Ridgelift writes "Wired's got the story on Intel's plan to incorporate Wi-Fi into the motherboard chipset. "The chipset, however, will not include an actual Wi-Fi radio, so users will still need a wireless add-on card. Intel has said it eventually intends build a Wi-Fi radio into its microprocessors." This would make setting up a wireless network a lot simpler."

Bob Plankers writes "By now we've all heard about IBM's Blue Gene/L, LLNL's remarkable new supercomputer which is intended to be the fastest supercomputer on Earth when done (360 TeraFLOPS). IBM has released some new photos of the prototype, and renditions of the final cluster. Note that the racks are angled in order to permit hot air to escape vertically and reduce the need for powered cooling. The machine uses custom CPUs with dual PowerPC 440 processing cores, four FPUs (two per core), five network controllers, 4 MB of DRAM, and a memory controller onboard. The prototype has 512 CPUs running at 700 MHz, and when finished the entire machine will have 65536 dual-core CPUs running at 1 GHz or more. Stephen Shankland's ZDnet article also mentions that the system runs Linux, but not on everything: 'Linux actually resides on only a comparatively small number of processors; the bulk of the chips run a stripped-down operating system that lets it carry out the instructions of the Linux nodes.'"

dave writes "UK train company GNER starts trials of the UK's first on-train wireless Internet access service. Currently only available on limited services and in First Class; if the trial is successful the service will be rolled out across the entire fleet in both Standard and First Class."

giantsfan89 writes "The OpenZaurus group announced that version 3.3.5 has been released, featuring Opie version 1.03 and kernel 2.4.18-embedix. From the new newsletter: 'As one of the few people participating on all the three above mentioned projects I recently volunteered to write regular newsletters from the inside - to keep you people informed (also to stop you from saying our projects are dead or on hibernation ;-)). We're seeking contributors, that's true - but we're aliving and kicking!' The newsletter talked about kernel improvement including 'speedups, cleanups and better power management'. Of course, OpenZaurus runs on other PDAs including the HP iPAQ, the SIEMENS SIMpad, and the M&N Ramses."

Richard W.M. Jones writes "A couple of new services have been rolled out in the UK recently which allow you to track people when they have their mobile phones turned on. Mapminder states 'It's important to know where your loved ones are for your own peace of mind'. 192.com asks 'Do you want to know where your children are?'. Of course the police have been able to do this for a long time, and evidence from mobile phone positions has been used in high-profile court cases in the UK. Silicon.com has an article."

swillden writes "Iain Barker and some other Linux Kernel Mailing List readers have discovered that several manufacturers of DVD players based on the Sigma Designs EM8500 chipset are distributing Linux, both in the devices and as binary-only firmware upgrades, but not providing source. Apparently, Sigma Designs provides its customers with a copy of the kernel as part of a chipset SDK, and those customers are making and selling devices without complying with the terms of the GPL. It's not clear if this is because Sigma didn't tell its customers about the GPL and their obligations, or if they're all ignoring it on their own. Maybe they've all bought licenses from SCO and therefore don't have to comply with the GPL? The LKML post contains a list of some of the infringers."

An anonymous reader writes "A NYTimes article (free reg) describes the dangers posed by viruses as 3G and text-messaging become more common, inluding an incident in '01 where numerous phones in Japan began calling 110 (equivalent to 911 in the U.S.). Wired mentions 13M vulnerable phones in Japan alone." (And that was a few years ago.)

Moochman writes "I recently discovered this article over at PC Magazine, an excellent and fairly complete review of the Sharp RD3D, aka the 'world's first 3D laptop' (see previous Slashdot coverage here). In addition to rating performance, features, etc, it provides a nice little explanation and diagram of how the no-glasses 3D technology works, and discusses possible eye-strain issues. The biggest disappointment is that even the included 3D games still don't work right." Moochman provides a link to Sharp's information site, too.

Tau Zero writes "The BBC reports that a group of scientists (including Stephen Forrest) have discovered a new use for the anti-static plastic film polyethylenedioxythiophene: storing up to a gigabyte per cubic centimeter. The storage technology resembles an old fuse-link PROM; a bit of polymer between two electrodes conducts electricity when new, but a strong pulse turns it into an open circuit. The polymer is already cheap, and read/write speeds are claimed to be good. The researchers predict that this could be made into working devices in a few years (no word on whether this means devices in the laboratory or retail packages)." Update: 11/29 16:34 GMT by CN : Whoops, we already reported this earlier, and I was fooled into thinking it new by the BBC. Given the slump of news due to the holiday weekend, it's still worth mulling over, though.

