Rob writes "Ok, so I've finally gotten my TiVo configured to let me extract and archive video, now I'm wondering what is my best solution? I currently have a CDR that I've been able to use to save both VCD and SVCD. Unfortunately I have a very old DVD player that will only play VCD's. So I decided that it's time to look at recording to DVD, but what is the right answer? Has any format won? I just got back from Fry's and I could get either -R/-RW or +R/+RW and there were even drives that did all of the formats. This is all well and good, since I'll have to buy a new DVD player to play any of them, but which format is most widely accepted? Even if I get a drive that will record in any format what do most DVD players accept? Sure I can make sure that my DVD player will play whatever format I produce but what about my parents and friends?"

An anonymous reader writes "Being ignorant of network vulnerabilities is a happy condition for only so long. Ignorance is bliss, right up until someone with rogue access drives away with your company secrets. This article covers information about AirTraf, an open source package, which performs a number of tasks, such as determining the Service Set Identifier of the access points, and the channel it is operating under. It can tell how many wireless nodes are connected to a given access point, as well as that point's total load. AirTraf is capable, too, of polling a number of sniffers through a central polling server in order to collect the most current information. The least of your fears should be the leeching of your Internet connectivity. Industrial espionage is a growing reality that you must confront."

Nathan writes "Tero Sarkkinen, Executive Vice President of Sales and Marketing at Futuremark, has commented on the claims by Nvidia that 3DMark2003 intentionally puts the GeforceFX in bad light, after Nvidia had declined becoming a member of Futuremark's beta program. This issue looks like it will get worse before it gets better." ATI also seems to be guilty of tweaking their drivers to recognize 3DMark.

Peter writes "We just finished at 8Dimensional our list of GeForce FX reviews. It tries to show all reviews of these video cards currently online, 120+ are listed at the moment." Hmmm, time to upgrade from an Xpert@Play98 ...

rocannon writes "Cellular-news reports that NEC has announced a technical cooperation with the Japanese toy manufacturer, Konami to enable its range of MICROiR toys cars to be controlled from the DoCoMo N504iS handset or the J-N51 handset sold by J-Phone. More details on Cellular News."

Roland Piquepaille writes "Will we soon be able to download music or videos on our cell phones? Yes, with the arrival of the next 3.5G technology, as reports Jennifer L. Schenker in this International Herald Tribune article. "NTT DoCoMo Inc., the Japanese company that introduced the first third-generation digital mobile phone service in the world, is preparing to pioneer wireless services that are at least 40 times as fast." DoCoMo will use "a technology called HSDPA, for high-speed downlink packet access, also known as 3.5G, [which] is expected to deliver data at as much as 14.4 megabits a second." This new technology will not arrive in Europe before 2006 at least. Check this column for a summary."

securitas writes "The NY Times and Bloomberg are reporting that Qualcomm is touting an expected 6 million Indian subscribers using CDMA by year end. But the facts seem to fly in the face of that with Reliance experiencing technical problems and delays with the launch of India's first CDMA network, covered on Slashdot late last year. Part of the problem is that the GSM operators won't allow Reliance's traffic on their networks, not to mention a court challenge and no approval by regulators. Is this just a hopeful diversion from the loss of the Iraq contract, where MCI chose GSM? How does a country where the per capita annual income is $390-$420 (depending on whose number you use) expect people other than the elite to afford mobile phone service, even if the handsets and service charges are heavily subsidized? Forbes discussed the problem of affordable mobile phone service in Africa where incomes are similar. Is this another wireless/fibre optic bubble akin to the one we saw a few years ago?"

Makarand writes "Thanks to the availability of low cost high quality inkjet printers, crooks are now able to produce currency indistinguishable from the real banknotes, at least under dim lighting conditions like that in a bar or a nightclub. The term "digifeiters" is being coined for counterfeiters that use cheap high-resolution printers to produce fake currency. Unlike costly color xerographic copiers that come inbuilt with features to detect security details on banknotes and stop currency copying, no cheap printers come with such feature. An anti-digifeiting system for cheaper printers may consist of printer driver software capable of recognizing data patterns indicating currencies of several countries." I wonder what GimpPrint would think of being forced to print or not print certain documents based on their contents.

Shutup Now writes "Spring cleaning for your hardrive. This article talks about some extremes for keeping your computer running well. You decide whether this stuff is necessary." More than once a year is a good idea, too.

