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Still, NBCOlympics.com continues to be a source of utter Future World uplift. And that is why I must go. Argentina’s finest field hockeyists are playing Great Britain online.

Their defense is that this is no different from American Idol, which Westies also see on tape delay, with the occasional reminder that this is the case.

I couldn’t possibly accuse any of them of taking steroids, but could you blame them if they slipped something a little special into their noon smoothie just to deal with another sleepless night?

Please don’t tell anyone else, but he missed. The Spaniards had allowed for this possibility by rigging the flame’s dish with so much gas that the arrow had to only pass somewhere near it for the flame to light up.

The reason why so much of sport still gets more than tolerable ratings is precisely because it is live. You get involved in it because it is happening right now. And love ‘em or love ‘em less, the folks at Fox try to make live baseball as live as it could possibly be, even identifying fans, managers and reluctant spouses engaged in the most spontaneous behaviors.

All this reminded me of the 1992 Barcelona Olympics when the wondrous opening ceremony had, as one of its moments of high drama, an archer shooting a flaming arrow to light the Olympic flame.

NBC has also suffered some slings and arrows by keeping the word “live” on the screen even on the feeds to the West Coast. Twice an hour, they remind you briefly that the pictures you’re watching are, well, not literally live. In fact, they’re not live at all.

Please forgive me, but American Idol is to live Olympics what America’s Top Model is to live NASCAR.

When I say online, I mean it’s almost as if they were literally right there on my laptop. You know, cinematically speaking.

Just to be clear, this is not CGI.

Who would choose to be in NBC’s PR Department this week?

I’m not sure how the CGI increased our excitement.

Actually, it was animation, wasn’t it? It was literally an artist’s impression, except this one wasn’t trying to sell you a timeshare.

Would you have preferred: “Here’s some animation to give you a more vivid sense of what they’re seeing out there”? I think I might have.

Click here for more stories on tech and the Beijing Olympics.

However, the description from NBC’s Matt Lauer was definitely breathtaking: “You’re looking at a cinematic device employed by Zhang Yimou here. This is actually almost animation.”

(Credit: CC Sister 72)

NBC’s Bob Costas, who is very clever, must have spent many moments composing his CGI voiceover: “We said earlier that aspects of this opening ceremony are almost like cinema in real time. Well this is quite literally cinematic.”

I know of no other country that would delay a sporting event that is happening live in the hope of expected commercial gain.

And if you think there’s some jolly jingoism going on here, well, if I remember correctly, ABC and ESPN televised America’s most popular international event, the World Cup, live. As in, you know, the thing you’re seeing on screen is happening right now in some other country.

Many critics have been kvetching about technological fakery during the opening ceremony, when fireworked footprints were CGI’d for home consumption.

To me this is as odd as the fact that love seats are always so incredibly uncomfortable.

If you followed NBC’s impeccable commercial logic, then surely Costas’ favorite event, the World Series, should be on tape delay on the West Coast. Same goes for the Superbowl.

Billionaire investor Carl Icahn is in a bit of a conundrum.

B. Get a hearing before the Delaware Chancery Court and ask the judge to invalidate Yahoo’s employee severance plan. Icahn, should he go this route, may want to act long before the August 1 meeting, because if his proxy slate is successful in winning a majority of the board seats, it would trigger the severance plans for the next two years.

On Wednesday, in a letter sent to Yahoo’s chairman, Icahn called on Yahoo’s board of directors to rescind the company’s controversial employee severance plans, fearing it was an impediment to a Microsoft buyout deal.

So, what are his options?

Which option do you think Icahn will take?

But as reported Tuesday, Icahn’s proxy fight is what’s keeping the controversial severance plans in play.

A. Give up the proxy fight, wait for 30 days to pass, then Yahoo’s board can withdraw the severance plan. Whether this would all be done before the August 1 shareholders’ meeting, when Icahn was going to run his dissident slate against Yahoo’s current board, is another matter. Obviously, this scenario is highly unlikely.

