[10/14/2001]
Thirteenth and fourteenth week's summary
The thirteenth week was the most boring week in my whole life so far, as I was condemned to guard the barracks for a whole week, while the rest of the platoon went out on exercise in the region around Lucerne. Therefore I mainly sat in the watchhouse and let cars and passengers pass by pressing an up and down button for the barricade. Very interesting.
The fourteenth week was a bit more interesting then, as I went on exercise this time too and the brigadier general came by and had a look at what we were doing. In the end he was so pleased that he gave us an "outstanding" grade and everyone who cared (that excludes me) was happy. Now as I am writing this, I'm getting ready to leave home for the last time, week 15 is approaching and it will be the last week of military service for at least a year and that feels so good.

[10/14/2001]
OS X DVD on unsupported Macs
xlr8yourmac has a guide on how to apply a hack to Mac OS X 10.1, enabling it to play DVDs on non-supported Macs. Certainly good news for all the B&W owners out there.

[10/14/2001]
Microsoft gets new bugs, real ones
the register reports that a report has been confirmed that Microsoft got a letter with Anthrax spores on it! The letter came from Malaysia, but it is unclear were the spores and other non-business material might have been included. This is not funny anymore...

[10/14/2001]
IBM CPU news
the register notes that IBM is going to ship some new PowerPC chips of the 4xx family, aimed at PDAs and reportedly consuming only 10% the power of a competing product.
the register also reports that IBM is about to release a new version of the PowerPC 750xx family. The new chip si believed to be the 750FX and is expected to clock around 700-1GHz+. The chip of the G3 family might well be used in future low cost Macs or PowerBooks, the decision lies with Apple.

[10/14/2001]
New PowerBooks coming?
the register reports that rumors and the fact that Apple is aparently running out of stock on PowerBooks G4 indicate that Apple may release new or at least speed bumped PowerBooks very soon. The rumors are talking about the integration of the 7440 chip and clockspeeds up to 700MHz...Maybe anyone has a cheap iBook for sale?

[10/14/2001]
Network bug in Mac OS X bothers users
the register notes that aparently there is a major bug in the network code of Mac OS X's cross platform networking if Mac OS 9.2.1 or 9.1 are installed. It seems that the Mac will simply close the connection and hang up. Well, if I was a mac and was connected to a Windows network, I'd probably do the same:)

[10/14/2001]
Why PCs still have 20 year old tech and don't stop using it
FiringSquad has a nice article on why PCs still use so much odl legacy hardware and what users can do about it. Maybe a good read for us Mac users to better understand why Steve Jobs killed ADB, Serial, the floppy etc.

[10/14/2001]
New chip tech by Intel
TomsHardware reports that Intel aparently figured out a new way of making chips and is now hoping to produce chip with more than 1 billion transistors and 10 times the performance of today's chip in about 5 years. That's still a long way to go, but it's good to know.

[10/14/2001]
MOSR
MOSR has some nice rumors on the new PowerBook G4 and also on new G4 chips that might be used in the near future.