Adam Engst
Adam C. Engst is the publisher of TidBITS. He has written numerous books, including the best-selling Internet Starter Kit series, and many magazine articles thanks to Contributing Editor positions at MacUser, MacWEEK, and now Macworld. His innovations include the creation of the first advertising program to support an Internet publication in 1992, the first flat-rate accounts for graphical Internet access in 1993, and the Take Control electronic book series now owned and operated by alt concepts. His awards include the MDJ Power 25 ranking as the most influential person in the Macintosh industry outside of Apple every year since 2000, inclusion on the MacTech 25 list of influential people in the Macintosh technical community, and being named one of MacDirectory's top ten visionaries. And yes, he has been turned into an action figure.
Dantz Development's popular backup program, DiskFit Pro, has been in the net conversations recently, though mostly on CompuServe. It appears that DiskFit Pro has a few bugs and confusing changes from previous versions, and those bugs have convinced Dantz to send a free upgrade to 1.1 to all registered users when 1.1 is done (soon is all I can say about the timing).
The first complaints about DiskFit Pro stemmed from Dantz's decision to change the Only Applications and Only Documents selections so that items in the System Folder were not included
Those of you on the nets may have noticed a flurry of postings about a proposed Federal Communications Commission (FCC) surcharge on modem users. Just to get this out in the open right away, this rumor is FALSE! Phew, now that we've cleared the air and everyone can stop being irate at the FCC, let's look at this in a little more detail.
I can't say that this posting is specifically a hoax, because that implies willful maliciousness on the part of an individual
Alberto Ricci writes, "Pressing command-S while (or right before you click Start) Disk First Aid is scanning a disk brings up a progress window that explains what it's doing
In the good news department, a Tompkins County grand jury indicted the two Cornell sophomores arrested in March on suspicion of releasing the MBDF virus
Laurel Lammers of Microsoft Word Marketing writes in regard to our article "CompuBigotry" in TidBITS-122:
To Gann Matsuda and all others concerned about the Microsoft Word Speller:
Microsoft values diversity in its workforce and its customer base
We've just heard from Pythaeus that Apple Canada is not yet selling the PowerBook 170 configuration with 4 MB of RAM and an 80 MB drive (with or without the internal fax/data modem), which is the highest end PowerBook available from Apple
Compaq Computer recently dropped out of the Advanced Computing Environment Consortium (ACE), claiming essentially that it could make do just fine with Intel's P5, or 80586 chip, in its high-end PC servers and workstations
Just as many of us received our long-awaited upgrades to Norton 2.0, Central Point Software upped the ante with a version 2.0 of its MacTools utility package, adding a number of new and cool features as well as a completely new virus-checking module
CE Updates -- Mark H. Anbinder passes on this information. "CE Software, Inc., has just announced that the company is now shipping System 7 compatibility upgrades for its products DiskTop, In/Out, and Amazing Paint
Tad Davis writes:
Kudos for the review of Inspiration. I've been a user of this program for some time, and was in fact one of the beta testers for the most recent version
Jeffrey L. Needleman passes along this note from Microcom.
The following is a revised version of the UDV (user defined virus) code necessary to update Virex 3.x to detect the recently discovered CODE 252 virus.
The original UDV falsely identified the virus in a number of files under specific conditions
Matt Neuburg writes:
It appears that the problems some applications are having with StyleWriter 7.2.2 are the fault of those applications, not of Apple
Greg Marriott of Apple writes about why Apple decided not to install the disappearing files fix into the System file directly: "Actually, it may seem like a no-brainer to just install the fix in the System and leave it at that
Hatred is not dead. I'm sure that surprises none of you, but it always bothers me, especially when people use computers to spread hatred. The most recent examples would only be interesting for their trivia value were it not for their closeness in time and the fact that both cases directly involve Microsoft.
Several weeks ago on the Info-Mac mailing list, a discussion list dedicated to things Macintosh, Gann Matsuda posted that he had noticed that the spelling checker in Microsoft Word 5.0 suggests "Nips" as a replacement for "Nisei." Now, "Nisei" means "second-generation Americans of Japanese ancestry," but more to the point, "nips" is derogatory slang for "Japanese-American." Based on a posting Gann made later, I don't believe he was implying in any way that Microsoft is racist, merely that this was an unfortunate coincidence that could have been avoided had "Nisei" been in Word's dictionary
(or Don't Rush Out and Buy SoftPC, Yet)
by Tom Hirasuna -- [email protected]
Although I have used personal computers for over ten years, only recently did I become aware of the many children's educational programs (my son Jeff is now 5)