email better than dope?

A British study commissioned by Hewlett Packard found that a nonstop barrage of email can cause a greater loss of IQ than smoking a small amount of marijuana. Workers who constantly break away from tasks to react to incoming emails and phone messages suffer an average loss of 10 IQ points, the equivalent of missing a whole night's sleep and more than double the 4- point drop from marijuana.

Apple turns 30

Apple Computer Inc. turned 30 on April Fool's Day.

It was three decades ago when a pair of prank-loving college dropouts, who also shared an interest in electronics, created computer circuit boards in a Cupertino garage, named the product Apple I and sold it to a local computer store.

free (and legal) music and videos

iMesh recently launched a new service that enables users to share about 15 million free songs and videos with P2P file sharing that is 100 percent legal. More than 2 million are original, high-quality songs licensed from the record labels. iMesh is able to do this because of an agreement it signed with digital music distributor MusicNet to supply it with songs. MusicNet’s collection includes inventory from Virgin, HMV, Yahoo! and AOL.

CD-R burnout

Popular CD-R and CD-RW discs used to 'burn' digital photographs, videos and songs for the long haul seem to have a crucial shortcoming, says an IBM information storage expert. The discs, unlike pressed compact discs used for professionally produced music and video recordings, typically last only two to five years.

-- from AARP Bulletin, March 2006

Digital Dave responds.