It is now kind of official: cell phones can alter your DNA and make it easier for your tissues to develop cancer. The industry silence is most disturbing, but it was the cell phone companies themselves, who payed for studies on the subject... and these studies returned some evidence of health problems.

According to ZDNet, the evidences are much stronger than the ones that lead the FDA (Food & Drug Administration) to ban silicone implants on breasts.

"For the 1st time in history, we are holding a high-powered transmitter against the head"... and 40% of the communication's waves / energy is absorbed by the hand and skull / brain...

No more cell phone for me. REALLY. There are already thousands of cases of people with regular headaches, that can be related to cell phones! How many more years until the hardware giants like Ericsson and Motorola, start paying the amounts that today's tobacco companies are paying?

Windows 2000 Gaming Compatibility Status

After my own real life experiences, I can report the following game performance / compatibility issues:

- Unreal Tournament (405b) : zero problems / performs as in Win9x

- Quake 3 Arena (1.16n) : zero problems / performs as in Win9x

- Jane's USAF (1.02F) : preferences menu NOT available, otherwise performs as in Win9x.

- GTA2 (1.03) : NOT compatible

- Ultima IX (1.18) : how do I quit?! / typical performance (game is slow by nature)

- Delta Force 2 (latest patch) : zero problems / performs as in Win9x

- Flight Unlimited 3 (patched) : zero problems / slower than in Win9x

- Flight Simulator 2000 (with update #2) : zero problems / slower than in Win9x

- Fly! : zero problems / performs as in Win9x

- Tomb Raider 4 : compatibility problems

- Tiberian Sun : compatibility problems

- Microprose's GP 500 : compatibility problems

- GP Legends : zero problems under OpenGL / not compatible under Glide / performs as in Win9x, under OpenGL

- Age of Empires 2 : zero problems / performs as in Win9x

Windows 2000 Hardware Compatibility Status

- Creative Labs failed the promised release date (mid March) for proper Sound Blaster Live! drivers, which are now expected to be online until the end of the week.

- Creative Labs failed two successive NVIDIA detonator drivers' update (official release 3.78 and leaked release 3.81) for their NVIDIA TNT / GeFORCE based products.

- Pinnaclesys / Miro failed the promised release date (week of 13 March 2000) of Windows 2000 drivers, for their PCTV product. Non BETA official Windows 2000 drivers are now only expected by the end of April!

- VIATECH (of VIA chipset fame) still did NOT address performance issues, relating to UDMA66 support, under any OS. It looks like their UDMA66 driver performs as good as the UDMA33 one.

- INTEL has severe i820 and i840 problems. It is not just the ECC (Error Correction Code) problem. Any i8x0 based motherboard has restrictions to memory hardware. Normally, you'll find i8x0 boards with sockets for just 2 DIMMs. Extra DIMM slots bring chaos to the chipset...

- HP is yet to support their high end 6350C scanners with native Windows 2000 software, although the current NT4 programs can handle the job.