ShadowRAM: August 21, 2006

To borrow a Jobsian phrase, is this Nabaztag bunny for real or part of a reality distortion field? The $150 Wi-Fi-enabled bunny (yes, bunny) from French company Violet acts as an alarm clock and offers a variety of subscription services.

"This bunny can teach you tai chi, read your e-mail, report the weather or stock market, pull RSS feeds and tell you the time," according to the write-up. "He's also got personality. Nabaztag can move his ears, play music, talk and whistle, and his body can show off hundreds of colors. ... Sometimes, he will even have his own random things to say, as long as you can put up with his moods!"

Two words: Wabbit season.

The geek world was abuzz about Borland's resurrection of its hallowed Turbo brand. The company even added a countdown clock to its TurboExplorer.com site, ticking off the seconds until the new Turbo tools ship in September. But since the schedule is still up in the air, the team may tweak the clock, said Borland evangelist David Intersimone. "We have leap seconds in this world; maybe we'll have Turbo seconds," he said.

LinuxWorld attendees found it bizarre that Red Hat skipped the event last week. Novell's big green booth chewed up a good chunk of floor space, but its key Linux rival, the market leader, was nowhere to be seenat least on the floor. Some guessed Red Hat didn't want to be upstaged by Novell, which used the show to highlight, again, its three-week-old SUSE Linux Enterprise 10.

One Red Hat customer chalked it up to a dispute between show organizers and Red Hat over timing of the Red Hat Summit earlier this summer. The Fedora team showed up along with at least one backer, who sported the trademark lid.

The exploding Dell laptop advisory rose to severe at last week's XChange '06 in St. Louis. At the show, held by CMP Technology, more than a few attendees began to take measures when they thought their laptops were getting a tad too warm. During a break, one woman tossed her Dell onto the chair next to her, yelling, "Oh my God! It's getting hotter!" The man next to her calmly instructed her to "walk away, just walk away." There was no ignition.

XChange attendees finally learned what "CA" really stands for. Gary Quinn, executive VP of indirect business operations at the vendor, said that after multiple executive changes, channel program efforts, and even the company name change, it's clear that "CA stands for Change Always."