in a few of its products. Changing the graphic card in a Powerbook or an iMac is quite an appealing idea.
Now, it all depends on the will of Apple to offer upgrade paths, which would go against the current policy of replacing the machines rather than upgrading them.

More and more of you are getting into what we call "bidouille" (try "hackage" for an English approximation) with the Mac and its peripherals, and we are thrilled by such enthousiasm. However, certain things must always be in the back of your head:
-If you have no previous solid experience with soldering and/or other high profile mods, ask for the help of an experienced friend !
-Before you venture any further, remember that sometimes things can go bad. Know how much is at risk, and if the results are worth the risk.
- Try not to hack a production machine. Mods to not mix well with the work environment.
Now, if you still want to stick around with us, good luck in your endeavours :)

New Site ALLOFMP3 offers to download MP3, sans DRM, not by the tune, but the the kilo (byte). One can fetch from the 250,000 titles available buy paying 1 euro cent per MB.
This Site, hosted in Russia, obtained the appropriate distribution rights there, playing with an apparently obscure point in the Russian copyrights laws. This would probably not be legal in France, for instance.

Thanks Alex for this gem:

Picture (almost) says it all : In Xichang, a city located in the Sichuan Province of China, a fan of Ping Guo (that's "Apple" in Chinese for the curious folks) has named his bar "Kiss Apple", and made a nice billboard with a picture of an Apple keyboard and a 1G iMac...

Knowing how Apple is un-flexible when it comes to brand image, we can't imagine them giving the green light for such billboard :)