Bob Sherpowski writes "According to CBBC News, they have come up with a 'game' that you control directly with your brain waves. University College Dublin researchers have designed a game where you are trying to get a monster to walk across a tightrope - if he leans one way or the other you have to concentrate on a box on either side of the tightrope to make him tip the other way. It's still in research and it's not for sale yet but it's the first step. "

EconolineCrush writes "In one of the most gratuitous benchmarking indulgences I've seen, Tech Report has tested Intel's new Northwood and Prescott Pentium 4 3.4GHz processors against sixteen competitors ranging from the relatively old school Athlon XP to the opulent Pentium 4 Extreme Edition, with plenty of Athlon 64 action thrown in for good measure. Performance is tested in a wide range of applications, including gaming, rendering, image processing, media encoding, speech recognition, and scientific number crunching. Even if you're not interested in Intel's latest Pentium 4s, the review nicely shows where 18 of the fastest desktop chips from AMD and Intel stack up against each other."

An anonymous reader writes linking to this story at stuff.co.nz, excerpting: "Five hundred powerful computers used by Weta Digital to help create the special effects for the Lord of the Rings may be put up for hire.... The pizza-box sized IBM blade servers each incorporate dual 2.8 gigahertz Intel Xeon processors and 6 [gigabytes?] of memory." Update: 03/22 07:08 GMT by S : The linked story says 6 megabytes of memory, we don't believe 'em.

Koen writes "March the 18th, Teamhardware.com visited Cebit 2004, the largest IT fair in Europe. We made tons of pictures and gathered a lot of information. Topics of discussion: Intel, nVidia, ATI, XFX, Abit, Epox, Shuttle, DFI and more." Espectr0 writes "BBC News has an article with pictures of the new gadgets being shown at Cebit 2004. Some of them are: 3D screens, heads-up displays, all-in-one USB memory sticks and portable video players!"

Jason Scott writes "I've put up my gallery of images from Phillyclassic 5, taken on Saturday, March 20th (and posted that night). Phillyclassic is a large classic games convention being held in King of Prussia, PA. They have a very informative webpage with details... I drove 600 miles in one day to stop in, and it was worth it. Homebrew carts for sale, lots of free arcade games to play, and all manner of vendors and characters. The convention's not over, either.. it lasts throughout Sunday the 21st, so if you didn't know about it, get down there! If you're nearby, you have no excuse!"

OCGeek writes "This should be interesting for the overclockers as VR-Zone has an article up on building a cascade cooling system that cools chips down to -110C. The guide shows you the components that are required for the cascade cooling system such as the compressors, condensers, refrigerants, evaporators, heat exchangers, oil separators etc. and the tools you would need. It allows hot chip like Prescott to reach over 5.1Ghz and ATi Radeon 9800 XT card to reach over 660Mhz core."

pdawerks says "Toshiba has previewed what it calls a Wristwatch PDA, which it considers to be very popular in future. According to MobileMag and BBC News, the device will provide the functionality of a high-end PDA in a comparatively small and handy form factor. It features a wide hi-definition display, integrated Wi-Fi and Bluetooth wireless networking and is perfectly suited for videophone conferences. The concept also sports voice recognition, which allows you to simply talk to your Wristwatch PDA."

bpiltz writes "A funk band in Harrisonburg, VA, called Midnight Spaghetti, has posted a story with photos about a newly installed Diebold Opteva 520 ATM at Carnegie Mellon University that crashed, then rebooted. The Windows XP operating system initialized without the actual ATM software. The result was a public desktop computer, with only a touch screen interface, left wide open for the amusement of the students at the most wired university in the U.S. Interestingly, Diebold is one of the leading manufacturers of e-voting machines."

YetAnotherGeekGuy writes "IEEE Computer has an article this month, "The Zen of Overclocking" by Bob Colwell. In it the author compares overclockers to hot rodders (which, in my personal experience, are two sets with a significant intersection). More importantly he talks about the phenomenon, the culture, the attitude, and the natural tension between them and the industry in the quest for the right balance between performance and reliability. Thought-provoking, and some good one-liners. Enjoy!"

Subartik writes "The new nano-itx boards from Via have been shown at the CeBit show in Germany. It looks like it will be a suitable platform for all kinds of small form factor devices. See VIA embedded and Linux Devices for the specs and pictures" An anonymous reader points to PC World articles about the Nano-ITX board itself as well as the first system which will include it.

