Computer

WASHINGTON -- Tucked away in a squat, 1980s-era office park halfway between Washington and Baltimore, 200 digital detectives are scouring the hard drives, MP3 players and compact discs seized from terrorist hide-outs in search of links and clues to their next plans of attack. If there is a real-life version of the kind of technical wizardry that appears in popular TV shows like CSI and 24, the Defense Department's Cyber Crime Center in Linthicum might come closest to it -- though these cyber-sleuths are quick to say it's not nearly as easy as Hollywood makes it look to piece together files on a bomb-blasted hard drive.

ARMONK, N.Y. -- International Business Machines Corp., the world's biggest computer maker, said yesterday that first-quarter profit rose a better-than-expected 42 percent on revenue from its services business and increased computer sales.IBM earned $1.47 billion, or $1.55 a share, compared with $1.04 billion, or $1.06 a share, in the year-earlier period. The company was expected to earn $1.41 a share, the average estimate of analysts polled by First Call Corp. Revenue rose 15 percent to $20.32 billion, topping forecasts of about $19.2 billion.

Seventeen years ago I bought my first PC. It was a Radio Shack Color Computer with a whopping 16K of memory, no disk drive and no monitor (I hooked it up to an old TV).I paid $800 for the package -- including a tape recorder for storing programs and a 300-baud modem -- and I thought it was magic. Why? Because thanks to that computer, I could write a story at home and send it to my newspaper's computer system.If I had to cover a late meeting, I didn't have to drive to the newsroom to write my story and then drive home.

I got mail this week from a man who's shopping for a laptop computer and wants to know which one has the best pointing device.The answer is simple: none of them. They're all bad. In fact, the first guy who comes up with a really good replacement for the mouse will retire very young and very rich.There's a good reason for this. The mouse is very good at what it does. It works the way we do. We all know how to point at something and we all know how to push a button. That's exactly what a mouse does -- it translates natural movements into instructions that the computer can understand.

Axent Technologies Inc., a Rockville computer and information security company, said yesterday that it has acquired Internet Tools Inc. of Fremont, Calif., in a stock deal valued at $26.5 million.Axent bought Internet Tools to get a bigger share of the intrusion-detection market, which focuses on ways to detect and repel hackers and other computer users who enter systems without permission.Intrusion detection can protect either an individual computer or a whole network of computers.Axent's strength lay in intrusion-detection systems that protect individual computers, while Internet Tools specialized in technology that guards whole networks.

IT'S SUNDAY. ARE YOU ready for some football? Well, don't be dropping by our house because, in a role reversal that has heads spinning, the parents are forbidden to watch TV until homework is done.I'd worry if the same thing were not going on all over America, or at least in the home of our good friends the Smears. (We are always checking with the Smears to make sure what is happening in our house is normal, and they have never disappointed us.)Anyway, their daughter and our son, students in a high school European history class, have declared the family room off-limits while they type their way through centuries of war and famine at the computer.

Not many teen-agers can say they spent their summer designing a military tank.But 16 budding military engineers did just that in Harford County, using Army research techniques and Lockheed-Martin software to create a computer-generated, three-dimensional World War II tank.Call them techno-geeks if you want, but these high school students say they're learning valuable -- and potentially marketable -- computer skills at "Geometric Modeling Boot Camp.""My friends do make fun of me, but that's OK," said Alicesara Boriboon, 17, who will be a senior at Aberdeen High School.

Louise Chandler has been using typewriters since before they came with a "1" key. That was in 1960, when the new typewriters of the day featured an electric motor and all 10 digits.In those days, Chandler spent up to four hours a day in front of her typewriter. Today, if Chandler, a secretary in the Student Life office at the University of Texas at Dallas, works on the office's typewriter for more than 30 minutes, she's put it to heavy use."I'd say I use it from 20 to 30 minutes a day at peak use. It kind of depends on what I'm doing that day," she says.

Baltimoreans should prepare for Y2K as if a fierce snowstorm was coming our way. But don't be surprised if the forecasts are wrong.That was the message last night at a community forum on preparations for possible computer failure, civil unrest or other problems that might occur when 1999 fades into 2000 on New Year's Eve.Attended by about two dozen residents, the forum was chaired by officials of city, state and federal agencies who assured the public that...

With the arrival of a new year, it's a good time to catch up on the tasks you've been putting off.Maybe you won't really start working out regularly at the gym or get all that junk out of the garage. But at least you can clean up your personal computer.I don't mean high-tech cleaning, as in removing old and redundant files or defragmenting the hard disk into a more efficient organization. I mean old-fashioned dirt and grime.If you've owned your PC for any time at all, there is probably dust on the screen, and some fingerprints, too. There are probably smudges on the monitor case and around the disk-drive slots.

