Personal Touch Has Its Limits

Opinion: Katt laments loss of privacy; triple-core AMD chips may be on tap.

"P.S., I love you, you, you, you," crooned the Mouser, mop-top-like, as he read the morose missive from AmeriTrade detailing how his personal info may have been compromised due to some unauthorized code in the online brokerages systems that allowed client information "to be retrieved by an external source."

After recently receiving similar notes from other companies, the Kitty wondered if there was anyone on the planet who didnt have access to his personal info. "Its amusing that they all fall back to dependable old snail mail to break the bad news, too," laughed the Lynx.

Alas, Le Chat, who was in San Francisco to attend the Intel Developer Forum, soon forgot his personal security woes and was thoroughly mesmerized by Gordon Moore—the Intel co-founder who proclaimed through his now-legendary Moores Law that the number of transistors on computer chips would double every two years—as he told the crowd that the fundamental limitations of electronics would probably see his theory hit a wall in the next decade or so.

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Later, after exiting the Moscone Center to rendezvous with some pals across the street at The Thirsty Bear, Spence heard that Intel rival AMD may be planning to release triple-core chips.

As the Tabby tossed a tortilla toward his tonsils, a companion told him that AMD is rumored to be using components from faulty quad-core chips to create a triple-core offering. Triple-core chips could come in handy for graphics cards, and Big Blue reportedly already makes a similar three-headed beast thats used in the Xbox 360, claimed the pal.

Another game geek accompanying El Gato said hed heard some folks at IDF talking about how Intel just acquired Havok, a game developer based in Ireland.

"Well, Intel needs to keep up with AMD on all fronts, I guess," said Spence. As the Furry One ordered another round for the table, one of his compadres noted that Dell has created a supercomputer, called Legion, for University College in London. Legion, which Dell touts as a low-cost supercomputer, supposedly will pack the punch of more than 3,000 PCs. "Wow, instead of IBMs Blue Gene playing chess against Gary Kasparov, maybe the low-cost Legion can play Hacky Sack against Dell Dude Steven," cackled the Kitty.

Then, before the group could balk at the Baron of Babbles vision of a supercomputer with ankles, El Gato quickly ordered another round. One of the Tabbys tablemates, a telecom maven, told the troop that Sprint would have four new handsets available by the end of the year, including an HTC touch-screen model that mimics the iPhones capabilities.

As the Furball uncharacteristically picked up the tab for the repast, one of his pals joked that if the Puss was paying, he must be pulling in Larry Ellison money these days.

The pal was referring to reports that Ellison, as Oracle CEO, recently pulled in a salary of $35 million, garnished with a sprinkling of about 7 million stock options estimated at more than $50 million. "Nah, Id just rather spend it now, before someone cleans out my AmeriTrade account," groused the Grimalkin.

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