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Even as Microsoft promotes Windows 8, its latest operating system, Windows XP is still the second-most used OS on non-mobile computers, according to Net Applications web analytics. Debuting in 2001, XP lasted through three new Microsoft operating systems and the growth of mobile technology.

And in a move that seems to lower the incentive for stragglers to move on already, Microsoft announced last week that it will continue to provide anti-malware updates for XP until July 2015. That's more than a year after XP support officially ends April 8.

But the company faces a challenge as it herds its users away from the 12-year-old operating system: With so many computing options on the market, customers leaving XP behind might end up leaving Microsoft behind, too.

What The End Means For You

First, a brief explanation of what "ending support" means: XP won't stop working in April — if you have it on your computer now, you'll still have it on your computer then. But the machine won't receive new security updates. Even with Microsoft's anti-malware updates, it will still be much more vulnerable to attacks.

"The data could be erased, the data could be changed, people could take over those machines to use for spam or other elicit purposes," says Michael Silver, a tech analyst at Gartner.

Still On XP?

If you're reluctant to get rid of an ancient-but-functioning computer, here are some steps you can take to protect it:

Back up documents and photos. In a worst-case scenario, you at least won't lose important digital files.

Delete critical data. A malicious attack could find information like credit card and Social Security numbers.

Update anti-malware software. Whether you're using Microsoft's version — which will be updated through July 2015 — or another company's, anti-malware software will be able to patch up some, but not all, security holes.

Limit email use. And for the love of all that is holy, don't open suspicious attachments.

Disconnect your PC from the Internet if you don't need it online.

Upgrade your PC. Unfortunately, most old computers running XP don't have the physical requirements to do this.

Microsoft only condones upgrading or getting a new computer altogether. Underlying vulnerability in the XP system will not be patched with new security updates, said a company statement. "PCs running Windows XP after April 8, 2014, should not be considered to be truly protected."

You can find Microsoft's official tips here.

Each year's Grammy Awards offer their own questions and controversies based on how the nominations pan out, but there are a few points of contention that come up year after year. There's the difference between Song Of The Year and Record Of The Year. How a song can be eligible for nomination this year when the album it came from was nominated last year (or vice versa). The precise eligibility requirements for Best New Artist, a category that can be (and has been) won by performers several albums into their careers.

There's a simple solution for at least one of those: Abolish the Best New Artist category altogether.

Of course, there are those who would call for the abolition of the entire enterprise. But even accepting the framework and mission of the Grammys at face value, Best New Artist is an odd duck. It's predictive at best (and the only explicitly predictive award, at that) and patronizing at worst (and the only explicitly patronizing award, at that).

Take, for example, the nearly annual discussion of the "Best New Artist curse." This year's model seems to have focused on "Royals" singer Lorde, who has received four nominations in major categories like Record Of The Year, Song Of The Year and Best Pop Vocal Album but not, alas, Best New Artist.

In arguing that Lorde should be thankful for that snub, Forbes's Ruth Blatt takes exactly two sentences to make a comparison that hits on the exact problem with the category: Jon Landau's famous review stating, "I saw rock and roll future and its name is Bruce Springsteen." Just as that review set expectations that Springsteen was apprehensive about living up to, argues Blatt, so should Lorde be relieved that she can avoid the spotlight that a potential Best New Artist win would bestow upon her.

This, like the more general cataloguing of previous winners and assessment of the worthiness (or un-) of their subsequent careers, is frankly madness. It is based on the understanding that, alone amongst the 82 Grammys being given out this year, Best New Artist is awarded not for the work of the past year but for the work the performer will be doing in years to come. It professes to honor an artist now for what they will do in the future.

At the same time, Best New Artist carries with it the less-generous whiff of being a Grammy with training wheels. Grouping together performers purely on the basis of when their careers began (or, as the case often is, took off) is the recording industry equivalent of setting aside a kids' table at its biggest annual event. It creates a minor-league award that makes the implicit argument that the nominees aren't strong enough on their own amongst more established artists.

That's insulting to the people the National Academy Of Recording Arts And Sciences is claiming to honor, all the more so when the nominees are also up for other awards (as are Kendrick Lamar, Macklemore & Ryan Lewis, Kacey Musgraves and Ed Sheeran this year). In those cases, a Best New Artist nomination is redundant. For artists without any other nominations (like poor James Blake), it's a consolation prize, a condescending pat on the back that says, "Good job... for a rookie."

And that's saying nothing of the many unique ways that Best New Artist offers NARAS to embarrass itself (beyond the usual, anyway). Lauryn Hill won in 1999 as a solo artist, two years after winning two Grammys (including Best Rap Album) as a member of the Fugees. 2001 winner Shelby Lynne accepted her award by saying, "13 years and six albums to get here." And by the time Fountains Of Wayne were nominated (but didn't win) in 2004 on the occasion of their first and only top 40 hit, they'd already released three albums (two on a major label) and had been the subject of a feature in People magazine.

So in the end, you have the most poorly-defined of all the Grammy categories (itself quite an accomplishment) that salutes performers for things that haven't happened yet — when, that is, it's not implying that the nominees aren't quite ready for the big time. Best New Artist may date back to the second-ever Grammys, but plenty of categories have been discontinued since then. The Oscars retired their Special Juvenile Award in 1961 (allowing Patty Duke to win in a straightforward Best Supporting Actress race two years later), and the Golden Globes dropped the variously titled Promising Newcomer/Best Acting Debut/New Star award after 1983. It's time the Grammys followed suit.

(And Song Of The Year is for the composition, while Record Of The Year goes to the recording proper. So now we've cleared that up.)