The suspended commander of the Baltimore Police Department's Southeastern District is being investigated for content on his office computer, police sources said. Police said Maj. Roger Bergeron was stripped of his gun and badge and sent home Sept. 30 with pay, but no reason was disclosed. Multiple sources say agency leaders heard rumblings that Bergeron spent significant time in his office rather than on the street, and decided to inspect his work computer. It was unclear what investigators found, but one source said the majority of Web sites he had visited were social networking sites.

I was complaining about moving files and pictures and stuff from my old computer to my new laptop - the electronic equivalent of your parents moving out of the family home and into a condo - when one of my friends offered this commiseration. "Yeah. It's like having two men and not being able to remember which one you did what with." That's me, I thought. The microprocessor version of HBO's Big Love. I have this fresh, young, streamlined laptop that can go like mad and restart in seconds.

Name: : Checkpoint Friendly Laptop Protector What it is: : A laptop carrying case made by Elk Grove Village, Ill.-based Travelon that allows air travelers to get their computers through security without taking the machines out of their carrying cases. How it works: : The case can be adjusted to fit your computer snugly. Once you have a good fit, wedge it in - add nothing else or security officers will make you take it out - and slip the computer in another carrying case, like a briefcase or a backpack.

Truckers, longshoremen and other workers waited for hours yesterday as they attempted to secure a federal identification card without which they cannot get to their jobs in the port of Baltimore. A top port official said the problem stemmed in part from a three-week computer outage that delayed issuance of the cards by a contractor for the U.S. Transportation Security Administration. Yesterday afternoon, more than 100 workers - many of whom said they had been cooling their heels since as early as 6 a.m. - crowded into the closed cafeteria of an office building in Southeast Baltimore waiting for news on when they might be allowed upstairs to pick up their federally required Transportation Workers Identification Credentials.

Thomas Morton is a lifelong fan of the New York Yankees. Unfortunately for Morton, he lives in Columbia, Howard County, so watching his boys in pinstripes on a regular basis was impossible unless they happened to be playing the Orioles. That's why last year, the 65-year-old ad agency art director signed up for Major League Baseball's MLB.TV, which enabled him to watch games online any time he wanted. "I liked it so much, I signed up for it again this season," he said. "But instead of a month-to-month package, I signed up for the full season for $119.

Never before had I even considered streaming music from the 48 advertising-free music channels on my cable TV box to a bedroom stereo system about 70 feet down the hall. But after installing Audioengine's AW1 Premium Wireless Audio Adapter, Buddy Guy's "My Time After Awhile" was coming through loud and clear on the bedroom stereo. "You don't need a computer to move audio - just power for the sender and receiver," says Brady Bargenquast, Audioengine's co-founder and director. "Some people seem to think that the only way you can use the AW1 is with a host computer."

A 21-year-old Crofton man pleaded guilty yesterday to possessing more than 600 images of child pornography on his home computer, according to the Maryland U.S. attorney's office. Prosecutors said that James Spencer Godboldte was arrested after an undercover law enforcement officer in Tampa, Fla., downloaded two images of child pornography from a computer address that belonged to the suspect June 30, 2006. Federal agents searched Godboldte's house in Anne Arundel County on Sept. 8, 2006, and said they found hundreds of images of children between 7 and 14 years old stored on his computer.

After writing close to a thousand of these weekly essays, I won't bury the lead on this one: It's my last column for The Sun. There. It was hard to say that out loud, and I spent two nights on a half-dozen elegant openings before I decided to get right to the point. Now I can talk about how much fun it's been, and how much I'll miss all of you. But first, I'll let you in on a secret: I've been faking it all these years. I am not a computer expert, or a nerd, or a techie by training or aptitude.

My computer is about two years old. I added 1 gigabyte of RAM so I would be able to play newer games on it. Normally, I use it all day for gaming, Web surfing and word processing. The internal fan is quiet after startup, but after some use it sometimes suddenly becomes loud. It may only stay loud for a few minutes or until the computer is powered down. - Keegan Nesbitt Many computers have fans that change speed based on the heat inside the computer. While it's possible something is wrong with your computer or fan, odds are things are operating just as they should.

If there's a recent grad in your house, or you're one of the many buyers who think they can get a better deal at midyear than during the holidays, chances are good that you're looking for a computer. And your chances of finding a good one for a reasonable price are good indeed. In fact, you'd have to work pretty hard to find a bad one. For that we can thank Moore's Law - which should more accurately be called Moore's Bubble. Gordon Moore, the co-founder of Intel, predicted decades ago that the number of transistors that engineers could cram onto a wafer of silicon would double every 18 months for the foreseeable future.