If, like me, you're a gadget fanatic and you would like to help someone out while scoring an interesting toy in the process, I may have just the answer for you.

The "One Laptop Per Child" project was started around 2002 by an MIT professor who saw in his travels how much a simple laptop computer could help the education of children in developing countries.  He founded the OLPC project as a way to develop and build a very low-cost laptop PC that could be used to educate children in developinig nations.

The resulting laptop computer is called the "XO" and is priiced at approximately $199.  Right now, if you buy a laptop for a child in a developing nation, the OLPC project will let you buy one for yourself.  The total amount out of your pocket will be around $425, of which you may be able to claim $199 as a charitable deduction on your U.S. Income Tax.  (See your tax advisor or lawyer, naturally.)

The option to give a laptop is of course going on for the forseeable future, but the option to get one for yourself or someone you care about is only open until November 26, 2007.

Because I run a game news site, I use Google Alerts to scan the Internet for gaming news and deliver me a list of potential articles by email each day.  Today's list of potential material included the following listing (modified slightly to fit this site's format) about a new Nintendo Wii (pronounced "wee") game that cracked me up.  When I read Google's excerpt from the article, it just got funnier:

Just what do you do in this Nintendo game?

If you don't get the joke, read this site's entry for the word "wee" (which sounds like Wii).

Then consider the site's definition for "whack off".

Then put the two things together...

Then read the article excerpt for an added laugh, talking about allowing the player to have an artificial sensation based on arm and hand movement...

The laptop experiment continues.

I realize that earlier I didn't explain why this laptop is going to be running Linux. I looked for a system capable of running Mac OS X 10.3 and there weren't any on eBay, even some that needed work, in the under-$100 range I was aiming for. Otherwise, I would have considered picking up a Mac so that I could continue to find Mac-related topics to write about here, since I'm doing less Mac work at the office now. (However, if you have such a laptop lying around that you'd like to give me, by all means feel free to so. My email address appears in the "Contact" section on this site. Let me know you want to send me a Mac laptop and I'll give you the address to send it to. If it's one of the Intel models, I'll even refund your shipping via PayPal.)

I could have considered running the "Hackintosh" (i.e., hacked OS X) environment on a non-Apple laptop, but that would have meant not only breaking the law (which I wasn't about to do) but also acquiring a system with at least a Pentium 4 CPU (to have SSE2 and/or SSE3 instruction sets needed by OS X). The only laptops in that performance range on eBay when I looked were well outside my $100 budget constraint.

In fact, the only laptops within my budget constraint were Pentium III and below. In the Pentium III category I found several in my price range, including the one I eventually purchased. It had 128MB of RAM, a 10GB hard drive, no battery, no CD-ROM or DVD drive, no AC adapter, no carrying case, and no operating system or operating system sticker on the bottom. Fortunately, I had a couple of used batteries that were compatible in my basement from when I used to repair Dell laptops on the side. I also had a "universal" laptop power adapter that could power the unit. I even found a 64MB SODIMM to boost it to 192MB of RAM. I also had a PCMCIA wireless card I picked up a couple of years ago, made by Hawking. Amazingly, it all worked smoothly together and I was able to cobble together a dual-battery wireless system with only $46 out of pocket.

The only thing missing at this point was an OS. I think I still had a Windows 98 license around somewhere, but I didn't have a legal license to Windows 2000 or Windows XP, so I couldn't load those on the machine. Windows 98 is no longer supported by Microsoft and isn't such a great OS for random wireless browsing anyway. That left options like ReactOS (which is a Windows clone that isn't quite yet ready for primetime, but getting there), BeOS, Linux, and the like. Linux has the best hardware and software support of all those, so I opted for Linux. The next question was which Linux "distro" (distribution) to get. I already had CDs/DVDs for Red Hat Fedora Core, Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Linspire, Debian, Gentoo, and 1-2 others I'd made for past experiments around the house. I ended up trying several of them. Ubuntu would boot into Live CD mode file, but the CD-ROM drive just ground and ground on the copies I had. Eventually I gave up because I would click an install option and have to wait an hour to see the result. For whatever reason (and I admit that it makes little or no sense to me), Kubuntu 6 worked and Ubuntu 7.04 didn't. So I chose Kubuntu because my copy of that distro's disk happened to be the one that worked.

