vmircea writes "If you think clock speed is the most important measure of a processor, IBM's Bernie Meyerson wants you to reconsider. Meyerson, who heads research and development efforts for Big Blue's semiconductor group, says processor chip speed is old news. Go to ZDNet for the interview."

no_demons writes "Apple have just announced the new, completely dual-processor PowerMac G5 lineup. The models all sport an 8x SuperDrive, whilst new the dual-2.5GHz model also features an 'innovative liquid cooled heat sink,' available in July."

Patik writes "According to an article at the NY Times, 'new TiVo technology... will allow users to download movies and music from the Internet to the hard drive on their video recorder.' This is TiVo's next big push for subscribers after being dumped by DirecTV Tuesday. Blockbuster, Netflix, and Real are also looking into distributing feature-length movies over the web."

yokem_55 writes "According to this article on Yahoo News, Mars rover engineers are beginning to consider the possibility that the rovers may be able to survive the oncoming Martian winter in a hibernation mode, and then return to activity when spring returns to the red planet. The article ends with a quote from Steve Squires speculating that, 'we're looking at the final demise of these vehicles perhaps as late as the onset of our second winter on Mars.'"

Saeed al-Sahaf writes "The Register is running a story about a security consulting company that as part of a study bought hard drives and laptops on eBay, and then was able to recover highly sensitive data including customer databases, financial information, payroll records, personnel details, login codes, and admin passwords for their secure Intranet site. This is a bit scary considering all of these drives were supposedly formatted and sold for surplus by major companies (although few of us actually use the multiple formatting standards of the DoD). Looks like it's hardly necessary for crooks to get at your private information, although I sure industrial espionage spooks have probably done this for awhile." Shades of the recent post about recovering sensitive contents from swap partitions.

foolinator writes "Yahoo News is featuring an article highlighting TiVO alternatives. This includes MythTV (my favorite), Freevo, and even sites on how to start as a newbie. All of us who subscribe to the mailing lists be prepared to help out the newbies as Linux PVRs become more mainstream."

An anonymous reader writes "The Grand Challenge 2005 Date has been announced for October 8, 2005. Check out DARPA's official webpage for details. Already several teams from last year are gearing up: Carnegie Mellon Red Team, D.A.D., and Cal Tech. Also, several new teams are entering, among them Stanford, and Florida Tech. Should be a very interesting Challenge next year!"

hovermike writes "Nantero and LSI Logic are expected to announce that nanotube non-volatile memory will be going into production, at least as far as the NY Times is concerned. Nanotubes have been discussed previously, Nanotube Applications..., and Buckminsterfullerene..., but I'm certainly surprised something like this has moved into production this quickly. Could this be the ultimate 'bubble' memory?" Reader hovermike writes "The press release can be found at the Nantero website. I'm looking forward to only needing one memory card to store all the 5Mbit pictures that I'll take for the rest of my life."

Alex Bischoff writes "The Gadgeteer has a review of a product called LapPads from LapLogic. They're heat-insulating pads to protect you from cooking your lap when using your laptop. Depending on the model, they apparently provide up to 57 degrees (F) reduction in heat transfer. Why didn't someone think of this sooner?"

An anonymous reader submits "I just got a Pro Lite LED sign today. After a few minutes splicing and wiring up a DB9 to RJ11 connection, and a little fun with python, I've got a script that lets me take input from the web and display it on the sign. Eventually it will have other, more useful, purposes, but I figured I'd let you guys play with it as it is. There's also a log of past messages."

stwrtpj writes "CNET is running an interesting commentary from its chief political correspondent explaining why the FCC should be abolished. When I saw this link from NewsForge, my initial reaction was that he was full of it, but after I RTFA, I have to admit that he makes some interesting points. So how about it? Should the FCC be abolished? Can the market regulate itself yet?"

