MacMegasite

Around midnight Pacific time last night, 30GB Zunes everywhere began restarting and locking up at their boot screens. Reports have swamped official forums and fan sites, and Microsoft has yet to officially comment on the reason for this pre-New-Year’s Zune apocalypse, saying only “We are aware that customers with the Zune 30GB are experiencing issues with their Zune device. We are actively working now to isolate the issue and develop a solution to address it. We will keep customers informed on next steps via the support page on zune.net (zune.net/support).”

I suspect it’s related to Microsoft’s DRM.
Update: It’s a leap year bug.

Michael Mistretta has created a free Christmas Wallpaper both for desktop and iPhone, which you can download from his site.

With Apple bringing back the personal in Personal Computing and general acceptance of Macs as THE safe and reliable computing platform there has been a surge of interest in the use of these computers. Local MUGs are here to help you find out how to get more out of your … Apple Mac, iPod, iPhone.

You may have recently switched to Apple or be a long term user. Whichever, there always comes a time when you need to find some local friendly help and advice. Look no further! - there is a wide spread of MUGs (Mac User Groups) meeting both face-to-face and online with members who are always pleased to share their knowledge and experience. Indeed, there is probably a MUG in a town near you.

Take a look at our Mac Users UK & Ireland website, which now includes a totally revised listing with a new map facility giving the ability to find the nearest MUG meeting by entering your own postcode. It will also help you get in touch with your local MUG by email or via their own web site.

For full information on individual Mac User Groups and to contact a local Group go to www.macusersuk/mugs/muglist.php
or call Michael Corgan on 01308 459398

David Alison switched from Windows to Macintosh just over three months ago, yet he feels he’s become a power user in a short period of time. How? By blogging about his experiences. His latest blog post covers how blogging has helped him learn a lot of information in a very short period of time.

While David Alison’s parents are happily using the Windows 98 machine he got for them 9 years ago, his wife reminds him of why getting them a shiny new iMac is probably not a good idea.

This is a universal problem that I run into on every computer that is plugged into the Internet. I call it the “Scan, Update” problem, meaning that it seems like my computer is always either updating one of its many programs or scanning for something. This seems likes its always robbing some bandwidth or some CPU cycles from my computer.

I am not saying by any stretch of the imagination that companies should stop providing updates or scanning my computer for problems. I just wish they would find a less invasive way to do it. It’s not uncommon for me to turn on my computer to record some music or edit a video and I get bogged down by Adobe updating a CS application, then my anti virus application starts updating their virus definitions as well, in the middle of this my anti spy-ware application decides that its a good time to scan my computer for any problems on my computer. Oh and amiss this chaos Microsoft needs to get in on this and update their browser which I haven’t launched in weeks. I’m sure there’s a way to turn off this chaos but the point is I shouldn’t have to.

Now I’m guessing at this point I have Apple and Linux fans snickering at me, you guys don’t get a free pass out of this. I have launched MS Word for Mac only to find it updating, then I have a couple of GB’s of files to download and install the latest iTunes+Quick time update (exaggeration of course but seriously apple my Internet does not have an unlimited supply of bandwidth.). So my Mac is installing updates while “Word” is downloading it’s updates. And here comes Adobe because we all know that whatever system you’re on, your not escaping Adobe products.

With all this downloading and installing going on its safe to say I will not be using the Internet or using any system intensive applications on my G4 for awhile. Linux does not escape this insanity but I must say it does handle it better, except for the damn upgrades Ubuntu puts out every 6 months which require me download a few large files to upgrade a stable version of a still very brown and un-attractive OS. Laugh at me or hate me but you have all been in this vicious cycle before. Now please excuse me I have to update my system.

As you’ve probably noticed, this site was down for most of the day. Dreamhost had a major meltdown when they moved their server cluster. I’ve signed up at two other hosting services and I’m evaluating which one I will move my sites to.

Some lowlife posted two ads in the forum for their questionable gray-market electronics sale, and after I blocked their login, that same sleazeball registered again with a different name, which I also blocked. I will continue to delete such posts immediately and block any users who post them. I’ve also enabled the Akismet plugin that will prevent such posts from appearing.

Apple on Thursday night issued a hotfix for its QuickTime media player that patches a single but already exploited flaw in the software’s handling of streaming content.

The exploit sends an improper header through QuickTime’s Real Time Streaming Protocol (RTSP) service, triggering a buffer overflow that permits a hacker to run their own code and compromise an affected system.

In recent days, a website known as Ourvoyeur.net has reportedly been hijacked and used to infect systems with malware that opens a back door for hackers. That exploit targets Windows users but could theoretically apply to Mac OS X as well given the existence of the flaw in Apple’s own operating system, according to one report.

The QuickTime patch is available both for the critically affected Windows systems in a 20MB download but is also offered as a roughly 50MB fix for Mac OS X Panther, Tiger, and Leopard.

[AppleInsider]

I just banned a user who posted an off-topic pharmacy spam in our forum. We have a zero tolerance for spam. Any such posts will be deleted on sight and the user who posted it will be banned. Go find someplace else to spam.

NOTE: If you’re submitting a legitimate article and it doesn’t appear right away, let us know. It’s NOT necessary to repost it multiple times. The spam filter sometimes incorrectly flags legitimate articles. In that case I will mark them as not spam and republish them. Reposting the article several times will make the problem worse.