Now that my eBay Special was up and running with the latest Kubuntu release, I was ready to start actually trying to use it. I was able to connect it to a nearby WiFi network successfully after loading it with Kubuntu, a Ubuntu Linux variant. While connected to the WiFi network, I upgraded it to the latest Kubuntu release (7.04 - though a newer one is about to come out) using instructions I found online. At that point, I was ready to begin loading it with applications, and I have to tell you it was easier than than either OS X or Windows would have been... by far!

To get the apps I knew I wanted loaded on the machine, I launched the Adept Installer, selected those applications from a list, and clicked "Apply Updates". Kubuntu obediently downloaded the applications and their dependencies, and installed them for me, all from that single click. Within minutes, I had FireFox, Scribus, Inkscape, and all the other applications I planned to use on the machine running for me. It was very slick and very impressive. And the apps all seem to work.

I loaded FireFox with some of my favorite extensions, including NoScript, AdBlock, Extended Copy Menu, DownThemAll and a few others. I populated it with bookmarks to all my sites (like this one) and some of my personal favorites like woot.com.

To make it completely usable for all my web work, however, I would need to find a Linux replacement for a tool I use to monitor game manufacturers' web sites for my game news site, gamerhotsheet.com. The tool I had been using up to this point was written for Windows using one of the Microsoft visual development tools, so it would not run as such on Linux (at least without WINE, which I would consider if I couldn't find a good alternative).

I've also decided that the 128MB of memory (plus another 64MB SODIMM I had lying around) wasn't going to be enough to keep this system running at peak efficiency. In fact, it seemed to be a bit sluggish already. I found some 256MB SODIMMs on eBay going at below $20 each and bid on those. If I get them, I'll be able to max the system at 512MB. That should help performance.

I've also decided that since this machine might be banging around in the car a lot, it might be good to ruggedize the data storage. Toward that end, I found a CompactFlash to 2.5" IDE adapter online and bought one. I'm hoping later to pick up a good-sized, fast CF card to place in it, then replace the old internal IDE drive with the adapter and CF card. That should minimize the potential for shock damage, at least to the data. To protect the screen, I ought to be able to find a decent-sized sleeve to put it in when I'm not using it, maybe something made out of thick neoprene.

To this point, I've spent $46 for the laptop, including shipping. If I can get the SODIMMs cheaply, I should be able to go to 512MB for $40-50, keeping inside my $100 budget. However, to implement the CF-to-IDE idea, I'm going to have to go over budget. The adapter was only $16. The CF card, though, could be a lot more - especially if I choose something like a 16GB Ultra III, which is perhaps the right thing to do. First, I want to test the adapter with one of my existing CF cards to see what the speed is like. If the adapter with an Ultra II flash card performs reasonably well, then it's worth investing in the bigger card. If it is too slow to be usable, then I can abandon the adapter and look at other options (like a decent backup or a spare drive).

I should point out that I am still waiting for word back from Dell on the master BIOS password to the unit so that I can fix some of the errant settings in the machine, such as date/time information and boot order.

Earlier this year, in my work as a system administrator, I was assigned to investigate why approximately 40 co-workers (out of 1700 using a PC or Mac) were having USB optical mouse issues. The symptoms were generally the same. While using the computer, the user's USB optical mouse would simply stop working. If they flipped the mouse over, it was as though the mouse was powered off. The laser would appear to have shut off. If they unplugged and re-plugged the mouse, it would nearly always come back to life. Only once in a while was it necessary to reboot the machine. Once in a great while, the USB keyboard would stop working as well. Again, unplugging and re-plugging seemed to fix it.

When I went through my first round of problems early in the year, a lengthy investigation proved that all of my 40 cases could be solved by performing the following steps:

1. Update the system BIOS from the manufacturer's web site. Sometimes this corrected the issue and no more work was needed.
2. Update the motherboard chipset drivers from the manufacturer's web site. Sometimes this corrected the issue and no more work was needed.
3. Update the mouse drivers from the mouse manufacturer's web site. Again, sometimes this corrected the issue and no more work was needed.
4. Replace the mouse with another mouse from stock.
5. Replace the keyboard with another keyboard from stock.
6. Install a self-powered USB hub between the computer and the mouse/keyboard.

