Ghoulish tiles for Stones fans

Journal Record, The (Oklahoma City), Nov 17, 2000

LONDON (AP) -- For sale: swimming pool tiles, slightly used, place in rock infamy. The Brian Jones Fan Club is selling tiles from the pool where the charismatic Rolling Stones guitarist was found dead on July 3, 1969. "It's not as macabre as it sounds," said the fan club's David Reynolds. "It's just owning something that your hero owned and touched and chose."

Jones, 27, was found dead of a drug overdose at his country house, Cotchford Farm -- one-time home of Winnie the Pooh author A.A. Milne.

Each tile costs $175 and comes with a certificate of authenticity. Ten percent goes to put up a statue of Jones in his home town of Cheltenham, a genteel spa town 120 miles west of London. Since the sale began on the club's Web site in September, 140 of the 320 blue ceramic tiles have been bought by collectors. The fund has raised $5,700 -- about one-sixth the cost of the statue.

Targeting the tablet PC market

LAS VEGAS (NYT) -- It's apparently not enough that Windows runs about 90 percent of the world's laptop and desktop computers. Microsoft now wants to capture a market that does not yet exist: tablet PCs. In a keynote speech that opened the annual Comdex computer show in Las Vegas this week, Microsoft's chairman, Bill Gates, described a new class of PC, which the company is encouraging computer makers to adopt. He displayed a working prototype of a tablet PC, one of a handful in existence.

At first glance, Microsoft's two-tone, bright orange tablet model looks like the offspring of an iMac and a clipboard. The prototype has no keyboard and only average specs (a 10-gigabyte hard drive and a 600-megahertz processor). But according to a Microsoft software architect, Bert Keely, who demonstrated the machine, its wireless networking features and full-page touch screen make it superior to laptops in certain situations.

For example, handwriting on the tablet's screen with a stylus produces "digital ink." The computer makes no attempt to translate handwriting into typed text. But because it stores each word as a graphic object, you can insert, move, or delete words by dragging them with the stylus, exactly like the old Apple Newton. By slightly fattening or slanting these graphic objects, the software can make selected phrases boldface or italic. And using shape matching, the program can even search for handwritten words.

Gates explained that the next versions of Windows and Microsoft Office, both scheduled for release in the second half of next year, will be tablet-ready. If all goes well, he said, tablet PCs could be ready for commercial release in the middle of 2002 -- a projection that came as something of a surprise to companies like Qbe, Xplore Technologies and InnoLabs, whose own tablet PC's were already on display on the Comdex show floor.

Only 36 shopping days left!

NEW YORK (AP) -- Today is the 322nd day of 2000. There are 44 days left in the year. Here are some business and legal highlights from this date in history:

In 1800, Congress held its first session in Washington in the partially completed Capitol building.

In 1869, the Suez Canal opened in Egypt.

In 1962, Washington's Dulles International Airport was dedicated by President Kennedy.

In 1973, President Nixon told Associated Press managing editors who were meeting in Orlando, Fla., "People have got to know whether or not their president is a crook. Well, I'm not a crook."

Big Dig beds down

BOSTON (AP) -- The Big Dig highway project is taking an unusual step to calm people who say vibrations from the project have kept them awake -- it's buying them new beds. The multibillion-dollar construction project, which has been plagued by cost overruns, will give residents of Boston's North End special vibration-fighting bed frames for $1,500 to $2,000 each. One local leader said he thinks dozens of people might ask for them. "People may view this as silly or ludicrous, but we take the impact on the community very seriously, and this is a potential solution to the problem," project spokesman Sean O'Neill said.

Some residents of the old Italian-American neighborhood said they were skeptical. "I'll try anything to get a good night's sleep, but I don't think it's going to work," said Lorraine Rizzo.

Officially known as the Central Artery/Third Harbor Tunnel project, the dig will bury Interstate 93 beneath downtown Boston. It is one of the most complicated and expensive road projects in the nation's history, with an estimated total cost of about $14.1 billion. North End residents have been kept awake for the last eight months by rumblings from the portion of Interstate 93 that is still elevated. A new support structure designed to hold up the road while work goes on underground is more rigid than the old one, increasing the vibrations in the neighborhood.

"It's like slow torture," Rizzo said. "I can't remember the last time I got a good night's sleep."

Officials said workers would smooth out the roadway this weekend, which should help reduce the vibrations until Interstate 93 is routed underground by the end of 2002.