Peeling the foam off the CD was easy. But the label side was permanently pockmarked beyond repair. The foam had damaged the CD lacquer layer. You might succeed in playing a CD with this kind of damage, but the disc is doomed because the fragile reflective layer that carries the music is no longer protected. My three discs were barely playable.

The fix: Use audio CD rescue software to create new discs. (Data CD rescue software probably won’t work because audio CDs employ a different format.) The free cdrdao package recovered 100% of Handel’s glorious music. I kept the original discs in case of trouble with the copies.

I let my fingers do the walking through the other fatboxes in my collection and guess what? Many, especially those manufactured in the 1980s, contained foam sheets. Not all the foam sheets caused damage, but some of my CDs face reincarnation as coasters.

Have you fingered your fatboxes lately?

“The WHO International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) has classified radio frequency electromagnetic fields as possibly carcinogenic to humans, based on an increased risk for glioma, a malignant type of brain cancer.”

A study, sponsored by the WHO and published one year ago, showed an elevated, but not statistically significant, rate of glioma among some study participants.

“There were suggestions of an increased risk of glioma at higher exposure levels, but biases and error prevented a causal interpretation.”

Any unbiased investigator applying rigorous scientific method would not have relied on experimental results that failed to pass the customary tests of statistical significance. The IARC admits that “biases and error” tainted the glioma evidence. Instead of responsibly labeling the experiment as inconclusive, the agency recklessly placed cellphone emissions in the same cancer risk category as the banned insecticide DDT. By failing to observe mainstream scientific principles, the IARC most likely will subject cellphone users to unnecessary regulation that will drive up costs and drag down performance.

Scientists, including physicist Bob Park at the University of Maryland, know that ionizing radiation (from X-rays, gamma rays, radioactive isotopes, and the like) damages chromosomes, which can lead to cancer. They also have known for decades that cellphones don’t emit ionizing radiation and cellphone radio frequencies are well below the damage threshold. What’s more, for cancer, frequency is what matters most, and “exposure level” is secondary. Albert Einstein received the Nobel Prize for explaining in the photoelectric effect that energy is proportional to frequency.

No mechanism has been found for radio electromagnetic fields below an 800 terahertz frequency threshold to cause cancer, regardless of exposure level. Cellphones operate at roughly one millionth of the 800 terahertz frequency threshold. So the cellphone-cancer link isn’t based on any mainstream scientific theory.

Even exposure level is low, thanks to government regulations. Though high exposure to radio frequency emissions may contribute to diseases other than cancer, cellphones operate at exposure levels that won’t hurt a fly. Cellphone exposure levels are orders of magnitude below the known threshold for harm.

Evidence of a cellphone-cancer link is exceptionally weak and almost certainly due to chance. I know of only one study with statistically significant findings out of about 20 (see this good survey of the evidence). I won’t bore you with the hideous methodological flaws and conflicts of interest that pervade many cellphone-cancer studies.

So even though cellphone usage is now among the zillion things on the IARC’s cancer risk list, the practical risk is nil. An hour in the sun at the beach or a short airline flight will expose you to more cancer-causing radiation than a lifetime of cellphone usage.

My advice: Don’t chuck your beloved Android phone just yet. Remember the power line scare of 1979? Reason ultimately prevailed, as it will on cellphones. Just don’t hold your breath.

The X300 debuted in February 2008 around the same time as the first generation MacBook Air. I was so excited about the Lenovo machine that I pre-ordered one as a gift for my daughter. Her X300 was one of the first produced. Alas, it was a lemon. My daughter, who is smarter than I, said “No, thanks, Dad” and returned the machine to me after suffering weeks of trouble with it.

The machine exhibited numerous symptoms. After six round-trips for Lenovo (IBM) service, including three (unnecessary) Windows reloads, one LCD replacement, and two planar/system board replacements, the X300 still crashed daily. Lenovo support personnel repeatedly ignored my assertions that the crashes correlated with wireless usage. After I bought a new Intel 4965AGN wireless board and installed it myself, the daily crashes were history.

The X300 still crashes randomly when I plug in a USB device. This is a known problem I can live with. Problems aside, I really like the machine.

Lessons learned: Unless you are a masochist, avoid buying serial number 00001 of the latest and greatest. And don’t make it a gift to a loved one.

Doesn’t say much, does it? Look up the 11 digit error code, 17257300799, on Google Search and the Turbo Tax support website. Nada. Play around with the program and you’ll trigger other 11 digit error codes such as 17942563671 and 17638845067. Information about similar messages on the TurboTax website goes something like this:

We have seen reports with some TurboTax customers where you attempt to start a new return (or transfer from a 2009 return) and the program shuts down with a serious and unexpected error.

One of the problem reporter error numbers we have seen has been 1991550181, but it could be any 11-digit number. Please be sure you have attempted all troubleshooting steps from our “Other Articles to Try” section on the left side of this page so you can eliminate other system problems first.