C. Aim for something less than majority control over Yahoo’s board, which means the employee severance plan could be pulled 30 days after the shareholders’ meeting.
Icahn, who is currently running a proxy slate to fill all positions on Yahoo’s board, would be leaving that outcome up to Yahoo shareholders, who will be electing the company’s next board at the August 1 meeting.

Icahn’s proxy fight is considered a “potential change in control,” which means Yahoo’s board can’t voluntarily remove the severance plans, attorneys say.

For those keeping score, Apple’s
Mac OS X Leopard is No. 7 on the software list, while the highest ranking Vista version is the update version of
Windows Vista Home Premium, at No. 41.

For those still looking to get their hands on XP, it doesn’t seem like it’s all that hard to find. Best Buy had it listed in several different flavors online and noted that it’s also available in most stores. Staples, Office Depot, Circuit City, and OfficeMax all listed at least one version of XP on their Web sites as well.

The highest ranked Vista edition doesn’t crack the top 25, although it does come on nearly all new PCs these days so most people don’t need a boxed copy.

On the bright side for Redmond, Office Home and Student for Windows is No. 1 and the Mac edition of Office Home and Student is No. 3.

Perhaps as a result of its potentially impending scarcity, XP is near the top of Amazon.com’s software list, with the full version of XP Home at No. 15 and the full version of XP Pro at No. 21.

Although Microsoft officially stopped selling Windows XP as of June 30, retailers can keep selling it as long as they have copies.

An estimated 10 percent of Americans are surfing the net via dial-up connections, according to a report released Wednesday by the Pew Internet and American Life Project.

Earlier this week, AOL said it would be raising the subscription fee for its dial-up service by 20 percent, starting at the end of July.

The Associated Press, in its posting on the report, cited this assessment by the report’s author, John Horrigan: “That (resistance to change) suggests that solving the supply problem where there are availability gaps is only going to go so far.”

Got dial-up and don’t want to give it up? You’re not alone.

The survey collected information from 2,251 U.S. residents, between April 8 and May 11.

And a lot of those people apparently see no compelling reason to change. The report indicates that those users are not itching to make a change to a speedier broadband connection in large part because, they say, broadband is too expensive.

Of this dial-up group, 35 percent cited the cost issue, while 19 percent say nothing will ever prompt them to change. Another subset–14 percent–say they’re still on dial-up because broadband is not available in their neighborhoods

Fast silicon is hitting a wall in game PCs, according to Alienware, which is looking for ways to boost game PC performance.

Parent company Dell vowed on Tuesday to pour more resources into the game PC unit and invest in “product development, design, and engineering.”

DDR3 memory modules use less power and double the data prefetch buffer
to 8 bits from 4 bits per cycle. DDR3 also operates at higher clock rates (1600 MHz), among other improvements.

“So many people are caught up in this hardware race. Dual-core, quad-core this and that,” said Diana, who is Alienware’s product marketing manager for desktops. “If these companies–Intel, Microsoft, Nvidia, ATI, and AMD–if they’d just sit down and realize the performance benefit of optimizing their drivers and software for 64-bit.”

Alienware Area-51 m9750 notebook

“I think that would make sense now,” Diana said emphatically.

He also talked about other factors–beyond faster processors and graphics chips–that affect system performance, particularly for consumers who have limited budgets. “If I was looking to invest in one component over another,” Diana said, “I would probably invest in a really good motherboard,” and after that, a dual-core processor and a midrange graphics card such as Nvidia’s 8800GT or ATI’s X2 card.

“They’re building (software) for something that is inherently very old technology,” he said. “We (need) drivers that are very healthy in the 64-bit space. I’m not saying that 64-bit drivers don’t exist. I’m just saying there’s not enough software development and support on that end to warrant companies like us to move to 64-bit operating systems.”

(Credit:
Alienware)

The most obvious limitation of 32-bit operating systems and applications is a cap–4GB–on how much memory an operating system can use. And some applications can’t even use the entire 4GB. “Who cares about DDR3 memory? What about giving me 4GB?” Diana asked.

