Liam

RZA 'invented' it, Ruck disparages it. Should the twain ever meet both will annihilate with a tremendous outpour of energy

Slightly more essential consumption for those of a pomaceous incline: http://www.wired.com/politics/security/new...7/11/mac_trojan

http://securosis.com/2007/11/01/investigat...opard-firewall/ Worth a peek for all you anor-Macs out there. The code signing has been changed, which (in application control mode) breaks a bunch of apps like Skype and allows ALL Apple-signed apps to run. Definately worth being aware of if you move to Leopard

So the end result is that the Macbook is directly in line with competing PC's then? I suppose it's good to see that verified in tests but nevertheless a field day for Captain Obvious.

Just FYI, the Hack-A-Mac community is working on an AMD version. Depending on how that works out, I'm actually thoroughly tempted to stick it on my mothers Turion X2 just to see how she gets on with OSX.

For non-mac intel users: http://forum.osx86scene.com/viewtopic.php?...p;sk=t&sd=a

Time Machine pointless? Speaking from the point of view of a guy who regularly gets drafted in by friends and family to fix a myriad of minor computer problems, Windows "System Restore" could be the single most important addition made when MS released XP; Time Machine would appear far more comprehensive so I certainly wouldn't sniff at it. Is there some kind of upgrade scheme in place? Because historically Apple don't do discounted upgrades for existing users, although I hsve no idea if this is the case with 10.5. If not, you're staring down the barrel of a $129 upgrade so Id say it all comes down to what you would otherwise do with that cash.

It's only personalities that has stopped it happening thus far, and to be perfectly frank it has reached a point some time ago when the sheer bloody mindedness of it all began to hurt the average Mac user far more than it ought to. There really is no need for Apple to be doing all the donkey work, the 'nuts and bolts' handling of a baseline OS when all they really are providing is a UI that appeals to some people. Apple used to provide an OS that significantly outperformed the competition, but those days have passed.

It'll become an increasingly marginalised argument when the Mac finishes the drawn out transgression from PC alternative to bespoke PC. Everyone knows where Apple's profit centre has shifted, five years ago it would have been crazy talk but today, I think OSX's days are numbered. Perhaps not next year or even the year after, but I expect to see Macs sold as Windows boxes with a high level of UI customisation. Win-win.

There are some fantastic DJ's on that list, although the top ten is highly suspicious. Carl Cox has always been a legend, anyone who has seen him on form will know exactly why and it has nothing to do with "banging choon" culture -he's just fantastic at staging mixes, building and winding tension. Infected mushroom in the top ten though??? Some of the more leftfield stuff is good but the trance they churn out is bland nonsense. Year in year out these lists are published, and you can bet your bottom dollar that there will always be a disproportionate number of trance DJ's in the upper reaches, despite trance being increasingly marginalised in favour of more trendy forms of dance. Artists like Laurent Garnier and Errol Alkan appearing quite low on this list have smashed it this past year, and whilst I'm not a trance fan so not exactly in the best place to criticise, does Tiesto really deserve such praise year after year? I've been looking at these lists for well over ten years and I remain as dumbfounded today as I first was back in my early teens copping dance mixes on cassettes. I really don't agree with all this nonsense about how 'craze could pwn all of em' and 'omfg qbert is da best skratcher in da world and he even invented his own qfo so he should win'. The average man on the street does not want to hear inventive juggles and mad scratches, so in exactly the same way as most people you meet won't be familiar with Steve Vai's music but will know and love Flea, don't expect scratch DJ's on this list because most struggle to even make a living at it.

Vestax mixers are prone to dry solder joints. It may be that.

The flip side to which is that playing Guitar Hero won't make you a greasy long haired spotty gothalike. Swings and roundabouts bruv. Hopefully the DJ'ing game won't make players feel bitter that they didn't lear a 'proper' instrument, and angry to the point of pathological violence at wedding, bar and cheesy club 'dee jays'

Word Mind you, I'm certain the risks of such a venture pale into insignificance when sat sipping a fine cogniac in the studio of one of your numerous stately homes

It's booting to the Windows XP logo -your drive is fine. Ther might be some dead sectors, but nothing catastrophic. Like Steve, chkdsk has helped me in the past. Corrupt boot sectors are very common, it's not hard to see why when you think about it -after all it's going to end up being one of the most frequently accessed sectors. There is a lot of other stuff you can do, but it's difficult to go through it all, so just start with chkdsk. BTW, consumer grade drives fuck up. A LOT. That's why server grade drives cost anything up to several thousand. The enviroment in a hard disk drive is far more severe than you might imagine; heads can 'crash' (literally make contact with the platter when the air bearing is defeated), fluid bearings can fail. The tin substrate desktop drives are deposition layered upon simply is not as hard as the glass ceramic ones used in laptop drives -knocks can warp them. I think the iPod and other HD players have led the public to believe that drives are robust. They really ARE NOT. The drives in iPods have diabolical bit-error rates -but in an MP3 you'll never notice a few missing bits of data, so it's all good, the iPod battery will die before your music stops working (an ulterior motive for unswappable batteries perhaps?). Server grade drives have bit error rates averaging about 1 bit every decade... but for the love of god, don't move them, let alone drop them. Anyway, I'm telling you all this as a meandering way to hammer home a point: BACK UP VALUABLE DATA. It would also be a very, very good idea to get him using a RAID array as a failsafe.

Mac users

Vaio. Definately. Only buy a Macbook if you need a Mac, bro. None of this "yeah but you can install Windows on it instead" bollocks.

http://thepiratebay.org/blog/86 ......wow.

The best thing about the 360 is XBL so it's a catch-22 situation really

Thing is, I'm pretty certain this will be bad in the long term. Any slight thermal gradient in the plastic will mean some areas of polymer constrict more than others, and after time you're likely to end up with a MORE bent record for your efforts. If you really wanted to correct warping through heat, you would need an extremely slow and even heating process.

Fuck. My brother sells phones for Orange and nearly shit a brick when I told him the minimum iPhone deal is 35quid pm with 200min/200txt. That's just plain diabolical, you'd think it would be enough to cherrypick heavy users and macboys with the hardware exclusivity.

Way ahead of you Steve

Nice. I wish this happened to every organisation set up to entrap individuals commiting petty crime. When you think about it, it really is downright disgusting. What's worse is that if they do their job right, they look great. If they do a crap job, the 'market' expands. Oh the ironing.

Hang on... this guy is petitioning to keep it off XBL, lol

Lol I remember this... Anyone else remember the turtles game with 4 joysticks -one for each turtle? Good times.

They do look rather lush, and Korg have always had a good build reputation.