Trust Me, a novel
by Bruce Forman
Lost Coast Press
ISBN 1-882897-75-7, 285 pages
$15.00 US
http://www.bruceforman.com

The music business is full of wannabees and phonies, plus talented and honest people. Guitarist and author Bruce Forman takes his readers to the edge and back in this tale of ambition, fraud, passion, and self-realization. No, it’s not a romance novel and no, it’s not a mystical new age puff piece. His hero is a genuine musical tour de force in need of some rude awakenings, and his villain is a bad guy who plays his dupes like finely-tuned instruments.

Wandering around Books By the Bay last July I heard a guitarist playing sublime renderings of jazz standards. Following my ears, I observed Bruce Forman in conversation with a potential reader while simultaneously working through complicated, subtle jazz changes. After the windbag departed I made arrangements to receive a review copy of Trust Me, which turned out to be the most memorable novel I’ve read in a couple of years. If you have any interest in learning about the seamier side of the business of music, you’ll be well-served reading this book.

Bruce’s prose, plot, and character development will not place him in any upper crust literary circles, but don’t let that concern you. The story evolves organically, as if Forman (or his main character) was creating a theme-based somewhat freestyle musical composition from scratch. Sounds weird? Not really.

Sam Mann is a struggling, talented San Francisco jazz guitarist. Circumstances place him in the company of new acquaintances who will ultimately save and nurture his life, if not advance his career. That task falls to Sam’s new manager, Jimm Dibbook, a strange name befitting a weird dude. This devilish slimeball promises greatness to Sam, who falls for the transparent ruse. End of story? No, merely its kernel. Don’t panic.

Jimm arranges a little disappearing act for Sam, during which he becomes much more than a mere musician. I’m not going to attempt to expose the plot, because the reader’s discovery parallels Sam’s. If you find yourself wondering if these characters are supposed to be “real,” chill out and keep reading.

My time with Trust Me was interrupted by a week’s travel, during which I didn’t bring the book (I was traveling really light). Sam and Jimm and their shenanigans got under my skin, leaving me nearly breathless to finish the novel upon returning home. The story lingers in my mind, like a great jazz masterpiece. Book Bytes applauds Bruce Forman’s first novel, and encourages him to work on his writer’s chops.

Oh, yes. Please take a few minutes to look over his personal web site. You’ll be impressed, I expect.

John Nemerovski

There are so many things wrong with the development of Apple Records suing Apple Computer AGAIN, which I am at a loss of where to begin. The Helter Skelter insanity of corporate law blurs the line of what is criminal and what is just plain stupid. Let’s start here:

Dumb: Apple Computer

Let’s face it, the world’s best computer company, headed by one of the world’s best inventors, building one of the world’s greatest inventions, and with the highest paid CEO in the country, does some really dumb things. In the battle between quality and quantity, I will always prefer quality, as I suspect most Mac users do. Apple delivers the best product, but always does it in such a way as to sabotage any chance to gain in quantity and cash. While part of the market share issue has to do with the fact that the product is so good that it lasts forever, most of it has to do with how it positions itself in the marketplace.

The Apple Music store is an astounding success of technology. The company has sold 5 million songs, and made itself a tidy profit of approximately 2 million on a side-line business. By most measures, those profit numbers would be an astounding success too, but not in regard to Apple. Despite sitting on 4 billion dollars in cash, Apple leaves much more cash on the table than it puts in its pocket. The Music Store is an other example of their paradoxical ability. The legal battle with Apple Records, which will cost them a good chunk of the store profit to settle, is just the small potatoes.

When the Music Store was first released, I complained that it excluded small record labels and should have been linked to the radio feature in iTunes. Apple has since then followed a strategy to include independent labels. It is also working on a Windows version of iTunes. No radio link in the plans, as far as I know. As the catalog gets bigger and more users can get in, the numbers of songs sold will continue to soar.

Damn, that is one side-line business I wish I could have, and that is exactly the problem. I can’t. Apple doesn’t empower everyone equally.

As the Music Store collection grows, Apple will be hosting more and more music, streaming more, and picking up all of the associated overhead costs. They will be buying their own servers to sell someone else’s product, and their own products will obsolesce and need support, repair, and replacement. Call me crazy, but I thought the reason Apple got into the server market was to sell them, not to buy them from themselves.

Wouldn’t it make more sense for Apple to be selling the servers and the technology of the Music Store to the record companies? Shouldn’t the label host their own music, and sell their own product directly to their own customers (perhaps via internet radio), at whatever cost they choose? I doubt a lot of independent artists want 99 cents per song; they just want to be heard. Apple has a chance to break the music monopoly, and make more money in the process, and it hasn’t, as yet, taken it.

Computer vendors provide back-end support to businesses, not front-side sales. Apple Computer could be selling hardware and software, both technology products, and charge a licensing fee per song. Instead, it is doing the labels work for them, protecting the political status quo, making less profits, penetrating fewer IT departments, and is being sued for its troubles. Dumb.

Apple Records: Dumber

If Apple Computer is the TECHNOLOGICAL phenomenon of this era, then the Beatles must be the ongoing CULTURAL phenomenon to match it. Apple Records is a company that was born out of the music and political revolution of the Beatles. For a great insight into this corporate experiment, read this post at the MacWorld forum. It is pretty easy to understand why the only long-term political success of the crazed revolutionary 60′s was the movement to follow Jerry Garcia and the Grateful Dead around from town to town sharing music. Comparatively, the Corporate Dead is a manned lunar exploration, where the Corporate Beatles are an episode of the Junkyard Wars hosted by Monty Python.

John Lennon, a poster boy for Apple Computer, preaches revolution and power to the people. Apple Computer, has the goods to actually deliver the power, claims to want to in its ad campaigns, and instead chooses to become a corporate lapdog and protects the music monopoly.

Then, in the irony of all ironies, Apple Computer gets sued by the now unrevolutionary corporate record company it protected, who also chose the same Garden of Eden icon to represent itself. Both are arrogant in protecting something that is not theirs.

Copyright and patent protections are the bane of modern society, and these two conservative false revolutionaries deserve each other, but you and I are going to pay the price of this foolishness. And as we can now see, they do too.

Music is a collaborative process. We claim to protect the artist, when what our laws really do is protect the record manufacturing process by granting them a monopoly. With computers we no longer need manufacturing, but we are still bound and gagged!

If Adam and Eve had a corporate lawyer, maybe they never would have been evicted. If the people had power, you would not need to be reading this. If these two global giants could actually Think Different, or at least share a bite of the apple, then maybe we could leave less to our imagination. I know none of us is perfect, and after all the gifts that both organizations have bestowed on humanity, I feel ungrateful to ask for more. But how about it guys, can the revolution you promised me start now?

The Revolution won’t be televised; it’ll be on the web. All you have to do is encourage sharing. Jerry has already proven it is possible. Let’s do this before my generation passes on.

Imagine no possessions,
I wonder if you can,
No need for greed or hunger,
A brotherhood of man,
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world…

You may say I’m a dreamer,
But I’m not the only one,
I hope some day you’ll join us,
And the world will live as one.

Steve Consilvio

“There is more stupidity than hydrogen in the universe, and it has a longer shelf life.” – Frank Zappa

I hate to admit it, but I do watch some television. I love a good episode of “CSI Miami”. I think David Caruso is a fine actor, and the character he plays, Horatio Caine, is “cool”. Why do I think this? Well, Horatio gets the bad guys, just by using his brain. He is not a big, brawny guy. He does not use one-line zingers. He doesn’t get involved in high-speed chases where fruit stands get knocked over, nor does he throw guys onto the hoods of cars. In fact, I cannot recall any scene where Horatio even pulls out his gun. No, He just uses his gray cells. That, and that great, authoritative speaking voice. You know he’s a man who means business. (Side note: Mr. Caruso, on the outside chance you’re reading this, Excellent work!)

I hope CSI Miami stays on the air for a long time, but I have read that despite high ratings, it does not pull in the “desired demographic”, which is teenagers who hang out in malls, and spend something on the order of eighty dollars per week in said malls. (More for females, I guess.). I am cheesed off big time, over the decision by CBS to cancel another great show I liked, “The Agency”. That program was well acted, and had fine production values. But, It aired on Saturday nights, when the desired demographic is at the malls, or, if they’re a little older, getting drunk at clubs, while trying to meet drunks of the opposite sex. The people who were fans of “The Agency” were all males over forty, just like myself. So, despite the fact that a given show has good ratings and share points, it can still be given the ax, if it is not pulling in the right viewers. That was the case with “Doctor Quinn, Medicine Woman”, and it apparently was the case again with “The Agency”. (And yes fellow males, I did have the hots for Jane Seymour”)

I really have to wonder what the heck is going on. This years offerings from the networks seem to consist of more of the so-called “reality shows” than ever, and yet even more of the 1/2 hour sitcoms, with the standard formula of one-line zingers, and a joke every thirty seconds. Toss in at least two kids who crack wise to their parents, and perhaps a whacky neighbor who keeps coming in the back door, and you have the basic formula for a typical 1/2 hour sitcom.

So what? Well, I’m hoping some network executives are reading this. You see Mr. network executive, this year I have purchased a new car, and a new computer, and both are big-ticket items. So, Mr. network executive, I do have some money to spend. But, your sponsors (The ones who buy ad time, and pay for that nice office you’re sitting in) aren’t getting very much of it, because I’m not watching the dreck you are offering. Thus, I’m not aware of what products or services your sponsors want to sell to me. I should also mention that I buy razor blades, toothpaste, deodorant and all sorts of expendable stuff. Mr. network executive, can you hear me now? Good.

With all that in mind, I will once again offer my own ideas for new TV programs. Now really, could I possibly be any worse at this, than the turkeys that are doing it now? So dear readers, knock yourselves out.

