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Everyone knows that the Chinese are some of the biggest pirates out there, and it's basically, for the time being, a lawless and lost market for competing software providers.

I would not put it past even the Chinese government to simply be pirating copies of Windows, and not because it costs them so much money, rather because they can.

Just like everything else they do, it's all stolen.

Last, but not least, we will not be importing any major software tools from the Chinese (or India) any time soon as the majority (read: not all) of their programmers are not very good, which is why they work for such little money. The best software they will be making is going to be repackaged OSS, or stolen proprietary code and even then, I bet any added features, if they choose to add any, will be second rate compared to any real software provider's.

By the way, what kids need 'compilers and tools' ?

GPL based distributions have to beg too. I have rough recollections of several such requests appearing on slashdot in recent memory, I don't recall the details but a quick google finds:

"The first public signs of financial trouble at MandrakeSoft appeared in March 2002 when Mandrake began asking users for donations and changed their support structure to get a new revenue stream."
http://geek.com/news/geeknews/2003Jan/osg200301160 18188.htm

Theo's bed was made by driving away potential sources of income like DARPA, not his choice of BSD over GPL.

Microsoft claim shakes graphics world

3D graphics world shaken by patent claims

Standards stalled over royalty disputes

Microsoft clarifies OpenGL position ... sort of

OpenGL 1.4 unveiled

50 hours
http://www.geek.com/news/geeknews/2005Aug/bga20050 810031766.htm

Second gamer dies after massive binge
http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2120472/second-g amer-dies-massive-binge

etc.etc.

Thank you for your wonderful offer. However, I feel that I must in good conscience, decline. I will not rename myself or my first born son to "BOTS", nor will I chisel the tagline of your new game "9Dragons" onto my great grandfather's tombstone. In fact, many of my collegues find your practices quite reprehensible, and will not support your company if you continue them. Thank you for your interest, and I hope that we won't do business again in the future.

Sincerely,
Your Customers

Reference 1
Reference 2

AMD just licensed something called zram which will allow them to bundle oodles of L3 cache in the near future.
http://www.geek.com/news/geeknews/2006Jan/bch20060 216034806.htm

They would have much more clients on iTMS if they just offered FairPlay or whatchmacallit to the other manufacturers... They already profit big, and they could be profiting bigger -- and they are blind for not seeing something so obvious.

Would they? In may iPod market share was 87.3%. That represents 32+million iPods in 2005 of the total 36.6 million sold. So, Apple is missing out on 4.6 million mp3 player sales. Of those how many people wouldn't buy strictly because it is Apple? How many of those would use the iTMS? Let's say 100% of those 4.6 million people were allowed to use iTMS. How much more money would that leave for Apple?

ZERO because Apple makes at most .04 So again, let's say Apple makes 0.04*4.6million*10(songs) (saying all of those 4.6 million bought 10 songs over the lifetime of the product). That gives us $1.84M. How does that compare with margins on iPod? Let's do the same comparison. 4.6M*299*0.19 = $261M (this would be the same $$ if Apple convinced just 32.2K of those 4.6M to buy an iPod and buy 0 songs from iTMS. (The latter assumes the avg price for an iPod across the board is $299 and all iPods are selling equally well by %)

Which would you rather do? Try to increase sales by 32k or try to convince 4.2 million people to buy 10 songs from your store, or 2.1 to buy 20, or 1.05 to by 40 etc.....

That seems to go well with a recent study:

http://www.geek.com/news/geeknews/2006Jan/gee20060 215034769.htm


Study confirms people misinterpret e-mails

A study, published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, helps to confirm that most people have a hard time properly interpreting the tone of an e-mail. It found that only about half the time were the readers able to properly identify if an e-mail was sent seriously or sarcastically. Adding further to the miscommunication, the senders of the e-mail were expecting the reader to understand the message's tone 80% of the time.

