EGWPATF will be extra short this week because of space considerations. In a wildly unexpected burst of enthusiasm, news staff, writers, and contributors have managed to fill up the news section with intelligent, timely, in-depth articles. Or something.

In other news, Microsoft’s operating systems are so insecure that they hire out therapists in bulk. Once more, America loses the solar car challenge, where geeks world-wide try to drop weight so their bicycle-wheeled photovoltaic carapaces can creep along the desert floor at a whopping 62 miles per hour. But, hey, it’s free. Rumor has it that the funding for America’s solar car got lost in the couch. MIT has fired up a student-run music sharing service that plays on the dorm cable service. And it’s free. They also steadfastly refuse to fork over the names of filesharers to the RIAA. If I were them, I’d be working on that forcefield and those photon torpedoes right quick-they have now flipped an incredibly intelligent birdie and any number of vast international corporations will shortly deploy their armies of soldiers. You think I’m making this up? No.

The true power of Linux operating systems has been revealed. Mandrake 9.2 will destroy a certain brand of CD when you try to burn their software into it. How much longer before it develops god-like omniscience and stalks the earth, blowing stuff up?

A note on the passing of Rusty Simonds. He was a geek plenipotentiary with a mind of light and a kind soul that never failed to impress the most hardened cynic. His courses in Media and Communications impressed me so much that I became a devoted fan. It was his hands-on understanding of everything that he spoke about that made him an extraordinary teacher. From his own server to his students to his course material, he never spoke without full understanding and delighted in passing his knowledge along. I never met a man more pleased to say, “I don’t know-let’s find out” and I count him, as so many do, as one of the best. Godspeed.