sp00 writes "The first products certified to support Wi-Fi Protected Access 2, the latest wireless security technology, were announced by the Wi-Fi Alliance on Wednesday. The Wi-Fi Alliance says WPA2 is a big improvement on earlier wireless security standards, such as Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP), which hackers have found easy to circumvent. It includes Advanced Encryption Standard, which supports 128-bit, 192-bit and 256-bit keys."

kengreenebaum asks: "Perhaps not the most exciting of topic; however it is storm season and I have a couple of UPS's that need new batteries. What is the best source for high quality, long lived replacement batteries for these devices? I assume it takes a special chemistry to survive continuous trickle charging and an occasional deep cycle. Has anybody tried connecting larger capacity batteries external to the UPS enclosure to attempt longer run times? (Obviously the load capacity is based on the inverter itself and can't easily be modified) Also what software do you use for monitoring and automatic shutdown on Linux? I have collected quite a few APC and Belkin UPS's 700VA or smaller as they go on rebate/sale."

dmayle writes "According to ExtremeTech, the Blu-Ray Disc Association (which consists of many big names, like Sony, Philips, and Pioneer) has decided to mandate Microsoft's VC-1 video codec. With HD-DVD incorporating Microsoft's patented video codecs as well, what will happen to the state of media players on Open Source? (Here's an additional source for Blu-Ray info)."

The Associated Press is running an story about Philadelphia's city goverment seriously considering creating the world's largest hotspot. "For about $10 million, city officials believe they can turn all 135 square miles of Philadelphia into the world's largest wireless Internet hot spot....the city would likely offer the service either for free, or at costs far lower than the $35 to $60 a month charged by commercial providers"

sevej writes "Keith Shaw, in his weekly column "Wireless Computing Devices" (Network World Fusion), reported on a recent entry in AKMA's Random Thoughts where AKMA was using a public WiFi network outside of a library. A policeman approached him and asked that he only access the Internet from within the Library and hinted that Federal Laws against "signal theft" were applicable. Oh, and btw, we're not talking about a person that looked like your stereotypical 'hacker'; AKMA is an ordained priest."

An anonymous reader writes "According to an article at LinuxDevices.com, the latest market research data from Venture Development Corp. shows that Linux is now firmly in first place as the OS of choice for smart gadgets and embedded systems. VDC's latest data indicates that Linux now accounts for 15.5% of embedded projects, beating out Microsoft's WinCE (6%) and XPe (5%), and Wind River's VxWorks (10.3%)."

Ophelea writes "Anyone who knows Jay Moore of Tribes fame may know about his great company Garage Games. Today it was announced that Marble Blaster Gold, one of their best games was bundled on the iMac G5. Woot! Go Go Garage Games!"

captainJam writes "The HagakiPC, Hagaki meaning postcard in Japanese, is a tiny PC with dimensions of 135 x 109 x 18mm and weighing in at 340g making it by far the lightest and 2nd slimmest handtop. Only 128MB RAM and a 640x480 VGA screen, plus there's no hard drive -- it's meant to run OS's from CF cards (great for D.S.L. and the like). Still only a prototype, so not much info is available, but what we do know (and a few photos) are here." Update: 09/01 12:14 GMT by T : Link to D.S.L. upgraded to a form that doesn't make some browsers choke.

cdneng2 writes "gamesindustry.biz has the scoop that Nintendo is dropping the GBA price down to $80 in North America later this week! The $20 cut is aimed to stimulate sales for the Christmas run-up. The article also indicated that DS is rumoured to sell for $179 US."