Roland Piquepaille writes "Is it time to get rid of your PDA? Apparently yes, according to General Motors, writes Ephraim Schwartz in InfoWorld.The subtitle of this story is pretty clear: "GPS, Java, and push-to-talk give smart phones a clear edge over PDAs." "General Motors announced last week that it will partner with wireless carrier Nextel to use Nextel?s Motorola cell phones with data capabilities to market a field-force management application to its commercial truck fleet customers." GM chose these cell phones because people feel more comfortable with, but also because they can run sophisticated applications. And of course, because they are cheaper than handhelds, both to purchase and to maintain. Check this column for a summary and references."

Jahf writes "/. reported awhile back that the folks at Digital Innovations (makers of the Neuros portable MP3 player) were teaming up with Xiph.org (makers of the Ogg Vorbis audio format) to release both native Linux support for synchronizing the Neuros and firmware support in the Neuros for Ogg Vorbis files. Today they announced in this forum posting that the native Linux client has reached beta. Nice to see this happen ... I can ditch my last Windows install (well, I'll keep it for a couple of games). It is a command-line utility, no amazing fancy UI, but I'm sure plenty of folks will work to remedy that in some fashion or another and I'm happier with a rock-solid command-line util than a buggy GUI app anyway since I already do all my ripping/encoding/freeDBing/etc from scripts in a shell (so I can just add this as the final step). Next on the list is Ogg Vorbis support ... not done yet but hopefully close. w00t!"

An anonymous reader writes "I had this dead motherboard on my hands and I wanted to see what would happen if I cut out the clock generator and used it stand-alone. So I removed the Winbond chip from the motherboard (I cut out the section of PCB with a hacksaw), powered it up and it was still working. Add a display, a microcontroller and two switches, and I got a cheap frequency generator. Here's my progress so far. Be kind to my Web skills, I'm really just a hardware monkey. It's not completed yet, but I just wanted to get the idea out there."

Wireless Spider writes "A couple of days ago there was a controversy over the 802.11g data rates and supposed changes in IEEE specification. Apple has clarified this controversy, stating that nothing has changed in the spec. It seems the article from Computerworld was somewhat misleading. Quote from an Apple Vice President: "802.11g is still a 54Mbit/sec standard," Bell told MacCentral. "802.11b is 11Mbit/sec, but your actual throughput is somewhere between 4 and 5-1/2Mbit/sec. The number that's quoted is the data rate that's used between the radios (raw data rate, which includes the protocols etc.)" After reading this article featured on Macworld, 802.11g transfer rate controversy meaningless, says Apple, it seems clear that the people at Computerworld didn't do their homework for the article featured on May 22. Also, there seems to be a lot of politics between 802.11g and a supporters, and that every article posted on the Internet about this subject might not be true, or could be politically motivated."

smashr writes "It never really occured to me that postscript could be used for something other than printing, until I came across this page. Evidently someone has written the classic 'Game of life' entirely in postscript. You can even send it to the printer and have it output every single iteration.. now that would be a fun prank."

gpmap writes "A new study from the New York City Council is recommending that the Big Apple throw open the competitive bidding process for its annual $130 million phone and Internet bill in order to leverage one of the most expansive -- and underused -- fiber optic networks in the country. In so doing, New York City could not only cut its annual telecom bill, but would also be in a position to deploy wireless networking links as the "last mile" connecting metropolitan area networks, or MANs. In addition, it suggested using the fiber to deploy free Internet access with a Wi-Fi Network in Brooklyn's Prospect Park."

poop writes "Most true Unix geeks will recognize just how nice LPD is as a distributed queueing mechanism for managing all jobs sent to the printer. But, what most people don't realize is that LPD can be used for other things too. In fact, it can be viewed as a general queueing mechanism with a few added bells and whistles for printers. So let's examine a more interesting use of LPD, an engine for distributed spooling of MP3s." Bruha points out this mirror.

greyrax writes "The revolution has begun! Seems that the Thailand branch of HP is selling Linux-based laptops for $450. The government of Thailand is now talking to Dell Thailand about a similar arrangement."

An anonymous reader writes "Heise Online is reporting that SAP and MySQL are going to cooperate (German article, you may want to use Google's translation). Short summary: MySQL and SAP are going to develop a new database server. 'The primary responsibility for the development and product management is with MySQL' says SAP spokesperson Karl-Heinz Hess. Until the new database is released, SAP will continue to develop its own free database system SAP DB, however it will now use the MySQL brand name." On a related note, IBM is introducing a low-end version of DB2.

jlouderb writes "As first reported by ExtremeTech, Futuremark has confirmed that nVidia is cheating on its 3DMark2003 benchmark through eight driver optimizations. The 3D graphics performance war just keeps getting more and more interesting!" See our previous story.

An anonymous reader writes "X-bit labs have posted an interesting article on manufacturing technologies used in the semiconductor industry. Good reading if you want to get a really indepth idea of technologies used for semiconductor manufacturing by IBM, Intel, AMD, and others."