According to one of the researches, psychologist Nicholas Epley of the University of Chicago, "That's how flame wars get started. People in our study were convinced they've accurately understood the tone of an e-mail message when in fact their odds are no better than chance."

The study was conducted using 30 pairs of undergraduate students, giving them 20 statements about various topics such as campus food. The senders then gave the statements either a serious or sarcastic tone.

Canadian researchers are finding evidence that the high-speed, multitasking of the young and wireless can help protect their brains from aging.

Dr. Grady said the results suggest that the brains of today's youth might grow up differently.

"Young people using all of these gadgets all of the time, at the same time, it may actually make a difference when they're old, like bilingualism does," she said. "We know that practice changes the brain, as with playing an instrument, a motor task -- it makes physical changes in the brain. Maybe those kids who play video games and who are also bilingual will be the best of older adults at filtering out distractions."

Another problem is the population sample: 100 university students. This is hardly representative of the population at large. I realize this is an issue with a lot of psychological research. Psychology departments tend to use undergrads as their research subjects because they are the most available. However, in this study, I think the problem becomes even more pronounced. If you take a sample of university students, I bet you the group that plays videogames the most will have a larger proportion of students that are enrolled in computer science and engineering than the group that plays less or doesn't play any videogames at all. So what, you ask? Well, the "mental tasks" that were used to test the students are probably the type that math/compsci/engineering students will generally perform better on than sociology or history students. It may have nothing to do with videogame playing at all. Good research would take this into account.

Another problem I had with the article is that it fails to point out some of the research that has been done to indicate that videogaming actually retards brain development:

Video games: bad for your brain?

Researchers: Video games hurt brain development

This doesn't include all the research that has been done to indicate the negative effect of violent videogames. To the article's credit, though, it does mention this fact at the end.

I thought Disney was gonna buy Apple. Or was it that Sun was gonna buy Apple? Actually, maybe the new rumor is that Apple is gonna buy Sun. Wasn't Apple gonna buy Pixar? D'oh! Too late. But they can still buy TiVo, right? Maybe if Apple does it quickly enough, by the time Sony buys Apple, Sony will get a twofer.

Still, the timing is perfect for an Apple buyout of Palm.

Who says Apple won't switch chips again? The current relationship isn't all roses, despite all we have heard. Apple won't put those retarded "Intel inside" stickers on their products.

And, it would seem, the Intel core duo is full of serious bugs which Intel doesn't really care about.

Is it short memory day around here? Before the NTP/RIM case, RIM was busy suing Handspring. As the grandparent said, they started as a bunch of litigating bastards. They tried to do pretty much the same thing to Handspring that NTP is now doing to them - crush them with patent litigation. Last time around it was about having a QWERTY keyboard on a portable. Now it's about push email.

Because this shutdown wouldn't affect the government members that might actually move to do something about it, it's not going to change anything there. If anything, with all the execs seeing how it could hurt their competition, it's going to fuel even more patent attacks.

I Don't Think So Tim.

"Washington is BlackBerry central. Members of Congress were issued the contraptions after 9/11, when cell phones died but BlackBerries kept working, and no political operative or reporter can be seen without one."

Fine, then what should be a standard legal definition for time limit for liability if they don't fix the bug in a reasonable period of time? If it's severe, they get three months? Other companies have to do product recalls by law if their products fail in a way that is damaging to life or property, so at what point do they have to start making amends to their customers for failure? Kinda funny considering the bravado they had in the past. I guess they got called out and they were all bluster.

You know, I just realized that you're looking at a different event. This article is the one where AT&T "explains" the problem of the '98 outage. If the Wayback machine ever comes back online, you should be able to find the official statement http://www.att.com/press/0498/980414.bsa.html">her e.

Really old news & was reported on slashdot 3 years back.

I think it was already duped a year also.

as far as i understood, this problem had a lot to do with an epidemic of bad capacitors in the industry and not anything having to do with the iMac design itself.

