Funtech

OK, so for several years now, Apple has been selling "MAc" products running a Unix OS. Now, Apple Shows New Intel Notebooks, Software Well, you knew it was coming. Apple's been having trouble for years now, as its percentage slice of the personal computer market has waned to pitiful single digits, getting fabbing for its chipsets, and further improvements in speed and features? Nah, not happening all that much-because of the problem of getting fabbing for such comparatively small runs. Sure, Jobs had "promised" (to some squealing from Macrodific users :-) last June to deliver Intel-based "Macs" (that just looks weird sitting there on the page: "Intel-based Macs"), but apparently, the Intel architecture is so easy to work with Apple's ahead of schedule (*heh*). Then, there's the bow to Intel dominance in announcing new Intel versions of popular Mac-Mac (as opposed to Intel-Mac or MacIntel *snirk*) softwares. Change ships and call the new one by the old name. Sure. It works in politics, so why not in personal computing? My only thought is, if he's going to try selling an Intel computer running a Unix-based OS, why should people not just save a BIG chunk of cash and get a plain box PC and pop in something easy like Ubuntu Linux or Mandriva Linux or (for the ease of use, "Aunt Tilly" users) Linspire? Folks who don't mind a little "rolling your own" work could easily use Redhator one of the other Linuxes or even Free BSD. A McIntel personal computer. Nah. Not for me. YMMV, of course. On other funtech fronts: Kinda enjoying my homebrew firewall/router. Was getting a lot of worm attack attempts from Chinese servers and was able to block a whole range of Asia/pacific Rim IP addresses that are known sources of malware/security attacks with just a download/script that updates a database of the worst addresses 3X weekly. Automatically. Nice. Reporting a buncha ping probes from another user IP within my ISP's network to abuse was fun, too. Lots more detail than other firewalls I've used. Still learning to nav its shell, some of the commands specific to the software and such. Touching base periodically with the user forum. It was pretty easy to build and configure once I decided on what firewalling software I'd use. Used SmoothWall Express 2.0 software. Built a few more network cables. After that, it was pretty easy. Kinda kicking myself for not doing this earlier. Old AT-based server case with monster power supply and AT mobo 64MB memory first handy PCI vidcard I laid my hands on a couple of network cards old floppy and CDROM drives old, spare 15" monitor (for setup/troubleshooting) keyboard Was/is fun.