STILL FLUTTERING

'Iron Butterfly' can't stay out of the limelight

She's the Energizer Bunny of the Philippines' political world.

Imelda Marcos, former and ousted Philippines first lady and onetime Hawaii resident, is making a run for a seat in the Philippine Congress next year. There's something about the flamboyant widow of Ferdinand Marcos that makes it hard to look away. Maybe it's the lingering notoriety over billions of dollars of alleged ill-gotten wealth, or those thousands of pairs of shoes, or a jewelry cache that swung from hundreds of millions of dollars to her own trash-and-recyclables line.

But it should be no surprise, one supposes, that the former jet-setter just can't stay out of the limelight. It is a small jolt, though, to note that the one-time “;Iron Butterfly”; is now 80.

CLOGGED TUBES

It's getting crowded in cyberspace

Computer experts meeting in Honolulu warn of a looming traffic jam in cyberspace. Experts at the annual convention of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers say Internet traffic has spiked 75 percent in each of the last seven years, explosive growth that even the global economic recession did not slow. But they say Internet usage can't keep growing indefinitely unless Internet service providers widely adopt an upgrade in fundamental technology known as IPv6, which at the moment less than 1 percent of Internet-enabled devices have. In the near future, everything from refrigerators to cars will be able to connect to the Internet — but each device will need its own Internet address in order to communicate with the rest of the world. With old-style addresses expected to run out by 2011, providers must make the upgrades or risk being left in the dust.