Try these:

• http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=SCO+legal+fee s+limit
• SCO Puts limit on its Legal Payments
• Start-up hedges companies' bets against SCO
• SCO Cuts deal for legal expenses
• SCO Puts a Cap on its Legal Expenses
• SCO's case doesn't fit, but the lawyers won't quit

The reason that I never learned to properly touch-type is because the keys are not where they should be when I place my fingers on the home keys. It hurts a tiny bit to hit them in the prescribed manner. Due to arm-angle and the natural motion of the fingers, the keys are all in the wrong places... it has always seemed like they should be shifted.

Split keyboards make a little bit of progress in solving this problem by rotating the halves of the keyboard so they fit the arm angle a little better, but practically none of them do anything about relative key placement.

Switching the layouts does not address the ergonomics of arm-angle and finger motion and it causes the added problem of learning another layout which will slow you down whenever you encounter the ubiqitous QWERTY layout.

I thought it might be a genius idea to invent a split-keyboard that lines the keys up the right way in a QWERTY layout for around $100, but these guys beat me to it:

U-Geek Review: Darwin Keyboards' SmartBoard

I have no idea why they didn't license their design... It's a crying shame that they are out of business.

DataHand also solves this problem the right way, but even at 50% off, their keyboard costs $500. It might be an efficient keyboard, but it's not $500 efficient.

I've had bad experiences with *several* treo 650's crashing/etc.

Check out the HTC Wizard (aka Qtek 9100, i-mate K-Jam, etc). Cingular's supposed to be coming out with their version in January.

These so-called "faults" with voting machines are anything but an accident. Witness the case of Senator Chuck Hagle magically winning his senate seat in Nebraska after being far down in the polls (the first republican elected to the senate there in 24 years, at the time). It turns out that 80% of his votes were counted by ES&S machines (a company that he has ownership ties to). That is just one of many, many examples. Check out these links: http://www.geek.com/news/geeknews/2003Oct/gee20031 009022127.htm http://www.infowars.com/articles/ps/vote_fraud_vot e_machines_under_scrutiny.htm http://www.infowars.com/print/evoting/hired_felons .htm

Actually, I believe Palm licenses the thumb keyboard from RIM

See the article from Nov 2002 on geek.com
http://www.geek.com/news/geeknews/2002Nov/bpd20021 108017219.htm

Sony issues recall for overheating PS2 AC Adaptors
Latest PS2 has compatibility issues
Read Disc Errors
Not to mention the Y-plug mouse and keyboard issue...

Nope, nothing wrong at all...

The first chipless linux boot was by Habibi in March 2003, announced April 1 IIRC.
http://www.geek.com/news/geeknews/2003Mar/gee20030 403019435.htm

And xboxes can be connected to VGA.
http://www.google.com/search?q=xbox+vga

This is certainly NOT normal for the console industry.

The bad news for Microsoft: China decided to do this by switching to Chinese companies, many of which develop for Linux.

And what is interesting about this article? Check the date: Wed Jan 09 2002

the problem with the x86 architecture is that the whole instruction set is out of date:
http://www.geek.com/procspec/features/revx86/

What, you were asleep when Valve's Gabe Newell announced that the Nvidia FX series had HUGE performance deficit while running in DX9 mode? The performance hit wass blamed on the number of available registers dropping by half in DX9 mode.

The performance hit was incredible at the time. After the botched release of the FX 5800 Ultra, the rest of the FX series had turned out to be competitive in DX8 / DX8.1 games currently availavble, so this was quite a surprise. [H]ardOCP summed up Valve's report on the following pages:

Performance in pure DX9 mode.

Nvidia FX-optimized "mixed mode" performance versus pure DX9.

The key quote:

The good news is Nvidia got faster [with the mixed-mode DX8/DX9 optimizations]. Bad news is that performance gains go away in the future as new DX9 functionality will be able to use fewer and fewer partial-precision functions.