MikeDawg writes "After dealing with the headache of never having enough electrical outlets, not having a cable TV coaxial, not having a telephone hookup in the right places of my apartment, I found this article at CNN. It is nice to see that college dorm rooms are getting filled with outlets to provide students with enough hook-ups with for all their electronics. My question to you (renters/dorm-room dwellers) is does your dorm room or apartment have enough outlets, whether it be electrical, cable, telephone, or anything else you may need? What do you do in a situation like this? Do you load up each socket with a 10+ port power strip (or battery backup as it may be) and pray that you don't knock-out the circuit everytime you start burning a CD?"

Alien54 writes "The Pentagon is drafting the Segway two-wheeled scooter as part of a plan to develop battlefield robots that think on their own and communicate with troops. Dean Kamen, the Segway's inventor, says he had no qualms about enlisting his brainchild into the military."

Ridgelift writes "A new device is helping families and loved ones feel connected even when they're far apart. Part of the Media Lab's Habitat project, a pair of 'cyber-tables' are equipped with radio tag readers, projectors and computers running on Linux and Macintosh operating systems. 'Habitat's designers say the system can give people a sense of what their loved ones are up to and perhaps even how they are feeling'."

trystanu writes "If Microsoft Built Cars, occasionally your car would just die on the motorway for no reason; you'd accept this, restart and drive on -- at least that was the joke a few years ago. ZDNET reports that Microsoft has persuaded a number of carmakers to use its slimmed-down Windows CE operating system to power a variety of in-car electronics, from navigation systems to music players to information devices. BMW, in particular, has gravitated to Microsoft systems, although the company has announced wins with Honda, Volvo and others as well. Perhaps the recent trapping of Thai dignitaries inside a BMW should be a warning to us all."

Carl Oppedahl writes "AT&T has released its new "Edge" wireless Internet access service, claiming it is twice as fast (100-130K) as Sprint's "PCS Vision" wireless service (50-70K). I have written up a few comments on my experiences with the services. What data rates are others getting with Edge? I rarely get the advertised faster speeds."

Semi-Anonymous Coward writes "The first review of a wireless headset using Magnetic Induction technolgy has been posted at mobile technology website MobileBurn. The reviewer mentions that the technology provides almost 'crystal clear' phone conversations, which is better than most Bluetooth headsets he has used. The magnetic induction technology creates a 'bubble' around the user which increases the security of their communications. Is this the replacement for Bluetooth in Audio applications? It certainly looks like it..."

VL writes "From synthetic, to real-world game benchmarks. TV capture, DVD playback, and 2D/3D image quality... we covered all the bases with a review of All in Wonder 9600 Pro."

leming writes "This article in Linux Journal explains low-cost DVD authoring available in Linux. Traditionally, DVD authoring has been an expensive affair. Full-featured professional applications can cost thousands of dollars, while cheaper products, such as Apple's iDVD, have arbitrary restrictions that significantly reduce their usefulness. A new open-source effort, dvdauthor, is bringing the possibility of low-cost, professional-grade DVD authoring to Linux. Although it doesn't yet support all the features of the DVD specification, development is proceeding at a fast pace, and new features are being added with each release."

asv108 writes "The Rio Karma has been out on the market for over a month now with very little mainstream press. Slashdot covered the product announcement back in August for one of the first mainstream devices that supports OGG and FLAC playback. I've posted a little review of the 20 GB Rio Karma, which, besides OGG/FLAC/MP3/WMA playback, has a great little dock that syncs the player via ethernet. One little known gem is that this player comes with java-based software that allows users to download the software directly from the player via any browser and sync the Karma with Linux, Mac OS X, and any other OS that Java runs on."

prostoalex writes "ExtremeTech reviews current mega-notebooks, which are powerful enough to become a desktop replacement. Among the laptops reviewed there's one with 64-bit AMD Mobile Athlon 64 3200+ (2.0GHz clock rate) - the Voodoo Envy m:855."

mE123 writes "It would seem that IBM is trying to change what we all think of as super computers. Their new Blue Gene family of super computers is meant to be 6 times faster, consume 1/15 of the power and be 1/10 the size of current models. The prototype is already number 73 (with 2 teraflops) on the list of the most powerful super computers and it's only "roughly the size of a 30-inch television". They are hoping to be able to make it up to 360 Teraflops using only 64 racks." We covered this a bit earlier, but without the level of details.