Ramon M. Felciano, Associate Director of Stanford University Medical Media and Information Technologies, writes in regard to Rob Managan's suggestion in TidBITS-139 for using Morph to animate scientific simulations, "Our research lab develops and does research on academic courseware in medicine. One of the biggest challenges is developing high quality animations for inclusion in the software. To date, we've resorted to conventional techniques: having our medical illustrator draw the images, then scan them in and animate. We tried using Freehand, which allows you to blend one image into another, but, ironically, it was too difficult to draw "freehand" to get the same image quality. We're hoping Morph will solve this problem!"

Information from:
Ramon M. Felciano -- felciano@camis.stanford.edu

Symantec Stamps

Allan Bloom writes:

Folks, this is too yummy to keep to myself. I read in a recent Macworld that Norton Utilities 2.0 had problems with "certain" accelerator cards and that one should contact Symantec for a fix. If one had a problem. Leslye's goosed Mac II (DayStar 40 MHz PowerCache and FPU) has been going kablooie of late, for no more reason than usual, so I dropped NORTON.TECH at AppleLink a note. Mike said they'd send the update. Independent of whether I had even the slightest inkling that it was Norton instead of Leslye causing the kablooies.

A FedEx arrived yesterday with the complete set of Norton 2.0 disks. Being a proper dolt, I looked at the contents. Hmm. Same version (2.0). Same date (Monday, April 20). Did they send me what I already have? I dropped another note. No, you silly goose. Look at the time stamp on each file. Sure nuff, my originals were created at 2:01 PM. This new set was created at 2:03 PM. Mike thought it should have been 2:02 PM. They snuck a new one in on him. That makes the new disks two generations newer.

Is this a hoot or what? Symantec is using the time stamp for incremental upgrades instead of changing the version number/date. Leslye's response was her ingenuous smile and a "We don't admit our errors, do we?"

I dunno, Symantec, do we?

Information from:
Allan M. Bloom -- irbloom@vtvm1.cc.vt.edu