Forest Gump Says

Are Macs overpriced fan toys?

forest — Thu, 22 May 2008 16:02:00 GMT

I recently read an article about Macs being overpriced fan toys. I disagree that Macs are overpriced. Like the adage says.. you get what you pay for. Consumer Reports has recommended the Apple systems as their top pick in personal computers for several years running.

You want a better tool then you pay for the better made product. Has this built a fan base? Sure. Same goes for the ipod and iphone. The iphone 2.0 software will prove to be of far more use than 1.0 and will really give blackberry a run.

As for market share importance, yes you can't argue the bottom dollar in quantity of sales. Microsoft plays dirty pool and we all know it. They have bought out many fledgling products and ported them to windows. Take x-box's flagship game Halo. Bungie was a mac only company before Microsoft bought them and shut the game down for Macintosh. So X-box would not even be on the map if it was not for a Macintosh software developer. How many other countless products has Microsoft done this to?!?

Bigger certainly does not mean better. And personally I hope apple does not get too big in the next several years. Otherwise it will begin to be plagued by many of the problems Microsoft does and become a worthless paperweight that will sit unused on the floor next to my old compaq cpu.

Is Photoshop drag-and-drop not working?

forest — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 17:58:00 GMT

Here is the problem. After copying or reinstalling OS X using 'archive and install,' did you suddenly discover that you can't drag and drop a file onto Photoshop's dock icon? This was quite frustrating and after some digging I found the solution and thought I would share a simplified version here in case this has happened to others.

If you are having this problem, you're most likely missing an important file called Adobe Unit Types, which resides in the top-level Library -> ScriptingAdditions folder (create the ScriptingAdditions folder if necessary). Then just drag Adobe Unit Types from the same location in your Previous System folder into the current Library -> ScriptingAdditions folder (quit all Adobe apps first), and you're done. Enjoy Photoshop once again.

Traffic Ticket Rip Offs

forest — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 16:05:00 GMT

After recently receiving a speeding ticket I thought I would post my experiences with the process so that it may help one other person with this rip off. I live in Tallahassee Florida. I was out on a Sunday afternoon driving on a 4 lane divided road going 50 Mph. The posted limit is 35 however. Nobody goes 35. Most travel at about 45 and I just happened to get caught by a police officer sitting in a parking lot with a radar gun. She was kind enough to write me a basic speeding ticket and not 15 over.

Ok they tell you that you can take the driving course online and not get any points on your record. Let me explain the whole experience. Your name is now listed on public record. So you will receive several offers in the mail. One if is for Lowestpricetrafficeschool.com They are an official school they also say they will reduce your ticket. Well its a complete rip off and some fat cat who made a deal with the state government is getting rich. They charge you $39 or so to take the 4 hour online test. They do reduce your ticket by $3. So generous! However then they turn around and charge you $2.50 for paying via the internet. Gee thanks guys!!!

The test is on a timer. So if you are a fast reader then you will have to wait until the time is done for each section. The website is nice because you can log in and out as many times as you need. I did get caught stepping away from the computer and it logged me off and made me answer a security questions to get back in. The site will ask you a security question with every chapter, if you do not answer the question within 2 minutes the site will kick you off. This was a bit annoying. Anyway the material takes 4 hours and then they give you 1 hour to take the final test. Its an open

Ok you have 30 days to pay your ticket. You can pay it online. After you pay your ticket you have up to 60 days to take the drivers course. Well I did not know the procedure at the time so I rushed to take the test and paid and extra $9 to have them email me the test certificate all before the 30 day expiration on the ticket. Don't do this, just pay the ticket and then take the test and they will mail it to you for free in two weeks. Then you have to fax it in to the county office. Done.

Apple Rates #1 Company in Fortune Magazine Survey

forest — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 16:48:00 GMT

Fortune magazine rated Apple as America’s #1 most admired company. They asked executives, directors and analysts from the fortune 1,000 industry to rate companies in their own industry on eight criteria, from investment value to social responsibility. It comes as no surprise to me really. I have been an Apple die hard fan since 1989. Apple is a company with a narrow scope of products and a mindset of quality. Steve Jobs, for all his egocentricities, puts the end user experience above all other factors. It has not made Apple the largest company in the world, only one that is loved and admired. Will Steve ever be as rich as Bill Gates? Most likely not. But how many people worldwide are proud of, or would truly endorse Microsoft to a friend?

