It is absolutely gigantic. I've never had a laptop this giant. It is huge both in terms of dimensions, weight, and specs. The resolution of this screen is larger than all but one of my desktops. It has more disk space on it's two (yes two) hard drives than any laptop and almost any desktop. It has an honest to god numeric keypad, but it's sitting on my lap. It's the WidowPC Sting 917 and I put it through it's paces, using it as my primary gaming machine for a month. And I write about it below.

slurpster writes "The register reports that Pi group has decoded the file system used in the Xbox 360. They write "Once you get past the protections and down to the raw bits on the disc, its just the standard xboxdvdfs, however the offset and layer breakpoint are different.""

conq writes "BusinessWeek has an interesting piece on some of the Coolest Products currently being developed. It includes a product from Plantronics Bijoux, a headset that looks like jewelery. The earbuds fit snugly and the speakers hang around the neck. "The set is as stylish as any pair of earrings and a matching pendant." Another product making the list, ultrathin MicroMedia Paper as a basic media-player."

phaedo00 writes "Ars Technica has reviewed the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet which is powered by a variant of Debian Linux. Eric Bangeman praises the device for its "wow" factor and has high hopes for its potential, but nagging issues with the implementation, relatively weak specs, and small software library lower the device's chances of becoming a hot item. From the review: 'The 770 could also use some beefier hardware. One of the attractive things about the 770 for me is the price--US$359. In order to hit that price point, I imagine Nokia had to make some hardware trade offs. Unfortunately, those make themselves glaringly apparent at times. 128MB of shared memory isn't enough; neither is a 250MHz ARM processor.'"

An anonymous reader writes "IBM DeveloperWorks is running a behind the design story for the making of the Xbox 360. The 360 has but a single chip with 165 million transistors for it's CPU " From the article: "This chip is in fact a three-way symmetric multiprocessor design. The three PowerPC cores are identical, except that they are physically reflected through the X and Y axis. Each of the CPU cores is a specialized PowerPC chip with a VMX128 extension related to (and partially compatible with) the VMX instructions in the G4 and G5 CPUs. The three CPU cores share a 1MB Level2 cache. Each processor has 32KB each of data and instruction Level1 cache. The chip's front-side bus/physical interface has a 21.6GB/second bandwidth, and runs at 5.4GHz."

AnInkle writes "ATI finally joins the Christmas party. If money is (virtually) no object and high-end 3D animation is part of your game, you'll want to check out The Tech Report's review of the ATI X1800 CrossFire card before spending your green on the green team. From the review: 'This new CrossFire card also sweeps away some of the limitations of the first-generation CrossFire hardware introduced just a couple of months ago, allowing mega-high-res gaming.' Further, if the latest rumors about the 7800GTX 512MB are true, it would mean that this CrossFire graphics subsystem would arguably stand alone at the top of the graphics benchmarking mountain."

Next Generation is running an examination of the 2005 hardware announcements from the big three console companies. They look at details and benchmarks released so far for the next-gen consoles. From the article: "The wraps were taken off the PlayStation 3 at Sony's pre-E3 press conference. Non-playable demos and canned footage games in development (over which arguments still rage over what was 'real' and what were renders made to be 'representative') wowed the media and stole a good bit of thunder from the somewhat underwhelming Microsoft presentation that followed."

isharq writes "In a cool little feat of extremely low-tech hardware hacking, Photocritic has created a macro lens out of a Pringles can. According to the article: "with less than £1 worth of equipment, a little bit of sweat and tears, you can build yourself a surprisingly good macro lens". The results are astonishing."

* * Beatles-Beatles writes to tell us YubaNet is reporting that in recent tests by Stephanie C Schuckers, an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at Clarkston University, she has shown that, among other things, biometric security measures were fooled 90% of the time by simple attacks like Play-Doh molds. From the article: "Schuckers' biometric research is funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Office of Homeland Security and the Department of Defense. She is currently assessing spoofing vulnerability in fingerprint scanners and designing methods to correct for these as part of a $3.1 million interdisciplinary research project funded through the NSF."

Anna Merikin writes to tell us that Sony has begun shipping a new digital camera, the R1. With the R1 Sony has married the big digital SLRs' sensor with the live preview display of the compact cams. But to do so, it is not an SLR although it is about the same size as one. The new architecture also allows wider-angle optics to be used, but it does not have interchangeable lenses.

Bill Nye (not the science guy) writes to tell us that InventGeek has an interesting article on do it yourself LCD backlight repair. From the overview: "Those of us that have used LCD monitors for a while know that over time the backlight starts to dim and will eventually completely fail. Leaving you with some electronic scrap that you could sell on eBay for 35 bucks or so. Well for less than $20.00 and about a half hour of your time you can replace the backlight and rejuvenate that monitor to as good as new condition."

