by , 9:00 AM EST, March 5th, 2002

The Mac Chatter series gathers up some of the juiciest, silliest, most outrageous, and most interesting discussion about the Mac industry from around the Web. Raena Armitage and Bryan Chaffin scour the forums, message boards, and article comments from some of the most (and least) popular hangouts in the Mac Web and beyond.

Please note that we have left the quoted posts "as-is," including bad punctuation, bad spelling, and bad writing.

We begin this week's odyssey with a trip to one of our favorite haunts, the comments from David Coursey's latest column. Mr. Coursey's recent outing was all about getting the second biggest rabid demographic in the online tech world riled up, and we are of course talking about Linux users. In the piece, Mr. Coursey says that desktop Linux users should give up the ghost and move to Mac OS X, and the unwashed masses turned out in force to oblige Mr. Coursey. Remember folks, we don't make this stuff up (heck, we couldn't make this stuff up):

uhmn.. the fact is that M$ OWNS MAC. MAC wouldn't dare to do anything to get M$ mad. If they werent such a M$ sellouts they would have already ported MAC OS X to PC beating the crap out of windoze in all aspects (server,desktop,games,development..). So until MAC and the MAC community stop being M$ sellouts and get on the PC market I will stick to Linux.

Relax, and lay off the Jolt! Cola...

Les has this wonderful dream inspired by last week's news that a kid managed to swipe Office from a demo machine at CompUSA.

Lone iPod warezing scriptkiddy enters the scene, the nearest CompUSA employee is chatting up some confused father-figure about the XBox and how awesome some fetid pile of crap like Circus Maximus is. Lamewad plugs his iPod into the lone G4 tower and begins cruising around, looking for that one file that will guarentee him adminship on Skw3rl's S3rV3r 0f f1l3z. CompUSA employee of the month Lloyd Ackleberger goes to his coffee break. His senses, keen like a wolf's from hours of Return to Wolfenstein and Jolt Cola, notice a disturbance in the force. 'DEAR GOD', he thinks, 'SOMEONE IS ACTUALLY IN THE MAC SECTION' Getting his largest shit-eating smile on, rehearsing lines such as 'While Mac's are great for the average consumer, there's something about you that just screams MORE to me. You, my friend, need a Dell.' as he meanders over. Wait! What is this! He has a thingy.... plugged into the mac?? Mac's can do that?! Call security! He's hacking into the gibson! He's hacking the planet!

*Cut to 20 minutes later when CompUSA's lone mac guy comes back from lunch*

Christ Lloyd, he was just copying a file.

From The Mac Saves The Day('s Effort) Department

We've all got our ease-of-use Mac stories, but there's none quite like nowt's story over at Slashdot.

Thrusday, 19:05 EST

Mom's iMac was preventing access to mission critical application (System folder corruption not allowing AOhell to let her into msnbc crossword puzzle with morning cup o' tay)

"No problem" says I.. "plunk down a wad for OS X"

Financing and resources secured. I arrive for a gnarly bit o dinner + boredom watching installation bar creep.

Mundanity ensues and my 1st install of OS X goes well after last touching a mac when options included a mac, or a mac without a mac.

Gratuitous use of AOHell under OS X (they stole my KDE backdrop dammit!) embarks and I am stumped by 10 Across.

Friday, 17:27 EST

<21+ hours later and no whiny calls about iMac. I kick the cat instead. Job well done: Thanks APPLE!

And in this corner, weighing in at a fraction of his opponent's bloated size...

The age old question of why Apple's hardware has slower and older components than the newest PCs has raised its head for the umpteenth time, and on this occasion MacNN is the lucky venue of this semi-regular event. MacNN Forum member raferx has this to say on the subject:

It doesn't matter how fast a PC is... is still a sh*tty PC running a total garbage OS. It's about the experience, I feel sorry for all the people who run windows boxes, they just don't get [it], and probably never will... let them keep their DDR and 400mhz FSBus, liquid cooled CPU's and fever pitched clock-cycles.

The Toilet Humor Department...

Of course in our own forums, where we're not afraid to tackle the big issues, we're mulling over the idea of an Apple iToilet. Observer Ahnyer Keester details the repair procedure for Microsoft-run toilets...

Oh come now Stephen, you know very well that the Toilet 2000 and Loo XP are no faster than the iToilet, less reliable and that is NOT how Toilet 2000 and Loo XP unclog (there IS no 'Unclog' button.) Here's the unclog procedure for them:

1. Toilet 2000 and Loo XP must be registered within 30 days of their installation. If you have not registered these products they will cease to flush after that 30 day period. If you haven't registered them yet, do so now. If you have registered them, please continue.
2. Press the Flush button (don't worry, it won't flush, remember it is clogged)
3. Select Crapper Control Panel
4. Select System
5. Select Network
6. Select TCP/OOP from the tab on top of that control panel
7. Check to ensure that your plumbing preferences are correct. Your sewage system must be configured to the propritory Microsoft Evacuation Technology (MET™), if they are not, contact your local utilities company.
8. If your MET version number is not 2002.39p.27 or better, download the patch from http://www.microsoft.com/toilet/
9. If you are configured correctly, close these windows.
10. Press CTRL-ALT-DELETE
11. Click the Task List button
12. Find the Flush task in the list (you may have to scroll through a lot of tasks to find it)
13. Single click on the Flush task and click the "End Task" button.
14. Attempt to flush again.
15. If that does not work, reboot your toilet.
16. If that still doesn't work, contact Microsoft at 1-900-CRAPHELP ($19.95 for the first 3 minutes, $2.50 for every minute after, please have a credit card and your Toilet 2000 or Loo XP registration number handy when calling)

If you need help walking through these steps, simply hit F1 from your desktop and Wipeeª the Windows assistant will walk you through them.

Seen a quality Mac hangout with interesting discussions? Why not point us to them? Coursey's going to finish his Mac trial soon, and we're running out of trolls.