That’s my Smock! Laughs galore on this new sitcom, about the trials and tribulations of a group of former hi-tech workers, who must now put on the old blue smocks, and go to work at WalMart, the only place in town with any jobs at all. There’s Cathy, (Used to be a System Administrator), and Bill (Used to be a software engineer), and Mike (Used to be an Optical engineer) and Paula (Used to be a Network Technician)

In the first episode, It’s learned that someone in the group has been talking to union organizers. Things get nutty as the cast tries to find out who. Will they cover for their fellow underemployed human being, or turn him/her over to WalMart internal security out of fear?

Stars Jennifer Anniston, Roseanne Arnold, and Anthony Edwards.
Guest starring Lee Majors as the manager of sporting goods. Special appearance by John DeLancie as:”The Time Study Supervisor”.

Pleasant Valley High. About as real as it gets. Parents will love this show. Pleasant Valley High is your typical white suburban high school. Unknown to the students, we’ve hidden cameras in almost every classroom and places where students hang out. Our operators, hidden in a central control room, watch everything, and zoom in on the “good stuff” Plus, we’ve got a few moms and dads to join in the fun. In the first episode, a group of girls get surprised, as our cameras tape them walking down the main hallway, after they’ve changed into their mini’s and halter tops, which they thought mom didn’t know about! Watch their faces when their mothers confront them! In the next segment,
A group of school athletes gets caught by the all-seeing camera, while injecting steroids and performance-enhancing drugs. Watch what happens when the police burst into the locker room, and the coach (who supplied the steroids and drugs) denies everything! Most hilarious are the antics of the stoner crowd, a few of whom are at the maximum age limit for high school students! Check out the facial expressions of school officials, when they call their parents in for a meeting, only to learn the stoners’ parents are stoners themselves!
You won’t want to miss this! On FOX, of course.

American Bar Fly’s’. Or, is that “Barflies’ ‘”? This reality series follows a group of single women in their late 20′s, to early 30′s. All have the same problems: They hate their jobs, they hate their meddling parents, and they hate not being able to find “Mister Right”. In fact, they hate their lives! So, they get drunk on Coronas’ every weekend, and frequently on weeknights as well.
Wow! What a fine indicator of what’s going on in the country, a group of adult women, acting like they’re still members of the “fake I.D. crowd”. Series pulls no punches, as it follows the women around, as they get plastered, meet sleazy drunks of the opposite gender, and wake up in strange places, wearing their own vomit, then calling anyone who doesn’t have the same lifestyle “a loser”. (Guess who are really the losers here?) On ABC. (Big Ratings are expected, of course.)

Peter Pans. As a “Companion show” to American Barfly’s’ this all new reality show follows the lives of a group of men, aged thirty to forty, who, as the title suggests, simply won’t grow up. No, they still live at home, mostly in their parents’ basements, and drifting from job to job. But on weekends, look out! These bad boys know how to knock back the brewskis and party till they puke! They’ve got their problems though, as seen in the opening episode, when one of our “Frat Brothers” gets arrested, after he gets caught buying a few six-packs for a group of underage college girls. (He thought he was going to get lucky.) In another segment, another of the “Peter Pans” has a heated argument with his parents about his latest firing, and decides to make his living using his Dell computer and printing equipment to start a business, making fake I.D’s for college kids. (Hey, the college kids think he’s the best!) On CBS.

Trophy Wives. This fictional series explores what it’s really like to be the trophy wife of a typical American corporate executive. You think it’s easy? Well, our group of three trophy wives has very busy, hard days. There are the endless appointments with the plastic surgeons, personal chefs, and private aerobics trainers. (“Can’t lose that “six-figure figure” now can I”, quips one of our heroines) Then, there’s getting the BMW serviced, which really eats into the time. Then, there’s the charity work, such as reading books to poor children, who live in the working class part of town, and volunteering at the local museum. Hey, its got to be done, right? And then there are the inevitable confrontations with their executive husbands’ adult children from their first marriages. “Those kids had better know just who they’re messing with”, says another of our heroines.

Ahh, but the payoff comes. Being seen on the town, and attending very important functions with the executive hubby, plus the McMansion, the luxury ski condo, and the summers on the Vineyard make it all worthwhile. On UPN. The Network is targeting the types of women who used to watch the nighttime soaps, “Dallas”, and “Dynasty”. Hosted Monica Lewinsky. Cast to be revealed on premier night.

The Mechanic. Matt LeBlanc stars in this new situation comedy for adults. Matt stars as Vini Botempo. He’s a great gas station mechanic, the best of the best. But, in a white suburb full of wealthy, divorced ladies, he’s also the town stud! All the women want him, and all the men want to be him! In the opener, Jennifer Smith (Shelly Long) pulls in, to see about that shifting problem in her Volvo Wagon. Well, one thing leads to another, and Vini has to do what he always does, and that means closing the office door for a while! Things get crazy as Vini’s ladies keep popping in, one after another. Will poor Vini ever get any work done on cars today? Tune in and see! On ABC.

Fire and Brimstone. Julia Louise-Dreyfus stars as Ellen Brimstone, who gets hired as the security manager at a chemical plant. Things get nutty on her first day, as the goofy head of shipping, (John Goodman) lets workers stack barrels of pure chlorine way too high! Laughs galore as the barrels fall over, break open and fumes spread everywhere! As Ellen says while grinning at the camera, “You’ll be fine, as long as you don’t breath for awhile!” On ABC.

All American Bitches! What’s the deal with some twenty-something women today? Why do so many pre-30 women have such a self-absorbed, belligerent attitude? This new reality show from FOX takes a daring look at the trend. This reality show follows the format of “Cops” and uses hidden video cameras for a candid look. In the opening episode, “Sandy”, aged 22, gets pulled over for speeding in her Honda. She gets nasty when informed by the police officer that her registration has been revoked due to her insurance being canceled. Enraged by “that stupid cop” Sandy is not about to be pushed around by “some stupid law”, so she kicks, bites, and gouges the officer when he tries to arrest her. It all changes of course, when she calls her latest boyfriend to cough up the bail money. (Note to readers: I draw Ideas from what to write about from what I see going on around me. That includes news events, some major, some minor. Here is an example.

In the next segment, “Lana”, a 19-year-old college student, gets in a little hot water with the campus police. Seems Lana has been stalking her ex-boyfriend, and his new girlfriend, and has even been making threatening phone calls to both of them! Isn’t that amazing? In the openers final segment, Security cameras at a grocery store parking lot catch “Nancy” a twenty eight year old account executive, pulling in, fresh from her step aerobics class. Of course, she zips into a handicapped parking space, cutting off an elderly driver who had been waiting patiently for it. “What’s the big (expletive) problem?” Nancy asks of a store manager, when he tries to confront her.

Well, there you have it. Yet another collection of ideas, which would obviously make for very lousy TV shows. If you think what I’ve put down here is bad, just check out what the networks are really bringing out this fall. And yet somehow, television executives are totally convinced that this crap is what people want to see.

Sorry network executives, but until you cough up something which is on par with the original “Outer Limits”, or “The Invaders”, or “Millennium” (Yet another great show, canceled because it didn’t pull in the desired demographic) my money is staying in my wallet. Got it? There is nothing else for us to discuss, is there?

Bruce Black

Master of Orion 3
Company: MacSoft
Price: $49.95
http://www.macsoft.com

Games… just what purpose do they serve? I am not thinking of games where you can win cash and/or fabulous prizes or contests where you get paid large green for traipsing around on manicured lawns interspersed with lime and crushed brick. I am musing specifically on video strategy games, you know the kind that started innocuously enough with Balance of Power and now leaves us with Master of Orion 3. In the past I would have answered the question simply by saying: for fun. With little cogitation or introspection I would have proclaimed my answer to be utterly inarguable, but now I think there must be something about strategy games that strikes a deeper chord than mere “fun.” There is, in the take over the universe/world/island/anthill genre, a vibe that you’re not just playing against the computer: you’re playing some crafty bastard residing in your computer whose sole reason for existence is to rob you of your ever dwindling time while inflicting as much mental frustration as possible. You secretly crave the frustration and challenge and the programmers are more than willing to oblige. Like a crack pimp the best strategy games pass out just enough of the good stuff to keep you going while cleverly letting you place the blame for any unfortunate events that befall you squarely on the shoulders of “that cheating game”.

Whatever the reason I found I enjoyed Master of Orion 3, in fact I found I enjoyed the game a little too much. Screaming at frustration at the computer doesn’t always mean you’re using Windows, sometimes it means you think the computer cheated (strangely enough, all the best games seem to involve anthropomorphization of said computer). Master of Orion 3 (hereafter referred to as MoO3) manages to be maddeningly frustrating, surprisingly addictive, and passably fun all at once, all this adds up to one pretty nifty game.

One of the prerequisites for a quality game is a bit of originality, and MoO3 has plenty of that (at least I think it does, I never played MoO or MoO 2. Suffice it to note that at some point the MoO series displayed plenty of uniqueness). Your earliest decision is also the first encounter with the designers creativity: You choose your pawn, you’ll note they aren’t all derivative of Star Trek characters (an all too common failing of the space genre), some races, like the Silicolds, are very original. You will also find that victory conditions are assignable from the very common “take over the galaxy” condition to the more original “become leader of the Senate” condition, also known as Bob Dole victory mode. The graphics are certainly acceptable, easy on the eyes with just about the right “feel” for this type of game, that is to say that the graphics are nothing to e-mail home about but they don’t hinder the game. The sound, similarly, is just about right. You won’t be playing MoO3 just to hear a funky backbeat, but it seems well matched to the game. The generous interpretation of the graphics and sound of MoO3 is that it is quite an accomplishment to fit the graphics and sound so tightly with the game they never distract you from your main mission while the other interpretation is that the graphics and music are very average. I think the play quality of MoO3 is fairly outstanding so overlook these shortcomings/high points.

MoO3 does have problems, and the most glaring one is the high price of admission. I refer not to the ubiquitous cash price of $49.95; I am speaking of the amount time spent becoming familiar enough with MoO 3 to actually accomplish something. It’s a fairly steep learning curve so be prepared to spend a whole bunch of time (30 hours!) learning the various ins and outs of MoO 3, particularly if you never played the earlier versions. Once you’ve mastered the basics you’ll find MoO3 at least very diverting indeed, if not fun. MoO 3 will have you swearing that the computer cheats, which is a sign of a particularly engrossing game.

