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Tech News
By Sue Crane, Vice President & Editor, Big Bear Computer Club, CA
sue.crane@charter.net

Nothing is Ever Really FREE
Linus Torvalds, creator of the Linux OS, has begun protecting his trademark for the term Linux.  He’s doing so to protect users from unauthorized and confusing use of the name.  Torvalds first trademarked Linux several years ago but has rarely defended its use.  The licensing fees for Linux are modest.  LMI is charging $200 to $5000 for each license; most sublicensees end up paying $200 to $500.  Most Linux companies have enthusiastically agreed to the licensing terms.

AMD Asks Intel for a duel
Major US newspapers in September showed an AMD processor standing in a boxing ring waiting for Intel to appear for a duel later this year so consumers can see who has the best dual core processor.  Dual-core chips have two processor cores on a single piece of silicon, boosting performance and reducing power consumption compared to two single-core processors.  AMD released its first dual-core Opteron processors earlier this year.  Intel said that it will release its first dual-core server chips later this year, ahead of its original schedule.  But regarding the duel, Intel was not available for comment.

PC Has Water-cooled Radiator
NEC took the wraps off its Valuestar G Type C, a new desktop PC that has a radiator embedded in the water cooler unit built into the back of the chassis.  The company said the added refrigeration will let consumers overwork the included Intel Celeron processor but keep the PC running at 30 decibels, which is whisper voice.  PC noise is increasingly a concern as more powerful computers require stronger and often louder cooling systems.

New IE 7.0 is for Windows Only!
Sources at Microsoft have announced that IE 7.0 will henceforth be referred to as Windows IE 7.0, highlighting the fact that the browser is integrated with Windows and isn’t a standalone product.  According to a source at Microsoft, the change signifies that IE will no longer be available for other platforms.  Users should simply consider IE 7.0 to be part of Windows.

No More Textbooks?
Students at Empire High School in Vail, AZ started class this year with no textbooks.  Instead, the school issued laptop computers to each of its 340 students, becoming one of the first U.S. public schools to turn away from printed textbooks.  Empire High, which opened for the first time this year, was designed specifically to have a textbook-free environment.

TMPs Make E-Commerce Safer
Trusted Platform Modules, if you’ve never heard of them, are chips that store cryptographic information needed to unlock hard drives, authenticate network log-ons and perform similar tasks. What is exciting about TPMs is their role in electronic transactions because they make sure the money and the product get to their proper destinations, via “anonymous certificates.”  Hacking such a certificate would not give criminals access to personal information such as credit card numbers, since the transaction is done on your side of the network, not on the server-side.

eBay Rethinks Recycling
Faster, more advanced computers, cell phones and electronics offer endless possibilities for enrichment, learning and entertainment.  But as consumers and businesses keep pace with the introduction of exciting new products, we are faced with a mounting challenge:  what to do with the products we’re upgrading from.  The Rethink Initiative brings together industry, government and environmental organizations to offer a fresh perspective and new answers to the challenge of e-waste.  On their website you can find information, tools and solutions that make it easy – and even profitable – to find new users for idle computers and electronics, and responsibly recycle unwanted products.  http://rethink.ebay.com/ 

There is no restriction against any non-profit group using this article as long as it is kept in context with proper credit given the author.  The Editorial Committee of the Association of Personal Computer User Groups (APCUG), an international organization of which this group is a member, brings this article to you.