An anonymous reader writes "LinuxDevices.com has published the results of its annual Embedded Linux Market Survey probing developer preferences and industry trends. Over the last four years, the survey has become an important resource for industry analysts and decision makers. Among the revelations: the embedded Linux tools and OS provider market is wide open, with no single dominant vendor; developers care most about Cost/Freeness; ARM is overtaking x86 in embedded systems; developers prefer support fees to runtime license models; and, Linux dwarves all other embedded operating systems, projected for use in half of all embedded projects during the next two years."

martensitic writes "eWeek reports that Phoenix has developed a utility allowing users of its laptop DRM BIOS (last discussed here) to 'check their Outlook data on a notebook computer without needing to boot the machine.' Since Longhorn is still several years away, Pheonix is developing their own trusted apps to sell the BIOS to laptop manufacturers. One can only imagine what other innocuous bells and whistles will be used to leverage DRM onto Joe Laptop's machine."

Audiostar asks: "I am interested in adding some security to several of my computers, but am unsure as to which product to go with. I would like to use some sort of external security measure, such as a pen drive token or something similar. I had considered custom building a key card and reader to install on all my machines, but once I started thinking about the cost and time of building a card reader for each of my computers it became rather impractical. Does anyone have any suggestions for external locking devices or software? I would prefer something that I could use on both my Windows and Linux machines, but protecting the Windows machines are the top priority. I don't need anything too fancy, just an added layer of protection from the multitude of various people who come in and out of my place of business everyday. I own a 128mb flash disk watch, so possibly using that as a token would be both easy and geek chic. Any suggestions on what to install?"

Peridriga asks: "I've been using the same cell phone now for going on about 4 years. I personally love it but, new technologies such as Bluetooth, WiFi, etc leave me wanting more from my 24/7 tool. I haven't gotten rid of it because I can work it in almost any condition (dark, drunk, asleep), with only occasional glances at the screen. Menu functionality, layout, ergonomics, and button layout are of real importance simply because I want a phone I don't have to think about using. The problem comes in that none of the cell stores/kiosks/provider retail outlets/etc have working demos of phones available. Simply shells of the phone model physically attached to the displays. How am I supposed to drop down $200-$500 on a top-of-the-line phone when I can't even see how it works? Does anybody know of a provider that has working demo models of phones on display so you can actually see what your buying? How about websites that review phones with their function and purpose in mind, not just the specs and the manufacturer provided marketing fluff?"

rekkanoryo writes "It seems that there is some trouble brewing in the DVD-RW camps. According to CNET, new, faster 4x DVD-RW media may not be compatible with older DVD-RW drives. The DVD+RW camp is confident this won't be a problem for them, but the -RW backers think it will sometime in the future when even faster media starts to appear. Also mentioned is a dual-layer DVD+R capable of holding up to 8.5 GB of data per disc and the problem with really old DVD+RW drives not being upgradable to support write-once DVD+R media."

An anonymous reader writes "Nokia, Sony and Philips have launched a new wireless technology, called Near Field Communication, that could be a threat to Bluetooth. Based on RFID, they say it will enable electronic devices to interact -- for m-commerce, file-swapping or to download info from the Web -- when touched together."

SolFire writes "Forbes is carrying an article about Vocera Communications and their little internal communication system that they have working at their office that functions like the badge communicators from ST:TNG. The employees wear the system as a badge and touch it to start the connection. Then they speak the name of the person they want to talk to and the system connects them using VOIP for one-on-one communication." We mentioned these in 2002.

Anonymous Coward writes "According to PC World, the Nokia 7610 has been announced at Cebit in Germany - it boasts a megapixel camera (1152 x 864 pixels), 65,000 color screen, and 4x zoom, along with an MP3 music player and smart phone features that allow users to manage and edit digital images. It can also create short films of up to 10 minutes and with the Movie Director application users can add special effects and music to the video clips." Other readers point out a picture of the phone, which comes with the LifeBlog software "to help people organise the information they capture about their lives on handsets."

Thanks to HeraldTribune.com for its article discussing the continuing fortunes of PC 'game console' manufacturer Infinium, following much controversy over their forthcoming Phantom console in recent weeks. Infinium CEO Timothy Roberts is quoted as saying, following a "four-for-one stock split", the second of the year, that "...part of Infinium's stock marketing effort will be aimed at video game aficionados, people who have contacted the company via e-mail because they are interested in using the product when it is rolled out and who may also have expressed interest in making a stock investment." With regard to this, it seems that, judging by current prices, "...even before it has a product to sell, Infinium has a market capitalization of $133 million ($5.80 times 23 million shares)."

Ray Janus contributes this review of Thomas Maufer's Field Guide To Wireless LANs for Administrators, writing "Have you wondered about how the magic of wireless networks for PC's happens? If so, this is a very comprehensive manual on how your bits and bytes move through the ether, and the hazards that they face along the way. Having worked with LANs and WLANs in both personal and business solutions, I was pleased to receive a copy of the Guide at a Sonoran Desert User's Group Meeting, compliments of Addison-Wesley Professional/ Prentice Hall. On first glancing at the title, I expected a 'how to' manual on how to implement and manage a WLAN." While that's not exactly what he found, Janus has mostly good things to say about this book. Read on for his review.