This is the final issue of 1994, since we plan to take the next two weeks off in order to enjoy the holiday season with friends and relatives. As the year ends, we'd like to thank you for participating in the spread of knowledge and ideas throughout the global Internet community

IBM Halts Pentium Shipments -- IBM said Monday that they are halting shipments of Pentium-based PCs because the risk of floating point division errors in Intel's chips was "worse than previously described." Intel has asserted in press releases and public announcements that the bug's probability of occurring is only once in every 27,000 years of typical use and that the majority of off-the-shelf software would not be affected

Our FTP site at (also called because it's one of Northwest Nexus's public machines) reeled under the load placed on it as users requested the updater for MacTCP last week

Got those MacTCP 2.0.6 Updater Blues? Many MacTCP 2.0.4 users have had bad experiences trying to use the MacTCP 2.0.6 updater (see TidBITS-255). Specifically, the updater application often refuses to update the existing version of MacTCP because the driver resource ".ipp" doesn't match what the updater expects. The updater works properly on a "clean" copy of MacTCP 2.0.x that's never been installed; however, if you're absolutely stuck without a "clean" copy, this particular problem may be fixed with ResEdit (but no guarantees): ftp://ftp.apple.com/dts/mac/tools/resedit/ resedit-2-1-3.hqx 1) Make a copy of the MacTCP 2.0.x control panel. 2) Using ResEdit 2.1.1 or higher, open your copy of the MacTCP control panel. 3) Locate the DRVR resour

Apple propaganda is now available on the Internet via a mailing list. Thanks to Robert Winston for alerting us to this list. Send email to with "sub pressrel Your Name" in the body of the message

Pythaeus writes: A computer movie is being shot right now under the name of "The Net" and stars Sandra Bullock (of "Speed" fame). Interestingly, the final scene is a chase scene, and it will be based upon and take place at this year's Macworld San Francisco

Santa Claus is online again this year, and will answer email sent to , thanks to North Pole Productions, a division of the Canadian firm Internet Access, Inc

Multiple Santas -- The Internet Multicasting Service has also set up a Christmas-oriented Web site, complete with a address and a number of interesting Web pages

With this, our 256th issue, we are pleased to welcome Geoff Duncan as our Managing Editor. You may have noticed his [GD] tag affixed to a few MailBITS in the past few issues, and starting with this issue, he'll be writing and editing more articles

Director of Technical Services, Baka Industries Inc. Early in December, many well-intentioned people forwarded email messages warning of a virus called "Good Times" that was being distributed as an email message that would erase your hard drive if you read it

Global Village today announced they are preparing to ship two new models of their OneWorld communications server family. The OneWorld Network Modem replaces the OneWorld Remote Access server, offering both incoming ARA and outgoing shared modem services

During the last few weeks, reports have circulated on the nets about failures to properly spin up PowerBook hard disks after putting a PowerBook to sleep

With rumors that the next major revision of Apple's system software (Copland or System 8) is set for the tail end of 1995, Apple is gearing up for an interim system software release in early 1995 to pave the way for new Macintosh models and critical new Apple technologies