Drath writes "Researchers at Purdue University are conducting a study by placing Sony Aibo robots in a Lafayette, IN nursing home. They want to see if robots can make people happy. Lets hope they have robot insurance." Makes you wonder if the AARP will have a position paper on this. Hope when I get old(er) I'll have gold plated killer robots around for my entertainment. pycananthemum also was kind enough sent in a link to the Project page.

Richard Robison of ZapMedia wrote in to say that their ZapStation stereo MP3 Box has had a serious price cut to $599. If you put in the comments field 'JUST LINUX' they will ship you the box with just Linux installed (and code to control the IR input and screen). In other words, a $600 stereo component PC ready to connect to your TV and speakers for whatever video or audio projects you feel like rolling up yourself. I reviewed this unit last December and found a lot of problems, but many of those glitches have apparently been fixed, and the price was the biggest problem, so this thing may deserve a serious second look this time around.

Foss writes "This article on EIMod.com shows a (very) cheap and effective way of getting that usually-expensive water cooling system that many of us have thought about. There are some pretty pictures too :)"

Sivar writes: "Cray, a well known vendor of extremely fast supercomputing hardware, has introduced a storage system with a 224 GB capacity. The large size seems impressive, but the device can also transfer an unprecedented 80GB(!!) every second. That's more bandwidth than the main memory of most servers, and it's just for storage. For comparison's sake, a typical dual channel DDR motherboard has a bandwidth capacity of barely 4.2GB/sec." Yow.

Dave Aiello writes: "For the past year, I have searched for a single device that could replace my cellular telephone, PDA, and pager. The products I used, a Nokia 8860 with AT&T Wireless service, a Palm V, and a Research in Motion 850 with Cingular Wireless Data service, are each fine products in their own right. But, the awkwardness of carrying them at once, the cost of maintaining two separate wireless service accounts, and the lack of integration between them kept my frustration level high." Dave has given a thorough look at the realities of using Handspring's new Treo to consolidate the functions that each of these other devices provides -- learn from his experiences, below.

boredadmin writes "It looks like Palm have finally released (a few weeks ago) their Bluetooth SDIO card to allow SD-Slot equipped Palms communicate with cellphones, PC's, access-points, etc. Now if only I could find somewhere in this sad little corner of the world that I'm stuck in that actually stocks them."

Mr. Red Baron writes "A resident geek at Ars Technica has turned his toolbox into a nice little computer. Looks more portable than most LAN party designs I've seen." His webpage has a few more pictures.

guinan writes "The Economist is running a story about how now that PC makers think the worst is over, it's high time to raise prices. In particular, the focus is on the steady price of flat-panels and a possible end to the decline we've seen in the price of memory. Granted, most of the /. crowd build their own boxes, but if you want to buy a computer from a major brand better go for one soon while you can still get all the perks."

Huma79 writes "Adrian O'Grady has successfully gotten TCP/IP and PPP working on his handheld Gameboy Advance for a web server. Pictures of the server running and a telnet session to it can be found at fivemouse.com."

mattvd writes "Keeping with thier promises from a few weeks ago, Apple has released thier Bluetooth software for MacOS X today. More info about the release is in the KnowledgeBase. Apple is also selling a D-Link USB Bluetooth Adapter."

TheRealZappa writes "For quite a while now I have been looking for a mouse that would not make any "clicking" sound when the buttons are pressed... Does it even exist? So to all you quiet-pc amateurs and hardware hackers... Can it be hacked? Can it be bought somewhere?" Sure it exists, I think they call it a "trackball" or "touchpad". Seriously, I've never had a non-broken mouse that didn't click.

doppler writes: "There's a killer graphics card round-up at TR today that compares the new GeForce4 and Radeon 8500 128MB cards against each other in extensive testing. Very good stuff. Most interesting: a visual representation of a texture upload problem in OpenGL on the Radeon 8500 chip."

Karim Yaghmour asks: "Flash/EEPROM programmers tend to be expensive (especially if you want support for many devices). I am trying to find a Flash/EEPROM programmer for which the schematics and software are available in Open Source form on the web. The projects I have found are rather basic and do not provide support for a wide range of memory devices. Does anyone have any recommendations? Is anyone working on such an Open Source project? Something like the Bitscope project (an 'Open Source' Oscilloscope) mentioned earlier on Slashdot, but for device programmers. If not, is anyone interested in starting such a project?"

Klenex writes "True 3-D Visual Effects w/o the use of annoying '3-d' glasses or stereograms. Actual Depth "The Actual Depth monitor is actually two LCD displays stacked on top of each other. The LCD on top displays white transparently, so you can see through to the display beneath it, which is opaque." You need a dual head card or a 2nd video card to drive each display but this seems incredibly cool and it will work with any OS which supports dual monitors w/o any other hardware. Here's TechTV's scoop on the new technology. They even have a link to contact them about a demo in your area. I'd love to see one of these in action even though chances are I would never be able to afford one. Prices start around 6 grand, quite steep."

theluckman writes "Reuters has this story on how new devices like "digital pens" could possibly replace keyboards as primary data entry devices. Maybe so, but I would need my pen to make cool clicking sounds."

kanad writes: "With all the news of banning cd burners, taxing blank CD-Rs, DMCA, and whatnot in the U.S., here's a breather from Australia. Some stores have installed coin-operated CD copying machines. Basically it's very simple: put the CD to be copied and a blank CD in two different slots and drop your coins and Presto! In 10 minutes you get a copy. It even bypasses some anti-copying measures. ... Obviously the burden of not violating copyright rests with the user under Australian law, which is the same as that applied to photocopiers. Today evening I saw the machine and it's really cool. Wonder what would happen to this machine in U.S. and Europe."

x136 writes "Despite being cancelled over four years ago, the Newton Messagepad is still getting better. You can now connect to an 802.11b network, install packages from OS X, and play the MP3s that you transferred from iTunes to your Compact Flash cards. It's pretty hard to imagine how great the Newton could have become had it not been abandoned."

Tora writes: "Zip disk maker Iomega has released a sexy new 1U Network Attached Storage server with an option for either Unix or Microsoft Windows as the OS. Their previous NAS offering was Windows-only; it is nice to see both OS options available, although they do not yet have pricing up for the Windows version."

Niscenus writes "The folks at AnandTech are buzzing about this article originally posted here at CS. It's an extensive comparison of motherboard manufacturers, which is great for people who want to build their own system." All the biggies look to be here. Good timing for me since I'm planning on building a system in another month or so.

securitas writes "The New York Times obtained a copy of the World Trade Center draft report by the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the American Society of Civil Engineers about the engineering failures that caused the towers to collapse. Among the findings: 'Fireproofing, sprinkler systems and the water supply for hoses were all disabled and the fires generated heat equivalent to the energy output of a nuclear power plant' reports the NYT (Yahoo link). Amazingly, if it wasn't for the fire (or another secondary catastrophic force), the towers would have remained standing."