JamesAlfaro writes "After much wrangling between opposing interests among the members of the IEEE, a first draft for the Wi-Fi IEEE 802.11n specification received approval in a Thursday meeting. Final ratification of the standard is not expected until next year." Relatedly, judgecorp writes "The IEEE has disbanded its working group on ultrawideband. They are leaving the marketplace to decide between two competing approaches." From the article: "Freescale, first to the market with UWB products, believes its headstart will give it a long-term victory, while WiMedia, with the backing of industry heavyweights including Intel and Microsoft, reckons its punch will eventually win through, even without a formal IEEE standard."

Spinlock_1977 writes "C|Net is running a story that Intel is going back to software x86 emulation on Itanium in order to reclaim chip real estate. (room for another 9MB of cache?) One notable quote about x86 emulation: 'Basically, no one ever used hardware-based IA-32 execution, so better to use the silicon for something else,' said Illuminata analyst Gordon Haff. 'Of course, basically no one uses software-based emulation either, but at least that doesn't cost chip real estate.'"

EvolvedHumanoid writes "In a blog post, Percy Bell of SnapStream Media details how he built 'Godzilla', an 11-tuner PVR machine with HDTV support using off-the-shelf components. At $4284.90, the end result sports 1TB storage for recorded content and has to be one of the coolest PVRs ever built."

Digital Inspiration wrote to mention a Reuters article discussing Europe overtaking the U.S. as the largest PC Market. From the article: "Shipments in Europe, Middle East and Africa grew 17.1 percent to 72.7 million units, overtaking the United States which grew 7.5 percent to 67 million. In 2004, the United States still slightly exceeded Europe, both regions taking about 62 million units."

diverge_s wrote to mention an article examining Intel's market share loss to AMD in the fourth quarter of 2005. From the article: "Sales of Intel-based desktop PCs fell 22.3 percent during the fourth quarter, according to Current Analysis. As a result, sales of AMD-based desktops took the lead during the pivotal fourth-quarter holiday shopping season. AMD chips were found in 52.5 percent of desktop PCs sold in U.S. retail stores during that period."

Michael Golembewski writes "For the past three years, I've been taking apart cheap secondhand flatbed scanners and turning them into homemade large format digital cameras. They are well over 100 mexapixel in resolution, and produce results that are both similar to and significantly different from traditional digital and conventional cameras."

JonathanGCohen writes "South Korea is planning on developing an advanced line of robots for military and police use by the 2010 decade. A $34 million USD infusion of cash will spur development and result in robotic applications like security watchmen and eight-legged autonomous combat vehicles. "

ScentCone writes "Pennies, pipes, untold miles of CAT5 - they tie up a lot of copper. Unlike abundant iron and aluminum, copper is relatively scarce. But it's vital to electricity generation/transmission, plumbing, and other uses central to a modern standard of living. Scientific American is providing a quick overview of the situation. They report the conclusion that there simply isn't enough available. Canada, Mexico and the US average 170kg of copper use per person, and the most generous estimates suggest that only 1.6 billion unused metric tons exist. More reclamation and use of fiber, wireless, and PVC helps - but won't be enough to cover the billions of people who don't yet live in highly wired/mechanized societies."

fredr1k writes " A test carried out by Pegasus Lab on account for Swedish magazine PC För alla showed that a normal PC keyboard was infected by more bacteria than a normal toilet seat. More specific it contained 33000 bacteria per square centimeter, compared to 130 on a ordinary toilet seat. The tests also showed occurrence of up to 3100 fungi per square centimeter." Also note that unless you read Swedish, you still have plausible deniability when asked to windex yours.

An anonymous reader writes "CNN is reporting that the first magnetic levitation elevators could hit the market as soon as 2008. The Toshiba Elevator and Building Systems Corporation has stated that the same technology used to develop high speed trains will soon be available in their elevators. From the article: 'The maglev elevators will be quieter and more comfortable and will travel 300 meters (984 feet) per minute -- not as fast as the company's conventional lifts that can move up to 1,010 meters (3,314 feet) a minute, Toshiba said.'"

