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Smarter Parental Controls

If you've been using the parental controls options in Mac OS X to lock your child out of using a particular computer late at night, but would like to employ a more clever technique to limit Internet access, turn to MAC address filtering on an Apple base station.

To do this, launch AirPort Utility, select your base station, and click Manual Setup. In the Access Control view, choose Time Access to turn on MAC filtering. You'll need to enter the MAC address of the particular computer, which (in 10.5 Leopard and 10.6 Snow Leopard) you can find in the Network System Preferences pane: click AirPort in the adapter list, and click Advanced. The AirPort ID is the MAC address.

 
 

Lack of PowerPC-native Utilities

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Joe Clark <joeclark@scilink.org> and <joec@hookup.net> writes:

I wonder if one overlooked reason for not buying a Power Mac is the relative scarcity of life-improving utilities. Adobe only recently announced a native ATM for Power Macs, and it won't ship for a few weeks, if then. Also, Adobe apparently has no plans to port Type Reunion to the Power Macs; as the owner of several hundred (licensed) fonts, I need it. Directory Assistance II from Norton Utilities and other useful utilities fall into the same category of desperately needing a port.

Authors of shareware utilities (like Speedometer) are laboring to bring them up to spec, and that's commendable. I worry about industry juggernauts like Adobe and Symantec. Sure, I can run big-name programs on a Power Mac, but as the saying goes, a chain is only as strong as its weakest link. For the next several months, it looks like utilities will be that link.

 

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