1445765
story
theluckyleper writes
"New Scientist reports that the semi-annual Robo-One contest took place last week in Kawasaki, Japan. Humanoid robots (2 arms, 2 legs) battled it out one-on-one and in multi-robot brawls. The goal is to knock opponents over, or off of the combat platform. If a prone robot cannot stand back up in 10 seconds, it is eliminated. PC Watch (Japanese only) has more images and videos of the event."
1445757
story
dbaker writes
"Wired Magazine has a very interesting article about the future of optical networks and the barriers we face before this technology is commonplace."
1445703
story
maddu writes
"Dr. Raj Reddy, a pioneering researcher in artificial intelligence and a
professor at Carnegie Mellon University, plans to unveil his new project, called the PCtvt, later this year - it's a $250 wirelessly
networked personal computer intended for the four billion people around
the world who live on less than $2,000 a year, according to the NYT (free reg. req.) He says his device can find a market in developing countries,
particularly those with large populations of people who cannot read,
because it can be controlled by a simple TV remote control and can
function as a television, telephone and videophone." We've
previously covered the somewhat conceptually related Simputer.
1445695
story
elgatozorbas writes
"The basic color elements of television have not changed much since 1954; a half-century after RCA introduced the first color set, the RGB (red, green and blue) system used then still prevails. But Israeli company Genoa Color Technologies has broken the RGB barrier by adding one to three primary colors such as yellow, cyan and magenta, thus expanding - from 55 to 95 percent - the coverage of the visible color gamut. The promised result of this multi-primary color (MPC) technology is a television picture that, with its truer, more vibrant color and brighter image, looks more like cinema than video. Also covered in IEEE Spectrum."
1445687
story
saccade.com writes
"Let's face it, the slowest part
of PC's today is the disk drive. Bit
Micro has come up with a nifty solution - flash memory based
disk drives available in typical
disk
form-factors. These e-disks are electrically compatible
with ATA, SCSI, etc. but run orders of magnitude faster - access
times down to 40 usec and transfer rates over 100 MB/sec. What's
the catch? Cost. Currently going for just under $1K/G, a 30G model
I recently held in my hand was worth much more than my car. However,
as flash memory prices drop, so do the price of these drives.
Within the decade the spinning hard disk may go the way
of the floppy and CRT."
1445685
story
Dave B writes
"The Register
has been fishing at the patent office again and found that Apple has a new patent for "a computing device [which] includes a housing having an illuminable portion. The computing device also includes a light device disposed inside the housing. The light device is configured to illuminate the illuminable portion".
While this gives us the exciting prospect of an iMac that is all five fruit flavors at once surely the original iMac with its glowing power button, or indeed a-thousand-and-one other electronic gizmos represent prior art?" Update a couple of users noticed this
Slashdot Story from 2002 which looks familiar.
1445651
story
ignipotentis writes
"According to PhysOrg we are close to being able to record our entire lives on a single 3.5" optical disc. This article talks about using ultraviolet light since focused laser beam is smaller in diameter than other frequencies of light. The expected cost per drive upon production is $570-$750 with discs costing $45."
1445637
story
danalien writes
"Anandtech with their previous review have stirred up a bit of controversy, and they've released their follow-up review where they pit AMD's Opteron 150 vs Intel's Xeon 3.6 Nocona (on linux)."
1445631
story
Predicta Lover writes
"It's widely believed that the late-50s Predicta series was the swansong for Philco. After its introduction, RCA's president David Sarnoff is quoted as having said "Philco has reinvented the industry and made TV more exciting again." Somehow, I can't imagine Bill reacting that way to an Apple product launch, at least not publicly. Years later, Philco's phenomenally-designed but questionably-engineered and over-priced TV sets are an icon of modern television design, and are even made in a stunning reproduction form. Maybe Philco would still be in business if they'd thought to shoehorn a contemporary computer into the box and put a high-resolution LCD up top (ahh, I guess that would've been tough...oh, the cruelties of history). At any rate, the researchers and designers at Onomy Labs did just that, 45 years later, and the result is an absolutely lust-worthy piece of computing hardware. Built to eventually house an experimental computer being produced by Sun Labs, the supercharged piece made its debut at their recent Open House held at the Computer History Museum.The Pedestal model that's used here was originally penned by Philco's Catherine Winkler, and is variously described as being inspired by the ideal female form and looking like a gas pump (I am not even going to touch that one). The perpetrators of this project have been mildly vilified by classic TV collectors (fearing imitators) and highly praised by most everyone else...some are calling it the 'best casemod ever'. I don't know about that, but it's definitely a beautiful object."
1445619
story
scubacuda writes
"When engineering assumptions change, shouldn't the laws that govern technology reflect those changing assumptions? Perhaps Clay Shirky puts it best: 'Things like shoes, cars, and houses are all property. Property is excludable -- it is easy to prevent others from using it -- and rival -- meaning that one person's use of it will interfere with another person's use of it. Spectrum has neither characteristic. Spectrum is purely descriptive -- a frequency is just a particular number of waves a second -- so no one can own a particular frequency of spectrum in the same way no one can own a particular color of light. Instead, when an organization 'owns' spectrum, what they really have is a contract guaranteeing Federal prosecution if someone else broadcasts on their frequency in their area. The regulatory costs of forcing spectrum to emulate property are enormous, but worthwhile so long as it leads to better use of spectrum than other methods can. That used to be true. No longer.'"
