Interesting. Apple patents a device to prevent stolen laptops and iPods from charging!

Very cool. Could actually produce a reduction in crime if criminals knew they couldn't charge what they stole, but not a significant reduction (people do get mugged frequently in London when they're seen wearing the signature white iPod headphones). Of course, it wouldn't prevent, in the case of laptops, removing the battery and charging it outside of the laptop, but that might take more work than people are wanting to contend with. Then again, if they build a sync technology between the battery and laptop, you could prevent the battery from being recharged external to the laptop -- most batteries have an electronic serial number that can be read by the laptop.

And you can register multiple (and third party!) chargers with your device, so that's cool.

I wonder if they'll retrofit the software to work with the two Mac laptops that we've bought this year.

http://blog.wired.com/gadgets/2007/07/apple-patent--1.html

Talk about obsessively reading Deathly Hallows!

Man, I so wish that I'd seen this live! (or at least on the initial broadcast).

http://www.trooker.com/FlashPlay.aspx?id=1785

Seagate plans to stop manufacturing IDE drives by the end of the year?!

Hmmm. Putting their entire focus behind PATA and probably SCSI. I was talking to someone yesterday about my doubts of buying another desktop, a high-end laptop is just so useful, especially if you have a wireless router that you can connect an external hard drive to. IDE is definitely a little long in the tooth, and drives are always the slowest component in a computer system (well, next to 28.8k modems).

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