networthworkout.com

Lower power consumption is also a plus. Enterprises solid-state drives consume less than 25 percent of the power of a 15K hard-disk drive, according to data provided by Samsung in October.

In a statement earlier this month, Wozniak invoked the potential for “innovation and radical transformation” and said, more prosaically, “Fusion-io’s technology is extremely useful to many different applications and almost all of the world’s servers.”

So how will Fusion-io’s solid-state drives change all of this? “We have the ability to put five and soon 10 terabytes within a standard 4U server,” he said. (”U” is the term used for rack unit in a server, equivalent to 1.75 inches, or 4.45 centimeters.) “In the near future we will be announcing a card which holds two of our I/O memory modules, therefore doubling the capacity but also the performance per slot,” Flynn explained.

What does Steve Wozniak know about solid-state drives that we don’t? David Flynn, the chief technology officer of SSD start-up Fusion-io, provides some insight into why the Apple co-founder is joining the company as chief scientist.

“We intend to greatly simplify things that have been a bastion of proprietary, high-margin, vertically integrated (storage) companies,” Flynn said.

Performance and low power consumption, however, aren’t enough,wholesale jewelry, according to Flynn. Because enterprise solid-state drives are a relatively new technology, reliability is crucial. Fusion-io offers a technology called “Flashback” protection–extra chips that can jump in to take over immediately if there is a failure. “This is at the chip level. It’s not wear-out that’s the problem, it’s chips that short out” because of the high voltages,LONGINES Watches, Flynn said.

Fusion-io’s technology is pegged to IOPS (input/output operations per second). And companies such as Citibank and American Express are increasingly looking at server performance through the IOPS lens, according to Samsung, which makes both hard-disk drives and solid-state drives. Enterprise SSDs process 100 times the number of IOPS per watt as a typical 15K 2.5-inch server hard disk drive, according to Samsung data.

A key role for Steve Wozniak at Fusion-io, says CTO David Flynn, is ‘not just the visionary part, but involving him in the public eye.’

Here are some more specifics Flynn offered. Currently, Fusion-io can achieve just shy of 1 terabyte of storage by using three 320GB cards. “We’re doubling density per module and doubling the number of modules per card so we’re going to have 1.3TB on a single PCI Express card,” he said.

“SSDs are only the tip of the iceberg,” said Flynn. “How silicon will change storage infrastructure…It’s a huge thing around messaging and how a disruptive technology will impact all of this.”

(Credit:
Stephen Shankland/CNET News)

I talked with Flynn on the phone about what the Salt Lake City start-up, founded in 2006, does and what attracted Wozniak.

“The storage accelerator (that Fusion-io sells) is ultimately going to liberate the proprietary storage market,” according to Flynn. And Fusion-io is not just whistling Dixie–it has some big backers. Dell was an early investor, and Hewlett-Packard–though not an investor–plans to deploy Fusion-io’s drives across its server line, Flynn said. (An announcement that updates the HP deal is coming later this spring.) IBM has also certified the drives for use in its servers.

Enterprise solid-state drives typically offer much better performance than even the fastest hard-disk drives. Fusion-io claims that its IoDrive improves storage performance by as much as 1,000 times over traditional disk arrays while operating at a fraction of the power and at a tenth of the total cost of ownership.

Flynn offered an analogy to describe what his company hopes to achieve. “The 3D accelerator decimated the vertically integrated companies like SGI, Evans, and Sutherland,” he said. “They used to be able to charge hundreds of thousands of dollars for workstations.” But inexpensive, off-the-shelf 3D graphics cards from companies like 3dfx, Nvidia, and ATI Technologies in the late 1990s changed all of this, Flynn said.

And what will Wozniak do? “Not just the visionary part, but involving him in the public eye,” Flynn said. “He is (also) helping us change the architecture and focus of our technology.”

“We’ll be able to address 90 percent of the databases with a single drop-in card. Most databases are less than 1TB in size,” he said.

“We are not replacing a 15K-rpm disk drive,” Flynn said. (Hard-disk drives spinning at 15,OMEGA Watches,000 revolutions per minute are the highest-performance disk drives used in enterprise servers.) “We are miniaturizing an entire (storage area network) of multiple drives by making it out of silicon. While a 15K-rpm drive may cost $2 to $3 per gigabyte, a high-performance SAN costs $50 per gigabyte and up–built from those same HDDs, mind you,” he said. “Our ioDrives are made up of chips that cost only $2 to $4 per gigabyte, but when we integrate them into a miniaturized silicon SAN, we charge $30 per gigabyte.”