2by4 asks: "I run at IT Dept for a small firm, our network room houses production & development servers. Some machines are plugged straight into a strip with no UPS. Here is the Mystery Problem: When the power glitches, the strip machines go down, and some of these machine WILL NOT come up again until I switch them to a new outlet. Once this happens, I can put them back on the original outlet and they will work. Unplugging & replugging on same outlet is not enough. I have seen this on at least 5 machines so far, with independent confirmation. We can narrow the 'fix' to plugging into an outlet of a different phase (there are 3 separate 120v phases powering the room). The symptoms vary from no powerup, to frozen at the BIOS (depends on motherboard make), etc, but consistently, switching to a new phase fixes them. I tried the 'unplug-wait-&-replug' cycle, to no avail. Using a new outlet w/ a different phase is the only solution. Any theories? I assume the new phase is causing something to 'reset', but what? I can provide more details, but I am wondering if anyone has seen this before? I am completely and absolutely stumped. Our power is healthy, lightly loaded, evenly distributed and the power strips are new. I know I should have at least a simple UPS, but this mystery is causing me to lose sleep."

An anonymous user submitted a review of the ZBoard Gaming Keyboard. You really ought to check this one out just to see how nuts it is. It has custom plates with keys that are movable and... well just look at it. I can't decide if its pure genius or just ridiculous.

Milton Waddams writes "Ars kick off what I'm sure will be a torrent of reviews of the of the new Intel iMac. Overall it looks like it's a bit faster than the iMac G5 and a bit slower than the PowerMac G5 dual core. I'm sure it will surprise many slashdotters to find out that Jobs' statements about the new iMac being twice as fast as the iMac G5 as being slightly over optimistic. AND it doesn't run Windows...yet..." I'm still waiting for the most important benchmark: frames per second in molten core combat.

usermilk writes "Robot educators Keita Matsuo and Hirotsugu Sakai have created a robot hand that translate the spoken word into sign language for the deaf. From the article: 'A microchip in the robot recognizes the 50-character hiragana syllabary and about 10 simple phrases such as "ohayo" (good morning) and sends the information to a central computer, which sends commands to 18 micromotors in the joints of the robotic hand, translating the sound it hears into sign language.'"

Roland Piquepaille writes "A new U.S. research center, the National Center for Design of Biomimetic Nanoconductors, has been opened to promote new ideas in the field of nanomedicine. For example, a team of researchers at Sandia National Laboratories (SNL) is developing a nano-size battery to be implanted in the eye to power artificial retina. But this center will also design and build 'nanomedical devices based on natural and synthetic ion transporters -- proteins that control ion motion across the membranes of every living cell.'"

wild_berry writes "Found, via Ars Technica's Apple journal, Infinite Loop, a Japanese site disassembling Intel Core Duo iMac. Clint, from the Ars blog, points out that the Core Duo processor is socket-mounted, allowing for possible upgrades, unlike the IBM chips which were soldered to the PCB's. Please use the - cached pages."

Devistater writes "After changing their logo from 'Intel Inside' to 'Leap Ahead,' (and attempting to explain why 2006 is a leap year), Intel has now decided to drop the Pentium brand. Instead of an 'Intel Pentium 4 Dual core' you will be now be purchasing an 'Intel D 840.' You can see the intial steps of this move on Dell's desktop lineup. On the heels of the news of AMD outselling Intel in Desktop Retail sales for two consecutive months, is it really wise to change the logo to something that has no inherent brand identification, and to drop the incredibly recognizable 'Pentium'?"

Ant writes "This Tom's Hardware article says that in the latest generation of graphics cards, PixelShader has become mainstream. Version 3 features 3D effects like HDR rendering for bright light sources, and parallax mapping for even more vivid features in walls and stones. The brand-new ATI Radeon X1000 series and the NVIDIA GeForce 6 and 7 master these improved graphics features. It looks at today's newest computer games (e.g., F.E.A.R.) and compare the 3D effects."

dlaur asks: "I am a right-handed programmer who doesn't use the numeric keypad. While some may appreciate it, I find that it forces me to place my mouse too far away and I would prefer a more compact keyboard. I depend upon easy access to the navigation keys (arrows/ins/del/home/end/pgup/pgdn) while programming, and I find that, while compact keyboard layouts do eliminate the numeric keypad, they also cram the navigation keys into unnatural places. Does anyone manufacture a 'standard layout' keyboard sans keypad? Tip for entrepreneurs: I'll pay a lot for one."

pcnetworx1 writes "New York State is starting to get crunched for electricity. While other states may just say 'pop a couple more coal/oil/natural gas/nuclear power plants down', NY has decided to take the green route. NY State wants to get more power by strategically placing windmill powerplants in upstate NY to help the grid. While getting a dedicated power plant placed on your property for FREE (and being paid $3,000 a year per tower) may sounds good to some Slashdotters, the citizens in upstate NY still need some education in the safety of alternative energy."