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Out of warranty since day two -- More-than-ordinary Airport investigator Constantin von Wentzel, fearing that "readers will learn about the vagaries of Apple RAM instead of how to fix base stations," writes: "Cliff posted a article by Peter Deweese detailing how his Apple Airport failed. Unfortunately, these failures are next to certain since the power supply inside the Base Station will fry two components by two different means. One is heat, the other the switching power supply. Apple Base Station owners are well aware of the heat issue (the underside can get hot enough to bubble off the sticker)and the two capacitors inside the base station are rated for 1,000 hours @ 105 deg C - about 50 days. The other mode of failure is the power supply itself which switches at a high frequency and subjects the capacitors to high current loads. I investigated my ABS when it failed, and discovered two fried capacitors. It is true that the ABS will run as a DHCP router, etc. when the power supply has failed as long as the WaveLAN card has been removed. The question is how long. I put together a online guide to repair Apple Base Stations as well as how to retrofit external antennas. Both can be found at [this URL]."

Of course, I still like playing Earthball. In reference to the recent quest for non-zero sum games, stuq writes: " 35-40 years ago Buckminster Fuller created the 'World Game' -- the mother of all non-zero sum games. World Game is now under the excellent stewardship of Medard Gable and his World Game Institute.

The original game was played on a version of Fuller's Dymaxion map of the earth that covered an entire gym floor. They now have a satellite imagery version of the map!

There are 100 players, each representing 1% of humanity. Players are assigned positions on the map in proportion to actual population density (which is an eye opener -- half of India had to stand in the ocean). Everyone is apportioned: energy, food, tech credits, etc. in a way that represents the actual distribution of those rescoures. Additional players around the edge of the map represent NGO's, Mother Nature, the world press, etc. The goal is to make the world work for everyone. Utter chaos ensues and the game play is totally exhilarating. The World Game Institute has taken the large version of the game to players around the world including many world leaders.

There is a net version of the game. Looks like these people haven't been clued in to open source, but I'd bet they would be interested."

Letters -- they're made out of letters! billn writes: "Long and short, member of a StarCraft clan was dealt a search warrant and is under investigation for 'tampering.' This is not a free speech suppression case. It's not a hate case. The followup is posted here. I did a lot of the research work myself, including a couple phone interviews. I'd just like to say, to all the people who flew off the handle without checking the facts first (including those of you who called Kent State to rant), LEARN TO READ.

For those who care, we'll be following the story to closure."

This after the recent story Cops Bust Starcraft Clan.

Have you got a license for this thing, sir? Olivier Lejade, CEO and co-founder of Nevrax wrote to say that he's posted a response to the recent mention of Nevrax's GPL-client/GPL-server game platform. More information is always good to have, thanks Olivier.