From: owner-ecto-digest@smoe.org (ecto-digest) To: ecto-digest@smoe.org Subject: ecto-digest V13 #688 Reply-To: ecto@smoe.org Sender: owner-ecto-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-ecto-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk ecto-digest Sunday, December 21 2008 Volume 13 : Number 688 To unsubscribe: e-mail ecto-digest-request@smoe.org and put the word unsubscribe in the message body. Today's Subjects: ----------------- deep 6 holiday [=?iso-8859-1?Q?anna_maria_stj=E4rnell?= ] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat, 20 Dec 2008 08:24:43 -0800 (PST) From: =?iso-8859-1?Q?anna_maria_stj=E4rnell?= Subject: deep 6 holiday Hi.. Just thought I'd recommend a good band..Deep 6 Holiday make ecto-ish noir rock with classical touches. Kinda. The singer is amazing and the album Awake at the Funeral will be on my list of this year's best. site:http://www.deep6holidaymusic.com/ Anna np-Juliana hatfield-How to walk away ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 20 Dec 2008 11:29:09 -0800 From: Michael Pearce Subject: Re: .rams and .sits and stuffit Greg Dunn wrote: >It's a proprietary format pushed on the Mac community in the early >90s by a company called Aladdin Systems (then Allume, now Smith >Micro); they hook you into using the format by offering a free >un-stuffing application, then if you want to compress your own files, >charge for a full-featured app that does lots of other stuff the >casual user probably doesn't need. Last I looked, the full app was >$80. It wasn't really "pushed" on us; it was developed by a 15-year-old programmer at the time and released for free/shareware when there were no zip applications for the Mac. It became the standard by being the fustest with the mustest. He paid for college with the shareware fees and was one of the early Mac programming stars. It was reasonably good up through version 8, but pretty much went to hell under Allume's ownership and now it's just a cash cow for Smith. Apple has included zipping and unzipping as part of the OS since OSX began, and quit including StuffIt Expander back with OSX 10.3. >I'm not sure why they think we've needed this program upgraded 12 >times - especially when the zip and gzip formats are already >supported by tools that come with nearly all computers. I'm >biased against it because it's not a particularly user-friendly tool >(and unnecessarily expensive to maintain). It's also bad that the >proprietary format and continual upgrades make it difficult for open >source OSes to support it. We don't need it any more. To keep users hooked, they introduced the .sitx format around version 8 and made it the default with version 9. Now, I don't think you can even choose to NOT create .sitx. I discourage my clients from using it, and always replace what they have with version 8 and tell them how to create proper Zips. One nice feature of the Deluxe version of StuffIt (DropStuff is still shareware) is you can create a window to drop things from all over your hard drive into, and it will make an archive of that without having to move anything around. To create archives otherwise you need to drag things out of their folders (or make copies) into a target folder and then make a zip of that. Then you have to put everything back. This is a big nuisance for graphics people if Collect for Output doesn't do all the copying work for you. The down side of Deluxe is that it patches the system in unpleasant ways and can cause failure after certain system updates if you don't stay current with it. Michael ------------------------------ End of ecto-digest V13 #688 ***************************