Alice’s Rant of the Week: We all get way too much Spam to comment on it anymore. What’s left to say after you’ve wittnessed money scams, illegal drug offers, plus the occasional porn blast that makes its way across your preview pane every day.

And yet…today I received this. (see above)

There is so much that can be said, but for starters, what the hell is this? (If you speak this language, please send a translation) And who were they hoping to snare with this grainy, ugly graphic. And most of all, why me?? Why?

Having two processors on a single CPU core is waaay cool. Just ask IBM. It’s Regatta (PowerPC) processor has been going gangbusters for some time now. On the IT side, it’s a great idea. Many software licenses charge by the CPU. Cut the number of processors in half by offering dual core CPUs and you cut your license bills in half. On the game side, well, let’s just say, oh yeah…. Now, just to be fair, Intel is headed for a dual core solution as well and while AMD is now the first to publicly demonstrate one, it should prove interesting to see who comes to market with one first.

How awful is this? Kevin Poulsen at SecurityFocus reports: “Overdue debtors beware: You may not be able to rely on Caller I.D. to screen out those annoying bill collectors much longer. A California entrepreneur has a plan to bring the hacker technique of Caller I.D. spoofing to the business world, beginning with collection agencies and private investigators.

“Slated for launch next week, Star38.com would offer subscribers a simple Web interface to a Caller I.D. spoofing system that lets them appear to be calling from any number they choose. “

About a third of businesses plan to migrate at least some Windows machines to Linux, according to a recent survey, but adoption will continue to be both slow and cautious, as companies evaluate a maze of economic factors.

In a report on total cost of ownership for the Linux, Unix and Microsoft Windows operating systems, research company The Yankee Group found that only 4 percent of businesses planned to migrate Unix servers to Linux within the next two years. A total of 11 percent intended to move Windows servers to Linux, while 21 percent proposed to add Linux servers to a predominantly Windows environment. On the desktop, 36 percent of businesses expected to have a few Linux PCs in their business, but only 5 percent planned a total migration to Linux. A majority–57 percent–planned no changes for Windows on the desktop.

But here’s my take: Last week, a friend tried to purchase 23 copies of Red Hat Linux from Red Hat and was told it would cost him about $20,000. That doesn’t sound like a less expensive alternative to Windows and methinks that some may be cranking the window up a bit too quickly.

Moore’s Law is holding steady at the house of Intel. The company announced a new technology breakthrough that can create a 70 megabit memory chip with switches measuring a scant 35 nanometers. That’s a 30% smaller than anything done to date.

Intel also pioneered a way to turn off unused sections of a memory chip in a power saving sleep mode. Then again, isn’t that what Bill does every day?! (And I’m darn proud that I did it first! -Bill)

BTW: Intel is heading for 22nm CPU design by 2011.

The Associated Press has a great piece on the Internet turning 35 this week. “Stephen Crocker and Vinton Cerf were among the graduate students who joined UCLA professor Len Kleinrock in an engineering lab on Sept. 2, 1969, as bits of meaningless test data flowed silently between the two computers. By January, three other ‘nodes’ joined the fledgling network. Then came e-mail a few years later, a core communications protocol called TCP/IP in the late 70s, the domain name system in the 80s and the World Wide Web — now the second most popular application behind e-mail — in 1990. The Internet expanded beyond its initial military and educational domain into businesses and homes around the world.”

Happy Birthday, you don’t look a day over 25!

Yee-Haw Dept.: Anyone who has ever ridden a horse quickly discovers the world of muscle pain that awaits the next morning.

Now, Matsushita (Panasonic) has found a way to torture your muscles at home without the annoying smell of horse manure or all the post riding clean up and work a real horse demands. To some this may look more like a motorcycle seat, but when it starts bucking, we guarantee it will be pure horse.

Hewlett-Packard Co. unveiled its own version of the iPod portable music player Friday, showing the fruits of a groundbreaking partnership it had previously announced with Apple Computer Inc. The product is a replica of Apple’s latest models of the popular white 20-gigabyte and 40-gigabyte iPods — but carries the HP brand instead. The price will be $299 for the 20-gigabyte model, or $399 for the 40-gigabyte model, matching Apple’s current prices. The players will be available in early September — the same month HP will release about two dozen other new consumer products, including a 42-inch plasma television and an all-in-one home theater projector, which were also announced Friday.