MacMice Rating: 4 out of 5, it’s worth both the cash outlay and the time spent learning if you enjoy strategy games.

Chris Seibold

OWC Mercury Extreme G4/1 GHz
Company: Other World Computing
Price: $349.99
http://eshop.macsales.com

Your basic processor upgrade review works like this: Long list of stats followed by a few personal use examples. This method is particularly useful if you run Xbench all day, but the average user probably has a little trouble converting benchmarking stats into real world differences. The other problem with using benchmarking figures in evaluating an upgrade lies in the end user of said upgrades, if you’re an uber geek administering a plethora of computers then benchmarks are king (after all you know the idiots using the computers mostly slack) but if you’re an average home user trying to maximize computing joy while minimizing wallet plundering you’ve got a different set of values. In any event: the obligatory stats (for what they’re worth)

Upgrade G4
Processor PowerPC G4 @ 1.00 GHz
Version 7455 (Apollo) v3.3
L1 Cache 32K (instruction), 32K (data)
L2 Cache 256K @ 500 MHz
L3 Cache 2048K @ 250 MHz
Bus Frequency 100 MHz
Video Card ATY,Rage128Pro
Drive Type WDC WD205AA-40BAA0
CPU Test 119.53
GCD Loop 114.08 4.46 Mops/sec
Floating Point Basic 119.47 432.06 Mflop/sec
AltiVec Basic 122.66 3.56 Gflop/sec
vecLib FFT 122.60 1.90 Gflop/sec
Floating Point Library 119.26 4.77 Mops/sec

Yer Average stock AGP G4 400 Scores:

Processor PowerPC G4 @ 400 MHz
Version 7400 (Max) v2.8
L1 Cache 32K (instruction), 32K (data)
L2 Cache 1024K @ 200 MHz
Bus Frequency 100 MHz
Video Card ATY,Rage128Pro (ATI Rage 128 Pro)
Drive Type WDC WD307AA
CPU Test 46.67
GCD Loop 39.41 1.54 Mops/sec
Floating Point Basic 59.77 216.16 Mflop/sec
AltiVec Basic 32.86 954.47 Mflop/sec
vecLib FFT 46.05 714.91 Mflop/sec
Floating Point Library 77.67 3.11 Mops/sec

What all that tells the average guy, I don’t know. Time to get down to real reviewing! Let’s approach this review from the prospective of a first time upgrade customer. Our subject (in this case me) has a G4 400 MHz AGP machine. It’s a nice computer, deft styling, easy access etc. Heck I like the thing but I was contemplating splurging on a new G5. Why? The computer lacked the muscle necessary to run some of the latest software and ran some recent software in a less than peppy manner. For example, if I wanted to use iChat AV in the maximum configuration allowed by my bandwidth I was boned, the best I could do was use standard quality. Bad karma, after all I’m paying for this bandwidth, I want to use it to it’s utmost. The problem was clear: The AGP G4 was holding me back. The G4 was also holding strangling me in the gaming area, case in point: Unreal Tourney was not an option because Unreal demands an 800 MHz processor at a minimum. The later iterations of iMovie were also getting painfully slow on the aged G4. In short: My computer was becoming a bottleneck and the world didn’t seem to care.

Two solutions exist to remedy this dilemma: New computer or upgrade the existing computer. Were I flush with cash I would have opted for the G5 every time, however, I’m not flush with cash. Hence, the idea of upgrade was appealing. Still, there was plenty of uncertainty, you hear folks opine that you won’t get your money out of an upgrade when you resell your machine. Added to that bit of fear you also have the nagging doubt that the performance will be hobbled by the other components of the machine. Worst of all, an upgrade might also be painfully difficult to install. All these factors add up to plenty of fear when considering an upgrade. On the other hand there’s no fear with a new computer, you just expect that thing to work. Are the doubts justified?

Let’s start with installation. The folded piece of paper (it’s a manual by definition I suppose) that contains the installation instructions is easily followed. There was one typo that threw me for a second but once I assured myself everything was kosher I was good to go. You pop the machine open, yank the heat sink off, remove three screws and pull the daughter card. Place the upgrade over the holes, seat said upgrade, replace screws, and restart the computer. A pretty simple process really, not quite as easy as I thought it would be but not challenging in the slightest. At this point I need to note that doing this kind of stuff doesn’t scare me, I’ve swapped processors on 50 PCs and know what a number two Phillips head is. If you’re a bit put off by poking around in the guts of your computer then take it slow and you’ll be fine. In any event, once the processor is in place and you hit the power button, there it is: 1 GHz of G4 computing goodness, I encountered no stability issues. The whole process was reminiscent of changing a very high hanging light bulb, you have to go through a bit of trouble but once you’re finished you just hit a switch and the bulb lights up.

Moving onto performance. As mentioned before benchmarks don’t impress me, real world stuff impresses me, the ability to run programs I couldn’t run before impresses me. That said I won’t bore you with how many seconds the upgrade shaved off start up time and minutiae of that ilk, instead I’ll focus on the user experience. The computer felt much faster running OS X, programs launched with comparatively short bounce times. Safari benefited from the upgrade, it now scrolled fast enough I could no longer read the text as it rolled out of the window. My experience is not limited to processor light apps. My main love is iMovie and here the upgrade really shined. Exporting to QuickTime fairly blazed when compared to the stock configuration of my PowerMac and deciding to apply an effect was no longer a major exercise in patience. In addition to the increase in speed I was able to run the aforementioned iChat AV using the maximum settings allowed by my bandwidth (take that Comcast!). If you’re into OS 9 (not that there’s anything wrong with that) I plead ignorance. I’ve always found OS9′s performance very acceptable on the AGP G4 and while I could feel a substantial speedup I don’t use the processor hungry OS9 apps that would really test the upgrade.

When considering value the question becomes a bit trickier. The OWC Mercury Extreme retails for $349.99, which is not an incidental amount of scratch. So we should consider the cost of a new G5. The low end G5 retails for a cool two grand but lacks the throughput enhancements of the higher-level machines. The top end will set you back 3,000 hard earned ducats but the computer should be hip for some time yet to come. Of course there are a few other bits of info to remember: the G5′s will steadily decrease in price and Panther (coming October 24th) is widely reported to speed everything up. If we include the fact that Panther is not 64 bit native we have some good reasons to wait. My bet is that by the time you actually need a G5 (and face facts, if you’re using an older G4 you don’t NEED a G5) and programs start demanding a G5 the price of the system will have slipped far enough to make the $350 outlay easily justifiable. While you might not get your cash outlay back reselling your computer I will venture that you’ll get it back in the dough you saved by not being on the bleeding edge.
The only thing left to do is put the whole picture together: Is the upgrade worth your time/money/effort. In my case it certainly is, for me it’s like getting a brand new computer in a small cardboard box. Of course I’m accustomed to using the old G4 400 MHz so the increase in performance is going to seem huge to me, if you’re trying a more incremental upgrade (say from 800 MHz to 1 GHz) the performance difference won’t be as noticeable and not worth the dough. In short, if you were making a big enough jump the OWC Mercury is certainly worth the cash outlay, if you were just trying to eke out a few more MHz you would be wise to save your money towards the purchase of a new G5.

MacMice Rating: 5 out of 5
Pros: If you’re used to slow, now you go!
Cons: No shiny new case to impress friends

Chris Seibold

I am coming out of the closet now. I have thought about it for a long, long time. I must remain anonymous, however, because of my job – I hope you understand.

Yeah, it’s true. I am a former Macintosh user and even a former ranting Mac evangelist.

I use a Windows PC now.

I am one of those rare birds who went from the Mac to Windows, not the other way around, as so many are doing nowadays, running from the insecurity and vagaries of the Windows environment to the safety and security of the Mac.
(Those wimps!)

What got me to switch?

This whole thing was not by choice at first, but reluctantly, working in a business environment where there was no chance to use anything else but M$ products.

I eventually went over to the dark side. It was a long time before I even noticed that I was a Windows User. Once I had gone so far, there was no turning back.

None of my online Mac friends know about this, however. They would be scandalized, I am sure. In fact, I still have my Mac at home. It just never gets used any more. (I was so ashamed for the longest time, but not anymore!)

A year went by on that job, and although I had access to the Mac at home, the expensive Windows laptop went with me there too, and all my work was done on it. It always worked you know, there were hundreds of tech support people at my company who made sure all our laptops worked. Couldn’t have survived on a Windows PC without them, of that I am certain.

But now, after so long a time using Windows, it has become a habit.
A habit I am now unwilling to put aside, although I know it will get me in the end . . .

Do I like Windows better? Oh no! Not at all!

Windows is a horrible operating system where nothing can ever be found in a decent or logical place on the hard drive, where files have cryptic names and extensions, and where nothing you do on the PC ever feels secure or even safe. If you ever were to contemplate using Windows, my friend, run, don’t walk to your nearest Mac store and forget you ever thought of using an M$ software product!

Why is Windows so seductive? Windows gives me (and most everyone else) just a slight sense that everything works and is stable (I guess at first that is enough for most people starting out in computing, right?)

But the real secret is that Windows is just not safe. What an adrenaline rush!

I like to think of it like mountain climbing. Why climb a sheer cliff when you could be safe at home with your loved ones? Its the crazy thrill you get when your whole digital life is hanging over the edge of the precipice and you know you are hanging by your fingertips as you continue to push your computer to do more and more things, and get more and more work done without losing it all to the sudden and very unexpected Blue Screen of Death! This is addictive computing!

For the most part my Windows 2000 OS running a very few M$ apps, and no funny stuff, is reliable – to a point. (I know I must never add anything to it, or it will surely crash – this is the only real fear I have when using Windows.) Therefore, I consider myself a professional Windows user, and I will never fall of that cliff and permanently lose all my data.

But even for the most careful Windows user, there is that fateful day, perhaps well off into the future, or perhaps even today –We all know it, don’t we? When the Blue Screen of Death comes to visit, and to stay. This is the terrible secret we Windows users must all face, and we all know it so well, from hard experience!

