News

AOL blind copy: glitch a work-around

Raul Gutierrez recently purchased a LaserWriter 8500 printer. He had a number of minor problems. In particular: The Installer disk installs a number of fonts (Postscript Type 3/True Type). I had problems with several of them. Courier, for example, displayed in Emailer as garbage. To try to fix this I removed the TrueType part of the font. This fixed my display problems but then I noticed that the new Courier had slightly different spacing than the old so I installed an old copy of Courier. This caused ATM to display the message "Cannot load due to lack of … Read more

Odds & Ends: Troubleshooting G3 Firmware Update; MacWEEK cracked; more

Troubleshooting G3 Firmware Update 1.0.2 The item posted Saturday, called "Troubleshooting G3 Firmware Update 1.0.2," has been updated and reposted as a new MacFixIt Extra.

MacWEEK site cracked: it's back Last time, we reported the cracking and subsequent temporary removal of the MacWEEK web site. MacWEEK's Rothenberg informs us that "it turned out these guys wrought serious havoc with our site, and the restoration took a lot longer than expected." It is now back online (although when I just tried it, graphic images were loading more slowly than usual; they … Read more

Privacy issues: MS and GUID numbers, Apple, and Intel follow-ups

Regarding previous reports of problems with Epson 600 printers and printing from Internet Explorer, Jerome Yesavage claims that he has had similar problems with many other applications. Other users note that the problem certainly extends to AOL's web browser (which is simply avariation of Internet Explorer). Harvey Ellis fixed the problem on his Mac by disabling the World Scripts I and World Scripts II extensions.

Tom McGee had the same problem on an Epson 800.

Utilities Updates: EpsonShare 1.0b10; MRJ plugin for Netscape; more

EpsonShare 1.0b10 is out. This does not have the data loss problem mentioned here on Monday.

Mozilla has released MRJ plugin 1.0d3. "It enables current Netscape browsers (version 4.X and later) on Mac OS to use the Mac OS Runtime for Java (MRJ) to run Applets. This is a development only release and support is limited. Use this plugin at your own risk."

VST USB Floppy Drive driver 1.2 is out.

RealPlayer G2b1 is out. [Some readers are reporting that the download is corrupted.]

EZNote 1.4 is out; excellent "note" utility

EZNote 1.4 is out: A press release states: "Great for web browsing, save selections of text as individual notes or append them to one single note! Bring up a text editor instantly with one key press! Copy selected text from any application with one keystroke and store it for later reading or editing."

New features added in version 1.4: Added searchable comments for each note (which are linked with the Finder comments), can now choose between saving notes as clipping files or standard text files, window is moveable and resizable (and the location & size is … Read more

Odds & Ends

Mac OS X Server is due out at any moment. Check this web page for an interesting PDF document (if you have trouble accessing the link, try this alternate link).

Star Wars trailer QuickTime movie Apple is hosting a QuickTime movie of the new Star Wars trailer, released in theaters tioday.

Apple Displays and bus errors According to a new Apple TIL (#58291), if you are getting bus errors after installing Apple Displays 1.7, zap your PRAM.

Interex mouse problem fixed by new drivers? Tom Porett reports using the scrolling function on the Interex mouse would result in a … Read more

Utilities Updates

Cassady & Greene's free Sherlock Assistant 1.0.1 was just released.

Fonts Manager 3.9.2 is out.

Black & Bleu 1.0.1 is an update to this utility that provides information about the meaning of Mac OS error codes.

NavCom Cache Control 1.2.1 is out. It's is a bug-fix release for this utility that allows users to activate and adjust the memory cache of Netscape's Communicator and Navigator 4.x browsers.

XLR8 has released G3 Control 1.3. It is software for controlling G3 processors and features "Virtual Firmware," a … Read more

Older PC Exchange may work in cases where Mac OS 8.5's File Exchange does not

Addie Teagardin and Brooks Weisblat both report problems with using the Ariston USB iRead PC/SmartMedia card reader (running Mac OS 8.5.x). In one case, inserting a SmartMedia card led to a system crash; in the other it resulted in the card being listed as unreadable. I am not sure how widespread such problems may be. However, of particular interest was the work-around that Addie discovered: Reinstalling PC Exchange and Mac OS Easy Open (from Mac OS 8.0) allowed the card reader to work (even though Mac OS 8.5's File Exchange should have made these … Read more

MacPac 2.1 arrives!

More recent reports (from Warren Holz and others) of the suspected new strain of SevenDust/666 virus (as reported last time) now suggest that it may simply be an already known strain C version of the virus - that went undetected by some (although certainly not all) anti-virus detectors. For example, as noted by Symantec's Lee Gummerman: "Norton AntiVirus for Mac does detect and repair (in this case, by deleting) SevenDust C (features of this strain: polymorphic, encrypted, no payload)."

In any case, new versions of The Exorcist and Agax (two freeware utilities that deal with this … Read more