Flynn continued: “What we’re finding is that putting an entire database on silicon has enough benefit, that you don’t have to futz around with putting some of it on mechanical disk, some of it on silicon.” The company is telling potential buyers to think in terms of $30 per gigabyte.

One TechCrunch commenter noted, “Good for them, but Diggers will complain either way,” referring to the site’s active and opinionated crowd of regular users. “There’s no pleasing them.”

If every blog rumor were to be believed, social news site Digg would have been bought a dozen times over by now, so take the latest one with the requisite grain of salt.

As for the media companies, no specifics are given, but keep in mind that Digg has deals with several traditional media companies’ online arms, like CBS and News Corp.

In an interview several weeks ago, Digg founder Kevin Rose told CNET News.com that he thought selling the company to a big buyer could get in the way of running it efficiently.

TechCrunch reported early on Friday that four companies are in the running to place bids on Digg–Microsoft, Google, and two unidentified “media companies”–and that a sale may happen soon. It’ll likely be less than the $300 million that Digg was once rumored to go for; TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington cited sources who said that Google is prepared to bid $200 million to $225 million and that Microsoft, which currently serves ads on Digg, is aiming slightly lower. That’s a good bit less than the $300 valuation that was floating around when Digg reportedly hired investment bank Allen & Co. to shop it around.

"ProdigyX" has mad drumming skills.

Paz–a 22 year-old pro gamer from the Bronx who already owns four other world gaming records and took second place in SciFi Channel’s Ultimate Gamer show–played his ion drums for over six consecutive hours, earning more than 10.5 million points. The achievement will be chronicled in the Guinness World Records 2010 Gamer’s Edition.

The WCG 2009 grand final will be held November 11th to 15th in Chengdu, China.

He accomplished his feat at the Samsung Experience during the 2009 U.S. Invitational, part of the World Cyber Games.

I suggested she tell her brother about it, and she refused, saying that she didn’t want to lose him forever to the virtual world. Money aside, if I’d told her just how much fame he could amass as a pro gamer, maybe she would have had a different reaction.

A few weeks ago, a colleague of mine, worried that her little brother played too many video games, asked if there was a way to make money while gaming. When I told her about e-sports, she returned quite the guffaw at the concept.

In addition to Rock Band 2, gamers competed in several other popular games at the two-day event, including, Virtua Fighter 5, Starcraft: Brood War, Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne, Gears of War 2, Hero: World Tour, FIFA? 09, and CounterStrike 1.6.

(Credit:
WCG Ultimate Gamer)

To wit, at a worldwide gaming tournament in New York Saturday, Robert “ProdigyX” Paz set the official Guinness world record for “Highest Aggregate Score in all 84 Songs of Rock Band 2.”

This started out as a rumor today, but Intel has since more-or-less confirmed that licensing discussions between Intel and Nvidia for Intel’s next-generation processors are not going well and the resulting conflict could have implications for high-end gaming PCs.

In light of this rumor, Nvidia’s recent marketing push encouraging upgraders to pick a graphics card before a quad-core CPU takes on new significance. If Nvidia knows high-end PC gamers will have to make a choice later this year, better to plant the seeds in its favor early. Intel probably has less to worry about, because gamers who demand SLI with a fast Intel processor can still use Nvidia’s NForce 790i chipset, which supports the current generation of Intel Core 2 Extreme chips.

The story is that Intel and Nvidia are currently negotiating technology licenses for Nehalem, Intel’s next-generation desktop CPU due out at the end of this year. As we were told from multiple desktop vendors who wish to remain nameless, Intel wants to license SLI from Nvidia for its Nehalem chipsets, and if Nvidia won’t, Intel will withhold the license that would enable Nvidia to support Nehalem’s memory controller, and thus Nehalem, on its own chipsets.

Staff writer Tom Krazit contributed to this report.

UPDATE 5:48pm PT - Intel released an additional statement after this blog was posted. “We are not seeking any SLI concession from Nvidia in exchange for granting any Nehalem license rights to Nvidia,” the company said.

Nvidia, on the other hand, has kept SLI close, often citing compatibility and certification concerns as the reason why no other chipset vendor has been able to offer SLI-capability. But if Nvidia loses out on Nehalem for its next-generation chipsets, the high-end desktop market will become more fragmented than it’s been in years. Nvidia has been able to offer SLI-supporting chipsets for both AMD and Intel processors, but if this split happens, on one side we’ll have Nehalem and CrossFire-based systems, the other will offer SLI (and possibly CrossFire, if hacks used in the past continue to work) and AMD CPUs.