So many ways to die! A lost DLL file, a schizophrenic Register, a Virus, A Worm, A Trojan Horse, shaky cheap hardware, incompatible Apps, or most of all, a totally rotten OS that never should have seen the light of day!

So you die. Then the world wobbles and the earth stands still, as everything around you in your virtual PC environment comes crashing down!

Major reformatting is required then, since there really isn’t any partial fix for these things. I don’t even bother with the insipid M$ tech support anymore, and all those long, wasted hours on the phone or on the web, looking desperately for some remedy — I just reformat my hard drive and reinstall everything. (It’s easier that way, you know?)

I continually mirror my work to another hard drive, so precious little is lost of all my course work and writing. I also continually, compulsively, burn CDs of my work, so I have some semblance of security, even on
Windows.

But still, this whole experience is a good thing for me! It really is!

It reminds me that the real world we all live in is no more or less secure than that Windoze trash OS we work on every day! What a philosophy!

Think of it! Doesn’t life kick you in the teeth when you least expect it?
Do you think you are really immune to the theft of your possessions?
Will it never happen to you that you are mugged sometime, somewhere? Your trusty Windows OS is there to remind you that life is neither fair nor lacking in sad surprises. Thank you, Billy Gates!

You have no idea how this helps me keep my perspective when I teach such realities to my incredulous students in my many college classes.

My advice? If you want comfort in your computing instead of wide-eyed terror, get a Mac and OS X, (or Linux if you are ambitious and have a bent toward self abuse and love to muck around with your computer). Either way, your computing will be much more safe and sane.

But if you want an OS that truly mimics reality, keep on using Windows . . . (But not XP – it is still garbage — give it a year or two before you upgrade. You may be crazy like me, but you don’t have to be a fool!)

Oh, I feel so much better now that I am out of the closet. Of course my best friends will never know about any of this, but you do, right?

Cheers!

ANONYMOUS WINDOWS USER

Roger Born

Like Quake and SimCity, Diablo is a game that has evolved over many years to become an unquestionable classic. The first version for the Mac was released in 1998, and though a good eighteen months behind the PC version, its release coincided with the launch of the original Bondi blue iMac, on which it played very well (AppleLust editor Marc Messer reviewed this game back in 1998 for
AppleWizards, see here). The action took place in the town of Tristram, or more correctly in the caves and catacombs underneath the Tristram, where the player was pitted against the monsters, demons and corrupted undead warriors. Though a great single player game, it was even better as a multiplayer game, either on a local network or across the Internet, and before too long thousands of people joined forces to work together and trade magical items. An expansion pack to that first game called Hellfire (that sadly never made it to the Mac) stretched the adventure a little further into the surrounding countryside, but it was the sequel, Diablo 2, released in 2000, that really let the player explore much more of the world in which the action takes place. Instead of just a single set of caves, the game spanned four different environments including deserts and jungles, as well as numerous smaller caves and buildings. Even the town of Tristram was revisited, albeit as a scene of desolation. An expansion pack, called Lord of Destruction, came out a year later simultaneously for both the PC and the Mac stretched the game further, adding two new character classes and a huge new landscape of mountains and icy caves to explore, as well as some very tough new monsters.

All the Diablo games feature rich graphics, detailed manuals covering both gameplay and the history of the action takes place in, and truly superb music by Mark Uelmen that covers a wide sweep of moods and ethnic sources. For those that don’t have the game, Blizzard have posted MP3 versions of the soundtrack here, and elsewhere on the website there are all sorts of extras to draw you into the world of Diablo.

Role playing or Hack-and-Slash?

Essentially, Diablo is a sword-and-sorcery action game in which the player combats the forces of evil using various combat and magical abilities, depending on the character class he or she chooses to use. Druids, for example, can call upon the forces of nature and have wolves and bears fight alongside them, while rogues use their skill with the bow to shoot down enemies from afar. With each new skill level earned, the player gets points to improve existing skills or add new ones, and since each character class has lots of possible skills, the player has plenty of scope for customizing their characters. But at the same time as the player progresses through the games, the monsters get ever more numerous and difficult to beat, and if you spread your character development points across too many skills, then none of them will be strong enough to help you defeat the toughest monsters in the game. To be successful then, the player must plan ahead, concentrating on certain sets of skills to specialize their character in a certain way.

Equipping the character is important too, and in multiplayer games a thriving market for unwanted items allows players to get the right tools for the job. Each time a monster is killed or a treasure chest opened there’s a chance of finding some magical weapons or armour. The value of these items can vary from the mundane to the exceptional, with many players looking out for “sets” of items that have enhanced magical abilities when used together. Though much of the paraphernalia of the game are solidly set in a mythical European Middle Ages, there are crossovers from different cultures and times, such as Roman gladius, Arab shamshir and Japanese katana swords. Weapons and armour have subtle effects beyond mere killing power and protection. Heavy armour slows a character down and reduces the distance a character can run before running out of breath, and some weapons will reach further but move slower than others, making combat with a two-handed Dacian falx rather different to fighting with spiked club and shield. Most interesting of all are the jewels, gems and rune stones found in Diablo 2. By plugging these into the sockets found on certain items, magical properties can be added to them. Certain combinations create unique “crafted items” with extra abilities, if the right recipe is followed.

Distributing skill points sensibly is essential if your character is going is going to have any chance of doing well in the later stages of the game, be it the original Diablo as here or the sequel.

Does this make Diablo a role playing game like Baldur’s Gate? Not really, ultimately the game runs along pretty well preset lines, and though the characters can be tweaked in a limitless number of ways they don’t have any sort of depth to them. They don’t have reputations to worry about or moral alignments. In the multiplayer game, some players use their characters to kill other players and steal their stuff, and perhaps these come closest to being “evil” characters, but essentially the game keeps the player on the side of good and opposed to Diablo and his hellish allies.

The assassin is one of the character classes that came with the Diablo 2 expansion pack. If you ever wanted to see play at being Buffy the Vampire Slayer, here’s your chance.

Diablo: A Manichaean Myth for the Modern Age?

The Diablo games take place in the world of Sanctuary, where various human communities have found themselves caught up in a struggle between the forces of good and evil, led by angels on one side and demons on the other. By themselves the forces of good cannot defeat evil, indeed, it seems that evil is well on the way to winning, and that is where the hero comes into the game. In the original game the player wins by defeating Diablo, and taking aboard his evil spirit by sticking a “soul-stone” into his head. Strange but true. Anyway, the spirit of Diablo takes control of the hero, and as the Dark Wanderer he sets out to free his trapped brothers, Mephisto and Baal, from their imprisonment elsewhere in Sanctuary. This is where Diablo 2 begins, with a new hero on a new quest, this time to defeat Diablo forever. Along the way the forces of good are represented by occasional meetings with the angel Tyrael and more consistently with the sage Deckard Cain and various hirelings that willingly fight alongside you.

These skeletons are the least of the problems this fighter will have to deal with to complete the original Diablo game.

Though the appearance of angels gives the game a vaguely Judaeo-Christian feeling, really the game occupies a very different theological world. Essentially Diablo takes place within a dualistic cosmology, where equal and opposite forces of good and evil are in conflict, sweeping through the material world influences the actions of mortals one way or the other. This is the similar to the mythology promulgated by the Persian philosopher Mani, who lived from 215 to 274 AD and saw himself as the final successor to Zoroaster, Buddha and Jesus. Manichaeism espouses a world view very different to the fundamental unity of all creation central to Judaeo-Christian belief. Jews, Christians and Muslims all believe that the one God is good, and infinitely more powerful than the forces of evil, personified by the Devil. Evil exists only by rebelling against the good creation that God made, and can only persist at all because free will allows it to do so. The devil was created by God along with all the other angels, and in Christian and Muslim theology at least chose to rebel against God’s authority and in doing so became evil (in the Hebrew Old Testament the role of Satan is more ambiguous, and closer to God’s inquisitor than opponent). Likewise, people commit evil deeds because they choose to, and they are able to make that choice because they are free to do so. This is all bound up with the belief in a golden age when man was completely good, dwelling in the Garden of Eden with God and in peace. Only through an act of disobedience, carried out freely and by choice, though tempted to do so by the serpent, did mankind fall from grace and find himself expelled from Eden to the mortal realm.

In the Manichaean world view good and evil are creative powers in their own right, and angels on the one side and demons on the other are good and evil because it is their nature to be so. The mortal world is inherently a mixture of the creative elements of good and evil, and that humans must constantly strive against the evil part of it if they wish to return to the purely good side of the universe when they die. Since sex was seen as an evil part of the world, having children was something the Manichaean theologians frowned upon. This was a common enough concern among early Christians, too, for example St. Jerome was quite convinced that the best thing that could happen to humanity was that it should allow itself to die out, failing that, churchmen at least should be celibate, and from this belief came the powerful monastic movement that drove much of early church history. Mani saw every deed a man does as being part of the battle between good and evil, and only through the actions of humanity can good overcome evil. Light was seen as the element of good, and darkness of evil. The creation of the universe had bound up the light into the darkness, and only by releasing that light could the final separation of good from evil be attained. Doing this was the goal of every Manichean. Certain foods like fruit were seen to “contain” light their consumption released that light and so did the universe good. Killing of any kind was seen as evil, be it animals for food or people in war, as these acts trapped light within the mortal realm, as did idolatry, theft and magic. Because the Sun and the Moon were luminous, releasing light, they were seen as good things, and during prayers the Manichean would face them as Muslims do Mecca today.

What has this to do with Diablo? Look closely and you will notice that everywhere the mythology it draws upon places the forces of Light on the side of good, and casts the various demons and monsters led by Diablo himself as the forces of Darkness. Implicit to the game is the idea that the individual can make the difference. It’s also apparent that nowhere does the hero kill humans in fulfilling the quest, instead the conflict is with various demons, undead and monsters. Similarly, means are somewhat suborned to the ends, so certain character classes like the assassin and the necromancer that would be seen as evil (or at least morally ambiguous) characters in other mythologies, are here heroic protagonists on the side of the Light. What matters is that Diablo and his allies are defeated.

