A reader who chose anonymity writes: "As usual ZZZ online was updated this Sunday. Nevertheless the issue number 67 contains quite unusual info about vertical keyboard. It is made by splitting normal keyboard into two parts and and rotating them by 90 degrees. The human imagination has no limits, vertical keyboard looks really weird." It also looks much comfier than most flat ones. Maybe that would make me learn to truly touch type, as well?

Pentapod asks: "I'm giving in to RSI and looking for a trackball mouse. I've tried the Logitech Marble Wheel but didn't find it very comfortable for my small hands. Now I'm looking for a thumb-operated trackball like the Logitech Trackman Wheel Mouse or the Microsoft Trackball Optical Mouse. These two look most promising, but there's also the Logitech Marble Mouse and the Logitech TrackMan FX among others. My question to Slashdot - the prices vary by up to A$100. So is there a real difference? What is it? Is the Microsoft 'Intelli-eye' technology really 'new' and better? Has anyone done any comparison between trackball models?"

malachid69 asks: "As a Java programmer [pls, no spam about that], I have been looking at the Patriot Scientific PSC1000a JavaChip for quite some time now. Last week, I finally ordered one (yes, just one, until I figure out how to use it). Some of the specs are here. In college, I took some Analog/Digital classes, but that was 11 years ago -- and I have forgotten a lot of it. I have been into VR for quite some time, and am looking for ways to make some really nice (yet cheap) VR hardware with this chip. I am investigating EInk/OLEDs (as replacements for LEDs/shutter) for the display, etc. Does anyone have any idea how to build VR hardware out of this chip?"

Lars Brinkhoff writes: "Remember the PDP-10 mainframe, the machine that ran the first version of EMACS and helped foster the Free Software movement? Now a company called XKL, LCC is funding a PDP-10 port of GCC. There's also a project to create a PDP-10 processor in an FPGA."

Buell Smelt writes: "I found this site about these set top boxes out there, and it seems kind of cool, now that I'm bored with my iopener... http://www.phoenixgarage.net/ Seems like a bigger challenge than the iopener in some ways, but maybe not. I just like the fact that it has NTSC/PAL out, so I can use it as a home MP3 player in my livingroom and don't have to haul a monitor out there. It also has the same form factor as most home stereos. It's a lot less expensive than the iopener, that's a plus. There are some floating around in the 'Internet Appliance' area of eBay. I guess you can also turn an old VGA monitor into a TV with these things. That's kind of handy too."

gullevek asks: "We are about to implement a huge database. In the first two years it will grow up to 650 GB and it will get larger and larger afterwards and could grow up to 2-4 TB. I never before implemented such a large DB. The DB Software has been choosen but now I have to find the right hardware. The basic components are not a problem, but what about storage? I would prefer to use RAID, of course, but what type of RAID? RAID 5 may be the best for disk failure, but it can be quite slow. RAID1 is fastest but the most expensive. Especially when it is at this sizes. And what about the type of drive: SCSI-3? FCA? FibreChannel? Do you folks at Slashdot have any suggestions?"

theluckman writes: "Hitachi is scheduled to release this digital camcorder in "early 2001". It can record 60 minutes of high quality (6M bps) digital video or 120 minutes of standard quality (3M bps) digital video. Also can store up to 2000 jpg's at 1280x960. All stored on an 8cm DVD-Ram disc (2.8 GB capacity). Add tons of specs and USB support and it seems like what the digital video world has been waiting for." It's sure intriguing, but raises the same pitfalls as Sony's CD-R camera discussed a few months back -- building a camera around a delicate mechanism is a difficult task. I'd be nervous about entrusting important moments to this.

SEWilco writes "Linux Devices has an overview of Linux-Friendly Embeddable Computers. It's a nice introduction to commercially available computers the size of a disk drive (biscuit) or smaller (PC/104). This is the type of thing to use for wearable or special-purpose devices." Excellent article.

chrisd writes " While surfing, I found a link to the PCMODS site which sells all kinds of cool stuff to trick out your PC. I'm talking big plexiglass windows. Neon! Aluminum cases! Lights! I see a link to thinkgeek but I guess TG doesn't carry thier stuff yet. Way cool though. But, a company called Plycon has their stuff and other cool stuff. So go accessorize that case cowboy!" Ant also sent in a story on the creation of a portable desktop - inside of an aluminum briefcase. Supercool as well.

Lardmonster asks: "My laptop is P3-750, 192Mb, large hard-disk. It would be ideal for games & LAN parties, except the graphics chip is an 8Mb S3 3D-Savage MX. These folks make a PCI to PCMCIA Adaptor, but prices start at $695! I could build a new rig for that! Anyone know any cheaper alternatives? I'd dearly love to be able to use a Voodoo3 PCI (or similar) with the laptop." Something like this looks promising, but is this really the answer for better graphics on a portable computer? Are there PCI cards that will not work well with this adapter?

