sinjayde writes "Yahoo!/Reuters is reporting that Toyota has released a car for sale in Japan that is able to park itself: 'Toyota's new hybrid gasoline-electric Prius sedan uses electrically operated power steering and sensors that help guide the car when reversing into parking spaces.'" No need to rely on the reverse parking formula anymore?

Sea Monkey writes "New Scientist has an article on the development of novel and ultra-cheap micromotor technology. It's a new type of linear motor, 'using a technique closer to origami than engineering' to cut slits out of tiny piezoelectric ceramic parts. One of the envisioned applications is taking a sheet of the material with the motors, wrapping it into a tube and moving a lens up and down it - instant tiny movable focusing element for cellphone camera lenses."

An anonymous reader writes "Mobile game developer Tom Park believes that scripting for wireless devices is important for proficiency sake. And with the need to scale mobile applications across so many different platforms, proficiency is everything. Read his thoughts on scripting, as well as his ideas on wireless application development's future."

nut writes "MIDP 2.0 is the latest version of the most common J2ME Profile. It comprises the Java Connected Limited Device Configuration (Usually referred to just as the CLDC) and a Java API for handheld wireless devices -- i.e. mobile phones, PDAs, etc. The MIDP 2.0 Style Guide for the Java 2 Platform, Micro Edition is one of a class of books that every application developer should read, and that not enough do, much like Nielsen's classic Designing Web Usability. It provides cheap access to knowledge that is expensive to obtain. The title is almost a misnomer; Call it a usability guide and give a better idea of its usefulness." Read on for the rest of nut's review.

Thanks to Gamesindustry.biz for their report that a source close to Sony suggests nVidia's rumored involvement with the PlayStation 3 is 'ridiculous'. According to the article, which dismisses earlier analyst reports, the source claims "...it was a 'ridiculous suggestion' that Sony would look elsewhere for a designer and manufacturer for the graphics processor (GPU) for the future console. 'Sony has its own chip design teams and manufacturing facilities with massive experience in this sort of thing,' he commented. 'Lashing NVIDIA's technology onto the PS3 architecture would simply make no sense either technologically or commercially.'"

arclightfire writes "The Register are reporting that Motorola, one of major mobile phone manufacturers in the world, has decided that the future's bright, the future's penguin! The reasoning cited is the belief that China holds the key to the mobile phone market of tomorrow, therefore this future needs to be Linux; 'Not only is China potentially the world's largest mobile phone market, but it's also where most phones are built. Even more significantly, it's where the next generation of all mobile devices will be based, thinks Motorola.' Pax Linux?"

william_lorenz writes "The Actiontec Dual 56k External Modem is an inexpensive device with a built-in 56k modem and two Ethernet ports that can be used as an Internet gateway of sorts. What's great about it is that it runs some form of uClinux, it's easily hackable, and Greg Boehnlein of the Linux Users Group of Cleveland and NOOSS fame recently contributed a detailed report on his findings! Pictures of the board are also available here, here, and here. Lots of specific details are included in Greg's article, and there's been some further discussions about this on the LUGC mailing lists."

propellerhead writes "Today is 2003 Wireless Field Day for Seattle Wireless. 'Similar to amateur radio field day, a mock emergency network will be created this summer using off-the-shelf 802.11b hardware, computers, and battery/gas power supplies. Network applications such as VoIP (Voice over IP or Internet Telephony), streaming audio and video, file sharing, chat, network games, and others will be implemented across a multi-hop wireless infrastructure. If resources allow, the goal is to connect this mobile network to the existing Seattle Wireless network, which currently exists in the Seattle area. This network can also provide access to the internet and our community network partners like Seattle Pacific University and Council House Projects.'"

hype7 writes "ThinkSecret is running a story which might explain exactly why the Dual 2GHz G5 machines have been delayed to the customers that ordered them minutes after the keynote was delivered. Apparently, Virginia Tech has plans to build a G5 cluster of 1100 units. If it manages to complete the cluster before the cut-off date, it will score a Top 5 rank in the Linpack Top 500 Supercomputer List. Both Apple and the University are playing mum on the issue, but there's talk of it all over the campus."