Diablo Replayability and Longevity

One of the nice things about this game is it’s infinite replayability. The single player game stocks up with new monsters every time you start it up, and with each new character the whole world is redesigned slightly changing the topology of the maps and the sorts of monsters you’ll encounter. Side quests at every step of the game keep the pace brisk, and with increasing difficulty the monsters become tougher but the rewards greater. Play through the game once, and you have two more difficulty levels to try the game at, and at its toughest it is very difficult indeed. Likewise, with three character classes in the original Diablo and seven in the sequel, all sorts of different strategies will need to be developed and employed, and even within the basic classes there are variations: a lycanthropic druid who fights with melee weapons will be very different to one who uses elemental magic like volcanoes and hurricanes. The experience is even more complex in the online multiplayer version, where thanks to Blizzard’s online service people around the world can team up and interact.

Exploding demons, berserker barbarians and enraged grizzlies. What more could you ask for from a game?

Though initially a Mac Classic application, Blizzard has done a good job in keeping the game fresh by releasing OS X versions of the application. Periodically they update the game by tweaking its many features, for example to make the various character classes more balanced in playability compared to one another. Sometimes this means reducing the powers of certain skills and abilities on one character class while strengthening them in others, at other times it’s about fixing bugs in skills that made them ridiculously powerful or uselessly weak. New recipes for crafted items are another popular addition to the game with each update. The latest update is version Diablo 2 v. 1.10, and though still beta Blizzard have provided a Mac OS X version of it that dramatically improves the performance of the game with certain graphics cards, among other benefits. It is because it is continually tweaked and improved, Diablo remains among the best game in its class, and a classic Mac game.

An addiction is “being abnormally dependent on something that is psychologically or physically habit-forming.” The key to this description is the word “abnormal.” All addictions are unhealthy. America’s addiction started 222 years ago, when the nation’s first bank, the Bank of America, was formed in 1781.

America’s addiction is not to money. Money in some form has been around forever. People work hard to earn their profit. And profit, whether in the form of cash or a harvest, is the fruit of ones labor. Gathering money and profit are one and the same; they are the just rewards for ones effort.

Like alcoholism, or gambling, this addiction takes over our entire physiological system. It feeds on a natural desire, and seems to reward it, when in fact it is sucking the life out of the subject. It leads to selfish destructive behaviors, and a despairing cycle of fits. The subject seeks to regain control, but never can quite come to grasps with oneself.

Those who recognize the symptoms of illness apply varying remedies with limited success. They try to help the victim as well as those affected by the addiction. In the end, it is only the will of the subject that can break this destructive habit. It requires a moment of objective clarity and moral courage to recognize a destructive pattern. The victim must refuse to be enslaved by it anymore. Only then can one walk through the door to a new, healthy, life.

For America, and most of the modern world, this addiction is the acceptance of the interest mechanism in our financial structure. On its surface, interest seems harmless enough.

Interest elevates the value of money. One must now pay another for the time to use their money. As a lender, this habit feels good. One can realize a gain from their harvest simply by time. Imagine gathering a basket of apples, and by not eating it, one then has two baskets. Of course, if one borrowed the apples, the cost of paying them back would be very difficult. The wisdom of the words, “Neither a borrower nor a lender be” becomes readily apparent. But how does this system affect us as a whole?

The gains from interest should reduce any desire to gather new apples; one could simply live off the surplus generated by the existing apples. But there is a problem. Because interest is elevating the value of money, the apples themselves are changing value. It takes more and more money to buy the same apple. We now have inflation. Inflation is a symptom of the interest addiction. To maintain the same amount of apples one started with originally, one must now seek out higher interest rewards. If one owes interest, then one is driven to sell more and more so he can generate enough profits to cover his rising interest debt. The destructive cycle of our addiction is complete. The more we get, the more we need.

Interest has now become entrenched in our economy. Even a casual transaction via credit card has the merchant paying an interest rate as high as 72% annually. (6% swipe rate x 12 months.) On the stock market, investors use their initial investment in hopes of being paid back perpetually, with even higher rates of return. However, the corporations and the merchants are borrowers. No matter how hard they work, they can never make enough to pay back the investors. These debts are never settled. As a result, it is necessary to constantly squeeze more value from others to generate more profit for the interest debt. The more we sell, the more we need to squeeze others. This makes the corporations look evil when they are the victims of the interest mechanism.

We are all tied to this interest mechanism. If we have no money, we are forced to borrow. If we have lots of money, we are forced to invest it to protect it from inflation. If we work or do not work, we are all squeezed equally. This is a collective addiction.

History has shown that despite the rise of the industrial age and the consumption of vast quantities of the earth’s resources, America has not been able to conquer poverty. How is it that we could have once been a nation of self-sufficient farmers, and now that we have machines doing the work we have more disparity in wealth? Interest is the mechanism that causes this imbalance.

The American Revolution was a turning point in mankind’s history. The two great revolutions that followed, in Russia and China, both perceived corporations as evil. Our economic imbalance would seem to confirm that interpretation. The people who run corporations are no different than the average person. We are all following the economic model we were born in to. The interest mechanism in our economic model causes our corporations to be predatory to survive.

Interest is a mechanism that automatically steals the fruit of another’s labor. The only way to protect oneself is to steal from another. We are all addicted, and because it seems to personally benefit us all, it is masked.

We are now engaged in yet another epic battle, but this is really just another symptom of our addiction. The 9/11 attack and our response is, at its heart, a result of our banking system. We are defending the right to gamble for a drink of interest. We have three destructive addictions in the same body.

Before 9/11, this system caused both hot and cold wars and the Great Depression. Our personal lives are one of constant economic duress. We seek to get ahead so we can have a chance to stop. We left the farm for a life that is more difficult, when our new productivity should be making it financially easier. Interest is a disease in our economy, and in the example we set for the world. It is no one’s fault. It was institutionalized over 200 years ago. Other original decisions have been corrected; we need to correct this one too.

Every weekday the bell tolls for us. The opening bell on the Big Board at Wall Street is a warning. No nation can survive the onslaught of disease forever. Our bodies, and our empire with it, will wither from addiction. The time has come when we must lock the doors to the Stock Market and step into the daylight of a new world order. It is the only way to break our addiction. We ignore this illness at our peril.

Steve Consilvio

Review – Sennheiser PXC 250
Tim Robertson
Publisher/Owner, Columnist, MacRelevant
Thursday, 9/11/03

Sennheiser PXC 250
Company: Sennheiser USA
Price: $149.95
http://www.headphone.com

Ah, the sweet sounds of music! And with the popularity of the Apple iPod there is a huge market out there for people wanting to purchase better sounding headphones than the earbud white ones which, while decent sounding, leave a lot to be desired.

While Sennheiser boasts some impressive looking products, there is only one fair way to review headphones, which of course is to plug them into our 20GB iPod and jam to some tunes!

All music used for this review was either MP3′s ripped directly from the music CD at 192 kbps, or music purchased through the iTunes Music Store in ACC format. Different genres of music were sampled, everything from Bach to Steve Wonder, from Leanne Rimes to Limp Bizkit.

The PXC 250 is “a closed, dynamic, supra-aural mini stereo headphone with NoiseGard active noise compensation.” (Description taken from Sennheiser) All that sounds nifty, but what does it all mean? First, let’s look at the specifications of the PCX 250:

Nominal impedance: 300 Ohm
Jack plug: 3.5 mm stereo
Transducer principle (Headphones): dynamic, closed
Ear coupling: Dupraaural
Cable length:1,8 m
Weight w/o cable: 65 g
Frequency response (headphones): 10…..21000 Hz
Sound pressure level (SPL): 106 dB (SPL)
THD, total harmonic distortion: 0,1 %

So what does all that mean to you, a non-techie who just wants a good sounding pair of headphones for your iPod, Home Entertainment System, or your computer? The good news is these headphones sounds great! With all forms of music, they performed well under most conditions. Because the PCX 250′s are not earbuds, they are not well suited for joggers, bike riders, or casual listening while outside. Rather, the PCX 250′s are designed for more of a relaxed or stationary setting.

The NoiseGard technology the PCX 250′s boast is noise cancellation technology, similar to the more popular Bose. In a nutshell, what the NoiseGard technology does is filter out background ambient noise, meaning less distraction from other sounds in the room with you. A good example would be a loud fan’s humming noise, which would tend to bleed into your ears and lessen your music listening enjoyment. While we are no experts on Noise Cancellation technology by any means, we can honestly say that the NoiseGard in the PCX 250′s work better than we had thought they would. With the headphone on, one can hear a major reduction of ambient room noise simply by turning on and off the NoiseGard “Stick” on the headphone cord. Even without music playing. One potential drawback if you wear these at work is that all sound is muted significantly. If your phone rings, or a co-worker asks you a question, you may not hear them!

MacMice Rating: 4 out of 5

DuoGB FireWire Drive Enclosure
Company: WiebeTech
Price: $179.95 case only; $999.95 case and 500GB using two 250GB 7200RPM drives
http://www.wiebetech.com

James Wiebe’s WiebeTech keeps adding storage products; they’re up to 21 innovative drive products, and climbing. One of the latest additions is the DuoGB drive enclosure, an external FireWire case that holds -two- ATA drives, connected via an Oxford 911 FireWire bridge chip (the best FireWire bridge chip there is). Each drive is physically; sharing only the power supply and FireWire bridge chip. A single bridge chip means that there is only one FireWire cable to connect to the Mac.

MyMac labs got a DuoGB 180 GB loaner for evaluation; let’s review the pros and cons of the unit, and see how it performs. The DuoGB arrived in good shape, surrounded by an almost-excessive number of Styrofoam peanuts. (Note to all shippers; can’t you use bubble wrap?) While the DuoGB is sturdy, you won’t confuse it with the high-style LaCie drive enclosures; the DuoGB is a somewhat thin plain-Jane box. The power button is located on the brushed-aluminum front panel, and the rest of the enclosure is powder-coated steel. You get a FireWire cable, power cord, and a CD with installation instructions that are not really needed by the average Macintosh user. Plug in, tap the power button, and you’re ready to be the digital packrat you always wanted to be!

