polymath69 asks: "I use a laptop as my primary home machine, and wish the display to last as long as possible. There are two main camps of opinion on how one ought to ensure this, each grounded on a seemingly logical point. Opinion One goes like this: An LCD's backlight is only going to emit photons for some number of hours, therefore shut it off when not in use to maximize life. Opinion Two counters: A backlight can only be turned on some number of times, therefore leave it on to maximize life. The conclusions in each camp are diametrically opposed. So what is the truth? And how do you make a choice when two seemingly irrefutable arguments are in disagreement? Both these truths start from the same given: that eventually, the LCD will fail. But looking at that given from two points of view leads to contradictory answers. Now, one of these arguments has got to prevail. But which is it, and why?"

noSpaceleftonDevice asks: "The company I work for stores large amounts of data on magnetic-optical platters. We currently buy these for about $60 per 4.6 GB platter. So far, we have over a terabyte stored, which really adds up (especially considering each items is stored on multiple disks and stored off site for redundancy and safety), and my guess is that we will write that much again in the next 12 months. We could use standard write-once CDs (which are much cheaper), but each terabyte would require well over 1000 CDs (not counting redundancy). Writing to, storing and managing this many platters quickly becomes unmanageable. I'm wondering if any of the Slashdot community knows of a better/faster/cheaper way to write large amounts of data on Write-Once Read-Many media."

CBNobi writes: "The National Committee on Information Technology Standards (NCITS) has rejected 4C Entity's proposal of the CPRM, a copy-protection that can be placed on future hard drives. While this may be a win for us, many other organizations are attempting the same thing. Full article at ZDNet." This is only a very temporary victory - there is nothing to prevent this addition to the ATA standard from being proposed again, or to prevent Intel, IBM, Toshiba and Matsushita from figuring out another way to implement it. Another submitter notes: "According to The Register, Apple, Adaptec, ST Micro, Western Digital, Maxtor, LSI Logic and Hale Landis voted against "Generic Functionality" in ATA devices for content control. Voting in favor of content control were IBM, Toshiba (4C members), Hitachi, Iomega, Microsoft, Phoenix, Absolute Software, and Circuit Assembly."

tadghin writes: "Rob Flickenger at O'Reilly Network has written a neat little piece about the range of wireless networks and how high antennae need to be to reach the maximum promised range, given factors such as the earth's curvature and the fresnel zone." Not that most people have solid transmitter disks and clear lines of sight to a wireless reciever miles away, but the more the better when it comes to bypassing modems and expensive per-computer hookups.

AstroBush asks: "I was reading this article which raised a very interesting question: Hardware keylogging devices now exist which can record all output of the keyboard regardless of operating system, permissions, or any software-based controls. How can I protect myself from having a co-worker (or student, thief, ex-wife, etc...) using one of these devices on my machine? Is there any keyboard available which encrypts output before it reaches the computer?"

An Anonymous Coward writes: "According to Eric S. Raymond in this article, 'hackers don't have to be helpless chum in the dating-game shark pool. We have some advantages; with a little understanding of human ethology we can learn how to use them effectively.'" Anyone who says brains aren't sexy doesn't get turned on by a liter of gray tissue.

Blockshrimp asks: "I have had an idea for creating a hardware device and developing a business based around that hardware. I have been kicking the idea round for about 5 years while I've tried to kick holes in the concept and I think that it should be a disruptive technology for at least another 5 years. I once approached a venture capital group where apart from their lack of understanding of the technology liked the idea and the market enough to suggest that if a prototype was successful they would be interested in the idea. My main problem is that I have two small children and the concept is very risky (from my perspective) to invest the amount of money to create a prototype (~$40000 Australian, $20000 US). How do I share this information with a group of interested people with letting some amoral person/company with available finances from taking the idea and running? "

Blenderlover writes: "The full Blender 3D animation & game creation/playback suite runs on a Compaq iPaq now! Here's what Not a Number (the creators of Blender) write on their website : One of the biggest suprises at the GDC was the demonstration of Blender running on a Win CE PDA (personal digital assistant). Prepared as a demonstration of the portability of the Blender code, the full creation suite was shown running on the 200 Mhz, 32 Mb iPAQ system. With a textured game demo playback of 3-4 frames per second, without CPU optimization, it was another confirmation of the power of NaN technology to shape next generation digital media. Mobile and PDA 3D gaming is arriving! There's a wicked video showing Blender on the iPaq" Why not the Linux version on an iPaq properly equipped? ;) This strikes me as a less-than-ideal development tool for Blender (which screams out for a 36" monitor just to hold the widgets!), but a cool accomplishment anyhow.

A reader writes: "50 years may not sound like a whole lot of time. But in the computer industry it really is a great acomplishment. The UNIVAC is celebrating it's 50th anniversary."

Joe asks: "I ordered a case over the internet and had to let it sit for a while before I got to it. Thus the Internet retailer will have nothing to do with me. As I examined it I noticed one of the wire leads to the power micro-switch was broken. given the nature of the break it would be more work than it is worth to fix it. after searching the net, I found plenty of electronics suppliers but they were all searchable by product number only. I need to know where I can find just the micro-switch. By the way this is the most frustrating hold back to building a machine I have encoutered." I too have run into problems with power switches and machines. Fortunately I had a local computer store who had clerks-with-a-clue to help me out. Where else can one go to find replacement power switches, both on and offline?