I think that sums it up nicely. Battlefield 2 is a 100% DX9 game (hence the reason the GF4 and GF3 are not supported), and it performs like crap on the FX series.

The worst part is, the lack of registers seems to limit only the maximum performance of the faster FX-series cards. So, while DX9 mode only slows down the FX 5200 and 5600 slightly, the 5900 series is severly hampered.

Also the street price for a 20A circuit in a datacenter is $200-$300, while the cost of a megabit is $100 or less. So a rack of servers that requires two power circuits and pushes 3Mbps (not an unusual scenario) costs twice as much in power than in bandwidth.

And here's another article on this issue. And another.

Not portable? I'm inclined to agree, but then why are PSP movie sales through the roof? It seems that a market already exists.

If Apple can match the PSP's screen quality and beat its ease of use (by making movies downloadable, perhaps) they might have something.

Plus, last I read, HD-DVD doesn't have anything even in the lab that is bigger than 30 GB, whereas Bluy-ray has a prototype of 100GB. MS ought to screw off. They are supprting it for two reasons. One is the whole console war, and the second is HD-DVD will use Micorsofts own codec whereas Blu-ray will not. MS just has their panties in a wad.

And to all those who think this is a propietary Sony product, they should read this FAQ. Sony, HP, Pioneer, Hitachi, TDK, Samsung, Philips, etc. were all in on the process. In fact it was TDK that made the 100GB version. HD-DVD is a very shallow replacement and will only require a new replacement in just a few years time. Blu-ray has potential, not just as a media disk, but also as a storage disk. With people having full hard-drives over 250 GB now, would you rather back that up on 9 HD-DVDs, or 3 Blu-rays. Shutup and die MS and Intel.

http://www.geek.com/news/geeknews/2004Mar/gee20040 301024062.htm

Microsoft's codec is one of the 3(!!!) codecs that HD-DVD manufacturers will have to license and support in their players. As far as I know, they've backed it for a while now. Of course they don't like Blu-ray, since no one's going to license their codec if it dominates the market.

Actually I'm correct. I remembered this way back then and I Googled it and found this article from Geek.com:

http://www.geek.com/news/geeknews/2000nov/gee20001 201003115.htm

Here's a snippett from the 2000 article:

Dell has been offering Red Hat Linux preinstalled on some of its computers for a while, including the PowerEdge and PowerApp servers, Precision, OptiPlex, and Dimension desktops, and Latitude and Inspiron notebooks.

I've posted on /. the history of DEC->Compaq->(Alpha->Intel)->HP and a bunch of links on how M$ and Intel needed to get rid of DEC and the new one third cost DEC processor Samsung developed for them. It was/is a good read.

The (DEC) Alpha was (imo) a great 64 bit floating point processor and would fit perfectly into Apple's scheme...now that Intel owns it!

Here's some source:

Intel buys Alpha from Compaq
http://www.geek.com/news/geeknews/2001june/bch2001 0625006512.htm

On ebgames.com right now, a 2-pack of 8MB PS2 memory cards is $40. I don't know how big the xbox card is, but I'm willing to bet it's bigger.

With the PS2, though, you have all kinds of third party memory cards which are dirt cheap. I would say that a short while after launch, you'd be able to pick up a MadCatz Xbox360 SuperMegaMemoryStick in a variety of flourecent colors for half that.

I *would* say that, except rumor has it that the 360 will only work with "approved peripherals", so MadCatz will have to pay a licensing fee to MS, which will drive up the cost of the MadCatz memory card too.

Will we? Will they do a demo of a 4 GHz P4 too? Will they tell us it will use just as little power as the new Transmeta processors again?

And will anyone believe them?

There was an article in Sientific American about making chips much smaller by letting water flow between the imprinting laser lens and the silicon wafer. The water changes the refractive index, so the lens can be better utilized, as I understand it, and apparently it's not particularly difficult either, since existing 193nm lithography can be used, and even surpass the planned 157nm lithography tech. Here's another article with some links.