Almost.
RAID!

Having two drives in one case allows for some interesting storage possibilities. As supplied by WiebeTech, the DuoGB mounts two drives on the Mac desktop. Our unit had two 180 GB drives, so we had two separate drive icons.
Having two drives in one case allows the user to enter the world of RAID formatting. We’re not talking bug spray, we’re talking Redundant Array of Inexpensive Drives. While this review can’t go into all the down and dirty RAID tech details (here’s a good FAQ http://www.robustdigitalsolutions.com/html/raid-levels.html) the average Mac user CAN benefit from either RAID level 1 or level 0.

RAID 0 is also referred to as Striping. Data is laid down in stripes across an array of drives for faster I/O performance, but with no data protection.

RAID level 0 on our loaner unit produced a single logical drive (1 icon on the Mac desktop of 345 formatted gigabytes. If one disk is damaged or corrupted, data loss may result (the same as with a single drive installation).
RAID 1 is also known as Mirroring. Identical copies of data on a pair of disks is laid down for total redundancy, but with limited performance and inefficient use of drives. If one disk is damaged or corrupted, the data can be read from the other drive.

Apple now provides both RAID level 0 and level 1 formatting capability in OS X’s Disk Utility software. Prior to OS X, users who wanted to employ RAID arrays had to purchase expensive hardware and software combos. Now, OS X’ers have the software component included in OS X, and it’s brain-dead easy to use; just select the RAID tab, choose the two physical disks, choose Mirror or Stripe, name the set, click Create, and you’re done.

The DuoGB was first tested in the as-shipped configuration of two separate 180 GB disks. without doing any fancy RAID formatting. This is the convenience of the DuoGB; having two external drives without the hassle of two cases, two power cords, and two FireWire cables. The drives popped right up on the desktop with no muss or fuss. The noise level from the internal fan was about average; not silent, but not obtrusive. The DuoGB fan won’t disturb the your iTunes enjoyment.

As plain-vanilla dual drives, DuoGB performance is right in the middle of the pack. Here’s an XBench 1.0 speed test report:

Disk Test 85.25
Sequential 70.82
Uncached Write 70.02 30.55 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 71.33 29.02 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 62.40 9.83 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 82.26 35.49 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Random 107.07
Uncached Write 98.49 1.49 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 126.49 29.02 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 104.62 0.68 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 102.65 20.12 MB/sec [256K blocks]

There’s nothing to report about the user experience in this configuration. You’ve got two external drives, and they’re used in the usual Macintosh way.

The RAID testing was more interesting, as I had no prior experience with either RAID striping or mirroring. Which first; stripe or mirror? The coin toss came up “heads” so I set up the DuoGB as a single striped volume for the first set of RAID tests.

Disk Utility did its RAID stripe formatting quickly and efficiently. I couldn’t help but grin when I saw a single 345-gig volume called “Stripe” (my choice of name) appear on the desktop when the formatting completed. RAID stripers need to remember that a problem with one drive can cause data loss, so back up regularly.

As noted above, the main reason for striping drives is for better performance. XBench’s verdict shows a small speed increase. Repeated tests came up with similar speeds.

Disk Test 88.67
Sequential 71.06
Uncached Write 75.84 33.09 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 72.11 29.34 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 58.08 9.15 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 83.20 35.89 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Random 117.87
Uncached Write 223.40 3.37 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 128.31 29.44 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 112.07 0.73 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 78.48 15.38 MB/sec [256K blocks]

I was a bit surprised there wasn’t more of a speed increase. Benchmarks can be deceiving sometimes, so in desperation, I resorted to a real-world test. I copied a 1.88 folder with 606 items to both a striped RAID volume and to a single drive when non RAIDed.

copy to non-raid volume on DuoGB 2:22 (min/sec)
copy to RAID volume on DuoGB 1:21 (min/sec)

Real-world operation was significantly faster.

RAID level 1, a.k.a. Mirroring, was next on the agenda. Disk Utility created the Mirror array with no trouble. A single 180 GB drive icon appeared on the desktop. Each write to the drive would be mirrored to the second drive; so both drives would have identical data. If problems developed with one physical drive, the second could provide the data. It’s good to note that the RAID tab in Disk Utility provides a “Rebuild” option to try to fix damaged arrays.

What does RAID level 1 Mirroring do for speed?

Disk Test 60.56
Sequential 48.70
Uncached Write 37.65 16.43 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 37.66 15.32 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 59.39 9.35 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 82.04 35.39 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Random 80.08
Uncached Write 96.35 1.45 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 67.15 15.40 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 102.00 0.66 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 67.23 13.18 MB/sec [256K blocks]

Clearly, there are speed tradeoffs for having data redundancy. Having to write data to two disks inflicts a speed penalty. Is it worth it? Many people think so; you’ll have to decide for yourself. I found normal operation slower, but not annoyingly so. I did not deliberately damage the array to test Disk Utility’s ability to repair a damaged array.

One other important fact is that current PowerMac G4′s are NOT able to boot from a RAID array. So, you cannot use the DuoGB as a RAID array with its faster area/write speeds as your boot drive.

Configurations

WiebeTech offers the DuoGB any configurations ranging from an empty case ($179.95), to being stuffed with two 500 GB 7200 RPM drives ($999.95). The fully-stuffed configuration may be a bit overpriced, as 5 seconds of math shows that Wiebe prices the two 250 GB drives at $410 -per drive-. I found the pricing for the moderate capacity DuoGB’s to be more reasonable. Mymac.com’s dual 180 GB evaluation unit is priced at $639.95, which prices the two 180 GB drives at $230 each. Don’t forget that there is a significant convenience factor is having two drives in one case; one power cord, one FireWire cable, one case, etc. Convenience is worth a certain premium that only you can evaluate.

Conclusion

The DuoGB works as advertised; it can be two separate drives, or it can be RAID level 0 Striped, or RAID level 1 Mirrored. You’re not paying for (or getting) a getting a fancy case, but you do get a reliable mechanism in a very convenient package. Performance is average in both normal and RAID formats. Some configurations are relatively expensive when drive costs are considered.

MacMice Rating: 4 out of 5

David Weeks

A certified non-copyrighted article,
Treason checked for plagiaristic content (software permit license number #4B2420216)
Author ID #7965539 Ð Licensed to write, March 25, 2021
This Article is Certified Government ProForm Compliant by Editor ID #66166882

I know that this article will be heavily edited and sanitized before it ever gets to public consumption, so I will say what I want here. You editors already know that I know this, and I am a few points ahead on my demerits this month, so I do not mind speaking about the current era of reading and writing prohibition. You doubtless will make your own article here to replace this one.

How did this “Current Era of Prohibition” come about? Details are sketchy, but Congress sometime in the last decade wrote some sort of copyright law into the Constitution. Since neither of these things (the copyright law nor the Constitution) is web search permitted, it is hard to do anything but speculate about what these things were, and what they mean.

I have been around a few others who remember these things, but they are currently banned from proper society and not permitted to speak of such things. There are rumors, however. Something called the RIAA and a cartoon animator named Disney caused Congress to make these changes in the Law, and all the rest just seemed to follow.

I know this is very sketchy, isn’t it? Current Authorized Books and Journals on American History contain nothing on this subject, and all attempts at research that I have done on my own have become dead ends. It is apparent that there might not even be such a prohibition in existence, despite the many rumors to the contrary.

Even this word, “Prohibition” is a non-word and is not allowed in published works unless it pertains only to the previous century concerning the use of alcohol, and if it is used in a completely non-offending way. (I do not think, my dear Editor, that I have offended anyone yet, so put away your demerit calculator.)

The official position of the Government is that there is no Prohibition of any sort at all. Everything is as it should be. Works of art and all the great writings are still available for viewing for people who are willing to sign the forms, receive the background checks, and pay the fees for seeing them.

Of course books, movies, plays, music, and works of art are not permitted to be privately owned, nor have they ever been. Ownership by private individuals would be anarchy, and our Government would never permit such individual ownership of any copyrighted works. Yes, this is a minor prohibition, but obviously not to the extent that we could all it an era or even something that smacks of overt government intervention in our free society.

The Copyright is one of the most fundamental tenets of our nation, and the rights of the copyright owners are sacrosanct in every way. Else why would the major entertainment corporations of this country be the only ones permitted to own copyrights? Of course they have the right to charge for viewing, and to check and maintain proper background data of all individuals who view their contents, so that no one would secretly reproduce them in any form or media, even from memory. Such guardianship costs are high, so fees for public viewing on such copyrighted material are also high, as they should be.

Remember too, that our national copyright holders and owners also support the thousands and millions of artists, writers and musicians who generate all this material for these successful corporations to control and disseminate to the paying public.

The right of the citizen to view copyrighted material is also sacrosanct in this country. All citizens, regardless of permitted rank, status, or class level, are freely permitted to view such works during regular viewing hours, and in any authorized viewing center.

The only exception to this are the academic centers across our country. They alone are permitted Web access to a few controlled copyrighted works, but only at authorized campus viewing centers, and only during those times scheduled months in advance by teachers for their student’s viewing.

Such freedom our citizens, students and faculties have in this great land!

The single thing that causes certain dissident individuals to talk about “Prohibition In The Current Era” are the required licensing and registration of all media recorders such as radios, music recorders, video recorders, music and video players, and game consoles. Only those fully controlled devices that are permitted to be used, and fully licensed to the proper individuals are allowed in our society. Even hand phones are controlled devices, as many of them can both record and play back sights and sounds. Of course none of these devices are ever permitted near any copyrighted repositories.

So why should some individuals use this private leasing of media recorders as an attempt to stir up resentment in our citizenry? Their motives are obviously not healthy ones for society, even our free and open society, and something should be done to silence them.

