Data Storage

Say Goodbye To Your CD-Rs In Two Years? 707

Posted by timothy from the mine-mostly-still-work dept.
Little Hamster writes "According to an article on cdfreaks.com, a test done by the Dutch PC-Active magazine showed that among 30 different CD-R brands tested, a lot of them were already unreadable after twenty months. This is shocking, and makes me wonder how should I backup my data, photo and music collection."
Hardware

Spray-On Computers 155

Posted by timothy from the topical-ointment dept.
Jack William Bell writes "Edinburgh University has funding for a program to create spray on computers. The basic idea is to make thousands of tiny 'silicon specks' or 'smart sand' (a step larger than smart dust) which work together via wireless networking to provide 'ubiquitous computing.' No, the idea itself isn't new. But it is interesting to see someone actually working on it. The initial application is a spray you apply to the chest of heart patients, creating a sensor array to report their health back to the hospital."
Toys

Cindy Smart Knows Better Than To Say Naughty Words 499

Posted by timothy from the because-bland-has-five-letters dept.
D'Sphitz writes "Cindy Smart, the first doll in the world to be able to read, tell the time and do sums. Cindy Smart 'sees' via a camera located under a bee on her overalls and has a computer 'brain' that can recognise more than 600 words and objects, although she refuses to recite certain 4-letter words. 'We don't say those kind of words,' she shrills, refusing to even spell obscenities. 'That's a bad word.'" Sounds like a good candidate for a personality transplant.
Wireless Networking

America's Hams Embrace Linux 249

Posted by timothy from the not-a-huge-surprise dept.
Anonymous Coward writes "The current survey question over on the eham site shows that around 40% of Amateur Radio operators that responded to the survey are using Linux/Unix as an operating system in some form or other. Part of the ham radio charter is to 'experiment and innovate'...seems the tradition is alive and well in ham radio. Some of the comments are interesting as well ...What's Amateur/Ham Radio? See www.eham.net/newham/"
Wireless Networking

Canadian Telcos Agree on WiFi Hotspot Standard 84

Posted by michael from the yay-canada dept.
Jucius Maximus writes "As reported by Globetechnology, Canada's cellphone providers have agreed to create a common standard for their subscribers to connect to the Internet via public "hot-spots." The agreement became necessary because Canada's cellphone providers offer four different and incompatible connection technologies. The carriers will continue to vigorously compete with each other, both for customers and Wi-Fi hotspot locations, the CWTA said in a statement."
Handhelds

Flaming Cellphones 288

Posted by michael from the good-name-for-a-rock-band dept.
phorm writes "Many of us have heard the urban legend of cellphones causing fires at the gas pump, but how about the hazards of replacement batteries? Reuters is carrying a story about a woman whose cellphone burst into flame, causing her superficial burn injuries. According to Nokia, the problem has occured before, and is related to non-brand replacement batteries. For various reasons, these batteries may overheat and catch fire, or even explode! So far I haven't found much info on whether this has happened with other brands of phone, though I do know that my little flip-phone gets very hot when running in analog mode. Perhaps some slashdot readers have had a similar experience?"
Graphics

ATi FireGL X1 Vs. NVIDIA Quadro FX 2000 242

Posted by CowboyNeal from the pro-grade-card-shootout dept.
SpinnerBait writes "The professional graphics card arena has been heating up as of late, with new products from ATi and NVIDIA hitting the streets on the heels of SIGGRAPH unveilings. In a first of two article series, HotHardware has a showcase with benchmarks on the ATi FireGL X1 and NVIDIA Quadro FX 2000. It seems as though NVIDIA still has a stronghold in this market, as their card seems to dominate many of the benchmark runs shown here."
Wireless Networking

SeattleWireless TV: Flickenger, Warcopter, And More 85

Posted by timothy from the made-local-think-global dept.
Michael Pierce writes "SeattleWireless TV has done it again! This months SeattleWireless TV show features an Interview with Rob Flickenger the inventor of the pringles cantenna and co-author of Nocat, an open source wireless captive portal. Then we have a chance to hear from Risto Koiva about his remote controlled helicopter with a 2.4ghz installed camera and gps unit, learn about the Personal Telco Project out of Portland, Oregon and finally a product review on the new WatchGuard SoHo 6 wireless firewall. Download the Mpeg version here or Watch the Windows Media Stream here, or the RealPlayer stream here."
Linux

Wiring A Vintage Teletype To The Internet 197

Posted by simoniker from the abacus-up-next dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Do you have an old teletype with a 5-bit serial interface sitting around that you've been itching to hook up to the Internet? If so, this article at LinuxDevices.com is just what you've been looking for. Henry Minsky has caught the Mini-ITX motherboard bug big-time, arguing that the tiny, yet full-featured boards can now compete favorably with more traditional embedded platforms." Minsky explains that: "Messages and alerts could be printed to the teletype automatically from remote locations (such as our Yahoo calendar), while a user could send messages and access services such as weather and news headlines from the teletype keyboard."
Technology

