October 2008 - apple-list - University of Manitoba Mailing Lists

Re: [APPLE-L]: FYI: today only - CodeWeaver's Crossover free to download
by Tom Dubinski 28 Oct '08

28 Oct '08

According to billing... > http://www.codeweavers.com/ > For today only (until midnight CST), you can download Crossover for > Mac and or Linux for free Bwahaha! Cheap bastard that I am, I investigated and... Main Website Temporarily Offline Due to the high volume of traffic for the Lame Duck Challenge Free Offer, we have temporarily streamlined the CodeWeavers main website. We apologize for any inconvenience. We still love Digg, even if our server disagrees. ;-) Use this form to register for a serial number. Due to load, expect your serial number to be emailed to you in a few days. -- Tom Dubinski Phone: +1.204.474-8841 Fax: 474-7609 Computer Science, E2-596 EITC CompSci General Office: E2-445 EITC University of Manitoba E-Mail: tom_dubinski(a)umanitoba.ca Winnipeg, MB R3T 2N2, Canada http://www.cs.umanitoba.ca/~tdubins/

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FYI: today only - CodeWeaver's Crossover free to download (OS X and LINUX)
by billing 28 Oct '08

28 Oct '08

..from: http://www.tuaw.com/2008/10/27/codeweavers-says-cheap-gas-free-software-tom… Three months ago, CodeWeavers CEO Jeremy White offered a challenge to another CEO -- the nation's chief executive, George W. Bush. If the president achieved one of White's six "Lame Duck" goals during the twilight of his 2nd term, White would make Windows-API enabler & WINE GUICrossOver free to customers for one day. Some considered White's proposal a great motivational tool for GWB; others found it smug, partisan and kind of a goofy way to promote the company's products, but in any event none of his six challenges seemed to be on the path to achievement, so that's where the story should have ended. CrossOver is a fine way to run Windows apps on your Mac, but as a force for political change, not so much. Then a funny thing happened on the way to January 20th: due to global economic conditions and through no fault of the president, the price of crude oil dropped precipitously and the cost of gasoline moved in parallel... bringing the average price per gallon in Minneapolis down to the target $2.79 level called for in White's goal #1. http://www.codeweavers.com/ For today only (until midnight CST), you can download Crossover for Mac and or Linux for free - -- it's usually ~US$40 or so. About CodeWeavers CodeWeavers' mission is to make Linux and Mac OS X fully Windows compatible operating systems. We do this through the power of Wine, which powers all of our CrossOver products. The CrossOver products make it possible to run Windows programs on Mac OS X and Linux without needing a copy or license for Windows itself. About Wine Wine is an open-source reimplementation of the Win32 API for Unix- based operating systems. Wine allows Windows applications to be run without a Windows operating system license. CodeWeavers is the largest corporate sponsor of the Wine Project, and contributes all of its work free to Wine. Crossover is a commercial version of the WINE emulator, that allows the user to run Windows apps on Mac or Linux.

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FYI: An Elephant Backs Up Google’s Library
by billing 14 Oct '08

14 Oct '08

...from: http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/10/13/an-elephant-backs-up-googles-libra… October 13, 2008, 6:17 PM An Elephant Backs Up Google’s Library By MIGUEL HELFT Google often says that it likes to take the long-term view of things. But Google’s idea of long term does not appear to be long enough for some librarians, who tend to equate long term with forever, at least when it comes to preserving books. On Monday, a group of major libraries that are participating in Google’s Library Project, said they are working together to create what amounts to a publicly accessible backup of the digital library that Google is creating. The project, which is called HathiTrust, includes libraries at 12 Midwestern universities like the University of Michigan, the University of Iowa and the University of Illinois, plus the 11 libraries of the University of California system. (Hathi is Hindi for “elephant,” an animal that is said to never forget.) In the Google Books Library Project, the Internet giant has been scanning the collections of several large libraries. The company gives users access to the complete text of books that are in the public domain, and to snippets of books that are protected by copyrights. Google also gives each library a copy of the books it digitized from that library. “Google is an excellent partner,” Paul Courant, university librarian and dean of libraries at the University of Michigan, said in an interview. “They are a corporation with a responsibility to its stockholders. Google could last 50 years, 100 years, 1000 years. We are academic institutions with a commitment to the preservation and use of scholarship and the scholarship record for the indefinite future.” Mr. Courant said that the majority of the 2 million or so volumes already in HathiTrust were digitized by Google. HathiTrust also includes fragile and hard-to-find books that the libraries have digitized on their own, he said. HathiTrust is an agreement by several of those libraries — but not all of them — to pool their digital copies into one giant database that will be accessible online. It will not make snippets of copyrighted works available, as some authors and book publishers said that amounts to copyright violations, but will allow users to search those texts. “I am hoping others will join, and I am hoping that we will be a destination for hundreds of thousands of people on the Web,” Mr. Courant said. “Google will probably be better than we are at large- scale consumer applications.” But Mr. Courant said that for some services aimed at scholars “we’ll be as good or better than them at that.” http://www.hathitrust.org/