These anarchistic individuals have even spread rumors that, before this century, people were both permitted to have private ownership of any recording and playback devices, and there was no registration enforced for any of them. They even wildly speculate that these things were prevalent in people’s homes and transports, and were for sale in public places! More than that, they say that there used to be privately owned little printers and scanners that every computer owner used to make their own copies of anything, regardless of its content or copyright status! Amazing!

I had to look that one up: computers. Surely they do not mean our free Web viewing devices, do they? These Web devices are incapable of storing or recording anything at all. I think they mean that people once owned personal computers and those machines had the capability to store and record anything at all, and even had programs that allowed the user to modify or change anything they stored or recorded. These devices were even hooked up to the Web and people supposedly exchanged unlicensed copies of all sorts of copyrighted material! Fantastic!

The final straw, in my opinion, and the one that should guarantee that these anarchists be permanently put away, is their troubling stories that private people once owned books, and what is worse, copyrighted books! Can you imagine?

If such a state of anarchy could have ever existed, it obviously would have been a major threat to every copyright holder, and it is little wonder that Congress quickly passed strict laws with high punishments to save our nation from this total lawless anarchy and chaos.

How fortunate we are to have both a benevolent Congress and such open and accessible National Entertainment Corporations, both of which are bulwarks for the continued safety of our great nation.

This concludes the informative article on the supposed Prohibition of the Current Era, dated 2020. We are duty-bound to keep our citizens informed.

Roger Born

Norton SystemWorks 3.0
Company: Symantec Corporation
Price: $129.95
http://www.symantec.com

“No partitions found.”
“The free block count is incorrect.”
“There is no root directory.”
“The extent record has an incorrect key.”
File system problems like these make Mac users wake up in a cold sweat, especially if they’ve failed for too long to back up their critical data. Of course, many Mac users may never experience serious trouble with their hard drives.

But, to quote Dirty Harry, “do you feel lucky?”

If you have file system trouble (can’t boot, lost files or folders, files won’t open, etc.), you’ll need a disk repair application, and you’ll need it quickly, as further use of your Mac may add to the damage. Norton SystemWorks 3 includes a bevy of applications designed to maintain and repair your hard drive. Applications for drive performance and maintenance include Disk Doctor, and Speed Disk. Disk Security applications are AntiVirus and WipeInfo, and the applications for Data Recovery are FileSaver, Volume Recover, and UnErase.

Some of the high points of SystemWorks 3 are:

Real paper documentation! Kudos to Symantec for providing a book that you can read anywhere, instead of a PDF file that forces you to read while tied to your computer.

Full OS X compatibility, including OS X booting for Macs that will not boot from OS 9.

The Norton SystemWorks CD contains two CD partitions:
Mac OS X partition with Norton SystemWorks 3.0 for Mac OS X v10.1.5 and higher. The Mac OS 9 partition with Norton SystemWorks 1.0.5 for OS 9.x

Both will boot the computer into Mac OS X or Mac OS 9 for emergencies.
* Volume Recover is now available for use with Mac OS X: Recovers missing drives and restores damaged directories. Volume Recover now provides a virtual image of the drive for recovery.
* Wipe Info is now available for use with Mac OS X: It securely wipes files, volumes, and free space.
* Scheduled Defragmentation has been added to FileSaver to allow users to schedule the defragmentation of all possible files on their drive(s) at a set time each day.
* Norton AntiVirus 9.0 for Mac OS X v10.1.5 and up protects your computer from all known PC viruses as well as Macintosh specific viruses.
* Norton AntiVirus 9.0 includes mount scanning of removable media, and it can scan and repair of files detected as infected within compressed archives.
* Norton AntiVirus 9.0 will quarantine viruses that are detected but that cannot be repaired with the current virus definitions.
* There are no changes in functionality in Norton AntiVirus 7.0.2, which has been included on the CD for compatibility with Mac OS 9.x. All changes in functionality are for Norton AntiVirus 9.0 for Mac OS X.

So, it appears that the Symantec’s engineers haven’t been sitting on their thumbs. Let’s take SystemWorks 3.0 out for a spin, and see how well theory translates into reality.
SystemWorks 3.0 installation is much improved from the tedious process required by version 2. No longer are you required to do the time-consuming on-line Live Update process just to complete the initial installation, since SystemWorks 3.0 allows the any required updating to be done at your leisure. All users should do the Live Update, as your CD may no longer be current, but at least you can now use the CD right out of the box.
I chose the default installation for my PowerBook 800, and it proceeded uneventfully. The Installer asks for your Admin password, and creates the needed files and folders in your Applications folder. You’ll find a Norton Solutions folder, and a Norton SystemWorks application, both having attractive icons to catch the eye.

On my PowerMac dual 1.4s GHz machine, I encountered an odd (and rare, according to Symantec Tech support) permissions problem that prevented the installer script from running. The on-line support database discusses an easy fix, which entails adjusting the permissions of the Norton CD itself. If you happens to encounter this “pre-install script will not execute” error when installing, the easy fix is outlined at Symantec’s Web Site.

Starting the SystemWorks application brings up the Launcher, a new feature for version 3. The Launcher is a centralized launch pad for the SystemWorks components, allowing easy access to all of them. For starters, I chose to do an AntiVirus scan on my 40 gig drive.
Don’t plan on a quick initial scan! AntiVirus reported that I had 121,378 files on my drive, and proceeded to scan each one. This took over 40 minutes. Not to worry, this time-consuming full scan need take place only once, as AntiVirus can be set to scan all incoming email attachments, and scan removable hard drives as they are attached. So, once your main drive is clean, any new drive that is mounted will be scanned to prevent a new virus from that drive from infecting your Mac. If you frequently attach the same “known-clean” removable hard drive for backup purposes, you can cancel the scan to save time. It’d be nice if there were some way for AntiVirus to recognize specific drives, such as those used for regular backups; Symantec, are you listening?

Techno-pundits say that Macintoshes don’t really need regular virus scans, as both the Classic Mac OS and the Unix-based Mac OS X are unpopular amongst virus writers. It’s true that there are very few Macintosh-specific viruses, but my AntiVirus scan showed that I had 15 Microsoft Word documents with Word Macro viruses! These files all came via email from work, where the thousands of PC’s are rife with infected Word files. AntiVirus cleaned the infected files, and my Mac was Spic ‘n’ Span clean. One great new improvement is the ability to scan compressed files for viruses. This feature kicked in when I scanned a ZIP’ped Word file, and AntiVirus caught a PC virus in the compressed attachment.

Maintaining proper virus hygiene may keep your mother happy, but disk and file integrity is the real point of owning SystemWorks 3.0. That means UnErase, Disk Doctor, and Volume Recover.

UnErase

To test UnErase, I duplicated a few files and applications and then trashed them. I then cranked up UnErase, to imitate a user who has emptied the Trash on a critical file or three.

When (not if) you join the ranks of those who have trashed important files, run UnErase right away; your chances of recovering the files will be good. DO NOT WAIT, and don’t do any more work with your Mac, as the chances increase that you will overwrite the recently deep-sixed files, rendering them unsalvageable.
UnErase scanned the ‘Book’s drive, and found 826 files that had been trashed over the past few weeks. Since it allows you to sort the list of found files by name, size, date, and recoverability, it’s not hard to find the files you so desperately need. If the list of found files is too large, UnErase allows you to filter the found list by name, file type, contents, size, etc. I selected the three test files, and recovered them without any trouble. UnErase creates a folder called “Recovered Files” at the main level of your hard drive, and all recovered files are found there. My recovered data files were complete, and the recovered application ran normally.

UnErase has some annoying little habits, however. “Help” is a menu choice, but if you are running off the CD (as you will be to do serious work) the Help viewer doesn’t run when invoked; nothing happens to let you know that Help is not available. This happens when any of the various SystemWorks applications are run from the CD. According to Symantec, Apple’s Help viewer cannot be run when booted from the SystemWorks 3.9 CD, as Apple’s licensing agreement does not let them provide the Help Viewer. Even so, it would be useful for Symantec to put up a dialog box saying, for example, “Help is unavailable when booting from the CD.”

When running UnErase from the CD, the default drive for saving the recovered files is the CD. Obviously, you can’t save files to a CD, and if you fail to notice that (it’s quite easy to do), UnErase simply regurgitates a less-than-helpful error message that “an error occurred” but the only “error” is that you attempted to write to the CD. Nothing was wrong with the recovery operation itself. Experienced Mac users will be able to figure this out, but newbies will be taken aback.

Once you’ve figured out that you need to save your recovered files to someplace other than the CD, you may be surprised to see several cryptically-named temporary volumes (“run” “tmp” and “dp”) shown in the list of available drives. Don’t save to these temporary drives; but don’t expect the documentation to tell you that.
Peccadilloes aside, UnErase did what it set out to do: recover deleted files.

Disk Doctor

I first ran Disk Doctor from the PowerBook itself. It examines partitions, directories, files, and media, all more or less simultaneously. I always skip the Media check, as it is very time-consuming, and true media problems are quite rare.

You’ll get ample warnings to tell you that many errors cannot be fixed unless you boot from the SystemWorks CD. This is because Disk Doctor cannot unmount, or take the boot disk “off-line.” But Disk Doctor is able to do light housecleaning on the boot drive. My scan found a goodly number of files with bad modification dates, folders with custom icons missing, and the like. Unfortunately, Disk Doctor also found cross-linked files, and tartly reported that I must boot from the CD to fix this problem.
Obediently, I booted the PowerBook off the CD. You’ll need the patience of Job (not Jobs) when you boot into the OS X version of the Launcher off the CD. My PowerBook is equipped with a 16x Combo drive, and it took 3 minutes 30 seconds to get to the Launcher screen. (Booting into the OS 9 version was quite a bit faster). Macs with faster CD drives will boot faster.

Don’t be surprised when you don’t see the normal Mac OS X desktop if you boot the OS X version, as Apple’s licensing rules apparently require third parties to boot right into their application, and not boot to the Desktop.