The above 6 remedies seemed to take care of all 40 users.

Then, about 3 weeks ago, the problem reared its ugly head again. This time, the above 6 steps didn't work. People who were run through all 6 of them still had the problem. Our help desk bumped the problem back to me to resolve, since I'd handled the one earlier in the year.

This time I went through a pretty thorough search on the web, Microsoft's knowledgebase, Dell's knowledgebase, etc. What I learned was interesting. When I searched for mouse failures as a whole, probably 99% of the time it was an optical mouse that failed. Moreover, it was almost always a USB optical mouse that failed. This was true on Mac OS X, Linux, Windows, and one or two other lesser-known operating systems. The brand of mouse didn't seem to matter, either. I read about the problem existing with every major brand and even some generic types. It made me wonder about the reliability of USB optical mice.

As a troubleshooting step, I suggested that we identify 1-2 of our users who were having the most "mouse failures". We swapped them with some new mechanical (i.e., old "ball style") mice from stock. The problems vanished for those users. As a follow-up step, I attacked the users' former optical mice to my system. Sure enough, I began seeing the problem myself.

An interesting observation occurred when we had one user who wanted to attach both an older mechanical mouse and an optical mouse to his Windows XP Pro system at the same time. He found that his optical mouse would fail, while the mechanical one kept working normally. (And again, when I swapped his optical mouse for mine, I began to see the problem myself.)

Another interesting observation was made after we installed Microsoft Windows XP Hotfix 914015 and 918365 on the affected systems. Occasionally the mouse would stop working as before, but within a couple of seconds it tended to come back to life on its own without any effort. (Please do not ask me for these hotfixes. If Microsoft won't provide them to you, I can't help as it would be illegal to do so.)

So it appears to me at the moment that we may have two separate issues here. The first issue is that there is a bug in the Windows XP Pro USB stack that causes a mouse to go offline if it asks to have the USB controller reset due to an error. The Microsoft hotfix takes care of that. The other issue is that we seem to have quite a few defective USB mice on-hand. In fact, I pulled one randomly out of stock and tested it, and it turned out to be defective. I confirmed this by attaching it to a Mac OS X system (in addition to a Windows XP system) and finding the same result, the mouse quit working.

I have a suspicion that the reliability of USB optical mice is not as high as we all might think. Just gauging from the numbers I'm seeing at our site, as many as 3% of the optical mice in use are in fact defective. Whether this is just the failure rate we should expect or whether it's symptomatic of a widespread defect in USB optical mice, I don't know.

In any case, it's caused me to add a few items to the above list of 6 steps:

7. Apply Microsoft Hotfix 914015 (if it's a Windows XP system).
8. Apply Microsoft Hotfix 918365 (if it's a Windows XP system).
9. Test the user's mouse on a system that isn't currently experiencing the mouse issue and give the user a mouse that hasn't been shown so far to have the problem.
10. Swap the optical mouse with a mechanical (roller ball type) mouse.
11. If the system and mouse support it, try installing the mouse on a PS/2 port instead of USB. We didn't see these issues with PS/2 mice on any platform.

Those steps, so far, seem to eliminate the problem in all cases. Perhaps they'll help you if you're experiencing a problem with your USB mouse.

Consider this a "cautionary tale" about rental cars... Names are being altered to protect the innocent and not-so-innocent...

Earlier this year, my wife and I rented a mini-van from an outfit we'll call "Nifty Rent-A-Car" (though that's not their name). We picked up the vehicle at a nearby Nifty rental office and headed off for a vacation. The next day, at our destination, we were rear-ended by a young driver. He was going so fast in the 35 mph zone that he knocked our stopped mini-van into the vehicle in front of us, knocking that vehicle into the car in front of it, and spinning his own vehicle two lanes over and in front of the three others. In other words, it's unlikely he was going anywhere near 35 when he hit us.

