November 2000 || Volume 01, Issue 04

Connecting...

Welcome to Connect, our column for reader email! We want to hear your thoughts and opinions about things you've read in Mac OS Journal, about Apple, your computer, Mac OS X, and so on. So let us have it people! Send email to connect@macosjournal.com or use this form.

Shame on You

I'm outraged about the anti-Americanism of your last two Surf Reports. I read Mac OS Journal to learn more about the Mac and the Internet, not to have our country maligned in this way. What gives you the right to stand on your lefty soapbox and spout out this stuff?

Michael Ward

Sorry you still take it that way, Michael, despite my multiple disclaimers. I've spent a lot of time in the U.S., and it's a country whose achievements I greatly admire and whose people I almost always greatly like whenever I meet them. It's easy to be scornful of the U.S.; it's a country that parades its worst attributes and which tends to take its best qualities for granted to the point that they often seem to get hidden. The exact opposite of totalitarian dictatorships, including the now totally-discredited communist ones, which go to great lengths to present a falsely benign face but which attempt to hide their multiple shortcomings under the carpet. Unfortunately for them, no carpet can ever be big enough.

However, if you live in a big and powerful country, it's easy to forget that others have points of view significantly different from what you're used to, and that the social consensus about topics such as gun laws and government health care is entirely different in almost every country from what you in the U.S. see as being the norm. It's because the U.S. is so powerful, and because it is so influential around the world, that I think it's especially important for Americans to be aware of others' points of view about important domestic and international issues. It wouldn't be as much of an issue if America was a dictatorship. But, for better or for worse, I see American leaders as being extremely sensitive to what their constituents think. Hence my rather modest crusade.

- Dennis

[Editor's Note: I refuse to accept that others have points of view different from Americans ;) ]

A Rival to the Mighty Microsoft Monopoly
(or at least a part of it)

One of my few reasons for ever using Internet Explorer was its ability to save an entire web page with the pictures and everything as a single file. Well, now the latest version of iCab does that too.

Robert van der Heide

This relates to a previous item about reading Mac OS Journal offline, so as to save money for those of us who pay by the minute for internet access. I'm ashamed to say that I don't know iCab, but I am pleased to give it this tiny plug.

And still, we're promised the next major upgrade of Netscape Navigator real soon Now. Maybe it will have this feature as well.

- Dennis

[Editor's Note: I use iCab for 80% of my regular surfing. Unfortunately, it doesn't fully support Javascript or Style Sheets just yet... so Mac OS Journal may still look a bit odd.]

Keep That Monitor in Play

I have an aging but perfectly functional vertically-oriented monitor, which I'd like to use as a second monitor with my new Powerbook. It shows a standard 8.5 x 11 inch page at around full size - very useful, because that's the size most of my work is printed at. However, the plug won't fit, and nobody in town can help me.

Tony Hernandez

Y'know, there are people whose greatest joy in life is to keep up with things like that, and the rest of us have to be grateful to them. Things are maybe a bit more standard than they used to be, but the old stuff -- well, we certainly do need someone to help us.

The net to the rescue... as usual. Griffin Technology, makers of excellent niche products for the Mac such as microphone adaptors which make the rest of the 99.999% of mikes in the world Mac-compatible. Some angel there keeps up with (seemingly) all the monitors ever made, and Griffin publishes them in exhaustive but easily-searchable form. The Monitor Database is at:

http://www.nashville.net/~griffin/monitor.html

...and if you can't find your answer there, throw away your old monitor. There's no hope.

One more comment on this topic. Lots of Mac folk have used multiple monitors for years. Just go to the Monitors (more recently Monitors and Sound) Control Panel and set 'em up. I recall that Windows 98 hyped them to the skies as a feature that was now available at last on the Dark Side. Yet you seldom see PCs using more than one monitor, or hear PCers actually taking advantage of that feature. I wonder why. Maybe it's just as intuitive as lots of the rest of Windows, with the result that nobody can take the time to get it going.

Anybody have any insights?

- Dennis

Send your rants and raves, questions and comments, compliments and criticisms to connect@macosjournal.com or use this form.

Dennis Field - dennis@macosjournal.com
Dennis' Page - Feedback Form