The ghost of Richard Nixon at CES

LAS VEGAS--When you look at the new ads for Intel's Viiv PC, a sense of deja vu creeps in. The ads feature pictures of ordinary consumers with captions saying things like "I watched a premier movie from my living room." In the pictures, the people give the double peace sign, which makes their fingers sort of look like the two V's in Viiv.

But where have you seen it before? Hippies? They flashed one piece sign at a time. Winston Churchill? He flashed a single peace sign, but to signal victory instead. Then it dawns on you. It was the same pose Richard Nixon struck when he got on Air Force One the day he resigned. Fingers forming Vs, arms above the head, smiles all around.

With a Viiv multimedia PC, his secretary Rosemary Woods would have never lost those 18 minutes of tape. They'd be backed up automatically in a spare drive.