Eric Priepke writes: "I have 2 "Pinball 2000" machines, both of which I've added ethernet to. Via that ethernet, it's possible to telnet in to the pinball machine and get to a shell. I'm using that shell to dump out a bunch of statistic information on the games, and then build a web page with a backend perl script. Any time my games are on, the local FreeBSD box notices and updates the web pages every 1/2 hour." The link is to a mirror. Really impressive hack. Revenge from Mars is among my favorite pinball tables. Since Williams is giving up on Pinball 2000, it would be sweet to see if we couldn't make new games out of the old hardware.

thefin asks: "My research group has finally received funding (~$200K) for a single SMP box. I've looked over the offerings from SUN, IBM and Compaq. I was wondering what others think of the SMP offerings and in particular, opinions of Linux as a SMP OS. What should we know before purchasing such a machine? What should we look for and what should we avoid? We will be using the box for large, individual based ecological modeling efforts. These models are CPU intensive, and make heavy use of inter-node communications. In particular, inter-node communication can be a serious bottle-neck in our models."

daniel writes "This is the first I've heard of a dedicated Webcam machine that runs NetBSD. See the mmEye, It's based on the SH3 and its parent corp has contributed towards the netbsd SH3 port and work on SH4 support. I think this could be pretty handy for people running Webcams."

A reader writes: "Elektron, a little company in Sweden, has been selling a MIDI synthesizer module based on the MOS 6581 SID chip pulled out of old Commodore 64 Computers, called the Sidstation. It's pretty slick looking, and makes some pretty amazing bleeps and blurps. Its complete with an operating system which controls a huge number of features of the SID chip, and even a little built-in sequencer. They've been manufacturing these things for almost 2 years now, but but they are about to stop production (roughly a little over 100 units left), due to the lack of SID chips around."

ssajous writes "This is an interesting article in the NY times which talks about PDAs quickly finding their place in the world of medical billing and keeping track of patient's care, there is a lot of money in the medical field, but also currently a lot of unnecessary paper work. I like what I see!!!" I don't think Palm makes a tricorder card yet, but it's only a matter of time. The last time I saw a doctor, he was doing things the old-fashioned way - I would guess it will take a while before this sort of technology is widely used.

Haakon asks: "I'm considering setting up a VPN across our USA offices by upgrading the existing 2600 / 2500 routers to FW / VPN feature set. My question relates to some 'Cisco' advice passed on by our supplier: to establish a VPN link between the USA and an existing PIX520 in Europe apparently we have to use another PIX520 in the USA -- Why is this?"

ArghBlarg writes: "As reported on the Mercury News' siliconvalley.com website, the 4C group, consisting of IBM, Intel, Matsushita and Toshiba, responsible for the dreaded CPRM rights-management standard for PC storage media, may be backing down on mandatory implementation of the standard in PC hard disks. A Linux consultant by the name of Andre Hedrick, who sits on the T.13 protocol committee, apparently confronted them during a recent meeting and got them to consider making an 'opt-out' mechanism if the standard is ever implemented in hard disks. However, the EFF says that's not good enough, and says that CPRM should never besmirch a PC hard disk's firmware, in any form. The 4C group has been eerily silent about the issue, according to the article, so this isn't over yet. (According to the Mercury article, the 4C entity promised to release a formal statement here about the 'opt-out' possibility, but no new releases were up at the time of writing.)"

Houndogk writes: "I came across this reading the news of the day at Tomshardware. This [article] talks about a new generation of CD-RW that promise to be 3x as fast and have 3x the capacity as current drives. It is also expected to scale to 4x and 5x." From the article: "[T]he premise of ML technology is the use of gray-scale disc encoding, with 3 bits per spot giving eight shades of gray. Under a microscope, the disc surface appears as a continuous blending of light to dark shading, versus the traditional disc appearance of either dark or bright spots." And what happens when we go to 24 bits per spot? ;) This announcement seems to partly answer GeoffM's quest for dual- or quad-density CD-Rs, and handily top Sony's moves to double-density.

LinuxOnEveryDesktop asks: "I am currently investigating which PABX has the best support for open OSes. I would like to see who's calling on the PC screen, run voicemail server software, do PABX administration, call logging, etc., on an Open OS. Most PABXs (like Lucent's Argent Office,...) come with Windows software, which is not an option for my employer."

Okay, we give up. Even though we ran this story a few months ago, it seems that Reuters has picked it up and slathered it all over the world, and now everyone is submitting this New! Improved! Palm Pilot Robot. Read the current story anywhere that has a Reuters feed. The design was purchased by a company called Acroname, which has a few neat pictures on their website. Personally, I'm putting in my application to be Goodlife as soon as possible.