aibrahim writes "Industrial designers at Purdue University win a competition for next generation computer design sponsored by Microsoft. The design emulates a bookshelf, with hardware components that are "stacked" horizontally around a cube shaped CPU. The design attempts to address hardware issues from a user perspective and is pretty cool despite a focus on DRM."

Rouslan Solomakhin writes "Forbes has recently posted an article on IBM's new revolutionary Cell processor. Cell is going to enable PS3 developers to create movie-quality games with blazing-speed graphics. Applications in other areas are also considered." From the article: "Some techies say PlayStation 3, which may debut by midyear and could end up in 100 million homes in five years, will usher in the next microchip revolution. The Sony system owes its prowess to a microprocessor called Cell, which was cooked up by chip wizards at IBM (with help from Sony and Toshiba) at a cost of $400 million over five years."

mallumax writes "ACM Queue interviews Hotmail engineer Phil Smoot on how they manage more than 10,000 servers spread around the globe. Between them, they process billions of emails per day and are overseen by hundreds of administrators. To do that they have returned to the command line. From the article: 'Our operations group never wants to rely on any sort of user interface. Everything has to be scriptable and run from some sort of command line'. The overriding philosophy seems to be KISS. Also: tape backups are out and spam levels have stabilized."

Skal Tura writes "Samsung will start producing 16 gigabit Nand Flash chips this year, nudging the memory technology towards use in notebook PCs and maybe even edging out hard drives in some products in the next few years."

Via 1up, an interview at the site Revolution Report talking with ATI about the power of the Revolution's graphics. From the article: "What I can say is that ATI is focused, as is Nintendo, in making [Revolution] a great, gaming entertainment platform. I know that a lot of journalists are very focused on specs. It's the big thing; as a geek, I look for that too. The key thing to keep in mind is that Nintendo, with ATI's help, is trying to create a game console where you don't have to look at [specs]."

An anonymous reader writes "While home theater PC hardware was once limited to a few specialized companies, those days are long gone and home theater computing is now big business. At this year's CES every hardware company, no matter their size or area of interest, brought a some cool new products too and no one forgot about the burgeoning home theater market. This fervor for home theater PCs was evident all over the show, but it mainly manifested itself in computer cases. This article goes over an extensive list of the products seen there."

An anonymous reader writes "This year at CES members of the press got to grab a glimpse of the world's tiniest power supply. Well actually it is the world's tiniest 12V snap-in ATX DC-to-DC power supply, but you get the idea. This unit produces 120W of power and is about the size of two AA batteries. It is specifically designed for use with Mini-ITX motherboards, but can be used in many other applications."

ajnsue writes "How would you like to control your homes power consumption at the level of the appliance - About 300 Washington State and Oregon Power users are now testing software and devices that allow them to actively control their household power consumption based on the price of power. From the article... "...(Using)real-time price information (provided) through a broadband Internet connection and automated equipment that will adjust energy use based on price. In addition, some customers will have computer chips embedded in their dryers and water heaters that can sense when the power transmission system is under stress and automatically turn off certain functions briefly until the grid can be stabilized by power operators." This technology also provides beneift to the provider network "...The Grid Friendly TM Appliance Controller chip could help prevent widespread power outages by turning off certain parts of an appliance when it senses instability in the grid - something that happens about once a day on average. Shutting down the heating element for a few minutes, while the drum continues to tumble, would likely go unnoticed by the homeowner but drastically reduces power demand within the home...""

Anonymous Coward writes "A colleague of mine just pointed out that Nikon UK has posted a press release here indicating that they are all but ending production of their 35mm film cameras, medium- and large-format lenses and enlarging equipment. The F6 35mm SLR will remain in production and be available in Europe and America, and the all-mechanical FM10 will be available outside of Europe. A handful of manual lenses will remain in production as well. Film in general isn't going away any time soon as digital cameras cannot replace medium and large format cameras, but this is clear evidence that the resolution and popularity of the digital medium have surpassed that of the 35mm format. 35mm took another step into the grave."

