Hello all readers, faithful and new! In order to show our love and
appreciation for you, Mac Junkie and I have put together a contest
for you. The grand prize is a free copy of MacAMP Lite 1.5, the brand new low-resource MP3 (and more) player. Want more info? Read this month's A Spider Speaks to find out how to make your own MP3s, and read the MacAMP Lite (MALT) mini-review in From the Desktop.
In order to win your free copy of MALT, you must answer all of the following questions correctly. If there are more than ten correct entries, we'll choose the ten winners with an electronic raffle. Need a hint? Answers can be found in previous issues of Apple Wizards and on the Apple Wizards website.
1. What are the names of both my Mac and Mac Junkie's?
Hint: Behind the Magic, The Happy Mac (Nov/98)
2. What is the URL to one of Apple Wizards' two sub-sites?
Hint: Visit our website
3. Who are the two original editors of Apple Wizards?
Hint: Jun/97 issue
4. What is a malt?
Hint: Webster might know
5. What is the first sentence in Apple Wizards Evangelism last month?
Hint: Gee, I wonder…
6. In which issue did Apple Wizards interview MacKiDo's David Every?
Hint: Apple Wizards text index
7. What is the name of at least one feature article by Brian Kelley?
Hint: Flip through a few issues
8. Name one shareware product reviewed in the Oct/98 issue.
Hint: The Oct/98 issue might be a good place to start
9. What issue and volume was the first to be published in PDF?
Hint: Look at the Previous Issues
10. What is the name of the sole Apple Wizards sponsor?
Hint: Look at the website, goofball!
Send completed entries to contest@applewizards.net . Please place "Win MALT" in the subject of the message or use the dandy form we've provided for you on our website at http://applewizards.net/win-malt.shtml .
 
Sig File of the Month: Windows is a "Poop" Breeding Ground
"There might be less software on the Mac side of the aisle, but a lot of what's produced for Windows isn't all that good. Crap does not survive in the Mac market." James Staten, an analyst with Dataquest.
— Martin Stephens
Our pickings may be slim, but at least Mac users can be reasonably assured that installing a basic word processor won't render our systems useless. Unless of course you are talking about Microsoft Office, which is more accurately described as a commercial virus than a productivity suite.
 
Shameless Self-Promotion
  Many of you have written to me asking if I would place a picture of
myself in this column. The answer is "No," but that doesn't mean
that you can't find a picture out there on the World Wide Web. Recently, Ilene Hoffman, a host of Talk City (http://www.talkcity.com/ ), created a new website called "People of the Mac" which profiles all sorts of people in our Macintosh community. Well, guess who's got a profile there? Go and visit http://www.xensei.com/users/ileneh/td/macpeople.html to find out! While you are there, submit your own identity to this innovative new site. Sure, you may regret exposing your private identity to the world someday, but just think of it this way — you're exposing yourself before our government does it for you.
 
Too Many Drugs in the 1960s
  This reader's letter is a little bit long, but it is definitely worth it. In
this submission, Tony elaborates on the Microsoft World
Domination '99 story which I broke last month. I reported that this version of Microsoft's new operating system will support Intel's new PentiumIII Toaster Oven. The Pentium processor will reside on a tray that slides in and out of the computer. Simply place your English Muffin on top of the processor, slide the PIII back into the machine and by the time Microsoft Office opens your Excel document, your English Muffin will be ready. The result of Tony's investigation is as follows:
 
I heard (from a SlashDot, <http://slashdot.org/>, link
to an anti-Scientology site which transferred me to an
invisible Perkin-Elmer FTP account when I clicked on
the greek letter theta) that when you put the muffin
in the P3TO (Pentium III Toaster Oven), it automatically sends a cookie to the muffin manufacturer with the ID of your Pentium III.
Eventually this will allow the muffin manufacturer to add a scaled surreptitious surcharge to your bank account determined by the freshness date of the muffin inserted into the P3TO (via dated, triple-DES secure tags baked into the muffin). (Alternately it may choose to deduct the surcharge from your Social Security Trust account, in which case you'll have to opt-in to be notified.)
If use of untagged muffins is detected (approved muffins will at first only be manufactured by Kraft and Perkin-Elmer), the BSOD of your choice will be invoked, AFTER a cookie is sent to your registered muffin manufacturer informing them of your attempt to use the P3TO to toast non-manufacturer-approved muffins. Three such warnings will cause Kraft supercomputers to attempt to drop a quick packet on computers at MS Redmond, at which point, if they're working, your install of World Domination '99 OS will be terminated by an Extreme Prejudice Cookie or EPC, and, in place of the BSOD of your choice, a frowning picture of Bill in his swim trunks will appear on your monitor which can't be turned off for three years or until the picture is burned into the screen, whichever comes first.
Until dated, triple-DES secure tagged muffins are out of alpha (current version 3.14d15), upon muffin insertion, P3TO will cause you to receive, every three weeks, an e-mail inviting you to become a Muffin of the Month Member (3M), enabling you to receive a different muffin every three weeks unless you return the enclosed form in a timely fashion. 3Ms (not to be confused with Operating Thetans) will, of course, receive a somewhat smaller surreptitious scaled surcharge, although naturally there is a nominal set-up fee for this service.
I believe it is possible that Robert Z's cryptic Alert Dialog (see last month's issue) is the result of an errant javascript prematurely attempting to stuff his Mac with a P3TO/3M enabling DLL. (You'll notice the terms 'EXE' and 'Key' in the *third* line.) I have contacted John Norstad about this, but he still refuses to come out of retirement.
I couldn't get into <http://anon.free.anonymizer.com/> tonight so remember ... you didn't hear it from me.
