On the computer front...

Interesting news from the computer world:

• Wireless has surpassed wired. As of December 31, 2004 there were 181.1 million wireless subscribers in the U.S., as opposed to only 178 million wired ones, according to the FCC.
• Some have no wires at all. According to a recent Forester Research report, 5% of U.S. homes have no landline service and only use cellular phones.
• Bite a fingernail, lose your data. Researchers at the University of Tokushima's Department of Optical Science and Technology have managed to encode data onto a human fingernail, In the future they are aiming to do the same thing for skin and teeth. The researchers used a femtosecond laser to record about 5MB of data on an average fingernail. The data is not permanent, though - it only lasts about 6 months, or about the time it takes a fingernail to grow out completely.
• Gizmo is good. Gizmo is a VoIP (Voice-Over-IP) system that can be installed, including phone books, software, and call logs, onto a USB thumb drive. Company principals report that they run Gizmo on their laptops on Lufthansa flights that have 802.11 Internet connectivity and are able to make phone calls in-flight as they fly across the Atlantic!
• Prices have dropped a little in 10 years. In 1995 a Toshiba Sattelite Pro 400 was advertised with a 75-MHz Pentium CPU, 8MB or EDO RAM, a 770 MB HD, a 10.4-inch display, a 4X CD-ROM, and a lithium-ion battery that would last for over 2 hours! And what did this marvel of technology cost, you wonder? List price: $4,899!