Roland Piquepaille writes "At least, the founders of Tableau Software, a small company established in 2003 and based in Seattle, come from Stanford University, where they worked down the hall with Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin back in 1997. In 'Tableau making name for itself,' the Seattle Post-Intelligencer writes that Tableau intends to make structured databases easy to use the way Google did with unstructured data. So the company is turning databases into easy-to-generate graphics. Tableau doesn't say who are its customers, but claims that it has more than 100 installations and that it's already profitable. This graphical data mining tool runs on desktops and costs $1,000 per user for a standard edition and $1,600 per user for a professional version. Will this company be successful and become another Google? Read more and decide after looking at an example of database drilling."

rookie1 writes "According to this article and this, Ericsson has shut down its Bluetooth division. Ericsson has not made any formal announcement. Considering SonyEricsson is a major supporter of Bluetooth technology, will this have a huge impact on its adoption?"

Mudzy writes "The Tech Zone reviews what has to be the coolest Swiss Army Knife ever made. The Swissmemory USB Victorinox is the first knife to be equipped with a USB flash drive. " Besides 64 or 128mb of data, it includes such useful items as a ballpoint pen, red light, scissors, nail file, and not surprisingly, a knife.

peatbakke writes "Well, here it is. Looks like the rumors of computer+monitor combined into a sleek little case were true." It's mostly what you'd expect both design-wise and specwise. And I want it.

Remik writes "Rio has released a limited edition of its new hard drive based player called Carbon. Coming in lighter and denser (3.2oz with 5 GB of storage) than the Ipod Mini with the same price tag $249, twice the battery life, and nearly the same dimensions. Rio has only made 500 players available in the initial offering, so get one while they last. There's more info at cNet, Pocket Lint and Gizmodo. Highlights: Drag and drop file transfer, charging over USB and Janus compliance."

Didion Sprague writes "News.com is reporting that XM has decided to "quietly discontinue" the XMPCR -- a tiny USB satellite radio receiver for XM radio. Slashdot readers may remember last week's story about TimeTrax -- homebrewed software that allows XMPCR users to automatically record and tag each song. Now, XMPCR receivers are going for almost $400 on ebay. The RIAA, it should be noted, claims that they weren't "behind the discontinuation of the PCR"."

pHatidic writes "My college dorm room is never dark, even with the lights turned off. This is because of LEDs. Between the Airport Express, laser printer, surge protector, and Logitech mouse there is the constant nuissance of light polution. The powerbook has to take the cake though, with a green LED built into the power adapter and a white pulsating LED indicating it's in sleep mode so bright that I can actually detect it even with my eyes closed. Short of actually unplugging all of my devices every day, is there any way to disable all of these LEDs so I can actually get some sleep?"

ATomkins asks: "The school where I work has 128 new G5s which will be set up in a couple of labs. We want to completely re-image all G5s at least every semester. Ideally, we would want to use something like Ghost to push the image out to all the Macs at once; with Dell boxen, under similar circumstances, this takes about 20-30 minutes. Is there a viable alternative for OS X?"

SupaFox asks: "I was reading through the specs of the soon to be released Nvidia GeForce 6600 and on the last line of the features and benefits page it reads: 'Integrated HDTV Encoder Provides world-class HDTV-out functionality up to and including 1920x1080i resolutions.' I don't see this listed explicitly on the features page for the potentially more expensive 6800. Does that mean using a 6600 is a better option for someone building a media center or HTPC or getting a fancy new LCD or Plasma display as a primary or secondary display option for a PC or is the 6800 just as good? Any thoughts?"

DMOS writes "Intel's 'Dothan' processor for moblile computers has finally seen the light of day, but where is the rest of the 'Sonoma' platform? Specifically, the 'Alviso' chipset that is replacing the current i855 and ICH4m. So far it appears to be MIA, and Devhardware looks into why with their 'Where's Alviso?' article."

Tong writes "PDA Buyer's Guide has published a hands-on review of the Sharp Mebius CV50. "The smallest notebook we've seen in years. This Japanese Import is available translated into English from Dynamism, and is smaller than a hardback book. It weights just under two pounds, has a 1 GHz Efficeon processor, a wide screen 7.2" display and absolutely stunning looks and style." Read the full review."