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INTEREST: Parental Restrictions on iPod touch and iPhone?
by billing 10 Oct '08

10 Oct '08

The Limits of iPod touch/iPhone Restrictions By Christopher Breen mailto:cbreen@macworld.com I recently got an e-mail from a reader asking if he could place parental control restrictions on an iPod touch's Web browsing functionality with Safari. Yes, and here's how it works. On an iPhone or iPod touch, you go to Settings: General: Restrictions, tap on Enable Restrictions, and enter and confirm a four-digit code. With this done, you have the option to switch off these features: Explicit iPod Content, Safari, YouTube, iTunes, and Installing Apps (the iPhone adds Camera as a final option). When you slide the On/Off toggle for Explicit iPod Content, any tracks marked Explicit become invisible. They're still on the device, you just can't access them. Toggle off Safari, YouTube, iTunes and/or Installing Apps and the associated applications on the iPhone or iPod touch are hidden. But then, how difficult would it be for someone to work around these restrictions? As it turns out, not difficult at all. All a kid has to do is restore the iPod touch or iPhone in iTunes. This removes the restrictions. The person could then restore from a backup and then enable restrictions on his or her own--using a new passcode instead of yours. That way, should you eyeball the thing and see Safari and YouTube missing from the Home screen, you might think your restrictions were still in place. Of course, if you're sneaky you'd then grab hold of the device and test restrictions to see if it works with your passcode. "Ah, but wait," you think, "all I have to do is switch on Parental Controls on my Mac and disable access to iTunes. That way they can't restore the thing!" And that would be great if your family lives in the middle of the Australian Outback and your next nearest neighbor is 400 kilometers away. You can restore an iPod touch or iPhone on any computer running iTunes. If your kid has a single friend with access to a computer, say goodbye to restrictions. In other words, yes, parental controls are built-in, but those controls are about as sturdy as a damp piece of bathroom tissue. Technological parental controls have their place, but communication and trust between parent and child remain the most effect tools available. Get all the latest iTunes and iPod news at http://www.macworld.com/weblogs/ipodblog.html?lsrc=mwipod.

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INTEREST: Blu-ray or DVD?
by billing 10 Oct '08

10 Oct '08

NOTE: One-to-One (OTO) is a trade journal of the CD, DVD and other recorded and recordable media industry. Their masthead bills it as "the leading publication" for this industry. ...from: http://www.oto-online.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1124&It… DVDs still the heart of home video Wednesday, 24 September 2008 Once again, industry is dealing with the 'Mark Twain Syndrome': "The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated." Two recent reports indicate that DVDs are alive and well worldwide - yes, even in the US. According to a recent report from the NPD Group, $8 out of every $10 spent on movies goes to buying and renting DVDs. As for trends in Western Europe, FutureSource Consulting reports that the home video market is expected to generate total retail revenues of €11 billion by the end of 2008, with 97% of those revenues coming from packaged media (DVD and Blu-ray) and 3% from new digital video (online and mobile video). Admittedly, the online video market in Western Europe is expected to gain traction and will be encouraged by technology advancements such as faster broadband speeds. Futuresource anticipates online video revenues to increase significantly by 2012 and, along with mobile video, this will represent 13% of total video revenues in Western Europe. As the vast majority of revenues in the short to medium term will come from packaged media, there are a raft of initiatives in the market aimed at boosting sales. Certainly the continued release of blockbuster titles on Blu-ray will be key factor in holding up packaged media; however, in the near term the focus continues to be on DVD." Across Europe an increasing amount of titles are being heavily re- promoted in the 3-4 month post-release period. There is a continued appetite for TV content on DVD. Although TV content is performing well in the UK, it has been Germany, Spain and Belgium that has witnessed impressive 25% growth rates in volume terms for TV content on DVD in an otherwise near-flat market. "As in any mature market as well as focusing on sales boosting initiatives the studios are also equally focused on improving efficiencies and reducing costs throughout the home video supply chain," said Jim Bottoms of Futuresource. "As a result, all the major issues preoccupying the minds of those involved in the home video supply chain will be debated in the forthcoming European Supply Chain Academy Conference in Prague on 2-3 October, with Futuresource a co- producer of the event." According to information presented recently by NPD, less than 1% of Americans' movie budget is currently spent downloading movies and TV shows from the web. Entertainment Trends in America, an NPD report, suggests that 41% of dollars budgeted for movies and video was spent on DVD movie purchases, 11% for purchases of TV programmes on DVD and 29% on DVD rentals.

