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Site News: DT is temporary home for XvsXP Forums
From the “Helping hands!” desk…
Last week XvsXP’s discussion boards were the victim of a security breach. No major damage was done, but it was a nuisance. XvsXP’s forum is still offline and will be until the board is upgraded, so in the meantime, Deep Thought will be hosting a discussion board for XvsXP.
If you want to participate in the XvsXP forums (say you were already an XvsXP member), you will need to register with our forums to be able to post (it’s free). We’ll keep you posted on when the regular forum is up and running again.
Happy posting!
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WinFS is dead
From the “Could have been that never really was” desk…
WinFS, the long-awaited data storage system for Microsoft Windows, will no longer be delivered as a standalone product, according to Quentin Clark of Microsoft’s WinFS Blog. However, while the WinFS project is dead, bits and pieces that were completed will be rolled into ADO.NET (a developer technology for data access) and Microsoft SQL Server.
For those who haven’t been following WinFS’s development, it was being developed by Microsoft to replace or supplement today’s file systems with a data management system based on relational databases. Organizing data would no longer have to be done manually, but by metadata attributes (for example, author, keywords, and such). Current operating systems have some of these capabilities through technologies like Mac OS X’s Smart Folders, but WinFS would have gone beyond this. There are other aspects beyond this, such as making sharing data between applications easier. The Wikipedia entry on WinFS provides (lots) more information.
WinFS has its roots in Microsoft’s failed Cairo project from the early 1990s, which was an attempt to develop a next-generation operating system. WinFS was initially meant to be included with Windows Vista, then codenamed Longhorn. It was actually included with an alpha release of Longhorn, but suffered from serious performance problems. Microsoft separated WinFS from Longhorn in August 2004, and announced that it would ship later.
Deep Thought’s Take: What doomed WinFS? If you were to ask me, I would guess that is simply was too ambitious of a project.…
(Continue)
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First “Screenshots” of OS X 10.5 leaked [UPDATED]
And so it begins: with only six weeks left until the MacWorld for Super Mac Nerds, you couldn’t expect not to see some alleged peepshots of Apple’s annual-and-a-semi uber service packs updates to OS X. Over at the newly-created blog Trinity Rubicon, our secret-agent man has claimed to have actual screenshots of actual Mac OS 10-dot-actual-five (actually, he made no claims at all.)
There are three screenshots, which I will now describe to enlengthen the article. One shows what appears to be a .NET compatability layer, with Internet Explorer 7 running on the same desktop as a new, dark, and smooth Finder. The second shows a transition effect that for some reasoning reminds me of the opening of a James Bond movie. Last, but not least, the third screenshot shows the most exciting feature evar: a button that opens up a menu with a text field so you can manually input the path of a file in the Finder (you know, like Explorer.)
Deep Thought’s take: If you listen very closely, over the hum of your computer fan, you can hear the ever-so-soft sound of an Apple legal official clickity-clacking these pictures off the internet by way of legal threats and jargon-y buzzwords.
UPDATE: Fake=Very yes.
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Apple launches eMac repair program
From the “Hey! That’s not a screensaver!” desk…
Own an eMac sold between April 2004 and June 2005? Having trouble with the video or power? If so, you’ll be happy to learn that Apple has instituted yet another repair extension program.
If the first five digits of your serial number are between G8412 and G8520, YM412 and YM520, or VM440 and VM516, and you are seeing distorted, scrambled, or no video; or issues with turning to computer on (no, your computer is not defective if you can’t find the power button), your eMac qualifies fora repair on Apple. Apple’s support site features an info page on this program.
Sidenote: Oddly enough, the other two repair extension programs linked to above also involve issues with video and/or power. Am I noticing a trend? 
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Photoshop is in the fonts
No background needed, just fonts.
Well this is my first blog as an offcial staff member. So I intend to make it good. Here we go…
Recently I acquired a copy of Photoshop CS2, it being the most widely used photo editor/whatever-you-want program out there. I quickly set to trying to make stuff. Soon I realized that with my limited fonts this was a hopeless task, so I typed “fonts” into google and clicked the one with the coolest name. Coincidentally it was the coolest font too. This was where things got good for me. Now, I’ve never picked up a copy of Photoshop before and the interface is quite confusing for about a week, but I want all of you to check out two sites, first one where I designed all of the designs, and second, a site where I designed about 95% of the designs, so if it sucks, it probably wasn’t me. Now the designs are all using only fonts and background colors so check them out.
Now on to how to make beautiful stuff wiht Photoshop using only fonts. Ill sum it up in 3 easy steps.
1. Think of what your design will say.
2. Find an appropriate font
3. Add a backing theme
A cool font to get is Split Splat Splodge. This font has painball splat-like shapes. Just go crazy with the fonts. Also you can use basic lines for a nice geometric design. Look at my designs and try and gauge from them. Peace out guys.
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more stuff
- Site News: DT is temporary home for XvsXP Forums
- WinFS is dead
- First “Screenshots” of OS X 10.5 leaked [UPDATED]
- Apple launches eMac repair program
- Photoshop is in the fonts
- Telekinesis and Menu Master - The 1-2 punch that gives you total remote control of your Mac.
- Konfabulator Shmenfabulator
- PopCopy rewritten, updated to v.2.0
- Taking the Plunge: The Biggest Beta Trial I’ve Ever Done
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- Is the MacBook the Most Competitively Priced Mac Ever?
- Be Patient With Your Developers
- A second look at iWeb: version 1.1 [UPDATED]
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- The Water Cooler: more security psychosis and going hard Core 2 the Extreme, y0!
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- Apple Bobs For Suckers - The Rebuttal
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- The Best Laid Plans of Macs and Market Share
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- A Conglomerate Blog Post
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- Google Earth for Windows
- News of the Weird: Alexa.com hacked? [UPDATED: Nope!]
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- Security Dos and Don’ts
- Shut the FUD UP!!!
- Spam poetry
- 28 Days of Linux: I give Up
- Cya around
- iMac: All Your Base-ic Needs In One
- Rumors: end the madness
- Apple updates abound
- Are Apple Leather Jackets Next?
- Mac Minintel + iPod BoomBrick.. er… Box
- Versions in Future are Less Confusing Than They Appear
- Microsoft announces Vista editions
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- Do We Really Need “Anti” Virus Software?
- iTunes: Over One Billion Sold [UPDATED]
- Apple to hold special event Feb 28
- iMac light sensor and LCD
- Who says that people aren’t switching to the Mac?
- 28 Days of Linux - Week of Feb. 12
- Summary of Computers this week in my life
- The truth about OS X/Leap.A
- Will Apple Adopt Windows? Not even when hell freezes over!
- Mac OS X Trojan Alert: This is NOT a Drill! [UPDATE]
- iMac vs. The World: Round Deux
- GMail is now GMail +talk
- Really Bad Geek Pickup Lines
- iMac vs. The World: Round 1
- The Apple Method
- 28 days of Linux
- Apple hasn’t impressed me lately
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- iMac G5 Hard Drive Replacement
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- Internet Explorer 7 beta available
- Mac Naming Convention