What came first of the chicken and the egg? The vendors won't release games for Linux because the userbase isn't big enough and the userbase won't switch to Linux because the lack of games..

It's called market potential. Whenever your company releases $HARDWARE or $VIDEO_GAME they have to ask the marketing people "who will buy this?" Based on the answers, you get publishers paying for development of Microsoft only hardware drivers and Microsoft only video games.

(Neither video games or hardware are Free as in Beer. Free as in Speech is possible, but discussing price-free drivers and games is beyond the scope of my argument here.)

I was asking around last year about the market potential for Linux kernel GNU systems. The biggest problem is find out just how many people use Linux in the first place (http://counter.li.org./

So, given that it takes a market of at least 100,000 units sold to turn a profit on a top-release $50 game with a $1 million to $3 million budget, are there enough desktop linux users to suppport a Linux game release? Is the market there?

Note that top-release $50 PC games for Windows sell upwards of 200,000 units in their first year, and upwards of 100,000 units for their next few. For example, Blizzard's Wold of Warcraft (http://www.blizzard.com/ cost $5-10million to make but sold 600,000 at $39-50 in its first 6 weeks. But that is on the extreme end of the spectrum.

Assume 50% of home desktop Linux users play computer video games[0].

Using counter.li.org numbers Linux desktops = 0.025% (0.0125% gamers) of all desktops, then a WoW for Linux would have sold 144 copies in it's first 6 weeks[1]. Stats at geek.com (http://www.geek.com/ for 2004 show Linux desktops = 1.12 percent of the market. Assuming the highest number of Linux desktop gamers being 0.56 percent of the total gaming market, then a WoW for Linux would have sold 3,000 copies in it's first 6 weeks at $39-50.

That means between $7,200 and $150,000 could have been spent by Linux desktop users on WoW. While $7k will only pay a Bangladeshi salary, $150,000 would nicely cover one or two interns to make sure WoW compiles and runs on Linux[2][3].

0. Or assume a higher rate of gameplay, but consider less than 100% market penetration of your game, so that 50% market penetration is reached.

1. Note that Transgaming (http://transgaming.com/ needs far more paying customers pending their $5 votes than this to start work on a title, and WoW has been voted #1 priority by transgaming.com customers for several months before being supported.

2. Assuming a baseline Linux is being supported (e.g. SDL $VER + Glib $VER or LSB (http://www.linuxbase.org/) or Distro $FOO) and no additional cost for shipping and delivering the binaries.

3.$15 per month implies $2,160 to $45,000 a month to keep that Linux port updated. Considering Blizzard.com is reporting a 1.11 patch to the 5 year old Diablo II, over a similar 5 years a WoW monthly income could have added $225,000 to Blizzard's coffiers.

MS has already stated that they will continue to provide security updates to *ALL* versions of windows, legitimate or not (first link I saw in Google that the company firewall didn't block):

http://www.geek.com/news/geeknews/2005Jan/gee20050 126028855.htm

"Microsoft is taking direct aim at the problem of software piracy, announcing that sometime in mid-2005 it will no longer provide updates to software it does not believe to be licensed appropriately. The company will, however, continue to provide security updates to all versions."

So where exactly does this "Exactly why is it acceptable to condemn millions to being spam zombies - affecting everyone on the Internet - through no fault of their own, by an unaccountable monopoly beholden only to its stockholders?" fit in? Zombie PCs are generally unpatched boxes, yes? How would MS's actions be changing this fact? Patches have never been on a 'push' system, so your argument has no weight.

The security updates are still available for all. Yes, even the illegal installed systems. What *isn't* available is the various 'enhancements' that most of us don't care about anyway - WMP, DX (I care about that one, as a gamer), etc. Your analogy is screwed up beyond all reasoning, and I already shot it down. They aren't "shutting off the gas" but are restricting it down to the bare necessity until you pony up the cash.