The damage to the back of our rental van and his vehicle was extensive. The rental van and the two other cards were drivable. His car had to be towed. We were all shaken, but fortunately there appear to have been no serious injuries... at least nothing that has shown up yet.

After getting the police report, having breakfast, and going back to our rented condo, we called the rental car company to tell them about the accident, provide police report information, etc. We also contacted my insurance company to have their involvement. The insurance company, which I'll call "Commonwealth Ranch" (though that's not their name), treated me extremely well. They spoke with me at length about the accident, explained what I needed to do at each step of the process, etc. I have always been pleased with that insurance company and this didn't change that.

Nifty Rent-A-Car wasn't quite so easy to deal with. We left messages, called various numbers, and asked to have the car swapped with another since the tailgate in this one was no longer usable. After several very frustrating calls, we were given two options. One was to continue driving the van, but if Nifty's people spotted it and decided that it was in their opinion "disabled" they would tow it away and we wouldn't have one. The other was to drive 3-4 hours away to their nearest location and exchange it. Since I was on vacation, the last thing I wanted was 6-8 hours in the damaged van doing nothing else, after having had an 10 hour drive to get to the vacation destination. So I opted for option one and made the mental note never to rent from Nifty ever again.

The next day, someone else at Nifty got one of the messages we left on their voicemail. This person must have been having a better day. He not only volunteered to replace the car, but offered to send someone to us to pick up the damaged one. It was a total 180-degree turnaround from the earlier frustrating calls. (Can you say bi-polar company?) The driver showed up when he promised he would, with a van that was comparable to the one we had originally, though not in quite as good a shape. But hey, it was an improvement and it wasn't wrecked, so that was fine with me. We swapped vehicles, I filled out some paperwork, and we finished our vacation.

When we returned home, we received a call from Countrywide Insurance (not their name) saying that they were accepting fault for the accident and would cover the costs of the claim. "Good," I thought, "that will be the end of that."

It wasn't. Last week I received a letter from Nifty, telling me that the insurance companies had paid all they were planning to pay and that I still owed them $5200+ for repairs to their vehicle. If I "agreed" all I needed to do was give them a credit card number or check. That didn't sit well with me. It didn't sound right.

I called Commonwealth Ranch (my insurance company) and checked in with my claim adjuster there. She looked up the records and said that the insurance companies were disputing Nifty's claim that $4800 worth of damage was done to the van. She told me that they're aware that car rental companies negotiate repair parts and labor discounts with body shops, and that while it might have cost you or me $4800 to repair the damage done to the van, Nifty probably paid a bit less. She said they'd asked Nifty to provide an invoice showing the "actual" amount of damages to the vehicle, but Nifty had not provided one, so they naturally had no paid.

She also told me that some car rental companies, and apparently Nifty was one of them, would try to get the customer to pay money if they didn't like how fast the insurance companies were or weren't moving. Essentially, if I had paid the $5200 Nifty was asking for, I was paying for the repair, their "loss of use" of the rental car, and various other fees, which were the responsibility of Countrywide Insurance. Countrywide had by no means told Nifty they wouldn't pay what they owed them, they just wanted proof that Nifty had paid that much to fix the car. As soon as they provided that proof, they'd get their money. So the request they sent to me was essentially an attempt to scare me into paying for the damage in lieu of the person who caused the accident and their insurance company.

Uh, no, Nifty... I wasn't at fault for the accident, my insurance isn't finished with you, and the driver who was at fault has insurance which hasn't paid you yet. When you've gotten what you can from the insurance companies and the other driver, we'll talk about what I might owe you - but I think that will be a big fat zero.

It should come as no secret or surprise to you that the Chinese are not known for having great respect for intellectual property laws. For years, they've flooded the world with bootleg music CDs, video games, DVDs, etc. They've also cloned popular pieces of high-tech gadgetry, such as the iPod. Korea and Japan were known for doing the same thing in prior decades. However, Korea and Japan were chased down by American (and other) intellectual property attorneys and eventually stopped (or at least radically decreasde) their efforts to pirate high tech inventions. In fact, they soon developed the expertise to develop and improve on those inventions, doing our own inventors one better in many cases.

