the frig blig

www.space.com

First of all, it doesn’t tell you which version it wants to upgrade to. Second, it hides an Open Office install under the link “more information” — pretty sneaky. Third, it tries to sneak in a Yahoo toolbar by default selection. Finally, what can I say? — it’s java.

It’s been a year since I purchased my Mac Mini running OS X Leopard, and copying files from my file server (Samba on FreeBSD) to the Mac has been excruciatingly slow — I can’t believe I lived with that abysmal performance all this time. Mentioned it to a coworker who said he’d heard of a known issue with Macs and Samba… so I googled it this morning and found the following fix: add the following line to the /etc/sysctl.conf file (or in my case, create the file) on the Mac:

net.inet.tcp.delayed_ack=0

Now performance is normal — what it should have been from the start. Why didn’t I research this sooner? Maybe cuz as a mac n00b I just figured macs were slugs accessing SMB shares…I was ready to assume the worst. Whatever, I’m happy it’s finally fixed.

Slashdot just posted this link to the coolest idea I’ve seen this month: a printer that “takes the leftover grounds from your morning roast and plugs them into an ink cartridge to create an eco-friendly source of ink.” Is this clever or what?