When booted off the CD, Disk Doctor fixed every problem it encountered. A follow-up run showed no errors.
While Disk Doctor is ready for prime-time, it too has plenty of little oddities. The OS 9 version immediately presents a Save dialog box for an Undo file, but there is no accompanying explanation or information about what the undo file is for. Oddly, the OS X version does not allow creation of an Undo file. Why not…?

Disk Doctor allows you to create aliases of damaged files to make locating them easier. Again, when running off the CD, the default location for saving the new aliases is the CD itself. The resulting error message “Norton Disk Doctor was unable to fix the files” is confusing. As previously noted, there was no problem with the alias creation itself; but you can’t save them to a CD.
To be fair, this is only partly Symantec’s fault. Both Mac OS 9 and X defaults to save files on the drive that holds the current application. I suspect it would be hard to patch this. But clear warning text accompanying the dialog box would go far to eliminate confusion as to where to put aliases and Undo files.

Of greater concern was the fact that, on occasion, I ran Disk Doctor only to get numerous serious errors when only hours before I had done a CD-based run where Disk Doctor fixed all errors. While troubleshooting my Disk Doctor session, I noticed information buried in the Read Me file says that, while Disk Doctor will run while in the background, doing -anything- that will change the disk directory may cause phantom errors to appear. It’s not playing fair to change the disk directory once Disk Doctor has begun work; that’s not an unreasonable request. But, Murphy’s Law being what it is, someone who has not read the Read Me (who ever does?) will try to save and delete files when Disk Doctor is doctoring, and they’ll get spurious error messages. Perhaps it would be a good idea to prevent Disk Doctor from being switched to the background. Or, just Disk Doctor should post a dialog box warning the user that false error messages may occur if Disk Doctor is run in the background.

I ran Disk Doctor on 6 different drives using both OS 9 and X. The only compatibility issue arose when I ran Disk Doctor on a WiebeTech DuoGB mechanism that had been formatted as a RAID array using Apple’s OS X Disk Utility. Even when running off the SystemWorks OS X CD partition, Disk Doctor was not able to unmount the drive to complete the repair session. I discussed this (and other issues) at length with Technical Support. It’s worth noting that all the Tech Support people I spoke with were highly knowledgeable. SystemWorks was tested with numerous types of RAID-formatted drives, but not the WiebeTech DuoGB. Symantec plans to obtain a DuoGB for testing. If you have a RAID array, it would be wise to check with Symantec to see if they have tested your hardware and software combination.

Volume Recover

Sometimes Disk Doctor can’t resuscitate the damaged disk, and more powerful juju is needed. SystemWorks 3.0 provides an alternative; Volume Recover. When run off the CD, this application will create a new disk directory, and allow you to preview it. If you are satisfied with the new (NOT rebuilt) directory, Volume Recover will write the new directory to the damaged disk. This ability to recreate the disk directory from scratch is new to version 3. Version 2 could only attempt to -repair- the damage, and many users felt that the repair attempts were often less-than-successful. It’s worth noting that directory recreation from scratch is the approach that Alsoft’s Disk Warrior uses. It’ll be interesting to see how well Symantec has engineered its implementation of disk directory rebuilding. I did not elect to deliberately damage my disk directory, so I can’t comment on how well Volume Recover actually works with a damaged drive. I did run it on my healthy disk, and verified that it created a new directory, which I was able to preview.

WipeInfo

This was easy to test! I wiped a recently backed-up 40 gig external FireWire drive, choosing to overwrite the entire disk with “1″‘s. After acknowledging several warnings about how not even Symantec could restore the wiped info, WipeInfo cheerfully wrote 1′s to the entire drive. I did not time the operation. When complete, I nosed around the drive using the Disk Editor X (included as part of the SystemWorks package). As advertised, the drive contained 40 gigabytes of 1′s. Mission accomplished!

Conclusion

Norton SystemWorks 3.0 is a major upgrade, providing impressive OS X compatibility. It’s still the most well-rounded and full-featured collection of disk repair and maintenance utilities in the Macintosh market. The various components work well, although some rough edges show through. In spite of the lack of fine polish, SystemWorks 3 will fix most problems most of the time. Some problems are unfixable by ANY repair application, so stay backed up, and run Disk Doctor to prevent little problems from becoming big problems.

MacMice Rating: 4 out of 5

David Weeks

In all of us resides the great modern American coward. He is a strange mixture of confidence, fearlessness, moral righteousness and cowardice.

We are, despite those who would profess our perfection and superiority, only human. Our frailty is not unique to our species, but because of our other successes, we may perhaps be blazing a trail unique in the evolution of modern man. America is the vanguard of modern history, and as such, is also the vanguard of the modern man.

The manufacturing revolution, electricity, light, communication, computers and space travel, as well as civil rights, separation of church and state, and due process, all seedlings in the world at large, found fertile land here and grew enormously and quickly. With the good, so too grew the bad. The throwaway pollution, the crime, the selfishness and the cultural trash.

As modern Americans, we are living a contradiction. In an agrarian society, the founders laid the foundation for our modern success with a system of checks and balances and individual freedoms. The power over everyday life resided in the individual. As citizens of a modern world, we are evolving toward a system of entrenched static posturing. Not only is one’s control over everyday life slipping away, but free thought is dying along with it too.

Throughout the world, including here, local horrors have waged war against individual societies. Ethnic cleansing, opposition killings, purges and pogroms have all weakened the intelligent in favor of the strong. It is a sad Darwinian drama, but one which gives America yet another advantage in its string of successes. And it is here that the great American cowardice in us reveals itself.

There are plenty of brave people in America. There are lots of men and women willing to run into a burning building, fight crime, work in the military. Doing brave things is fearless. The cowardice I loathe in myself and others is the “go along to get along.” We go along with far too much. We risk far too little to protect and improve what we have. We need to dare to sit down on a bus again, to break the blue wall of silence, to expose the backroom deals. We sell ourselves far too cheaply.

Power and money corrupts in concentration. Schools have gotten worse as the unions have gotten stronger. Healthcare has gotten worse as the insurance companies have gotten stronger. Benefits and job security has gotten worse as the businesses have gotten stronger. Pollution has gotten worse as the manufacturers have gotten stronger. Government has gotten worse as the parties have gotten stronger. Egalitarianism, a recognizable impulse in agrarian times, has been buried beneath a mountain of spin, greed and self-indulgence. There is nothing in this country that can’t be had for a buck.

Is this really who we want to be? Venture capitalists, day traders, stock brokers? We turn a blind eye to so much, when it would take so little to be greater still. We have erected demi-gods all around us. Individuals and institutions of great power that seek nothing of real value. Shoppers shop for the best deal, clipping coupons like there were valuable freedoms. We gather possessions and squander the wealth of time. Nothing real has value, and the best values are discounted. Freedom 50% off. Liberty 75% off. Oh what savings our cowardice brings. Please, lower my taxes and sell me my liberty at 85% off. I am proud to be a coward, I am proud to be happy.

Steve Consilvio

(Note: This is a very self referential column, I’d stop reading now)

Now that the G5′s are shipping, I’ve got new computer fever in a bad way. All the symptoms: massive envy, eight gigabytes worth of lust, bugs crawling on my skin. Skip the last one, that’s hygiene issue. I don’t need a G5 anymore than I need a Hummer. Which is: not at all. But I want a G5, you know, for the coolness factor. Add to the lust inspired by the coolness factor the fact that the G5 is a brand new chip and allow for the extra cool perforated form factor and you’ve got one salivating Mac user. So I started dropping not subtle hints, cause my birthday is coming up.

Here’s an example:
“Hey Chris, what do you want for your birthday” My long-suffering wife inquired.

“Dearest, I require nothing more than your continued devotion” I replied “And a G5, Steve Jobs has one.” This last bit I tacked on, as an addendum lest she think that happiness was something not purchased with baubles.

“For one thing we can’t afford a ####ing jet, and for another you hate to travel, if someone slapped a tracking collar on you they’d be hard pressed to distinguish you from a tree” my lovely wife retorted.

“No, no, it’s not a jet it’s a computer, chock full of shiny newness!” I said.
She replied, “Fine, go buy one”

Of course she said those four words in a manner that implied were I too actually purchase said computer I would be the only homeless guy with an aluminum computer to mach the cans in my shopping cart. Put off? Nay nay I say! She just needs some softening up. So I sent the heinous thing ever: Spousal spam. I spammed her with the “send this order” button at the Apple store. Didn’t work.

It’s probably a good thing it didn’t work because even if I had a G5 I probably wouldn’t use it much. The reasons are long and interminably boring but they involve lost computer space due to a nursery for our only child. In fact I have a G4 crammed into the corner of my wife’s office, a G4 I rarely use. Yep, I am trading speed and screen space for mere convenience. I can’t say I really regret the swap though the iBook is decidedly pokey when making videos. Still, new computer fever has me squarely in it’s consumeriffic grasp. In short, I’m going to buy a new computer; it’s just a question of which one.

This is where you, my few readers, come in. Judging by the mail I get everyone who reads my columns is, in fact, smarter and a better writer than I am. I’m okay with that, heck my IQ is so low I have to leave post it notes scattered around the house reminding me to breathe. So the question is: G5 or shiny 12′ PowerBook. I could unload my current iBook and get the brushed twelve incher. Or unload the 400 MHz G4 for the G5 garlic press.

Either way I’ve got the aluminum thing covered so aesthetics aren’t a concern. With the G5 I figure I’ll get blazing speed I can’t really take advantage of because I don’t have the necessary apps or the will to sit in a squeaky chair essentially chained to one spot. With the PowerBook I retain mobility but lose (possibly) longevity (those things are hard to upgrade). Plus it makes the G4 tower redundant so I’d probably sell that as well. This scares me because if something goes wrong I can’t comfortably work on the guts of a PowerBook owing to my hamfistedness. Hence any computing outage will leave me unconnected in an increasingly connected world. It’s pure FUD, and I need some advice to figure it all out.

Final note: I would generally ask the mymac.com folks about this but I’ve hit just about everyone there up one time too many (thanks: Todd, Jeffrey, Nemo, Tim, Adam, Dawn, Steve et al.)

Chris Seibold