There is a great deal of effort being poured into stopping the flood of illegal Chinese copies into the rest of the world. That pressure will inevitably give the pirates pause, and cause them to consider producing truly innovative goods as the Japanese and Koreans did before them. With China's abundant human and natural resources, they'll have the ability to crank out their goods more cheaply and in more quantity than perhaps any nation on Earth.

That's what I mean when I say that American industry could be shooting itself in the foot. By chasing down the Chinese outfits that are reverse engineering and cloning products like the Apple iPod and iPhone, they are in fact pushing the Chinese to develop their own technological expertise and design know-how. There is evidence, in fact, that this may already be happening.

Consider the Meizu miniOne, a phone patterned after the Apple iPhone. It's not a knock-off, per se. It doesn't run OS X, but Linux (or Windows CE according to some reports). It doesn't pretend to be an Apple product. Its specifications are impressive. The screen is 3.32 inches versus Apple's 3.5. Its resolution is 720x480 (standard DVD resolution) versus Apple's 320x480 (VHS resolution). The miniOne will be offered in 4, 8, and 16GB sizes. It will feature a 3 megapixel camera versus Apple's 2 megapixel camera. It will be the same thickness as the iPhone, but shorter and narrower. It doesn't use the potentially problematic MultiTouch display but a standard touchscreen.

Why is the miniOne significant? Consider several key points about it. First, it isn't just a feature-by-feature clone of Apple's iPhone. It's actually a different technology, utilizing design concepts inspired by the iPhone. But it also goes the iPhone one better. It will include a user-removable battery and a variety of functions the iPhone doesn't offer, such as the ability to work on any wireless carrier's network. Since I haven't gotten to play with an iPhone or a miniOne, I can't offer more of a comparison than the links I've provided above, but I can tell you that given the choice between a miniOne and an iPhone, I'd rather have the miniOne hands down. Regardless of whether it's based on Linux or Windows Mobile, I'll have much better odds finding and installing any apps I want on the miniOne.

If the Chinese can continue to innovate in this way, they won't need to be "cloning" our products in the near future. We'll want them because they're actually better...

A couple of months back, Woot.com offered the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet for around $135. I was looking for a portable device that would allow me to browse the Internet via WiFi networks, check my email, etc. It seemed to be a perfect fit. This device was definitely pocket-sized, ran a "real" OS (Linux), offered a true web browser, and a decent-sized display.

I received the tablet a few days later and was quite impressed. It took me maybe 5 minutes to get used to the user interface, and another 15 or so to have it visiting my favorite web sites, checking my email, etc., over my WPA-based connection at home. Because it's a Linux-based device, there are plenty of third parties willing to create software for it and port existing tools over to it, so I found several useful software gadgets within a few hours and had them all installed and running.

My only real complaints with the device were that the on-screen keyboard was a pain to work with using the stylus, and that it seemed a bit slow if several things were running. Battery life was pretty good, the display was bright and clear, and it generally did everything I needed it to otherwise.

Unfortunately, after handing it to my brother to use for a while back in July, something went haywire with the display and it became unreadable. I need to send it back to Nokia for repair but I've not done it yet.

In the meantime, I've learned about the Nokia Internet Tablet N800 which is the next-generation version of the device I already had. The N800 seems to have resolved every problem I had with the 770 and improved on the features I liked.

Like the 770, the N800 is Linux-based. It connects to WiFi networks, or cell phone data networks via BlueTooth. It has an integrated webcam, a 4.1" touchscreen display, a full-screen keyboard (instead of the little mini-keyboard), and two memory card slots for expansion via SD/MMC/miniSD/microSD. The display resolution is 800x480x65k colors.

I placed my order for the N800 today from Amazon.com, and should have it within 48 hours. I hope to write a full review after it arrives and I've had some time to fiddle around with it.

(Note: This article contains medical and other information which should be taken for illustrative purposes only. You should always seek the advice of a competent medical professional if you suspect you have any sort of illness.)