Much of the software in the PC world is still 32-bit, including most copies of Windows XP and Vista. In fact, Diana said Alienware doesn’t offer 64-bit operating systems because “we don’t feel comfortable shipping a system to a customer with the 64-bit driver support that’s out there in the industry.”

New DDR3 memory is also becoming more of a factor. DDR3 memory is offered in two Alienware platforms. “It is the highest-performing memory now on the market. But I’m not so sure it’s quite there yet. The cost is very high,” he said. “Six months from now it will start making a lot more sense (economically) than it does right now.” Because of this, DDR2 memory is still widely used.

Alienware’s Marc Diana believes optimizing systems for the 64-bit world would allow game PCs to make big strides in performance. In effect, today’s 32-bit environments are putting a crimp on PC-based gaming.

Now owned by Acer, Gateway lost its way years ago. Despite frequent course corrections along the way, Gateway couldn’t stop the customer exodus. In the end, Acer was able to buy the companylast year for a relative song ($710 million.)

Hard to believe that at one point in the early 1990s, Gateway and Dell were roughly neck-and-neck. But Waitt, a charismatic operator, never matched Michael Dell as a business organizer. Both CEOs made their share of miscues, but Michael Dell always could tap a deeper bench. As fate would have it, both Waitt and Dell were forced to return as CEO because their chosen successors stumbled.)

Former Gateway CEO Ted Waitt

(Credit:
CNET News)

Dell CEO Michael Dell

still can’t tell whether Dell Redux is going to turn out to be a success. But he’s a survivor. And for old time’s sake, it’s good to see folks like him still taking center stage.

More than a year after returning as CEO, though, Dell seems to be settling quite nicely into the new/old role. He’s also reportedly contemplating a renewed run at the digital music player business. (Here’s more context on that story.) The previous attempt was a failure but I

Along with Dell, Gateway was one of the two companies most responsible for popularizing the idea of buying computers over the phone. But this week’s about-face only put a long-expected coda on the final chapter of this story.

Last I heard, Ted Waitt was kicking back somewhere in a posh part of Southern California, living the high life that came his way from starting Gateway. I wonder what he thought about the news that his old company no longer would be selling computers directly to the public.

Amen to that.

“The return of the prodigal son has many precedents in American business. Steve Jobs returned to a company in shambles in 1997 but has since turned Apple into one of the great growth stories of the decade. Mark Hurd, though not a prodigal son, also took over a company in disarray and turned HP into a formidable competitor in less than two years. At the same time, Ted Waitt, Gateway’s founder, was unable to return the company to its former glory when he came back in 2001 after a year’s sabbatical.”

Reading through the clips from that time, I came across this observation on Dell’s return from Needham analyst Charlie Wolf:

(Credit:
CNET News)

Now, the flip side. The biggest turn off is that Upline does not backup e-mail files. That’s planned for the future, according to HP, but backup users will need it now. Imagine losing your e-mail archive. Enough said.

See also: Mozy and Carbonite.

There’s a free version that gives you 1GB of online storage for a year, but if you’re serious about backup you’ll want one of the paid versions. The least expensive $59/year Home plan gives you the unlimited storage and allows up to three PCs to share the online storage pool. Family plans and small office plans give you individual storage bins, and the business plans also give you an administrator’s dashboard.

The application doesn’t offer PC-to-PC sync (see FolderShare, BeInSync, SugarSync), which to many is an obscure feature, but I think it’s one of the most valuable data safety and convenience applications you can have on a personal computer. There’s no virtual drive, such as XDrive has, which makes using the service just a little more tedious than it needs to be. Also, it’s PC only on the backup side, although any machine with a browser can view Upline archive pages. There’s also no mobile client. Finally, the search feature seems to only search file names, not files’ contents.

Upline can also back up files to a local device, such as a second hard drive, a server, or a PC on the local network. I don’t know of any other products that handle both local and Web-based backup. It’s a very cool feature.