Slashback tonight brings some corrections, clarifications, and updates to previous Slashdot stories, including a possible release date for the long awaited Optimus keyboard, yet another extension in the Blackberry court case, lakebed theory on Mars possibly all wet, US-CERT statistics perhaps not all they are cracked up to be, stem cell investigation reveals papers were faked, the FTC objects to the Netflix settlement, and a new Crossover Office fixes the WMF exploit among other things. Read on for details.

ptorrone writes "We podcasted live, we posted over 100 photos real time via a WiFi camera + EVDO as we walked around and now we've picked the top 5 products we liked the most at Macworld San Fran 2006. It's safe to say our picks aren't likely to be the same ones you'll see in the usual "best of" lists. We gave top marks to products, services and software that we think fit the "Maker" mindset - technology on your time and a bit of news from the future... Here they are..."

dr_agonfly writes "Despite many skeptics, a Massachusetts company is getting investor interest in developing a process to tap electric power from trees. MagCap is looking to boost the current power from just under 2 volts to a more useful 12 volts with investor funding." From the article: "Jim Manwell, director of the University of Massachusetts Amherst's Renewable Energy Resource Laboratory, questioned the potential of MagCap's plans. 'I'm wildly skeptical,' he said. 'I would need to see proof before I believed it. It strikes me as pretty questionable for a number of reasons.'"

Samuel Cotterall writes to tell us The Register is reporting that, not content to wait for Apple's mythical tablet PC to ship, ThePlaceforitAll.com is selling converted iBooks on eBay to fill the void. From the article: "ThePlaceforitAll.com is the first to admit the hardware will not be supported by Apple, thanks to the warranty-warping modification work, but the software should still be covered. More worrying is the site's statement that it "will not fix any broken iTablets". It will also ship to US-located buyers only."

**$tarDu$t** writes "Isaac Berzin, a rocket scientist at MIT has come up with an idea for using algae to clean up power-plant exhaust. His research began 3 years ago in an experiment for growing algae on the International Space Station. His idea consists of building algae farms near power plants to provide a means to reduce CO2 and nitrous oxide emissions. Emissions are filtered through the algae. Then the CO2 saturated algae is harvested and squeezed to produce a combustible vegetable oil (biodiesel) and a dried green substance that can be further processed into ethanol."

yukk writes "The Age is reporting that Levi Strauss is now making custom bluejeans with a built-in joystick and retractable headphones for all the iPod lovers of the world." From the article: "The Levi's RedWire DLX Jeans for men and women, which will be available this northern autumn, also have a built-in docking cradle for the iPod and retractable headphones. Its price was not yet available."

Doug writes "An enterprising hardware guy known as JavaMoose on Flickr has created an amazing case mod for his iPod by modifying an old Geiger counter to house the iPod and remote. The photos are up on Flickr with descriptions along the way. Very cool, if a little big to fit in ones pocket"

carpdeus writes "The 2005 Fourth British Computer Society's Annual Prize for Progress towards Machine Intelligence has been won by IFOMIND, a mobile robot system that demonstrates intelligence as it meets a new object in its world. When it meets a new object it acts like an animal encountering a new animal, using inquisitiveness to learn more about the new object and determining the best way to interact with it."

Steve Gray asks: "It has happened to all of us at some time or another. You're two weeks from deploying an application, but suddenly your testbed server falls over, and just won't get back up. After fighting with a variety of companies to try and get parts delivered for Tuesday, I'm finding that most companies will stall your order for days for reasons from random extra checks through to migration of lesser known species of Vole, business needs be damned! Who do Slashdot readers turn to when technology goes wrong? Do you trust them to deliver by tommorow, without fail?"

An anonymous reader writes "CNet reports on an analyst's prediction that Dell will begin using AMD chips, instead of their much-touted Intel processors." From the article: "Dell likely will reverse course and begin selling computers with Advanced Micro Devices' processors, Piper Jaffray analyst Les Santiago predicted Tuesday, sending the chipmaker's stock up 4 percent in midday trading."

Lam1969 writes "Computerworld has interviewed Kurt Gerecke, an IBM storage expert and physicist who claims burned CDs only have a two to five-year lifespan, depending on the quality of the CD. From the article: "The problem is material degradation. Optical discs commonly used for burning, such as CD-R and CD-RW, have a recording surface consisting of a layer of dye that can be modified by heat to store data. The degradation process can result in the data 'shifting' on the surface and thus becoming unreadable to the laser beam." Gerecke recommends magnetic tapes to store pictures, videos and songs."