MacAddict (June 1999)

MacAddict (June 1999)
There can be do doubt that the late 1990s/early 2000s were the best of times for Apple's Macintosh line. Before that, the company was nearly dead. But Steve Jobs had come back and performed a miracle with a line of very distinctive computers that were in some ways ahead of their time. I admit, I was no fan and they look far better through the eyes of nostalgia. The iBook and iMac line of the time were underpowered and overpriced and while getting rid of floppies and legacy interfaces was forward looking, it could also be inconvenient. But it's still a little sad that Apple has retained none of the whimsy factor from this time. I think a modern retro styled iMac or iBook would be immensely popular today...if they could make them relatively inexpensive. MacAddict was essentially the Macintosh version of Boot (now Maximum PC). It covered Macs with an almost religious fervor. It was an excellent magazine if you were a Mac lover. The June 1999 issue includes:

Highlights

• We Got Game - The Mac gaming market is about to explode with a slew of hot Mac titles, new-to-the-Mac developers, and simultaneous platform releases! In our preseason exclusive report, we give you the stats on all the major industry players and fill you in on their secret game plans.


• The Great Graphics Cliche Giveaway - We're such a sneaky bunch! This month we tricked three professional artists into revealing their trademark illustration secrets, then turned around and printed them as step-by-step how-tos complete with screen shots! What else would you expect from a former Prison Guy?


• XXIII Reasons You Should Care About Mac OS X Server - OS X Server - why should you give a rat's behind about it? We brief you on Mac OS X Server's selling points, show you how it differs from Mac OS X, and dish all the dirt you need t know about the latest addition to Apple's system software family.


• Oh #%@*!!!!! What to Do When Undo Just Won't Do - Oops! Why me? D'oh, not again! Whether you just launched the wrong app, lost all your bookmarks, or trashed vital extensions, we can help you right your wrongs. We've got more than 30 quick fixes for your most bonehead boo-boos, so dry your tears, quit shouting, and for goodness' sake stop shaking that monitor!

How To

• Build Interactive QuickTime Movies - Think you need Macromedia Flash to make cool interactive animations and rollovers for a Web site? Think again, bucko! Couple QuickTime with Totally Hip Software's LiveStage and you're ready to, um, roll.

Every Month

• Editor's Note - It;'s been a hell of an issue - we'll tell you all about it.


• Letters - Funny? Serious? Funny? Serious? You just can't decide, can you?


• Get Info - We perform a little exploratory surgery on the open source movement, voyage into space with Motorola, hail an iCab, and figure out how to turn off all those annoying "helpful" features.


• Scrapbook - What's the well-dressed Mac addict reading these days? Peruse our snapshot of an Apple-obsessive bookshelf and pick out some summer reading.


• Reviews - Does Virtual Game Station steam up PlayStation games on your Mac? Will Klingon Honor Guard make your blood boil hotter than a dishonored Klingon's? We answer all these questions and more as we pass judgement on 14 products, including Adobe After Effects 4.0, Kai's Power Tools 5.0, Dreamweaver 2.0, and MacLinkPlus Deluxe 10.003.


• Ask Us - Some say Owen W. Linzmayer has gone insane. Other's say he's just overworked. Either way, he's got the answers to your questions! This month he resolves your printer problems and upgrade issues, and even puts an end to your Power Mac identity crisis.


• Shut Down - We poke fun at everyone, even ourselves! Ouch, that hurt!

...and more!

Vintage Photos - Oestreicher (993-996)

See the previous post in this series here.

I had the opportunity to pick up a huge batch of slides a while back. These are pictures span from as early as the late 1940s to as late as the early 1990s. These came to me second hand but the original source was a combination of estate sales and Goodwill. There are several thousand...maybe as many as 10,000. I will be scanning some from time to time and posting them here for posterity.

Apparently, getting your pictures processed as slides used to be a fairly common thing but it was a phenomenon I missed out on. However, my Grandfather had a few dozen slides (circa late 1950s) that I acquired after he died. That along with having some negatives I wanted to scan is what prompted me to buy a somewhat decent flatbed scanner that could handle slides and negatives, an Epson V600. It can scan up to four slides at a time with various post-processing options and does a decent enough job.

This set continues a rather large batch of slides that originally came from an estate sale and appear to have belonged to a locally well known photographer (or perhaps a friend or family member) from the Spokane Washington area and later Northern Idaho named Leo Oestreicher. He was known for his portrait and landscape photography and especially for post cards. His career started in the 1930s and he died in 1990. These slides contain a lot of landscape and portrait photos but also a lot of photos from day to day life and various vacations around the world. Here's an article on him from 1997 which is the only info I have found on him: http://www.spokesman.com/stories/1997/jan/04/photos-of-a-lifetime-museum-acquisition-of-leo/

Many of these slides had the date they were processed stamped or printed on them. I've found that in cases where I could verify the date, either because a more specific date was hand written or there was something to specifically date the photo in the photo itself, that this date has typically been the same month the photos were taken. In other words, I expect that in MOST cases these photos were taken relatively near the processing date.

Click on one of the images or the link below to also see versions processed with color restoration and Digital ICE which is a hardware based dust and scratch remover, a feature of the Epson V600 scanner I am using. There are also versions processed with the simpler dust removal option along with color restoration.

None of the photos in this set are labeled or dated. The first two appear to be overhead shots of islands in a river or lake. The last two are street shots, perhaps from somewhere in Europe. These are all likely from the 1960s.

The entire collection that has been scanned and uploaded so far can also be found here.