We have no official confirmation from Nvidia on this, and Intel’s statement from PR manager Dan Snyder is vague, but it lends credence to the story:

“There is a disagreement between Intel and Nvidia as to the scope of Nvidia’s license from Intel to make chipsets compatible with Intel microprocessors. Intel is trying to resolve the disagreement privately with Nvidia and therefore we will not provide additional details. It is our hope that this dispute will be resolved amicably and that it will not impact other areas of our companies’ working relationship.”

Intel has been after SLI support for its chipsets for years, but has thus far only been able to build it into its ultra high-end Skulltrail motherboards, seemingly a one-off. With SLI available across all of its chipset lines, Intel would be able to sell motherboards that support both AMD’s and Nvidia’s multigraphics card technologies. Right now Intel boards (with the exception of Skulltrail) only support AMD’s CrossFire.

Click here for CNET News’ complete iPhone 3G coverage.

The blog must be getting big if Matt Marshall or Dean Takahashi aren’t out here. Missed you guys.

Dale Larson, first in line outside San Francisco's Apple store sits near his tent and answers the curious.

Harcore iPhone fans lined up outside San Francisco's Apple store.

UPDATE: About 50 people are in line here at 4:50 a.m. PT. I made a rough count of those videotaped by my colleague Caroline McCarthy outside of New York’s Fifth Avenue Apple Store and there are at least three times as many there.

Larson said that the first version of iPhone was enough to generate intense interest in version 2, with it’s faster 3G network and cheaper price.

The iPhone 3G debuts Friday morning and across the country, Apple fans,
iPhone lovers, and people curious about why friends say the device has changed their lives, are sleeping on the streets. They want to be the first to enter Apple’s retail stores when doors open at 8 a.m.

SAN FRANCISCO–The twenty-something woman trash-talking us is definitely no fan girl.

CNN is reporting that more than 1,000 people waited in line for the iPhone 3G in Tokyo.

2nd UPDATE: Way to go S.F.. It’s 6:45 a.m. PT and there’s easily 150 people standing in line, including some of my competitors from VentureBeat. They’re showing me up a bit by handing out some delicious donuts in a shameless marketing gimmick. For the record, I’m ahead of them in line (The non hackers didn’t show up until midnight).

“This device has changed my life,” declares Ilan Fehler, a 21-year-old student at the University of Arizona, who considers himself lucky to be third in line.

(Credit:
Greg Sandoval/CNET Networks)

The questions from passerby this evening, whether legitimately curious or intent on snickering at us, generally follows the same line: “Why put yourself through this just for some consumer good?”

The iPhone, many of them believe, is ready to take up a spot alongside the
Mac and
iPod.

Dale Larson is customer No.1 at this store. The 39-year old consultant on mobile products said says he’s not particularly tied to Apple gear but he acknowledges he started camping out on Wednesday evening.

(Credit:
Greg Sandoval/CNET Networks)

Still, nothing dampened his enthusiasm for the iPhone. “I would get excited over any product that works as well,” Larson said. “But nothing does. This device opens everything up. Developers can develop and consumers can take advantage of their innovation.”

She’s wearing a sweatshirt from a college in the Midwest and toting a shopping bag so someone barks back: “tourist!” But she’s not the only one who mocks us for camping out all night–braving this city’s shivery summer air–for something as ho-hum as a cell phone. “Is it really that serious?” asks a man wearing a tweed sport coat and smirk.

So If you’re reading this and happen to be in downtown San Francisco in the wee hours this morning, don’t bother asking why we’re out here. Just read the T-shirts handed out to everyone in line by employees of Fastmac.com, a company that sells Apple accessories.

Forgive them Steve Jobs. They know not what they do.

“They’ll be selling these stupid phones on eBay in a year,” she snarls as she stalks past the 25 of us lined up outside Apple’s store here late Thursday evening.

Consumer good? To the bleary-eyed people standing in line with me, the hope is that they will be among the first to own the next transcendent and culture-changing Apple gadget.

Written on the T-shirt is: “You had me at…” and it ends with the symbol of a phone.”

He pitched a tent and stayed the night. He said he felt a little embarrassed when Apple’s watchman said goodnight and he was the only person in line. “I thought there would be so many more people here,” he said.