Duh. The “Other Articles to Try” section lists the usual suspects (such as antivirus software) that cause things to go wrong when installing software. I laughed when I read that the error code could be any 11-digit number. How in the heck do you troubleshoot a random number? Looking it up doesn’t work.

Want to try your hand at fixing this bad boy? Follow these steps.

1. On the lower left side of the box, click What is sent in the error report?

2. You’ll see a box that starts “The following information is included in the error report.” On the left side, click Error Info underneath About This Report.

3. The next box (see below) will show detailed information about the error. What helped me was the .NET exception message highlighted in gray.

4. Use this information and your bare wits to correct the error. On my machine, restrictive permissions caused the message “Access to the path … is denied.” Fixed in a jiffy with the Windows Explorer security dialog.

Best of luck. If worse comes to worse, you can always surf over to the IRS website, download, print, fill out, and mail 2010 Form 4868, “Application for Automatic Extension of Time To File U.S. Individual Income Tax Return.” That will give you a few more months to wrestle with TurboTax.

NVIDIA’s demise in the chipset game is no big deal, Barron’s magazine opines:

“This is not news,” [Needham & Co. analyst Rajvindra Gill] tells me this afternoon by phone. “The fate of the chipset business has been telegraphed for some time now by management and by the Street.” Chipsets are a business NVIDIA is exiting, so it’s really all about the pace of the run-off of that business.

Chipsets are a commodity with thin margins. Apple is, and always has been, a fickle customer for chip suppliers – just ask Motorola and IBM. So a bloody nose for NVIDIA should hardly have come as a surprise.

NVIDIA’s latest forays, the Tegra processor for mobile computing and Tesla graphics processor module with CUDA supercomputing architecture, look interesting. Investors agree, shooting the company’s stock skyward after a 40% dip last summer. Time will tell how the next round of the graphics fight versus AMD will play out. After losing the last round, NVIDIA’s latest punch lands with zing. My take: I won’t invest, but I still like NVIDIA graphics chips.

His advice on lithium-ion, NiMH, NiCd, and lead-acid batteries is poetry to my ears.

Capitalism without bankruptcy is like Christianity without Hell.

Mr. Bass hit the nail on the head. Too bad nobody in Washington is listening. Here is an eye-opening video interview before the testimony. Your patience with the advertisement at the beginning will be rewarded by keen insights into what is coming next, including possible sovereign default.

I’ve purchased and used a wide variety of motherboards with NVIDIA nForce chipsets, all paired with AMD processors. These boards suffered myriad minor maddening problems attributable to the chipsets. The final straw came in 2007 with Windows Vista: NVIDIA never provided drivers for its nForce2 chipset and later dropped support of nForce3. If your motherboard used those chipsets, tough luck, no Vista (or Windows 7) for you.

I swore never to buy or recommend another motherboard with an NVIDIA chipset.

The handwriting was on the wall over two years ago. NVIDIA’s primary chipset partner, AMD, acquired NVIDIA’s arch rival, ATI, in 2006. AMD then rapidly declined in processor market share. Few compelling reasons remain for using NVIDIA chipsets with Intel processors. And Intel litigators never sleep. So NVIDIA’s prospects for making big money in chipsets are nil.

Though I’ve had excellent luck with NVIDIA graphics, I won’t wax nostalgic for nForce chipsets. Hasta la vista, baby.

Not everything will move into the cloud, but the cloud will move into everything.

Kinda like the sound of one hand clapping, don’t you think?

[R]ecently I hosted a meeting of the advisors to one of my portfolio companies. It was an impressive group of tech veterans. Each of them had been involved in the building of multi-million dollar high tech companies. Yet, what struck me about this summit was how many of these computer gurus carried with him a good, old fashioned notebook… I was surprised to see so much scribbling and so little typing. Since that meeting, I have kept my eyes out for this notebook phenomenon and have been amazed by how many startup CEOs, Venture Capitalists, attorneys, etc. have forsaken the digital world for the analog.

Acknowledging that paper isn’t perfect, the article cites problems of exposure to elements and lack of backup. Yet such problems have never troubled me. In 25 years of carrying notebooks, I’ve never lost or ruined one, while during that same period I’ve been grateful for computer backups dozens of times. You’ve heard of notebook computers bursting into flame, but not my trusty book. I consider paper notebooks stable, durable, and unobtrusive.

Folks in Mr. Hornik’s circle prefer the classic leather-bound Moleskine and the pocket-sized graph paper Rhodia, but my choice is more prosaic: the WilsonJones S300-3R Record Ruled. The Rhodia does bring back memories of my college days in France. I must admit a twinge of Moleskine envy and I’ve considered giving the awesome Livescribe Pulse pen a try. Still I can’t imagine why anyone would risk annoying colleagues by tapping on a phone or computer during a meeting.