I was diagnosed with sleep apnea several years ago. Sleep apnea, for those of you unfamiliar with it, is a condition where your airways relax as you sleep and close off. When they close too much, you aren't getting enough oxygen into your body and you wake up, causing the airways to open back up. A person with sleep apnea will be pulled out of "restorative" sleep many times in a single hour. They wake up exhausted, go through their days tired, tend to be depressed, and have other problems like high blood pressure. It's not a great way to live.

I spent several nights having various readings taken of me sleeping at night, during the daytime, with a CPAP machine at various settings, etc. When it was all said and done, my neurologist prescribed a CPAP machine as a solution.

For those of you who don't know what a CPAP machine is, it's essentially a big air compressor that pushes air out at a specific level of pressure, into a tube which is connected to a face mask, which is connected to a harness of sorts, and is strapped to the patient's head while the patient sleeps. The theory behing the CPAP is that by pushing air through the person's airways at a continuous pressure as they sleep, you will keep their airways from closing shut while they sleep.

Some patients see the CPAP machine as a godsend. They feel better, wake up refreshed, and in general are thrilled with the device. As for me, it was not a godsend. I felt no better on the device than off. Worse, I couldn't sleep in positions I felt comfortable in because they would dislodge the face mask. When that happened, it blew air into my eyes, which made them burn and dry out. The mask itself, if not washed every day, made my face break out. Then there was the fact that you had to keep distilled water around for the device's humidifier, and wash the whole thing once a week. For me, these added troubles were more than whatever benefit I might have been getting from the device.

After around 3 solid months of faithfully using the device, keeping it on all night, etc., I felt no better. Not a bit. In fact, because I'd had to sleep in positions I wasn't comfortable in and deal with the mask, I now had backaches and facial acne that I didn't before. I asked my doctor if there wasn't some other solution. He referred me to an ENT (Ear, Nose, Throat) surgeon.

The surgeon felt I was a good candidate for surgery, and I was fortunate that my insurance covered it. I underwent the surgery and resulting pain, and for a while things were much better. That might have been the end of the story if I hadn't gained about 40 pounds and, it seems, negated the effect of the surgery. I was back to snoring and apnea again. They (my neurologist and general practitioner) wanted me back on the CPAP. I told them, quite honestly, that if the CPAP added 20 years to my life, the hassles it brought with it weren't worth the 20 years.

I've tried different masks, and in fact have on order an expensive mask that claims to be more tolerable than any other. We'll see about that. I'm not optimistic. (And no, in the meantime, I refuse to use the darned thing.)

I read earlier today that a group of researchers, concerned about how many people (like me) give up on the annoying CPAP device, is working on a different device. Unfortunately, it's more of the same. This one inserts a single tube into the patient's nose and uses airway pressure along with extra oxygen. They claim it will have better compliance than CPAP. Maybe.

To me, with an engineering mindset, CPAP and other air pressure machines are not fixing the problem, but the symptom. It's like solving a leaky tire by hooking up a battery powered air pump to the wheel. Sure, the tire's not going to go flat, but it's still a leaky tire. You're going to have to replace that battery, keep the pump maintained, etc. The oxygen machine is like adding a little fix-a-flat in with the air pump. Still, there's a hole in that tire that needs repaired.

What amazes me is that no one seems to be thinking of THIS solution... If you have a blocked artery or vein, doctors will insert a device called a "stent" into the artery to prop it open and allow blood to flow through. They don't insert miniature pumps to push more blood through the blocked area, or give you drugs to make your heart pump harder. They fix the blockage. Sleep apnea is essentially the same thing. It's an airway that becomes blocked.

Why not a surgical implant, or implants, which can be inserted into a patient's airways to make them stay open? No worries about patient compliance because the appliances are installed by a surgeon and don't come out. No issues (probably) with the patient (like me) gaining weight because the devices prop the airway open. The solution should be permanent (unlike a CPAP, that wears out eventually), fixes the problem (closing up of airways) rather than the symptom, and should have all the same health benefits. I confident that we have materials from which such supports could be made, which aren't rejected by the body and which are durable enough to last a lifetime (or at least a few decades). I'd jump at the chance to be in the trial group for such an appliance. I suspect many current and former CPAP users would, too.

What about it, medical researchers?