More people now are buying macs than ever. I figure its due to the popularity of the ipod music player. It brought considerable attention to the company. Now people are discovering what we mac heads have known for over 20 years. There is a better way to get things done when it comes to personal computers. My only fear at this time is new attention will invite the deluge of viruses that currently haunt the windoze realm. I am hoping that Steve has a team already planning to lock down the macs current operating system. If he could get it as water tight as the older Macintosh operating system then all would be well in the world of personal computing.

Getty Images Agrees to Multi Billion Dollar Buyout

forest — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 16:21:00 GMT

I have been contemplating uploading some of my photos with Getty’s sub royalty-free photo company, istock.com for a while now. Here is some recent news that caught my attention. Getty Images Inc. has agreed to a $2.1 billion buyout from the private equity firm Hellman & Friedman LLC. San Francisco-based Hellman & Friedman offered $34 per share in cash for all of Getty’s shares, a 39 percent premium over Friday’s close. The company’s shares jumped $7.22, or 29.5 percent, to $31.67 Monday. Good news for a company who’s stock has been taking a beating over the last two years. The downward trend is due to many stock photo buyers, mostly from print publications lowered budgets. It makes me wonder what the next two years holds considering the trends in digital publishing. This will be an interesting industry to watch.

Wal-Mart wants to be your SEO firm.

forest — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 15:46:00 GMT

Wal-Mart sister company Sam's club has teamed with Innuity to bring Search Engine Optimization to the masses. I discovered this disturbing news while reading an article by Scott Buresh of Medium Blue. I am not going to rehash all the gory details, but I do agree with his overall conclusion. What they are offering is a service that allows you to input your business data into a form that then goes to several "local" search engines like Yahoo local, Yellow pages, Google local and some others. So they are not truly competing with a real full blown SEO company.

Shocking as it may seem, it is both good and bad for the industry. Good because it does expose more people to the concept of SEO for their business. That is less advertising you have to do to educate the public. The bad is that they are not providing the full concept of Site Optimization and Organic Engine Ranking. Plus what company with a website that generates lots of business traffic wants to trust it to a company who brings them giant mega packs of granola bars and 5lb tubs of peanut butter. I would not.

Ram Installation Shocker

forest — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 19:11:00 GMT

I finally upgraded to the world of G5 macintoshes. I found a good deal on a 2GHZ G5 tower on craigslist. When I picked it up it only had a paltry 1gig of RAM. I remember the days when a 4meg 30pin simm was something special. I looked up my new machine on macsales.com a nice place for mac upgrades. It turns out there were 3 G5 tower models. Two use 3200 DIMMS and one uses the 4400 DIMMS. The shocking part is that the 3200 DIMMS are twice the price as 4400 DIMMS. It cost me $112 for a matched pair of 1GIG RAM chips. This was not a fun pill to swallow. The computer only cost $700 and it would cost me $500 to upgrade it to the maximum 8gig of RAM. anyway I am fine with the 3gig of RAM that I have now. Maybe next year when I want to upgrade to 5gig the prices on 3200 DIMMS will be cheaper.

3000gt Stealth Car Club Day Scheduled

forest — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 22:20:00 GMT

Saturday the 26th the Florida Chapter of 3S, which stands for 3000gt and Stealth, car club is meeting in Gainesville Florida. I and one of my fellow 3000gt owners here in Tally is also planning on attending the meet. He has a white 93 3000gt VR4. This will be my first Florida Chapter meet. I look forward to it. Now I just need to make a few small repairs to get my car in shape to make the 2 hour journey.

WordPress Blog PHP Error on line 391

forest — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 15:21:00 GMT

After adding a title to my index.php page I started to get this error.

Warning: Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at /Library/WebServer/Documents/ Websites/forestgumpsays/index.php:3) in /Library/WebServer/Documents/ Websites/forestgumpsays/wp-includes/pluggable.php on line 391

After looking at many similar error posts I figured out the problem. This is what it means. On index.php line3 there is an error indicated. However the problem is that the <?php tag hs a line space before it. Or the <? tag has a space after it. The odd part is that it was only showing an error when I hit the non www domain name. So check the file indicated in the first part of the error. The pluggable.php file is fine it is the one catching the error.

I also had a similar error problem on a new wordpress install in the config file. Turns out that there was an extra line at the end of the document. I hope this post helps the next person to quickly fix their similar php error problem.

ARD File Transfer Port

forest — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 15:23:00 GMT

I finally found the answer to my problem with Apple Remote Desktop ARD software not copying files from the office computer. I posted my quandary on a Macintosh board and got an answer that let me to an apple service document. Now I just need to get the master router configured to allow port 22 traffic through. here is the doc ARDPort Doc