Georgia Republican Saxby Chambliss won't be seeking a third term in the U.S. Senate this year, and his decision to bow out has eight other Republicans, including three congressmen, scrambling for his seat.

Democrats, meanwhile, have their hopes pinned on the daughter of a well-known and widely admired former senator. It's turned a Senate race Republicans hoped would be a cakewalk into something far less predictable.

Georgia has gone from a bastion of conservative Democrats to a place where, for the first time since Reconstruction, all statewide offices are now held by Republicans. Still, Merle Black, who teaches Southern politics at Emory University, says going into this Senate race, neither Democrats nor Republicans in Georgia have a majority.

"The issue for the Republicans is whether they can come out united behind a candidate who can put together the different factions of the Republican Party and also appeal to independents," Black says. "And right now, that's a big open question."

The Most Conservative Person In The Room

In a high school auditorium deep in southern Georgia last weekend, state GOP chairman John Padgett kicked off the first debate among the Republicans vying for Chambliss' Senate seat. A nearly all-white crowd of several hundred showed up for the debate, as did seven of the eight GOP contenders. Moderator Martha Zoller, a conservative radio talk show host, said this slew of Republican rivals have their work cut out for them.

"Whoever comes out of this primary is going to be bruised, bloodied and broke," Zoller said.

The debate largely boiled down to those candidates trying to out-conservative one another.

"I am a proven conservative, with a track record of actually getting the job done," said Karen Handel, a former Georgia secretary of state.

Not to be outdone was 11-term Rep. Jack Kingston.

"I'm a consistent conservative with an A-plus NRA rating," Kingston said.

Rep. Paul Broun one-upped the others.

"I'm the only true conservative with a proven consistent record of that conservatism," Broun said.

Rep. Phil Gingrey, the other member of Congress who's running, skipped the debate for a fundraiser. He's made repealing the Affordable Care Act his campaign's centerpiece; so has Broun.

And Kingston, who's considered more moderate than the other two congressmen, called Obamacare "an absolute assault on the American Dream."

"That's why I have voted 40 times to repeal it," Kingston said.

That's not good enough, though, for Broun, who chides his House colleague in a recent Web ad.

Kingston has also caught some grief for suggesting last month that low-income children do something in exchange for free school lunches, such as paying a dime or a nickel, or "maybe sweep the floor of the cafeteria."

That prompted the NBC TV affiliate in Savannah to highlight some of Kingston's own free lunches. They reported that Kingston and his staff expensed $4,200 in meals for business purposes to his congressional office.

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Two weeks before the Winter Olympics, Russian security forces are reportedly searching for potential suicide bombers, at least one of whom may already be in the host city of Sochi.

The suspects are thought to be linked to Islamist militants who are fighting to throw off Russian control and create a fundamentalist Muslim state in Russia's North Caucasus Mountains.

Police have been circulating leaflets at hotels in Sochi, warning about women who may be part of a terrorist plot.

They are known as "black widows," women sent to carry out suicide bombings in revenge for husbands or family members killed by security forces.

It's a tactic that's been used before, to devastating effect, by a Chechen rebel leader named Doku Umarov.

Last June, Umarov released a video that showed him in a forest, flanked by jihadi fighters. He called on Islamist militants to do everything in their power to wreck the Olympics, which he called "satanic dances on the bones of our ancestors."

Umarov has claimed responsibility for a number of deadly suicide attacks in the past, including bombings in Moscow in 2010 and 2011 that killed more than 70 people.

Mark Galeotti, an expert on Russian security issues, says that Umarov is an important influence on other jihadists in the region, "but his actual authority within the insurgent movement is exceedingly limited. Essentially, it's symbolic more than anything else."

Galeotti, a professor at New York University, says that's because the insurgency is composed of autonomous cells scattered across a rugged area that stretches for hundreds of miles.

It makes the rebel network hard to combat, because each cell plans and carries out its own operations.

Earlier this week, an insurgent group based in Dagestan posted an online video showing two men in explosive vests, saying that unless Russian President Vladimir Putin canceled the Winter Games, they were preparing a "present" for him and the Olympic visitors.

The video also claims that the two men pictured were the ones who carried out a pair of suicide bombings that killed 34 people last month in the southern Russian city of Volgograd.

Although it's only a little more than 400 miles from Sochi, Volgograd is considered to be outside the North Caucasus, a reminder that the insurgents have the power to strike terror beyond their region.

Some analysts say that terror may have only been a secondary purpose of the attacks.

"The biggest fear is that these attacks in Volgograd might be some sort of a diversion tactics," says Andrei Soldatov, editor-in-chief of Agentura.ru, a website that acts as a watchdog on the Russian security services. "Before every big terrorist attacks in Russia, militants used diversions. They organized small terrorist attacks in some other regions."

It was only after the suicide attacks focused intense attention on Volgograd that reports emerged that a "black widow" might have infiltrated the security cordon around Sochi.

A leaflet that has been distributed in the Olympic city shows a mug shot of a woman with dark, impassive eyes.

She wears a Muslim headscarf.

The leaflet says she is Ruzanna Ibragimova, the 22-year-old widow of an insurgent, and that she has been spotted in recent days in central Sochi.

Galeotti points out that once a suicide bomber has been prepared, he or she must be must be used fairly quickly.

"Suicide bombers are actually quite fragile weapons," he says. "These people have been groomed, they have been brought to a pitch, where they're ready to give their life. And once they're at that pitch, you can't then put them on the shelf until you're ready."

Even if there is no bomber, and even if the Olympics go off without a hitch, the terrorists may have already succeeded, to some degree, in disrupting the games.

Russian officials acknowledged last week that, so far, only about 70 percent of the tickets for the Olympics have been sold.