USA Today made it last Monday’s centerpiece and the editors of the Oxford English Dictionary said they were rendered wordless: If 1980 was the start of the eighties and 1990 was the start of the nineties, what are we going to call the decade that starts with 2000?
The Ohs? The Zeros?
What did they call that first decade back in 1900s? The experts say that nobody seems to remember.
Pshaw, as grandmother used to say. Haven’t they heard of the Great Blizzard of aught eight (’08)? Have they never fired thirty aught six (30.06) deer rifles?
2000 AD will be double aught. 2001, aught one. The decade? The aughts.
GAME OVER!
I AM NOT A CROOK
Am I?
The next time the creep calls and says he’s working late, record it and then fire up your handy Fortress Wireless Consumer Software Lie Detector from Westmont-based Digital Robotics Inc. (www.digitalrobotics.com).
The software uses the VSA (voice stress analysis) techniques developed by intelligence agencies to check recorded speech. Then it replays the recording and beeps mightily at the suspicious parts.
ROOK TO KNIGHT’S Y2K
YOU’VE GOT MOVES
At last, video games for the geriatric set. Doom II for dowagers. Toy maker Hasbro brings us em@il Grand Master Chess, a CD-ROM that you load on your machine and call up an on-screen chess board display, Make your first move and click on the e-mail button and the software sends the move to your opponent anywhere on the Big Blue Marble.
The countermove comes back via your own e-mail and the software moves the appropriate piece. You respond and click the e-mail icon and again.
Is this dull enough for you?
YOU GO TYPE
No batteries required
Hot on the heels of the arrival of the trendy and tiny Palm IIIx and Palm V computers comes something that the hand-held toy-like gadgets cry out for, an optional keyboard that lets you use proper plastic keys instead of a toothpick of a plastic stylus to enter your data.
At $80, the 10-inch by 4-inch GoType keyboard lets users drop their Pilot into an on-board slot and create a mini-computer with maxi-power.
Y2KORNER
Crack this Rubik
Patrick Bossert, 30, who at age 12 wrote a bestseller about how to solve the Rubik’s Cube puzzle, now has a day job in England fixing Millennium Bug outbreaks in embedded chips inside electronic devices.
His Delta-T Probe examines chips electronically to find the ones that might have calendar functions and then tests them for compliance.
So far, says the BBC, the probe has been “spot on.”
Ta ta for now.
