A not-so Anonymous Coward asks: "I've got a spiffy Canon Digital Elph camera, and have been wondering if I can control it from my PC - that, is can I trigger it to take a picture remotely via the USB interface? If so, it seems a logical next step to turn it into a very (very) nice Web cam for stills at a fairly low frame rate. 1600x1200x24 bit. Also, I'd love to try my hand at digital astro-photography (put it on a telescope that is). Seems to me there ought to be some way for me to control it thru the USB again. Anyone with good leads/info on how to hack a Canon digital camera? Seems a worthy hack to me." Some cameras have command line utilities that can be used in scripts to do this. I know Kodak-compatible cameras can do this via ks or the DIGITA ^[?] scripting language, however I'm not so sure about Canon's Elph series. This also might not be too hard a capability to hack into gPhoto.

I enjoyed reading the robot diaries which are an account of building some BEAM ^[?] robots from kits. BEAM bots are interesting in that the design sense behind it is much more building from the ground-up (IE, build a robot to resemble an insect) rather then trying to build from the top down. Basically a more evolutionary approach to things.

MHQ13 writes: "Over the years tape media has advanced greatly, increasing in bit density and decreasing in tape length and physical size while increasing in total storage capacity overall. Although I feel this is a good thing, I am not satisfied. Why are manufacturers not producing longer and larger tapes with current bit densities so that we can have tapes with monstrous total capacities? I would like to have tape media capable of storing a terrabyte or more. This would greatly simplify the nightly backups that I have to perform to backup our numerous UNIX systems. I think it would be a great benefit to be able to perform full backups of every partition of each machine either every night, or at least 2 or 3 times a week, rather than having to perform primarily incermental backups and squeezing in a full backup about once every two weeks."

SeattleDave writes "CNET's News.com is carrying a story about Palm's new OS, version 4.0. To quote their article: "The new version 4.0 of the Palm OS, which chief executive Carl Yankowski detailed at the PalmSource developer conference here, supports 16-bit color, Bluetooth wireless connectivity, universal serial bus (USB) connections for easier PC synchronization, and support for wireless telephony." Read the original article as well. "

!TorpedoBay asks: "I am looking for an OS to run on an HP Jornada 820C - want to get rid of the CE thing. I know this is a 16MB ROM machine - is there any way to replace this OS with PalmOS or with a stripped down Java OS ala Espial or something else? How hard is it to replace the ROM chip in these devices anyway?"

Kevin Lawton, currently employed by MandrakeSoft, is the creator and driving force behind Plex86, the Open Source X86 virtualization software which runs under Linux and now boots several operating systems, including QNX and Windows 98. This is a tricky endeavor, because (among other things), as the plex86 site states: "The x86 processor is not 'naturally' virtualizable. That is to say, it was not designed to run multiple operating systems concurrently." But with enough feints and jabs, Kevin and company have cajoled it into doing so anyhow. He's agreed to answer your questions about virtualization (and / or emulation -- he is the guy behind the also-Open Source bochs project to emulate X86 processors), so please post your stumpers below. Make sure to check out the Plex86 website first, and perhaps read other things about Plex86 on Slashdot. (And "What's the point?" is not a stumper.)We'll forward the top questions on to Kevin, and hear back from him soon.

Seumas writes "Check out the Durapoint stainless steel industrial mouse which has bee thrown off a five-story building, submerged for hours, run-over by an 18-wheel truck, beaten with a hammer, used as a hockey puck, thrown across a room and stepped on countless times. It's even theft-proof. Even the pentagon is considering using it. At $279, it isn't cheap -- and it sure isn't an ergonomic wonder, but it might be your ticket if you do your computing strapped to the underside of a Mac truck." If only it had 3 mouse buttons!

yamla asks: "These days, just about the slowest computer you can buy new runs at 600 Mhz. For a lot of people, this is overkill, a waste of money. Are there any online sites in Canada (or elsewhere) that specialise in selling new, low-end systems for bargain prices? Any other alternatives I haven't considered? I am thinking of two situations specifically here. I would like a firewall to place in front of my LAN. Now, I know there are products like FreeSco and the like that can run comfortably on a 486 with a floppy, but I'd rather run something like Storm Firewall and so I need a bit more power. I am also thinking of my mother who wants to upgrade her 200 Mhz system a little but needs neither the power nor the price that $600 Canadian would get her." Aside from surplus shops like Computer Surplus Outlet where can you find new or used older computers at decent prices?