1445609
story
Arne Anka writes
"How about a no noise PC? Well, Hush has recently launched its ATX range, which takes a full ATX motherboard, decent speed processors and graphics card, but sticks to the main concept of producing no noise PCs. The chassis is made from solid aluminum heatsinks and the whole system is fitted with heatpipes. Have a look at TrustedReviews for the first online review of the Hush ATX."
1445595
story
An anonymous reader writes
"LinuxDevices has published an article about the Telly MC1200, a new convergent PVR/mediaplayer made by Interact-TV. The Linux-based device supports up to three internal hard drives on which it can store and manage libraries of digital music, photos, and DVDs/video. It can also burn CDs and save DVDs to local mpeg (DivX?) files, and it can pause and record live TV in TiVO-like fashion. The device is based on a 1.2GHz VIA C3 processor and has 256MB of PC2100 DDR SDRAM memory, expandable to 1GB."
1445581
story
the economist troll writes
"An article in this week's Economist argues that overcautious control of electromagnetic spectrum, on the part of regulatory agencies, has resulted in the sheer waste of up to 95% of available spectrum. The article suggests remedies for this sorry state of affairs, including (but not limited to) various methods of privatization. Peppered with history and interesting facts--for instance, did you know only 2% of America's spectrum allocation is determined by auction?--this is one article you won't want to miss."
1445559
story
worm eater writes
"The Register reports that Apple has filed for a European design trademark on a tablet computer. El Reg speculates that this could may make Apple Expo Paris more exciting that previously thought. Could this be the tech that finally brings the Mac desktop, iPod, and AirPort Express (and let's not forget the iPhone) together into the media household of The Future? (Of course, we've heard speculation about this before.)"
1445549
story
DrunkenTerror writes
"Yesterday at QuakeCon, Nvidia debuted their new affordable GPU mentioned a few days ago on Slashdot. Dubbed the GeForce 6600 and 6600 GT, they differ from their higher-end brethren by having only 8 pixel pipes (unlike the 12 & 16 of the 6800 line), and appear to be limited to 128MB of RAM. Both GPUs support Shader Model 3.0. The 6600 GT sports fast GDDR3 RAM, while the 6600 appears to use plain-jane DDR. The GT also supports the oft-recently-discussed SLI, which could 'enable millions of users to experience the power of two GPUs in their system.' The best part, however, may be the price/performance. With a suggested street price of US$199, the 6600 GT runs at a steady 42 FPS in Doom 3, at high-quality 1600*1200." Reader aceh0 adds a few links:
"Nvidia is announcing their NV4x Sub $200 Level graphics hardware today with the GeForce 6600 Series. The 6600 Series is feature complete with the 6800s and the differences come in the number of pipelines and memory configuration. SLI has trickled down to the 6600GT as well. Coverage is available at Neoseeker, Tech Report and PC Perspective as well as other sites."
1445517
story
prostoalex writes
"Wireless LANs seem to be enjoying the tremendous amount of interest lately, if you judge by the number of book covers and articles written on the topic. It's no wonder that this year the sales of WLAN equipment will grow 20% and generate $2.1 billion - everyone seems to be installing a wireless network in their office, their apartment complex or their own backyard. With extending the network into the radio world one is always extending the opportunities for unwelcome visitors to become part of the network. This book is a hands-on guide on hacking wireless networks followed by the recipes and principles to protect WLANs." Read on for the rest of prostoalex's review of
Wi-Foo .
1445493
story
Mark asks:
"As demand for storage continues to grow and prices continue to drop, network attached storage (NAS) devices are popping up everywhere...from large enterprises to restaurants to small offices and homes. Several vendors are now offering low-end NAS solutions targeted at SOHO users, with varying results. Most of them are just standard PC components and standard IDE hard drives running Linux, but the price tag on these often far oustrips what one would expect to pay for the parts. Hence, people all over the world (myself included) are building their own NAS machines at home at a fraction of the cost. Beyond support for RAID, CIFS, NFS, HTTP, and FTP, what would the ideal home NAS operating system include? And more importantly, what should it leave out to avoid conflicts, security vulnerabilities, and instability? Are there any Linux/*BSD/other distributions out there optimized specifically for NAS applications? What does the ideal NAS distribution look like to you?"
1445485
story
An anonymous reader writes
"Belkin said on Monday that they'll be releasing a wireless network card and router that uses pre-802.11n multiple-input, multiple-output (MIMO) antenna technology created by Airgo Networks. Belkin said the new pre-n products will provide four times faster speed and coverage area than 802.11b and g products. The new products will also be compatible with older products and in fact will increase performance on those older products."
1445475
story
freitasm writes
"Geekzone is reporting on the AOL Optimized PC, a 2GHz Intel Celeron PC with 256MB RAM and 50GB ATA-100 HDD. It'll cost US$299.99 from Office Depot stores, with a commitment of 12-month AOL subscription. More information on AOL Optimized website." There's also a
Reuters story.
1445465
story
womby writes
"DVD Jon has just announced that he cracked the encryption in Apple's AirPort Express. 'I've released JustePort, a tool which lets you stream MPEG4 Apple Lossless files to your AirPort Express. The stream is encrypted with AES and the AES key is encrypted with RSA.' No real details of the process employed in cracking the unit but newsworthy none the less."
