Computer

Maryland reserve sophomore outside linebacker Tim Fosque was arrested Wednesday night by campus police for allegedly stealing a computer, campus police said last night.Fosque, from Neptune, N.J., allegedly took the computer Sept. 22 from the Lee Building on campus with the help of a friend.He allegedly paid the friend $200 to help remove the computer from a desk. Fosque was charged with theft over $300 and breaking and entering.The computer in question was discovered at his home in Laurel during the execution of a search-and-seizure warrant, said Sgt. Paul Tess of the campus police.

QUESTION: I wish there was some way I could take the numbers from my desk calculator and send them directly into my computer. Have you heard of anything that would do this?ANSWER: Key Tronic Corp. has the Abacus keypad. Abacus even looks like a typical numeric keypad in that it offers most of the same functionality. These include directional arrow keys, Home, PgUp and PgDn keys. But it also sports a standard eight-digit calculator display, and it works without the computer turned on.As far as calculators go, Abacus is pretty straightforward.

Three men, one of them armed, robbed an Annapolis computer store and its employees Tuesday of an undisclosed amount of money and merchandise, county police said.Employees of Kockums Computer Systems of the 900 block of Bestgate Road told police that three men walked into the store shortly before 3 p.m. and one drew a small black handgun.The men ordered the employees into a back room and robbed them, took several computers and left in a car driven by a fourth man, police said.Police did not have descriptions of the men or the car.Pub Date: 2/13/97

Before you invest in reading software for your child, consider these points:* Try before you buy. Some stores have demonstration software set up, or check to see if the library or your child's school has a copy you can preview.* Look for reviews in magazines such as Consumer Reports for Kids, recommendations from teachers, tutors and other parents, and advice from the store's computer software experts.* Choose a level of difficulty appropriate to your child's age and ability.* Check specifications to be certain your computer can adequately handle the program's technical requirements.

As 1995 begins, the computer industry offers convincing evidence that nobody's perfect and everybody wants to be hip.Intel Corp. is belatedly spending $200 million on the first-ever consumer recall of a computer microprocessor, the Pentium chip. Meanwhile, Microsoft Corp. merits a procrastinator award for a second delay (until August) of its much-publicized Windows 95 software program. It claims there are no real problems and the delay wasn't prompted by the Intel debacle.Television commercials for some straight-laced computer companies lately have become more desperately "Generation X" in nature than ads for blue jeans or corn chips.

Aboard Snow Goose during the RP Sail for Sight regatta in the harbor Friday afternoon, two sail trimmers were blind. Yet, in each there was great vision.You may remember one of them, Jim Dickson, who set out to sail the Atlantic Ocean alone a couple of years ago, and faced with autopilot problems and the threat of hurricane Arlene, made for Bermuda.Next year, Dickson has plans to sail alone from Newport, R.I., to Barcelona in time for the opening of the Olympic Games.The other, Dave Stoffel, has plans for a two-year circumnavigation with his wife, Doris.

A 50-year-old Silver Spring man has been charged with using his computer to transmit sexually explicit pictures of children, the latest in a series of arrests by federal agents posing as minors in on-line services.Michael Bruce Sassani, who lists his employment as a free-lance photographer, was arrested Wednesday while vacationing at Walt Disney World in Orlando, Fla., federal prosecutors said. He is charged with five counts of receiving and distributing visual depictions of minors in sexually explicit conduct.

"Computer One," by Warwick Collins. Marcia Boyars Publishers. 272 pages. $24.95.Boy, do computers ever give Warwick Collins the willies. "Computer One" is a novel he wrote and published in his native England a few years ago; in a new introduction to this first American edition of the book, he writes: "If we do not address the question of the threat posed by [computers'] artificial intelligence ... the human race will not survive another fifty years." Why? Because, asserts Collins, "within forty years, fTC computers will control factories that make other computers" and they'll, they'll - well, they'll band together and take over the whole bleeding world, seems to be the gist of it.Collins, a novelist who has written a trilogy about sailing, a Victorian romance called "The Rationalist" (1993)

Spurred by rising reports of family violence, the Anne Arundel Department of Social Services has developed an innovative computer system to better track child abuse cases.The department is the first in Maryland to use computer technology to record and retrieve reports ofchild abuse, which have doubled in the last decade.Instead of spending hours filling out lengthy forms by hand, county social workers can log on to the computer to file a report, find afoster home or check whether a family has a history of violence.

* Second of two parts on home computers.The immense drop in the price of personal computers means that you now can get more computer for less money than ever before.But the decline in computer prices can lead to confusion. If you are a newcomer to computer science, you need to sort it out.A couple of years ago, most people couldn't afford (nor had they any real reason to buy) much more than a compatible equivalent of the IBM personal computer. Such machines, devoid of bells and whistles, commonly were called "plain vanilla clones."