1. How can I determine if a laptop has this?
2. Are their any workarounds? Fixes? Can it/Should it be disabled?

I had "heard" about habanero pepper being dried and actually built into the cable extrusion, but never saw any proof of it. So when I read this story, I went looking for it, to no avail. Anyone else hear of this?

This was the closest link I could find, which tends to support what the hytechdistributors.com link above is doing.
http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/jul2001/nf20010712_107.htm