And BTW, there is no such thing as 'winter' on the 'net. Cutting off software updates that aren't even guaranteed to be released isn't inhuman. *Annoying* yes, but not inhuman.

How many times can you reply before you RAFA (read *ANY* fantastic article) and see that MS is still providing security updates for free, to anybody who comes calling? Your blind stance that "MS is cutting off everybody from all updates OMGWTFBBQ!!!" is just simple *INCORRECT* MS-bashing, plain and simple.

Dammit, you've got me *really* pissed over this one, because your ridiculous stance has MADE ME DEFEND MICROSOFT!!!

Shorter wires do reduce the heat, but the wires are thinner, and most importantly the ratio of transistors to surface area (used to dissipate heat) has greatly increased. Even with the shorter interconnects, these 3-d stacked devices will generate alot of heat. This article from 2004 talks about this technology, and suggests:

Moreover, stackable chips would exacerbate heat-dissipation issues since standard heatsink/fan combos probably can't cool an entire stack of chips. Semiconductor makers could choose to insert tubing between each layer of chips in order to cool the stack, but this would further complicate interconnect placement. Perhaps the optimal solution will be to use modified versions of low-power processors, such as Intel's Centrino.

Putting "tubing" in between the layers sounds complicated. Maybe in 10 years microfluidics will be up to the task, but not right now. Probably what they are hoping to do is run the transistors slower than modern chips (and at lower voltage?). The loss in GHz will be made up for by the greater number of transistors and much reduced interconnect times. Sounds like it could work.

You must be thinking about Forgent, who basically abandoned their scheduling product line in favor of buying up patent portfolios, and suing everyone in sight that might be violating them. Unlike SCO, Forgent has actually succeeded in ripping off millions of dollars in licenses for such things like JPEG, and are moving into suing PVR manufacturers.

(Granted, most people who use Linux at home are knowledgeable enough to keep even a Windows machine safe.)

Uh, no. If you've spent your entire learning curve on a linux machine you're not going to know the first thing about securing a Windows box. Yes, a lot of the same principles will be used in the securing, but that doesn't change the fundamental differences in the operating systems. I realize that you said "most people" and that you may know what you are doing with a Windows machine. I know a number of linux people however who run/ran Windows machines and have had them hacked. More evidence against Windows? Nope. They didn't take the time to download updates as well as set the necessary security policies to prevent outside access.

Just because the average user running Linux is more paranoid about security than a Windows user doesn't mean that Linux is inherently a more secure operating system.

Check out this link and read "Eric's Opinion".
http://www.geek.com/news/geeknews/2003Jun/gee20030 605020295.htm

--
"Patriotism is supporting your country all the time and your government when it deserves it." --Mark Twain

All too familiar, is it not?

Here is someone elses great explanation for why Itanium/Intel suck...

"Itanium however, is completely based on the future. It has no real history. Only 2-3 processor releases, and all the big server sellers are getting behind it. And if you were to judge Itanium by Intel's history, you know that when Intel pushes something, it happens. I know they too have had failures, but seeing the big server oems get behind this should be a good clue to where this is going. Alpha engineers were acquired in 2001. Merger took place a year later. Not sure if Intel knew about the merger when they were making the deal. I think they were just trying to buy Alpha IP, but I could be wrong about that.

Intel pushed Rambus in a huge way and was flatly rejected by most consumers as being too expensive at the time. This lead to AMD picking up a few crucial market share points as i recall from history. So much for Intel's strong arming there. Itanium's history is what, 10 years or so at this point? Over 10 billion dollars invested in R&D. It is the love child of Intel desperately wanting a big chunk of the big iron market and HPQ's dying PA-RISC. As it stands right now Intel has almost ZERO market share of the big iron market, that is still ruled by SGI, IBM and SUN. Yes, lets discuss why Intel was buying Alpha IP shall we? Could it have anything to do with them blatently ripping off DEC Alpha tech and getting caught and rather than facing an incredible lawsuit they decided it would be much more cost effective to just buy the company?

