(Continued from page 32)

• Several companies worked pen-based computing in the late 1980s, and Microsoft jumped on the trend. By 1991, it released "Windows for Pen Computing," an add-on to Windows 3.1 that let the operating system accept input from an active "pen" (really a stylus). Several devices used Microsoft's software, and are recognizable as the ancestors of today's tablets: They were square, portable slabs with a screen on one side. They weren't designed to respond to finger-touches, however: the reigning paradigm was that of the notepad and pen.
• The pen-computing fad mostly passed. While PenWindows tablets got a lot of attention, mainstream computing remained stubbornly keyboard-based.
• ___

• WASHINGTON (AP) -- Barry Bonds. Guilty on a technicality. At least that's how much of the public sees it. It's all that came out of a seven-year investigation into baseball's home run king.
• Lance Armstrong. Not even prosecuted. A two-year, multi-continent investigation brought to a close this year with no charges filed.
• Now Roger Clemens. Acquitted on all counts. A five-year investigation ended with the top pitcher of his generation celebrating with family hugs inside the courtroom.
• After three expensive failures, the government is done, it seems, with the business of pursuing high-profile cases of drugs-in-sports -- with a track record not

worth bragging about.
• "It was a tremendous waste of federal resources," said Stanley Brand, a long-time Washington defense attorney who was counsel to the House of Representatives from 1976 to 1983. "The juries that acquitted these people weren't persuaded by any of this. That's the man on the street."
• ___

• WASHINGTON (AP) -- The United States is planning a significant military presence of 13,500 troops in Kuwait to give it the flexibility to respond to sudden conflicts in the region as Iraq adjusts to the withdrawal of American combat forces and the world nervously eyes Iran, according to a congressional report.

(Continued on page 34)