Come on San Francisco, you’re being out-teched by New York. The shame…

“The key is to smooth out the cost increases as much as possible, to help the business plan, and help us use electricity more efficiently,” he said.

“The fact is that electricity prices will go up anyway as we retire and replace power generation so why not address this environmental issue at the same time,” he said.

Best or last chance?

It’s important to establish a price on carbon emissions because large businesses are waiting for a “price signal” before they make investments in low-carbon technologies, Krupp said.

“We can keep the costs to households to pennies a day,” said panelist Fred Krupp, the president of Environmental Defense Fund. “We can limit the costs to very manageable levels if we do it right. I think the equitable thing to do is to have a transition.”

“If enacted and implemented, 20 years from now we’ll look down the road and see this is as the most important piece of legislation in the history of the country,” said Bumpers. “It has truly transformational potential.”

In cap-and-trade proposals in general, there is a long-term horizon for emissions target reductions–the House bill targets an 83 percent decrease in carbon emissions compared with 2005 levels by 2050.

LAGUNA NIGUEL, Calif.–Despite formidable political challenges, the United States has a good chance of passing legislation to regulate greenhouse gas emissions in the next nine to 12 months, energy industry experts said here on Monday.

These developments make it more likely than in previous years that rules to put a price on emitting carbon dioxide in the U.S. will be put in place. If they take hold, it would be a turning point for the U.S. economy, creating the financial foundation for sustainable and green technologies, said William Bumpers, the chair of the climate change practice at law firm Baker Botts.

Up for debate are how many of those permits are given away, rather than auctioned off. The House bill, for example, calls for giving away permits to heavy polluting industries in an effort to keep them competitive internationally.

Handicapping Washington and carbon: From left Marc Gunther of Fortune, Environmental Defense Fund President Fred Krupp, NRG Energy CEO David Crane, William Bumpers of law firm Baker Botts, Applied Materials CEO Michael Splinter, and Duke Energy CEO James Rogers.

Because of that time scale, a utility can upgrade its power generation facilities around cleaner forms of energy and efficiency and address the “carbon issue” at the same time, said Duke’s Rogers.

That’s why negotiating the details of a “transition period” between now and a future low-carbon economy are so crucial, panelists said.

Businesses typically favor a cap-and-trade system, rather than a straight carbon tax. With a cap-and-trade system, big polluters such as utilities and cement manufacturers purchase or are given permits to emit carbon. Permits can be traded among participants to stay under an emissions limit–the cap–established by government.

The critical factor to passing climate change laws is managing the transition to low-carbon energy sources without sharply raising prices for consumers, said panelists at the Fortune Brainstorm Green conference.

Panelists said that a legislative approach to regulating carbon emissions is better than having the EPA regulate them under the Clean Air Act because Congress can better deal with the complexity of the situation. The Obama administration, too, prefers “comprehensive legislation” over regulation by the EPA.

“Businesses will have an obligation to deal with a capital commitment over the next 30 years that is unprecedented,” Bumpers said. “If we don’t manage this transition by mitigating cost impacts…there could be political backlash because prices have gone too high too quickly…Those trillions of dollars of investments will turn out to be bad investments.”

On the panel were energy industry executives who are lobbying for quick enactment of carbon regulations, which would be phased in over the next five years. They included Jim Rogers, the CEO of utility Duke Energy, and NRG Energy CEO David Crane, a power generation company that relies primarily on fossil fuels.

Once that price is in place, a utility that relies heavily on coal, for example, will invest in renewable energy or technology to store carbon dioxide underground. That also helps create jobs for people in clean-energy industries, Krupp added.

The House on Tuesday will begin hearings on an energy and climate bill its sponsors hope to pass this summer. The Environmental Protection Agency on Friday issued a preliminary finding that greenhouse gas could be regulated under the Clean Air Act because they pose a threat to public health and safety.

Successfully managing the transition to minimize or eliminate cost increases on consumers is important to get right in the coming year, Bumpers said. Otherwise, carbon regulations will be set back years.

Despite the support in some quarters, climate change laws are opposed by some business leaders and politicians, particularly from states in the South and Midwest that rely heavily on coal for power generation. As such, even if the House passes a bill this year, it faces a tough road in the Senate.

(Credit:
Martin LaMonica/CNET)

Netflix and Amazon stand in stark contrast to the companies described a few days ago in the Wall Street Journal.

All companies have computer problems, how they deal with them separates the men from the boys.