Ratface asks: "Having seen the recent question about resources for interesting youngsters in astronomy, I wondered if the Slashdot readership had any thoughts about getting started in electronics. I remember building crystal radios at school and poring over the Maplin catalogue, but I never got much further than that. I would hope that nowadays there are some great resources for the budding hardware designer to get started with." I remember my first electronic circuit which I designed way back in junior high school for a science project. I dived head first into concepts that I wouldn't completely understand until college, but it was rewarding nonetheless. What suggestions do you readers out there have for getting youngsters started in electronics? Should they start with basic electronics kits or would something a bit more challenging hold their interest, longer?

An AC sends news of this New York times article on trying to use photons instead of electrons to make much faster chips. "Not available in stores near you".

The Tech-Report is currently running a feature that compares two of the leading PDA keyboards - the Targus Stowaway and the Landware GoType. I've seen a number of these used before, but haven't gotten one yet - anyone else found one that they really like?

n8willis writes "ZDNet has an article about IBM's latest breakthrough, Magnetic RAM (MRAM) that actually works. The story is a bit fluffy, rolling out every possible buzzword (eg, wireless video will now be feasible due to faster RAM technology???), but the tech - in development since 1974 - is indeed going into production as we speak. Gotta hand it to IBM these days: copper interconnects, 200ppi LCD monitors and now this." I'll believe it when I can read/write from it.

Ant sent us a Salon feature that talks about the (lack of) quality control in computer manufacturing, and then talks about it being "the American way of techno-capitalism". I've not had nearly the problems that people in this article allege, but I can sympathize.

Robert writes: "VoodooExtreme posted a hands-on preview of the mysterious 3dfx Voodoo5 6000 video card from the I/ITSEC (http://iitsec.org) Interservice/Industry Training, Simulation and Education Conference which comes equipped with the first-ever published benchmarks of Quake III. Formerly the Voodoo5 6000 was planned to be a retail product, but its high price tag and need for an external power supply led them to sell the rights to it to Quantum 3D, where it will be used in Visual Simulation industry..." I always thought a video card was a selling your video short ;)

If the iPAQ looks nice, the Yopy looks sexy, the Agenda intrigues you, and a V-Tech Helio running Pocket Linux looks interesting to you ... then you may enjoy this sweep of the available Palmtop GUIs with an emphasis on Free ones, written by reader 1010011010.

dcigary asks: "So, I'm visiting my local outlet mall, and strolling through the Sony Outlet store. At the entrance, they have a BIG stack of refurbished WebTV Plus boxes, with a price tag of $19.99 each. It also included a wireless keyboard! Being a sucker for a cheap price, I snatched up two of them, figuring I could at least set one up for my net-impared parents so they can surf the internet easily. What else can I do with one of these boxes? Are they hackable? I would really like to add an ethernet adapter to it and put it on my house LAN, and run out through the cable modem, but that would probably be asking too much. I've read through the specs and apparently they have a 1.2G drive in them as well? Any other ideas? Any sites out there dedicated to this?" $19.95 for a Web-TV box? That's not a bad price if these things can be enhanced in any way, shape or form.

maxmutt writes: "PalmPalm Technology Inc. a Korean Company, has got a new "smart phone", the IMT-2000, that looks interesting." Runs Linux, and is both a cell phone and PDA. Plays MP3 and video, has bluetooth, and runs embedded Qt. And has net functionality. It'll be interesting to see what comes of this.

dhart asks: "Does anyone make low power servers or desktop computers? Couldn't this be accomplished with commodity parts designed for portable PCs. Energy efficiency is environmentally friendly, with the added benefit of smaller and cheaper UPS and AC units in a server setting. If the demand for these units increased, it could lower the cost of energy efficient parts and, by association, the portable computers that drive the technology."

Syn Ack asks: "Does there exist any specialized hardware for the sole purpose of compressing audio into MP3 format? Without going into too much detail, I'm putting together a platform that has to rip and compress as many songs as possible in the shortest amount of time (ie compressing several thousand CDs). I was considering a large ~20 machine *BSD or Linux cluster of high end x86 or Alpha hardware solely for compressing digital audio into MP3 format. Before I go ahead and look at other solutions, I wanted to check the distributed minds of the Slashdot readers to see if they know of any specialized hardware for this purpose. Price isn't really a concern. Something like the dedicated encryption boxes/cards used on Web servers is the type of thing I'm thinking of. Anyone have any ideas?"

Ali Hassani asks: "I was looking around for a cheap place to buy CD-Rs and I stubbled upon a website talking about 99-minute CDs Have people had success in using in these CDs on normal audio players? I know that the new Beatles CD has something like 26 tracks and I was wondering if any high capacity CDs are being used currently by the music industry."