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FYI: Windows XP availability extension?
by billing 09 Oct '08

09 Oct '08

To help clarify the following article, while there doesn't yet seem to be any related material at the Microsoft web site, most major computer manufacturers appear to be saying that Windows XP will continue to be an option on new computer purchases until July, 2009 (as the article states). It should be noted, however, that the program which allowed Windows XP OEM to be purchased apart from the purchase of a new computer has been discontinued and availability will probably dry up before the extension date so, if you were planning on getting a copy of XP to run under VMWare Fusion or the Parallels product, you might not want to wait too long to pick up a copy of XP. Wayne ...from: http://www.informationweek.com/news/windows/operatingsystems/showArticle.jh… Windows XP Gets Reprieve, Yet Again With Vista struggling, Microsoft has extended the period in which it will make XP available for PC makers' downgrade programs. By Paul McDougall InformationWeek October 8, 2008 12:29 PM Windows XP is proving harder to kill than a Halloween vampire. With businesses having all but shunned Windows Vista, Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) has decided to extend the period in which it will make copies of its older sibling available to PC makers. Microsoft originally planned to stop distributing Windows XP media to large OEMs on Jan. 31, 2009, but this week said it would move the deadline to July 31 of next year. A Microsoft spokesman claimed in an e-mail that the move is designed to help businesses upgrade to Vista painlessly. "As more customers make the move to Windows Vista, we want to make sure that they are making that transition with confidence and that it is as smooth as possible. Providing downgrade media for a few more months is part of that commitment," the spokesman said. The fact is, however, that very few large companies are eyeing Vista. A survey released last week by the UK's Corporate IT Forum showed that only 4% of businesses in that country are using Windows Vista on workplace systems, while 35% said they were "not yet interested" in Vista. 58% said they were still using Windows XP, now seven years old. A document obtained by InformationWeek last week revealed that state IT officials in Maine will likely skip Vista and stick with XP until Windows 7 becomes available sometime in 2010. Users have complained about Vista's resource requirements, intrusive security measures and lack of compatibility with older software. Vista's unpopularity in the business world may have forced Microsoft to extend XP's shelf life. The company officially retired the OS in June for most markets, but continues to make XP Professional available to PC makers who offer it as a "downgrade" option from Vista on business systems. Downgrade availability was set to end on Jan. 31 but will now continue through next July. If Microsoft is on schedule with Windows 7, that will leave a gap of just six months between the end of the XP program and Windows 7's availability. It's a sign that Microsoft has conceded that Vista has flopped in the corporate market. Microsoft is hoping Windows 7 will receive a better reception. In an effort to burnish Windows' reputation and pave the way for the next version, the company recently launched a $300 million ad campaign starring Jerry Seinfeld, Bill Gates, and a host of ordinary PC users. The ads make no mention of Vista. Microsoft, however, has warned that Windows 7 and Vista share the same basic architecture. As a result, applications that aren't compatible with Vista won't likely run on Windows 7, either. Microsoft shares were off 2.7% to $22.60 in mid-day trading Wednesday as world financial markets continued their downward slide.

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INTEREST: stopping telemarketing calls using the new https://www.lnnte-dncl.gc.ca/
by billing 03 Oct '08

03 Oct '08

I realize this posting is not really computer related nor even Macintosh related but, since it's tough getting through to the actual site (it's so busy), and it seems like a Very Useful Thing, I hope you will forgive this posting if you already know about the Canadian "Do Not Call" service: ...from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Do_Not_Call_List Canadian Do Not Call List From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia The Government of Canada announced on December 13, 2004 that they would introduce legislation to create a Canadian Do Not Call List. The Canadian list follows the model set by the National Do Not Call Registry established in the United States in June 2003. Bill C-37, An Act to amend the Telecommunications Act, S.C. 2005, c.50 was the legislation which followed this announcement. It received royal assent on November 25, 2005 and came into force September 30, 2008. It gives theCanadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) authority to establish a national do not call list, to establish procedures to administer the Act and to levy penalties for violations. Starting September 30, 2008, Canadians began to sign up online at the Do Not Call List website or by calling the toll-free numbers 1-866-580- DNCL (1-866-580-3625) or 1-888-DNCL-TTY (1-888-362-5889). The number of Canadians trying to register on the first day overwhelmed the system bringing the website down eight or nine hours after the official launch.[1] = - = - = - = - = - = The official site is at: https://www.lnnte-dncl.gc.ca/ ...try again later if you get the following message (the site is not broken just very busy): The service is not available. Please try again later. NOTE: this registers your phone number for DoNotCall but there are some exceptions. (Also from the Wikipedia entry: Criticism Professor Michael Geist, an authority on technology, Internet and copyright law and holder of the prestigious Canada Research Chair in Internet and E-Commerce Law at the University of Ottawa has criticized the changes adopted in the amended Act. He observes that the legislation contains too many exemptions. Professor Geist expresses particular concern about the extent and duration of the existing business relationship exception. On March 28, 2008 Professor Geist introduced iOptOut.ca, a free service which assists in the process of creating a personal do not call list. The service notifies callers selected by the user that the individual exercises his or her right under privacy laws not to receive communications from the notified business. It is intended to cover those organizations excluded from the Do Not Call List. You need to register on the iOptOut.ca site before you can avail yourself of that service. Wayne

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