Right now there are 289 visitors online at MacMegasite.

My G4 now hangs when I try to boot 10.1.5, and I can’t reboot 10.2 until I zap PRAM.

Random: How Well Would You Do on the INS Test?. How well would most natural-born US citizens do on the INS citizenship test? [Morons Dot Org]

NOTE: the form doesn’t render correctly in Chimera

I now have a dialup ISP to use when I travel next week. I just signed up for access-4-free, which was $5 to sign up with 10 free hours per month. Best of all, they don’t require any special software and it works great with Mac OS X (in fact they even have Mac OS X setup instructions, although it refers to 10.0).

I’ve been looking for a free or cheap dialup ISP since I switched to AT&T Broadband last month. Unlike BellSouth DSL, they don’t provide dialup to use when I travel or when the service is down (so far it hasn’t been down). This looks like my best choice.

Synchronizing computers with iSync. After installing iSync on my iBook, I was able to sync it with my G4, which I had previously tested iSync on. While the sync went very smoothly, it’s less useful than it could have been, since it’s tied to .Mac. [MacMegasite]

An anonymous user posted the following comment:

DUH! How often are you gonna be carrying both computers around with you! Syncing via .Mac is the only way that makes sense…you can sync any macs together(home and work) all you need is an internet connection- if you don’t have an internet connection, you shouldn’t be passing comment.

At no point did Apple say that it would offer File synchronizing- so why are you pissed off that it doesn’t do that?

Try SynchronizeX butthead.

I do use Syncrhonize X. I was just pointing out that iSync doesn’t do file synchronization. Also, when the two machines are on the same netwrk, it should be possible to sync them directly instead of having to go through .Mac.

I just upgraded WorldBeatPlanet to PHP-Nuke 6.0. The upgrade went flawlessly.

I’ve got it down to a quick & simple routine. Upload all of the files to a temporary directory, since uploading can take a while. When everything’s up, run the upgrade script, and then move the uploaded files into the live directory.

Since copying the files to another directory takes a lot less time than uploading, only a few seconds pass from the time I run the upgrade script until the upgrade is complete with all of the files in place, and there’s little or no downtime. It did take me a few minutes to activate some new modules & rearrange blocks, but the site remains usable during that time.

Peter Gabriel’s new CD, “UP” arrived today. The first track, “Darkness” scared “Cody”. It starts out very soft, and then there’s a sudden burst of noise. I have very mixed feelings about this album, but I need to listen to it a few more times. This isn’t an accessible pop album like “So”. It’s very dark & brooding. “Barry Williams Show” is the only upbeat song. I’ve heard at least two of the songs, “Signal to Noise” & “I Grieve” before. One pleasant surprise was Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan’s vocals on “Signal to Noise”.

Was it worth waiting 10 years? I’m not sure yet. It will be playing on my stereo for a while, though.

I finished an all-day meeting with the manager I work with. I’ve worked with him for almost a year, but we never met until now. Everything went very well. If certain other things happen, very good things could happen for me. Keeping my fingers crossed…

Chimera built successfully, and I’m now running the application that I built.

I’m now attempting to build Chimera. I checked out the sources from CVS and it’s now running. It will probably continue to run all night.

I just sent out the first MacMegasite newsletter, which announced the new features & themes I added. We have 34 members with 6 subscribed to the newsletter. Yesterday I enabled the journal feature & private messages with a new user block. I just added a FAQ entry about writing for MacMegasite and enabled the FAQ module.

Tomorrow I’ll be meeting with a manager, so I probably won’t write too much.

iPlugs. I can’t believe MacSurfer actually linked to this.

Chimera 0.5 is now becoming my favorite browser. I’ve been using it as my only browser since last night, and I find that it works with every site I’ve visited (except it sometimes seems to forget cookies). Even though it lacks some features, I really love its speed – this is the only browser that really feels fast and not bloated. It’s even faster than OmniWeb.

WSJ.  Wired.  The music industry is set to launch an ad campaign against P2P file sharing.  “People going into computers”??

Ms. Spears, for example, is quoted in the ad saying: “Would you go into a CD store and steal a CD? It’s the same thing: People going into the computers and logging on and stealing our music.”

She proves again what an airhead she is. If file sharing means an end to manufactured pop, maybe it’s a good thing. The recording industry is producing crap and trying to sell it at inflated prices. I think the audience is smart enough to reject it. If quality music was available at a reasonable price, people would buy it. They’re just tired of the junk they’re being sold and they’ve stopped buying it.

I’m now setting up a backup server for MacMegasite under my reseller account. Right now it looks like the main server is back up, but if the problems continue, I can switch over the DNS entry. Since both sites share the same database (which is running on my mc-development.com server), both sites will have the same content.

BounceWeb is currently upgrading their servers, so MacMegasite & WorldBeatPlanet are both down right now. The upgrades should be finished this weekend. I’m also unable to receive email at both domains (and all of my email addresses except my domain mc-development.com are forwarded to my macmegasite IMAP account).

Child advocates target prosecution of juveniles as adults

By Bill Kaczor

The Associated Press

Posted September 26 2002

PENSACOLA á Opponents of prosecuting children as adults have formed a national advocacy group in response to the trial of two Florida Panhandle boys convicted of killing their father.

Under Our Wings was formed during a conference call Tuesday night among 19 participants from California to New York.

“When we start prosecuting our children as adults, people know that something is wrong with that,” said the Rev. Thomas Masters, the group president. “Now the problem is, how do you fix it? That’s what we want to present.”

Masters, pastor of the New Macedonia Baptist Church in Rivera Beach, became an advocate on the issue when a member of his congregation, 13-year-old Nathaniel Brazill, was prosecuted as an adult for fatally shooting a Lake Worth teacher in 2000. Brazill was sentenced when he was 14 to 28 years in prison for second-degree murder.

The catalyst for the new organization, however, was the Pensacola trial three weeks ago of Alex and Derek King. They were 12 and 13 when their father, Terry King, 40, was beaten to death with an aluminum baseball bat on Nov. 26. Firefighters found the body inside the family’ burning home in nearby Cantonment.

Many Under Our Wings members have been circulating a petition urging that the brothers, convicted of arson and second-degree murder without a weapon, be sentenced “as the children that they are rather than as the adults that they are not.”

BounceWeb is having trouble with their SQL server for a change, so I moved the database for MacMegasite to another server. It’s more difficult to maintain that way, but seems to run more reliably. I may have to do the same with WorldBeatPlanet, but I don’t think the server can handle two active MySQL databases for different sites.

I’m trying out Chimera 0.5 now. It’s actually a nice, usable web browser. It could end up being my main browser.