You like to clamor about how Itanium adoption is a given for all of these leaders of big iron technology. Lets look a little closer as to why this is. SGI is on the ropes and arm chair quarter backs such as myself wonder how much longer they will be withering on the vine before they are bought out or file for Chapter 11 protection. MIPS for high end computing is quickly becoming passe and has been that way for years. The only reason SGI can still use the chip is because of their NUMA architecture and they leverage massive amounts of cpus to work in tandem with one another.

HPQ as already mentioned is in the love nest with Chipzilla. Some consider the Itanium to be the greatest quo ever pulled off in corporate history. Basically Intel has footed a 10 billion dollar bill for HPQ to redesign a brand new architecture that no one really knows or is comfortable with from a software writing point of view. Adoption at this point in time has been abysmal at best. It certainly doesn't help the Intel cause when a bug is discovered with this supposed "enterprise" level chip and the only solution to it is to scale back significantly on its clock speed so that it doesn't rear is ugly head."

July 2004: Intel is now saying that there won't be any 4GHz parts until Q1 2005.

September 20th 2004: 4GHz Intel Prescott on target for Q1 (Or the 580, as we call it now)

October 14th 2004: Intel drops plans for 4GHz Pentium 4

Intel has been banging their head on the door of 4GHz for longer than the G5 exists.

July 2004: Intel is now saying that there won't be any 4GHz parts until Q1 2005.

September 20th 2004: 4GHz Intel Prescott on target for Q1 (Or the 580, as we call it now)

October 14th 2004: Intel drops plans for 4GHz Pentium 4

Intel has been banging their head on the door of 4GHz for longer than the G5 exists.

In 2001 Intel dumped their surplus in Japan and gained some market share that way. Another thing driving the figures is the number of chips in the X-Box. Personally I am surprised by these numbers since I do prefer Intel but find the price range and functionality of AMD to be more appealing to my budget.

In 2001 Intel dumped their surplus in Japan and gained some market share that way. Another thing driving the figures is the number of chips in the X-Box. Personally I am surprised by these numbers since I do prefer Intel but find the price range and functionality of AMD to be more appealing to my budget.

Kim Komando has a reference to several companies that do what you ask.

Dear Kim: I bought my son a laptop. Is there a way it can be tracked if it is stolen?

Dear Reader: Yes. There is software that works over the Internet to report the location of a stolen laptop. When a thief connects the laptop to the Internet, the software reports its location to a special Web site. CyberAngel (www.sentryinc.com, $60 annually), CompuTracePlus (www.computrace. com, $50 annually) and zTrace (www. ztrace.com, $50 annually) are three companies that offer laptop locator software and services.

For MACs you might also try LapCop which emails you when the computer "disappears."

In addition, as literally anything could be on the drive, encrypt it. The translation slowdown will be barely noticeable and will save you if your child decided to put your VISA card in plain text files. Also, while a hardware password may seem like a great idea, if someone does steal the machine, it will never call home because they cannot get past the password.

I would then add a real easy to use laptop lock. If it is hard to use, it will not be used. No one wants to try and grab eight books from the library while lugging around their laptop. So they set it down for "just a minute."

Finally, for the "team her to be responsible" crowd: a college is about the least secure environment to which we will ever expose ourselves. People are free to come and go in most dorms, doors are secure as your least responsible roommate. College is also where more growing up occurs. Lighten up.

From reading this article, SSE3 doesn't look like too much of an improvement. More registers are always good, I suppose. Compile-time "hinting" might be kind of interesting to do some optimization research into.

I do like that they are readying a dual-core chip; Intel's chips have always been really hot, particularly in an SMP rig.