The best companies at disclosure were BJ’s Wholesale Club, DSW and Dave and Buster’s. Each disclosed the breach to their customers shortly after they became aware of it.

Of course, it can be impossible to tell if data was copied. Certainly bad guys getting credit numbers over a WiFi network wouldn’t leave any trace, and neither would other types of breaches. According to the New York Times, BJ’s Wholesale Club, the Sports Authority, OfficeMax, DSW and Barnes & Noble had their wireless networks breached.

When I was away from home recently for an extended period of time, I tried to change the shipping address on my Netflix account. What should have been trivial became a problem because the Netflix web site made assumptions about the format of the address that didn’t apply in my case. Every time I entered the address, their system reformatted it. I could not, for the life of me, figure out how to enter the correct address, so I contacted someone at Netflix for help. The person I spoke with sympathized and offered a way to fudge things to get the good data past their system filters. What I remember from the experience is the good customer service, not the problem.

Amazon.com offers a file storage service called S3 (Simple Storage Service). Not long ago it suffered an outage of a few hours. I don’t use S3 so my interest was marginal, but I did run across the after-the-fact accounting of the problem from Amazon. It was fairly technical and explained the internal functioning of the system in a clear way and detailed what when wrong and how the problem was unanticipated. They explained how they fixed the immediate problem and the steps they would take to prevent a recurrence in the future.

Boston Market and Forever 21 “never told their customers because they never confirmed data were stolen from them”.

Netflix

There is more detail in the article and it’s definitely worth reading to form your own opinion on which companies you can trust and which you can’t.

The crime ring in question hit other outfits besides TJX. In Some Stores Quiet Over Card Breach three Wall Street Journal reporters describe how other companies didn’t tell their customers about the data theft.

Now, Netflix is all over the news for a massive system failure that affected all 55 of their distribution centers. Here too, what I’ll remember is not the screw-up, but the way they handled it. After all, computer systems fail, it happens to everyone. Before I knew there was a problem, Netflix sent an email message apologizing. That makes an impression. And, now that the problem has been fixed, they are offering a 15% rebate on the monthly fee to affected customers. The take-away from this, at least for me, is that they dealt with the problem honestly and fairly.*

Amazon

Credit Card Breaches

The Journal reports that OfficeMax, Barnes and Noble and Sports Authority “wouldn’t say whether they made consumer disclosures”.

I was impressed with how Amazon came clean, even Netflix is mum on the technical details of their problem. This inspires confidence and if I ever need a web service that Amazon offers, I would not hesitate to use them.

Over the time I have been a Netflix customer, they repeatedly showed themselves interested in providing great customer service in other ways too. Thus, I trust they are telling me the whole story. Recently, I ordered their Roku box for watching movies over the Internet. I didn’t care a lot about online movies and at $100 the price just about matched how much I cared. I could have taken it or left it. But, because I trusted the company wouldn’t have any hidden gotchas, I ordered it.

Recently the US government charged men in five countries with stealing credit cards from a number of retailers. The poster boy for this credit card and ID theft ring was TJX, the corporation behind the T.J.Maxx, Marshalls, HomeGoods and A.J. Wright retail chains. The breach of their computer systems has been extensively publicized, it was even featured on 60 Minutes. From what I’ve learned, their computer security was disgraceful. But, at least they came clean.

*Still, Netflix needs some better computer nerds. Speaking as a techie, a three day outage is inexcusable. No doubt, more than one thing went wrong to cause such an extended problem. Human error is likely on the list as is poor up-front planning.

See a summary of all my Defensive Computing postings.

Previous systems with integrated graphics were only able to connect one additional display. Now via DisplayLink and with these new Intel-specific optimizations, users with PCs based on the Intel 4 Series Express Chipset Family can easily connect to up to four monitors at once without the need to buy additional graphics cards. In addition, users who run four monitors on the Intel chipset will enjoy a 20 percent performance improvement, which includes smoother video playback, according to DisplayLink.

Users who have an Intel Series 4 chipset-based system should be on the lookout for the drivers to be implemented via Windows Update.

(Credit: DisplayLink)

Three displays are connected to one system all via USB only.

DisplayLink–which makes technology that allows multiple monitors to be connected to one computer through USB–announced this week that it’s now optimized its technology for the Intel 4 Series Express Chipset Family for desktops and notebooks.

The news last week spooked investors, who sent the company’s stock down about 8 percent. Cisco reported second quarter revenue of $9.8 billion, compared with $8.4 billion in the period last year. Net income for the quarter was $2.1 billion, up from $1.9 billion last year.