‘Fiscal Insanity’: Senator Joe Manchin Comes Out Against Biden’s $3.5 Trillion Spending Proposal

Congress’s efforts to push through a budget-busting $3.5+ trillion welfare and climate change spending bill are coming to a fever pitch. But with the Senate evenly split between Democrats and Republicans, 50-50, the party-line spending legislation could be doomed—because one prominent Democratic senator just came out swinging against the effort. 

“I can’t support $3.5 trillion more in spending when we have already spent $5.4 trillion since last March,” West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin, a moderate Democrat, said in a statement released Wednesday. “At some point, all of us, regardless of party, must ask the simple question – how much is enough?”

“What I have made clear to the President and Democratic leaders is that spending trillions more on new and expanded government programs, when we can’t even pay for the essential social programs, like Social Security and Medicare, is the definition of fiscal insanity,” Manchin continued. “Suggesting that spending trillions more will not have an impact on inflation ignores the everyday reality that America’s families continue [to] pay an unavoidable inflation tax. Proposing a historic expansion of social programs while ignoring the fact we are not in a recession and that millions of jobs remain open will only feed a dysfunction that could weaken our economic recovery.”

To be clear, Manchin is not exactly a principled free-marketeer or small government fiscal conservative. Indeed, he is actively promoting a $1.2+ trillion spending bill ostensibly dedicated to transportation infrastructure, and is open to the idea of more spending. The senator simply acknowledges the reality of trade-offs. (Unlike many in his party who bizarrely continue to falsely claim their multi-trillion-dollar proposal costs “zero dollars.”) 

Still, Manchin deserves credit for grappling with the reality that the government cannot create resources out of thin air. Whether through the sweeping proposed tax hikes, new federal debt, or money-printing that drives inflation, all the goodies handed out by the federal government must ultimately come from somewhere else. 

Manchin rightly argued that the current approach of spending trillions and ignoring any consequences is reckless and motivated by an extreme political ideology that ignores fiscal reality. 

“Overall, the amount we spend now must be balanced with what we need and can afford – not designed to reengineer the social and economic fabric of this nation or vengefully tax for the sake of wishful spending,” he said. “While I am hopeful that common ground can be found that would result in another historic investment in our nation, I cannot – and will not - support trillions in spending or an all or nothing approach that ignores the brutal fiscal reality our nation faces.”

If only more politicians in Washington were willing to at least grapple with fiscal reality when crafting spending policies and less content to simply pass the buck onto future generations. 

“America is a great nation but great nations throughout history have been weakened by careless spending and bad policies,” Manchin concluded. “Now, more than ever, we must work together to avoid these fatal mistakes so that we may fulfill our greatest responsibility as elected leaders and pass on a better America to the next generation.”

WATCH: Reacting to PAINFULLY Dumb Gun Control TikToks

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Brad Polumbo

Brad Polumbo (@Brad_Polumbo) is a libertarian-conservative journalist and Policy Correspondent at the Foundation for Economic Education.

This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.

‘Fiscal Insanity’: Senator Joe Manchin Comes Out Against Biden’s $3.5 Trillion Spending Proposal

GamesMaster (January 1993)

GamesMaster (January 1993)

GamesMaster is a computer and video game magazine that was published in the U.K. from 1993 until 2018. It was originally a spin-off of a TV show by the same name but the show ended years before the magazine. It was also published in Lebanon between 1996 and 1999 and the Philippines between 2003 and 2009. Issue Number 1 from January 1993 includes:

• Network - Bong! New magazine launched (oh, you're already reading it!) Bong! Game Genie and Action Replay arrive for SNES. Bong! Cheap Sega carts on the way? bong! Etc. Bong!


• Charts - What's hot and what's, if you must, "not" in the stores. Plus the chance to vote your fave game to the top of the Readers' Chart.


• Dominik's Big Purple Column - The big barrel of double entendres has its bottom roughly scraped in this, the first of a series of frighteningly unhinged missives from everyone's favorite redcoat.


• TV News - Who's on when? What challenges are coming up? This is the definitive guide, as you might expect, to what's happening on GamesMaster over the next few weeks. Plus: what on EARTH is that git Douglas doing on the telly?


• Games Arena - Two young men, one with a stinking cold and the other just stinking, face off for the dust-up of a lifetime on, you guessed it, Streetfighter 2. Think you can do better? Well here's your chance...


• Previews - Take a sneaky peek at forthcoming stormers for your system. This month we've got Mr. Nuts, Cool World, James Pond 3, Gunship 2000, Star Wars and, as they say, "more"!


• Win The Ultimate Games Station! - If you thought that your car rent games system was smart think again. Here's the chance to own every 16-bit console, and a bundle of software for each. PLUS: an ultra-smart color TV with full stereo sound to play on.


• Reviews - For a full list of reviews; eyes right!


• Subs - Scribble, snip, send, save, smile.


• Survey - A million miles away from the skull-implodingly dull surveys you're used to filling out, this one will actually improve your state of mind. No, really.


• Win A Bloody Enormous Telly! - 28 throbbing inches of gristle, sorry, screen. That's what's on offer in our Comet Game Zone Sonic 2 Competition.


• Tips Zone - From gaming geek to software Schwarzenegger in one super-easy step.


• Christmas Start Here! - It would be a grumpy old scrooge of a magazine that didn't offer some lighthearted Christmas fun and games, and a bah humbugging reader who didn't enter into the spirit.


• Secret Level... - That's right. Lurking in this issue of GamesMaster is our very own secret level! Can you find it? Can you beat it?

Next Month

...and more!