Another missing piece: System restore. Upline is a document and media backup product. It won’t store your programs or system settings. So if your hard disk crashes, you can’t use it to rebuild your system.

The product is based on Titanize, which HP acquired when it bought the company Opelin last year. I’ve always thought Titanize was an underappreciated backup application. Perhaps HP was listening.

The desktop application is pretty straightforward for a backup product.

Upline is neither a perfect backup tool nor a complete integrated online storage suite. However, at this price point, given its unlimited backup space and its straightforward sharing options, it’s a good deal.

The good news first: The software is simple to get started with (critical for a backup application) and the paid plans provide unlimited storage for your documents, photos, music, and video files (also critical–who wants to count bits when signing up for data insurance?). The system checks for new files by default every 15 minutes, and uploads your data to the HP-run servers in a quiet background process.

Upline's desktop widget.

The product allows for Web-based access to your backed-up files, which is very nice if you want to grab a something when you’re away from your PC. You can also share files via e-mail (recipients get links, not the files themselves) or publish files for public access.

HP has entered the online backup space with a new product called Upline. It’s a decent cloud-based backup product at a good price point, but it has a few frustrating limitations.

This review has been updated from the original: Information was added on backing up data to a local device.

Chartered Semiconductor, which builds chips for companies like IBM and Samsung, says it is looking at a bleak economic picture for the coming months.

(Credit:
Chartered Semiconductor)

Update: Infineon Technologies, a German chipmaker, announced Friday that it would lay off 3,000 workers due to the “levels of risk in the current market conditions.”

Chartered partners with IBM in chip manufacture and development

Chartered is looking to customers to help it defray costs. “Due to the unprecedented situation and limited opportunities to offset such increases through internal cost reduction measures in the near term, we have initiated discussions with our customers to share the cost increases,” said Chia.

Energy-related costs are negating cost-saving efforts, according to Chia. “Cost increases in items such as chemicals, process gases, and supplies are nullifying the results of our cost reduction and productivity improvement efforts,” he said.

This is coming at an inopportune moment because Chartered is moving from its current 65-nanometer manufacturing technology to a more advanced 45-nanometer process. “We are at a point where we can no longer defer enabling 45nm capacity,” he said. The company will need an additional capital expenditure of $160 million for the year to support “early customers at 45nm in 2009″ as well as for rebalancing the mix between 65nm and 45nm, Chia said.

Chartered CEO Chia Song Hwee issued a cautionary statement when the company announced earnings late Thursday afternoon. “We continue to be cautious about the worsening economic situation,” he said, adding that Chartered is “dealing with the challenges of…crude oil price increases” and “a weaker U.S. dollar.” Chartered is one of the largest contract chip manufacturers in the world and competes with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC).

Chartered reported gross profit of $69.9 million for the second quarter, or 15.3 percent of revenue, compared with a gross profit of $60.2 million, or 18.6 percent of revenue in the year-ago quarter. This is also up from $64.6 million in the first quarter of this year.

(Credit:
HP)

If you’re in the market for a powerful media-center PC, here’s your chance to save some big bucks on a sleek, compact system. Note that you can’t apply the coupon (which expires after 900 uses, so act fast!) until you get to the payment page.

That, my friends, is a pretty killer load-out. I didn’t even mention the 500GB hard drive that comes standard. Shipping is free, though you may have to pay sales tax.

There's an embarrassment of riches inside this compact case.

Starting with the base configuration, I selected Vista Home Premium 64-bit (!), the Intel E4700 processor, 4GB of RAM, the 256MB Nvidia video card with HDMI, and the Blu-ray player. To inch the total up to $999, I also added the HP 2.1 speakers with remote and HP multimedia keyboard with HP optical mouse. (Note: monitor not included.)

Find more deals, coupon codes, and bargains on CNET’s Shopper.com.

The HP Pavilion s3500t is a sleek, ultracompact desktop that you can configure to your liking at Hewlett-Packard’s online store. For an extremely limited time, HP is offering a $100 instant rebate on the s3500t
or $400 off with coupon code DT1158. You can use the latter only when your config hits $999–but getting there is half the fun.