OriginalSpaceMan asks: "I have a lot of hardware, so I've been looking for some sort of a static free PC parts storage solution. Preferably this would be something modular. I have Googled this for a while now and, as you can guess, I can't find much other than data storage solutions. I'm picturing something that is specifically designed to store drives, memory, CPUs, expansion cards and maybe mother boards. Also, it could have smaller compartments for screws, cables, LEDs, switches, case accessories and etc. It would be really neat to have built in slots to hold expansion cards in a static free case. Does anyone make anything remotely similar to this, or will this end up being my next project?"

tengwar asks: "Way back when I was at university, I did a course on microcomputers which went into enough detail to design, build and program a Z80-based system - more or less state of the art at the time. Now that my lecture notes are firmly embedded in the Carboniferous layer, I'd like to have a go at doing this with a more modern chip, and I wondered what's available. I'm not brilliant at electronics, and I liked the way the Z80 peripheral chips integrated easily with the CPU. Obviously I'm not looking to just slot together the latest PC motherboard with the latest Pentium, but I'd need to go for something where the board design won't get too complicated, which probably rules out processors with full 32-bit external interfaces on space grounds. I'm not really concerned about performance, but it would be nice to be able to port a JRE to it rather than working entirely in assembler. Any thoughts on suitable starting points?"

prostoalex writes "MIT Technology Review runs a story about MIT Computer science students building their own mesh network for Internet access: 'A few weeks ago, MIT graduate student Shan Sinha canceled his broadband Internet service. Now his Net connection comes through the chimney. From a computer in the living room of his Cambridge, MA, apartment, a few blocks from the MIT campus, a cable goes into the fireplace up to the roof, where it is attached to an antenna. From there, data packets hop to another roof-mounted antenna at a nearby student's apartment. That way, from roof to roof in multiple hops, Sinha's data packets finally reach a gateway--a computer connected to the fixed Internet--at MIT's computer science building.'"

Raxxon asks: "I've been working with some guys in my company laying the groundwork for our next phase of network upgrades. We're looking at having an ATM feed for the main pipe but we're unsure of the Linux ATM support. I know that the firewall code is good (and plentiful) and that for an Ether/Ether or Ether/WAN (frame, DSL, etc) it's great, but with limited knowledge of how well Linux handles ATM, I'm a bit worried about suggesting this as an interface on the router/firewall given that we can convert it back to Ethernet (and in 60% of the case, it's going to stay ether anyway). What's the current state of Linux ATM and is it really worth it?"

server1 writes "In what could be the largest public wireless service in the world, Case Western Reserve University is opening more than 1,230 Cisco Aironet 1200 Series wireless access points on September 1, providing free Internet access to faculty, students, staff and visitors to the Case campus and University Circle." Good news for Clevelanders looking for some free wireless internet access.

Hoon Mihn Fao writes "For those of you for whom 2D laptops are not awesome enough, next year NEC is coming out with a 3D laptop. No, you don't have to wear those retro red and blue glasses, but the monitor is actually an LCD screen placed on top of a conventional monitor. The company is currently seeking gaming software companies to produce games for its technology. Each unit will cost an estimated $200 more than a conventional laptop."

cdneng2 writes "Yahoo!/Reuters has an article on the a new official wireless LAN/broadband adapter for the Xbox, details of which were unintentionally leaked on the FCC's website ahead of Microsoft's product unveiling. There's even a picture of the adapter, which has '54 Mbps' printed on it, in a Digitimes.com article." According to this latter story, "The chipset in the MN-740 wireless adapter appears to be supplied by Atheros Communications, possibly its 2.4GHz AR5002AP-G chip, which supports 802.11b/g. The device also features user-configurable 128-bit WEP (wired equivalent privacy) security."

An anonymous reader writes "MIZI Research appears to be taking on the largest players in the emerging third-generation smartphone software market with an integrated solution based on its MIZI Linux 2.0 distribution. Furthermore, the Korean embedded Linux specialist is rumored to have a development deal with an unidentified major consumer electronics powerhouse that, if true, could result in 3G smartphones based on MIZI Linux 2.0 receiving aggressive worldwide development, distribution, and marketing soon."

Martin Marvinski writes "PostgreSQL Inc, the commercial company providing replication software and support for PostgreSQL, open sourced their eRServer replication product. This makes PostgreSQL one step closer to being able to replace Oracle as the de facto RDBMS standard. More information can be found on PostgreSQL's website."

panhandler writes "As reported at CNet and the Austin American Statesman, researchers at UT are working with IBM on a new CPU architecture called TRIPS (Tera-op Reliable Intelligently adaptive Processing System). According to IBM, 'at the heart of the TRIPS architecture is a new concept called 'block-oriented execution"' which will result in a processor capable of executing more than 1 trillion operations per second."

Today's installment is a lengthy (but hopefully informative) piece on mirroring controllers. Ever had weird problems with a FastTrack TX2000? Are you curious how well HighPoints RocketRAID boards are really supported? Ever wondered which controller gives you the best performance for every dollar spent? In true Slashdot tradition, we're taking the issue and throwing it out to you, the readers. Futurepower(R) is willing to start us off with a wealth of information on his experiences, and I'm hoping a few of you are willing to do the same.