LazloToth asks: "Those of us who manage small- to medium-size networks face the decision all the time: for the run-of-the-mill web, print, or storage server running on i386 architecture, should we buy HP or Dell, for example, or build it ourselves from commodity hardware and save some bucks up front? In my operation of fewer than 50 servers, one will see a mix of the two. For servers that take more abuse, I tend to buy the proprietary stuff. But not always. I wonder what experiences other admins and managers have had with do-it-yourself servers in a production environment, and whether they feel that white-box servers perform as well - - and last as long - - as anything else? What is the mix in your network of big-names to no-names?"

Dotnaught writes "The Eye Ball is a spherical, throwable WiFi camera designed to precede police into areas where there's no direct line of sight. It's manufactured by O.D.F. Optronics, Ltd, an Israeli maker of vision-based systems for the defense, security and consumer electronics markets. Remington Arms Co. has won approval from the Federal Communications Commission to sell the Eye Ball domestically, with law enforcement being likely buyers. The cost is about $4,800 for two EyeBalls (who would want just one?), which apparently also includes video monitoring gear."

THG writes "CoolTechZone.com has the latest information from NVIDIA regarding the company's plans to discontinue its top of the line graphics card, the 7800GTX 512MB. The article says, "Well, we've been hearing rumors about this for a while, but we finally heard it from the horse's mouth not too long ago. Recent conversations with insiders at NVIDIA have led us to believe that their top of the line card, the 7800GTX 512MB will be out of production sometime in Q1 next year, most likely somewhere around February '06."

judgecorp writes "The Intel-backed WiMedia group, unable to get its UWB proposal approved as an IEEE standard, has got it published as a standard, by the ECMA group. ECMA has less of a history in network standards, and is more swayed by commercial issues, say critics." From the article: "ECMA, whose members are manufacturers, has published two standards, ECMA-368 and 369, based directly on the WiMedia UWB proposals. These had previously reached stalemate in the IEEE, where they were blocked by rival proposals from Motorola-backed Freescale in a debate that lasted for years. ECMA, by contrast, approved WiMedia unanimously, in about three months."

An anonymous reader writes "Recently Dr. Penelope Boston (U. New Mexico) and Dr. Steven Dubowsky (MIT) discussed their NASA advances to develop 'hopping microbots' capable of exploring hazardous terrain, including underground caves and planetary extremes. 'We came up with the idea of many, many, tiny little spheres, about the size of tennis balls (slide show), that essentially hop, almost like Mexican jumping beans. They store up muscle energy, so to speak, and then they boink themselves off in various directions. That's how they move...They behave as a swarm [of 1000s]. They relate to each other using very simple rules, but that produces a great deal of flexibility in their collective behavior that enables them to meet the demands of unpredictable and hazardous terrain.' Test prototypes available in March will initially explore terrestrial lava tubes."

Ant writes "Fosfor Gadgets lists the top weirdest USB drives ever, including photographs. Sushi and shrimps look yummy." From the article: "We start off with the least weird USB drive, and it's the iDuck from the Japanese company Solid Alliance. They are available in six different colors and the version on the picture even lights up when it's plugged in. It's cute so it's not that hard to understand why it's popular, right?"

dolphinlover writes "Craig Barrett, Intel Corporation chairman believes that the $100 laptop computers to be manufactured by the MIT media lab run by Nicholas Negroponte beginning in early 2006 are merely 'gadgets', making them unattractive to consumers who will be disappointed by their 'limited range of programs'." From the article: "Negroponte said at their launch in November the new machines would be sold to governments for schoolchildren at $100 a device but the general public would have to pay around $200 -- still much cheaper than the machines using Intel's chips. But Barrett said similar schemes in the past elsewhere in the world had failed and users would not be satisfied with the new machine's limited range of programs."

Tomo Hiratsuka writes "NEC's new battery uses polymers that turn to gel, allowing it to be flexible and to charge to full capacity in just 30 seconds. It's apparently destined for smartcards and the evil that is RFID."

Matt writes "In a recent interview Steve Ballmer has been quoted as saying that the shortages everyone is experiencing are simply down to lack of chips because of low yields - they even considered delaying the launch because of it. In the end they decided to push on and just try and get as many consoles out there as possible." From the article: "Repeating the company's official line on the shortage crisis, which is now threatening to entirely undo Microsoft's attempts to win the next generation war, Ballmer said, 'We are making more. All stores are getting new units each week. Can we make as many as people want? The answer is no, but not because we don't want to.'"