An anonymous reader submits "CD Freaks.com has made a first preview of 16x DVD recording. Many people wondered if 16x DVD recording would be too fast and data could not be delivered by the hard disk. The first tests show that this is not a real problem. 16x DVD recording means that a DVD disk is written in about 6 minutes . The test drive, a BenQ DW1600, also supports dual layer writing and writing at 16x to 8x media."

erroneous writes "Today is the 50th anniversary of the death of Alan Turing: mathematician, code breaker, and computer pioneer. He was today commemorated in his home city of Manchester, UK." Here are stories at the BBC and at The Register.

babynerd writes "On Tuesday June 1st the Coeur dAlene tribe unveiled the Turbocharged Broadband Geek Project. The scheme, organized by project head Valerie Fast Horse and funded by a $2.8 million dollar grant from the USDA Rural Utilities Service and a 15% in kind match from the tribe itself, will help build a community technology center (CTC) with 40 computers, and a wireless broadband ISP that will provide high-speed wireless access to anyone living on and near the reservation at a price comparable to that of any other DSL or Cable Internet providers - there's currently no broadband Internet access of any kind available."

Roland Piquepaille writes "Several years before the Colossus in the U.K. and the ENIAC in the U.S., the Z3, built by Konrad Zuse in 1941, was crunching numbers in Germany. In a short article, the Register reports on allegations that the Z3 was the first programmable computer. Based on a binary floating-point number and switching system, it had all the attributes of today's computers, such as a control block, a memory, and a calculator. But it didn't have the ability to store the program in the memory together with the data because the memory was too small. It had a 64-word memory of 22 bits each and was able to handle four additions per second and to do a multiplication in about five seconds. And it was pretty big: five meters long, two meters high, and 80 centimeters wide. It was destroyed during WWII, and later rebuilt in 1960/1961. You'll find more details, pictures and references in this analysis of this ancestor of modern computing. [Additional note: you can find other references to the Z3, Colossus and Eniac computers in this former Slashdot item, posted in October 2000.]"

das writes "Apple has introduced AirPort Express (specs), a palm-sized, portable 802.11g base station with 10/100 ethernet, USB printer sharing, and analog and optical audio output, for connection to a stereo system or powered speakers for streaming your music collection via 'AirTunes.' It supports multiple profiles for easy use at multiple locations It can plug directly into the wall as a "power brick", or use a longer power cord, similar to the newer PowerBook AC adapters. AirTunes requires iTunes 4.6, expected to be available soon."

Gaming Nexus writes "Over at Gaming Nexus, we've posted an interview with Alienware about their new video array technology, which 'will provide gamers with an expected 50% increase in gaming performance by utilizing two video cards.' The interview covers the creation of the technology, the problems they had in developing it, as well some more details on how it works." The short version is that it utilizes multiple cards to render one screen, similar to SLI, but with many more features added in as well. What Alienware has developed is a software layer that sits between the video drivers and the application, routing things to where they need to be.

Alan writes "A lot of people underestimate the significance of a good technology demo. A good tech demo can be more important for a GPU product launch than even benchmarks. However, this means more than just pretty graphics or complex shaders. In my final article to the industry, I explain what the art of the tech demo is all about. "

securitas writes "The New York Times' Matt Richtel writes about the the challenges of finding a sustainable business model for 802.11 Wi-Fi wireless Internet. The problem for entrepreneurs, telecom companies and others is that the proliferation of free wireless access hotspots at the municipal and grassroots level has obviated commercial carriers' revenue and profit models in many cases. One user quoted in the story sums up the attitude of many wireless users: 'The Internet is free here.... Why would I pay?' IHT, published by the New York Times in Paris, is carrying an abbreviated version of the story."

adelayde writes "Recently we decided to build ourselves a custom rack-mountable box that we could use as a web and DNS caching proxy and which would offer flexible wireless networking facilities and have an uniterruptible power supply. The result was a 2U rack-box with dual wireless networks built upon a low-power Via EPIA MiniITX motherboard. The box has two wireless networks built in with external antenna connectors, locking switches on the front to avoid tampering, a battery to give at least 20 mins of autonomous operation, a low wattage power supply and most importantly lots of blue LEDs :)"