The government of Portugal will provide 500,000 Intel Classmate PCs to school children under its "Iniciativa Magalhães" (Magellan Initiative) in the next year.

Classmate PC

Intel's Classmate PC, which will soon use their new low-power Atom processor, runs Windows and varients of the GNU/Linux operating system such as Mandriva Linux. Mandriva, formerly Mandrake in France, acquired Brazilian Linux company Conectiva in 2005. Mandriva is also providing a customized version of Linux for the Gdium "netbook" which runs on a USB key.

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We're reminded of former executives of a now bankrupt film company disagreeing over the color of their new corporate jet's leather seats in reading the piece about comfort capsules for U.S. Air Force Generals.

One request was that the color of the leather for the seats and seat belts in the mobile pallets be changed from brown to Air Force blue and that seat pockets be added; another was that the color of the table's wood be darkened.

Changing the seat color and pockets alone was estimated in a March 12 internal document to cost at least $68,240.

Terminator transport?

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When California's failed IndyMac Bank reopened under the administration of Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) regulators, customers met with confusion.

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The Experts

Everyone thought these guys were the best in the market at evaluating mortgages, so they let them skate by with huge debts and tiny financial cushions. But now it’s less clear they knew what they were doing, and it’s really hard to know who’s right and who’s selling pipe dreams and then hoping for the best.

- Thomas H. Stanton, John Hopkins University

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