Just this week, Google announced the addition of a “following” feature to blog platform Blogger, and it invited users to import the list of Blogger-hosted blogs they subscribe into its Google Reader RSS software so that they can read them alongside other blogs. Google Calendar’s collaborative datebooks have been tied into the Gmail client. And when developer applications became the craze du jour, Google developed standards like OpenSocial and the forthcoming Friend Connect for other social networks to deploy.

It’s the latest social-networking failure for Yahoo, which was unable to get its earlier “Yahoo 360″ network off the ground, and once attempted to purchase Facebook, only to have its billion-dollar offer turned down.

Regardless, what’s important is that Google seems to understand that there isn’t room in the market to debut and promote a mass-appeal social network. With the demise of Mash, perhaps Yahoo gets the point now too. But while Mash likely wasn’t a resource or cash drain in the end, Yahoo is now on the PR defensive.

Let’s hope Yahoo has finally learned that the maxim “If you build it, they will come” simply does not apply to a social network.

Mash was cute, with a slick interface, and Yahoo already had the advantage of millions of registered users to roll right into it. But its failure to catch on is indicative of a bigger truth in the social-networking world: a new player in this saturated market has to offer something legitimately new and useful.

There are plenty of compelling properties at Yahoo’s fingertips: imagine if a feed on Yahoo’s home page told you which of your contacts were uploading Flickr photos, RSVPing to events on Upcoming, or voting up news stories on Yahoo Buzz.

Other broad-reaching social networks that have seen decent growth have either targeted a large demographic–Bebo and under-25s, for example–or have achieved localized success in regions of the world that hadn’t yet caught the social-networking bug, like Hi5 in Latin America.

In the days of AOL People Connection, the novelty factor of creating a profile and giving yourself an identity online was enough. But a decade later, filling out an online profile is about as interesting as filing tax forms.

Here’s a thought: Yahoo would’ve done better in the social-networking market to introduce a friends list and news feed option to its members’ Yahoo.com home pages rather than attempting to create a standalone service. That way, it wouldn’t have to change existing members’ browsing habits one bit.

Critics of social networks say they’re nothing but gimmicky fads, pointing to the popularity of silly Facebook applications and the flashy glitter text that adorns many teenagers’ MySpace profiles. That just isn’t true: if you look at the two biggest social-networking success stories, Facebook and MySpace, each one has served a distinct utility since its debut.

Even still, they have to differentiate themselves: Bebo, which has been acquired by AOL, touts its library of original video programming. Hi5 recently launched a mobile site that it hopes will make it appealing to consumers who don’t regularly use a personal computer.

And, goodness knows, it doesn’t need any more of that.

Look at Google: its social network, Orkut, is big in Brazil and India but not globally. Instead of trying to push Orkut into markets that are already saturated by competing social networks, Google has quietly been tying together existing properties into a more social experience.

If Yahoo, or any other aspiring Facebook rival, wants to take social networking seriously, it has to give its millions of users a reason to create profiles and connect with friends. Virtual pets that your friends can “snorgle” are not a reason. Neither are drag-and-drop widgets–that’s something that could draw people to a personal home page service, not a social network.

Yes, really. And let it be a lesson to any other would-be Facebook killers.

The Silicon Valley mainstay and onetime Microsoft shopping-spree target is quietly shutting down Yahoo Mash, its latest foray into creating a general-interest social network like a Facebook or MySpace.

People initially signed up for MySpace because it offered unprecedented tools for independent bands to spread the word about their music–and ways for fans to keep track of those bands. Facebook gained popularity because, in its infancy, it was the digital version of a college directory.

To be fair, Google has had its share of social-networking blunders: it acquired mobile where-you-at service Dodgeball and failed to find a niche for it within the company, instead letting it wither on the vine. It’s also still unclear as to what Google will do with Jaiku, the Twitter-like start-up that it acquired last year, and the likes of OpenSocial and Friend Connect are still too early-stage to deem them surefire successes.