Last Wednesday Cisco beat analysts’ second fiscal quarter sales, but the company indicated that its orders on new products had slowed in Europe and the U.S. as companies pulled back on technology spending. The company said it expects growth in the third quarter of only 10 percent instead of Cisco’s long-term growth rate expectation of between 12 percent and 17 percent, a range that Chambers expects the company to get back to within the next two to five quarters.

BARCELONA, Spain–Cisco Systems’ CEO John Chambers gave a little more color Monday to comments he made last week regarding a slowdown in IT spending.

Chambers, speaking at a preview event at the Mobile World Congress ahead of his keynote speech Tuesday, told analysts and reporters that the company only started seeing a slowdown in customer orders of its networking products in January, the last month of the second quarter of Cisco’s fiscal year 2008. He also said that the current blip in orders is not as bad as previous downturns, most notably the major telecom bust of 2001.

John Chambers

(Credit:
Cisco)

“In situations like this, the classical approach is to look at how long will this last and how deep will it go,” he said. “Based on what we’ve seen in the past, we think this will be relatively short in duration and relatively shallow.”

Microsoft’s hard drive in the cloud is now a reality.

The service allows for personal folders as well as ones that are shared with a select group of friends, or the public at large. Microsoft is also expanding the service to 38 countries or regions including large swaths of Europe, Central and South America, as well as Australia, New Zealand, Japan, and Taiwan.

I see the launch of SkyDrive as a key piece of Microsoft’s effort to build what some think of as a cloud OS–a collection of services that includes identity, messaging, photo management, contacts, as well as storage. Storage is probably the most straightforward piece, but important nonetheless.

On Thursday, Microsoft removed the beta tag from the Windows Live SkyDrive service. More importantly, it upped the amount of free online storage to 5GB, giving users roughly the same amount of storage that comes on a new Eee PC. That’s up from a recent cap of 1GB.

I don’t know about you, but I like things to be a little cold indoors when it’s hot outside, so I asked the nice man at reception whether I had misunderstood something about the control panel. What, indeed, did I have to do to make the room colder?

I skipped back to my room and pressed the “down” button on the aircon control. Nothing.
Computers take some time to reprogram, don’t they? I sat in hope. And, well, a little sweat.

“Oh, the computer is still not allowing you?” said the man at the desk. “I will speak to maintenance.”

Ah, he told me, the computer system would like me to agree that 21 degrees is the optimum temperature. But he promised to reprogram it specially so that my room could be colder.

Is this the beginning of the end? Or the end of the beginning?

As I walk to the bathroom, I find myself bowing to the control panel, hoping that, somehow, it will agree to make things cooler. I also find myself thinking whether the man on reception is human and whether there is such a person as the maintenance man at all.

Rovinj is one of the most beautiful secrets in all the world, a place of such breathtaking charm and beauty that you simple do not want to leave. And the organizers put the speakers up at the aforementioned hotel, which seems to have dedicated itself to computerized logic.

Rovinj, home of the Weekend Media Festival.

(Credit: CC Akk Rus/Flickr)

Perhaps you might imagine yourself to be a little dependent on your digital friend but not to the degree that it tells you what to do.

Perhaps, however, you have never stayed at the Hotel Monte Mulini on Croatia’s Adriatic Coast.
Please allow me to explain.

I went to bed, believing I would be waking to a cooler environment.
Still nothing. So the following morning, it was back to reception.

In your room, there is another control panel that switches lights on and off and generally monitors the look and feel of your environment, including what temperature you are allowed to enjoy.

You don’t have to put your key card into a slot to enter your room. No, you wave it at a control panel and your door opens like that of the haunted castle in a horror movie.

But as I write this Sunday, it’s been three days. My computerized control panel still drifts between 21.4 degrees centigrade and 21.7 degrees centigrade and there is a little crustiness around my mouth after three days of hot, dry, conditioned air.

Did I detect the sort of raised eyebrow on his head that said: “You, sir, don’t realize who’s calling the shots here”? Perhaps.

I am currently in Rovinj, Croatia, home of the Weekend Media Festival. The festival has speakers from companies such as Google, MTV, and Nokia and, well, there was this one speech Saturday titled, “Why advertise when you can Twitter?” given by a bald chap you might know.

Perhaps you are skeptical about the notion that computers will, one day, actually control us.

It seems as if the computer has decided that you will only enjoy temperatures of 21 degrees centigrade (70 degrees Fahrenheit) or higher.