Boy explodes from eating Pop Rocks with Coca-Cola. Girl summons vengeful spirit by chanting “Bloody Mary” while staring into mirror. Richard Gere checks into hospital, furry friend in tow. And once again, Apple plans x86-platform Macs. As posted on MacOSRumors, “Apple may be on the way to moving over to an x86-based platform, probably the AMD Athlon family of processors.”
Historically, this techno-legend was wishful thinking on the part of cultish Apple devotees in hopes that the Mac would rise up from its Amelio-era deathbed and strike a fatal blow to the Wintel camp. Today, there are several reasons why this rumor is feasible at this time in Apple’s history: Apple’s UNIX-based MacOS X seems an easy port to CISC-based processors; The Apple/Microsoft arranged union is soon to come to a close; rumors of Motorola’s processor shortages; and so on.
“Although Motorola sources have repeatedly stated that they do not believe Apple will be implementing Moto’s G5 family of processors as it is currently known — G4 processors “have legs,” according to those sources, and will power Apple computers for at least another year, they say — we do not believe that this means that Apple will not employ PowerPC processors significantly more advanced than the current crop. It may mean that Apple does not believe that the current G5 designs are suitable in terms of clock speeds, price, or reliable supply availability. In fact, this rumor that Apple isn’t going to implement the G5 may not be accurate at all.”
Consider that CISC-based processors are larger, consume far more power and run much hotter than RISC processors, which would not fare well in many of Apple’s newer, more compact machines that do not include processor-cooling fans. Additionally, Apple touts its PowerPC G4 with Velocity Engine processor“the chip that put supercomputing power on the desktop?can perform four (in some cases eight) 32-bit floating-point calculations in a single cycle ? two to four times faster than processors found in PCs.”
Some person(s) has been affixing razor blades into tampons sold
in vending machines inside ladies rooms in rest stop bathrooms. Because
of how small these blades are, the perpetrator(s) has been able to seamlessly
slide them through the product wrapping and directly inside the tampon
itself. None of the victims detected the needle until she had actually
inserted the tampon. Obviously, each woman realized something was
wrong when she felt the painful internal laceration from the blade
piercing skin.
In Pennsylvania alone there have been 14 cases of people
being stuck by these needles over the past 6 months. This activity is
not only occurring in this state, however. We have verified reports
of at least 19 other cases in states around the country. I know of at
least 6 in rest-stop bathrooms in the Washington, DC area, which immediately
made me worry about you.
Considering how widespread these incidents are, I believe that these
may be copycat incidents due to someone reading about the crimes in
the newspaper or seeing them reported on the
television. At this point no one has been arrested and catching the
perpetrator(s) has become our top priority.
In the meantime, it is imperative that you do NOT use tampons that
come from vending machines at rest stop bathrooms. Please take time to warn your friends too. If you or someone you know does find a razor blade inside a tampon,
IMMEDIATELY contact your local police department so they can collect
the evidence.