DARPA Looks Beyond Moore's Law 217

Posted by timothy from the and-around-and-through dept.
ddtstudio writes "DARPA (the folks who brought you the Internet) is, according to eWeek, looking more than ten years down the road when, they say, chip makers are going to have to have totally new chip fabrication technologies. Quantum gates? Indium Phosphide? Let's keep in mind that Moore's Law was more an observation than a predictive law of nature, despite how people treat it that way."
Science

Giant Laser Transmutes Nuclear Waste 81

Posted by timothy from the two-steps-back dept.
paulnuyu writes "NewScientist is reporting that scientists have transmuted nuclear waste with the Vulcan Glass Laser, cutting iodine-129's half-life from 15.7 million years down to just 25 minutes (as iodine-128). The advance is remarkable, but not practical: the laser would need power from a number of power plants to transmute the waste produced from just one nuclear plant."
Technology

Standard Brewing For PC Card Replacement 'Newcard' 187

Posted by timothy from the standard-flux dept.
winston_pr writes "The details on the successor to the PC Card is starting to take form with details being given in this article at Nikkei Japan. The standard is scheduled to be finalized in 2003, while the first PCs with NEWCARD slots are expected to ship in the second half of 2004. Will this mean the end of all these crazy SD-card connection based peripherals?"
Games

Junji Hirayama 's Home Flight Simulator 211

Posted by timothy from the beyond-the-ordinary dept.
hifiandrew writes "I love seeing home mockups of cockpits for Flight Simulator like the recent Slashdot article of the person who used 13 Monitors and 9 PC's. But this one takes the cake for cockpit coolness! While doing a Google search for 747 cockpits, I ran across a web site of a person in Japan who has the coolest home cockpit for Flight Simulator I've ever seen. It has a perfect built-to-scale layout, backlit panels and even a projector for the scenery! All running on relatively modest PC hardware. I'm envious!"
Handhelds

Best Cell Phone Service for GPRS? 53

Posted by Cliff from the finding-the-right-provider dept.
hojo asks: "I have a Palm Tungsten T and I'd like to start using it for (limited) wireless web browsing. It has Bluetooth support and will work with GPRS cell service. Alltel, my current cell provider, doesn't support GPRS so I want to switch to another plan. What cell phone service plans are there that you have used or know about that will work to allow me to use my Palm and preferably a Bluetooth phone for some on-the-road lookup? My only other issue is I'm trying to keep the cost less than $100/month."
Wireless Networking

During Blackout, Ham Radio Shined 476

Posted by timothy from the breaker-breaker dept.
Mark Cantrell writes "An interesting bit on AP through Yahoo today. Seems that ham radio (which recently had a bit of backlash here on Slashdot from a few people thinking it was useless, outdated technology), really shined through during the blackouts. When the power went, ham radio operators, using battery backup power, were able to help coordinate emergency workers while the cell phone networks were overloaded. For anyone wondering why interference due to power line broadband is considered a bad thing, well, there ya go."
Data Storage

Simple Windows Backup to CD/DVD? 123

Posted by Cliff from the replacing-tapes dept.
Meri051846 asks: "I am looking for a simple backup for my own use. Ideally, this backup would be able to span from one CD to the next for 'overflow'. Right now I am just using 'Easy CD Creator' and choosing what I want backed up and saving it so that I can backup most every day or so. One problem I am having is that my backup material is growing and won't fit on one CD. Also, when I add new items to 'My Documents', for example, I have to go into my program and make sure that new document will be included in the backup. (Even when I ask 'Easy CD Creator' to update the backup, the new items are not included. It just updates the old ones.) It usually isn't, so I have to manually add it to my 'backup program'. I hope I am making myself clear. Is there any backup program that will fullfil my wishes or am I dreaming of 'things to come'?"
Programming

Codename Brutus: Chess-Playing FPGA PCI Card 260

Posted by timothy from the talk-about-specialized dept.
rockville writes "Brutus, a FPGA add-in PCI card developed by ChessBase and Dr. Christian Donnegar, just dominated a strong field of human players at a tournament in Germany. It's the first serious chess-playing FPGA architecture since Deep Blue was disassembled after its victory over Kasparov in 1997. Pictures of the card and a short description are here."
Movies

Movie Industry Blames Texting for Bad Box Office 1197

Posted by michael from the buying-your-gross dept.
cybercuzco writes "The movie industry is blaming poor sales of such movies as Gigli, The Hulk and Charlies Angels not on the fact that they were poor quality, but because people text message other people telling them that the movie stinks. Industry executives say that this undermines a carefully crafted marketing image. Expect texting to be banned by the MPAA in the near future."

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