You should already know that electrostatic discharge (ESD), more commonly referred to as a static shock, will damage sensitive electronic components. The parts most sensitive to ESD are those that contain memory chips. In the computer industry, ESD is a major concern because nearly every part contains some kind of extremely ESD-sensitive component. The way computer parts are made, shipped, installed, and handled may change with the introduction of an interesting new anti-ESD technology announced this week.

As many of you already know, Forbes continues to sponsor a man known variously as Daniel Lyons and "Fake Steve Jobs," and possibly several other pseudonyms on online forums and discussion lists. For many years, Lyons has sought to publish articles that are oddly skewed against Linux, the free software movement, open source software development, IBM, and other things that are individually or collectively distasteful to the Microsoft Corporation. Recently Daniel Lyons has taken his antagonistic editorialism to a whole new level by creating a shabbily crafted Blogspot page called "The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs." There are many things wrong with this situation, both outright and potential, and the fact that Lyons continues to have Forbes' blessing to harm innocent people suggests that there is some kind of hidden motive behind his efforts. No person with a properly functioning brain would openly and continually behave this way unless there were a very good reason. I mean to discover that reason and publish an article explaining it in detail, so if you have any information about Daniel Lyons that you think might possibly be helpful to my article, please feel free to contact me at jem at thejemreport dot com, through our forum, or by telephone at (585) 414-5042. If you wish to remain anonymous or if you want to tell me your story without being on the record (meaning you will not be quoted or mentioned in the article at all, and the information you provide will not be printed if it can't be attributed to another source), that's fine -- just say so.

For as long as there has been a computer technology media, there have been predictions as to where it will be headed in the near and distant future. At first, predictions were really soft because the rest of the electronics industry moved at a slower pace. Today, computer technology drives electronic innovation, so we have bigger ideas for the future of computing -- more automation, more processing power, more appealing interfaces, and more complexity. What few people ever include in that bundle of dreams is "more power consumption." I never imagined that I would own a computer that would suck down more than 400 watts under normal operating conditions. Recently I got a power supply in for review that offers a steady power delivery of nine hundred watts. That's more than my refrigerator! Fortunately, a few hardware companies are heading in the opposite direction, inventing computer parts that use as little electricity as possible.

What is it about Ubuntu Linux that makes otherwise competent technical writers switch to Moron Mode? Everywhere I turn, I see articles on how to do obvious things in Ubuntu. Books on Ubuntu concentrate on listing every insignificant detail of every obvious procedure; things that are inherently self-explanatory are explained in depth. Subjects that have any inkling of technical complexity are skipped because, "Whoa -- those are way too hard for you stupid Ubuntu users to grasp, so let's just skip them and pretend everything's peachy." The best I can guess is that article writers and book authors assume that if you were capable of something more technical, you would be using Slackware or Debian, not Ubuntu.

Ruby is a hot topic among software developers -- and rightly so. It's an exciting language to learn for "old school" programmers because it allows many luxuries and conveniences that you used to have to code around at length. Ruby is equally as attractive to new developers because it is easy to learn and can be implemented on almost any platform. A good book that introduces this interesting language by designing scripts for software development and testing would certainly be welcome; unfortunately, Everyday Scripting With Ruby isn't it.

Yesterday the OpenBSD Foundation announced its inception as a legal entity in charge of donations of money and equipment for the OpenBSD operating system and its associated projects. Today we have an interview with Ken Westerback, one of the foundation's founding members.

Over the years I've dealt with a number of people in the public relations field. Some work directly for a particular company, others work for PR or marketing firms that a company outsources its PR work to. Some of the people in the tech PR world are very good at what they do and understand their role in the the process. There are a few rogue PR people out there, however, that make it their mission to stymie article and news story efforts, redirect information requests to the circular file, and in some cases, even try to take revenge on journalists for writing things that interfere with PR's message. Here's a quick story about some of the more ridiculous PR moments in my career as a journalist.