Augustus writes "LinuxHardware.org has just posted a preview of one of the new Linux handhelds on the market, the Agenda VR3. Although the product reviewed is only a developer release its a good intro to things to come. If you are a developer the Agenda VR3 is a steal at $179 (plus applicable tax and shipping)." I'm hoping to get my hands on one of these soon as well - looks pretty cool.

nprodrom asks: "Has anyone done any developement on drivers/software to support the Sun PCI II Coprocessor board under Linux? I know very little about creating such things, but everything I've read makes me think that it must be possible (except for the fact that I haven't seen anything about someone actually doing it). I've got this crazy hair-brained idea of having about six of these things running in one big Linux box to do some really cool terminal stuff. Now I just need to find someone else who is smart enough to write it for me. Never heard of these things? You can find out more information about them here". These things are yet another way to run Windows under a Unix system, this (it seems) is made expressly for Solaris. Would supporting this piece of hardware under different Unicies be possible?

Simone Paddock pointed me to the article on O'Reillynet about some quick and dirty testing of WEP, wireless, microwaves, ovens and all sorts of fun stuff. The article is entertaining and informative - my favorite kind.

rchatterjee writes "Cray, the only mainstream recognizeable name in supercomputing, has been busy lately. Their totally new MTA-2 supercomputer design will use a UltraSPARC-III powered Sun Fire 6800 server to just feed the data to the MTA-2's processor. They're also refocussing on Vector Supercomputers and are going to release their first new vector supercomputer since Tera Computing bought them, the SV-2 in 2002. And if that wasn't enough they have a deal with API networks to develop Alpha processor based Beowulf clusters of Linux machines that as a cluster will run the same operating system as Cray's T3E supercomputers. Seymour Cray would be proud. You can get a quick overview of all the latest Cray developments from this article on Cnet."

slashdot.org writes: "For anyone interested in the bowels of the iPAQ, this guy has taken one appart and put about a zillion pictures on a website. This may help for that in-dash installation you've been thinking about ;)" Cool engineering inside -- interesting to see the various companies that make the pieces going into one of these things, and a brave guy to take one apart. (iPAQs are still about 3 years from eBay prices for me.)

olafva writes: "You may be interested in this new breakthrough! See NASA Press Release and a couple of today's local stories for a remarkable paradigm shift in "Computing Faster without CPUs"." CmdrTaco said he'd believe it when he saw it. Well, they've got pictures. (Update: 03/29 5:02 PM by michael : At NASA's request, we've modified the links in the above story to reduce the load on their Public Affairs website. The same content is at the new links.)

Guppy06 asks: "The big question about copying DVDs (other than legality) seems to be "What do you do after being able to decode it?" A cursory scan of Pricewatch shows that DAT tapes are now big enough to hold the entire contents of a DVD and then some. I know that tapes in general have been relegated to the back-up role because of their slow search times and, to some extent, slow read/write times. However, you don't exactly need ATA-100 (or even a 12x DVD-ROM) to watch DVD-quality streaming video from start to finish. So, my question is 'Would it be possible?' If not, what's standing in the way, and are those problems long-term or short-term? How fast are read/write times on DATs increasing, if any? DATs are an ancient technology (by computer standards), widespread, cheap, and not easily censorable in the near future. It might be a better alternative to bending over for the MPAA for playing/recording large media files." As long as the data transfer rate is sufficient for real-time playback of a DVD, I don't see why something like this can't be done. Of course you will lose the searching capabilities (playback in a differing speeds both forwards and backwards), but when you are just playing a DVD, do you really need those?

Legend asks: "I am looking into implementing a BSD based firewall at my place of employment. I have been looking at different solutions, from Nokia, and Cisco, but they seem quite expensive, and the Cisco solution is nothing more than a router, with some extra software, and the Nokia, nothing more than a PC, with extra software. I have decided to build my own PC/BSD based firewall, with FreeBSD, or OpenBSD, however, I am looking for the perfect hardware for this project. CompactPCI looks like a great choice, but I am wondering if anyone has run *BSD on this hardware, and if there are any pitfalls to it. CompactPCI seems like it would be the perfect firewall solution, compact flash based boot drives, hot-swappable processors, up to eight PCI slots for NICs." Sounds like a nice idea for an always-on PC appliance. Although we covered some of the issues with BSD Firewalls in an earlier article it would be interesting to know of your thoughts on CompatPCI and how well it can stand up to this kind of use.

Gonzodoggy writes: "Saw this on my local news last night. There's a company in Oregon that is trying to eliminate the mouse as we know it. The company is called Naturalpoint. Basically, you place a reflective dot on your forehead or, for laptop users, a plastic ring on your finger. Then when you move your head or your finger, the mouse goes where you point. The demo on the news showed a gamer making the game look where he looked, allowing him to keep both hands on the keyboard" Looks like a cool idea, but very Windows only for now. So I guess I'll have to rig up a trackball underfoot, and just fool my housemates into thinking I was controlling the cursor with my changing glances.

uglomera writes: "LEON, the open-source CPU developed for the European Space Agency, has been successfully manufactured and tested by Atmel on an Atmel ATC35. Gaisler Research, whose CEO Jiri Gaisler wrote the VHDL model of LEON, also offers a real time kernel, simulator, a cross-compiler, etc. for this SPARC-family processor designed for space applications. Check it out." You can find more good information on the LEON processor on the Gaisler site, including diagrams and further reading. Open Source hardware running Free software -- wheee!