dorkygeek writes "The Korean Advanced Intelligent Robot Association (KAIRA) will have 64 educational robots deployed by the end of 2005. Able to read out English stories and correct pronunciation of English words to children, these robots are going to be supplied to apartment complexes in Seoul, Bucheon and Bundang in Gyeonggi province for testing purposes. After testing is complete, the Ministry of Information and Communication and KAIRA plan to commercialize the robots as early as 2006. If there exists sufficient demand, education robots will sport other subjects (as mathematics, etc.) apart from English, as well as also target older students." Update Link removed when host decided to change it to porn. Sorry.

Nyxs writes to tell us Sci-Tech-Today is reporting that researchers at the University of Texas are taking a new approach to designing microprocessor architecture. Doug Berger, a computer science professor at the University of Texas, and his colleagues hope to solve many of the pressing problems facing chip designers today with the new "microprocessor and instruction set architecture called Trips, or the Teraop Reliable Intelligently Adaptive Processing System."

prostoalex writes "Nokia delayed its Linux-based tablet product, the first one to use open-source Maemo tablet. The official site still optimistically promises delivery by Q3 2005, but the word is that Nokia is trying to improve the quality of the product and push the product before Christmas."

Justin Davidow writes "For a new twist on internet appliances, AMD is finally attempting to go mainstream with their mobile Geode processor, with the Personal Internet Communicator (PIC), a stand-alone device that allows users a striped down laptop/inflated PDA (without a screen included!) for internet surfing.
Expected retail price: $299USD." Be cool to play around with - I'd love to test it out.

An anonymous reader writes "Logical partitioning provides POWER processor-based servers with the capability to do server consolidation and optimize system resources. Dynamic logical partitioning enhances this capability by providing control of the allocation of the resources without impacting the logical partitions availability. Linux on POWER supports dynamic LPAR for changes to physical I/O, virtual I/O, and processor resources."

Cave_Monster writes "Sony has unveiled a new version of its canine robot AIBO which, unlike your average puppy, can talk and keep a diary but which still needs love and attention. Sony starts taking orders Thursday, with a price tag of 194,250 yen (US $2,263.40) in Japan including a five-per cent sales tax. Now that's one expensive toy!"

QT writes "Ars Technica has been following this week's next-gen DVD dramas closely. First, there's extensive coverage of the reasons why Microsoft backed HD-DVD, which was primarily inspired by mandatory support for copying discs to computers. The BDA, however, countered with an attack on Microsoft's reasons, and Microsoft returned fire. Richard E. Doherty, Microsoft's head of the media entertainment technology convergence group, said that 50GB Blu-ray disc are in fact many years away. Is MS playing games, or is Sony misrepresenting just how far along BD-ROM really is?" From the article: "HD DVD is proven to deliver 30GB capacity today, with the potential to deliver even greater capacity. The 50GB claim for BD-ROM discs is unproven and will not be available for many years to come, based on discussions with major Japanese and US replicators. Replicators not only do not have test lines running, they cannot even pre-order the equipment to begin evaluating this disc. They cannot judge the cost of these discs, or even whether they can be manufactured at all. Major replicators can mass manufacture 30GB HD DVD discs today and it's well understood that these discs will cost significantly less to manufacture than the lower-capacity 25GB BD discs." We previously discussed this topic when the announcement came out.

MaceyHW writes "PhysOrg.com reports a big step forward in the development of magnetic microchips. Since their initial creation of a magnetic logic gate in 2002, an international team of researchers from Durham University, Imperial College, London and the University of Sheffield 'team has created a number of further "logic gates" and created interconnecting structures using magnetic "nanowires," which can now reproduce the logic functions of a conventional computer.'"

Doggie Fizzle writes "Overclockers with a serious SLI gaming system don't have to deal with the drone of double the fans to get the extreme performance. A review of a customized Zalman Reserator 1+ water cooling system shows a well overclocked SLI system offering solid temperatures on the CPU, but an impressive drop of 20 degrees C on both video cards during full load operation... And the unique cooling tower of the Reserator 1+ does it all without a single fan to cool these hot components."

Elite 4CE writes "If you're like me, you are always transporting data from home to work, and back. I was surprized at how many options there were to facilitate this. Hardcoreware.net have posted their Portable Storage Guide for 2005, covering everything from flash based devices that fit into your pocket, to huge FireWire drives with a capacity of 400GB."

fishdan wrote to mention that the Darpa Grand Challenge is getting underway again. The qualifying rounds started yesterday. National media has picked up on the story, with pieces at the Washington Post and Seattle Times. From the Post: "The autonomous robotic vehicles began competing Wednesday in the first of a series of qualifying rounds at the California Speedway. Half will advance to the Oct. 8 starting line of the so-called Grand Challenge. The grueling, weeklong semifinals are designed to test the vehicles' ability to cover a roughly 2-mile stretch of the track without a human driver or remote control. Participants ranging from souped-up SUVs to military behemoths will be graded on how well they can self-drive on rough road, make sharp turns and avoid obstacles _ hay bales, trash cans, wrecked cars _ while relying on GPS navigation and sensors, radar, lasers and cameras that feed information to computers."

NightRyder writes "To cope with the increased power demands of today's processors and video cards a 500W silent power supply has been released by Antec. The topic of silent power production has been an important one to the computer community recently, especially concerning the increased hardware demands by new game and operating systems. Considering the processing demands of something like, *cough* Windows Vista, its important to be able to keep your computer cool without it getting loud."

skeletor935 writes "Due to the increase in the number of medical students in Mexico, medical schools have turned to the use of robotic patients to assist in training." From the article: "The robots are dummies complete with mechanical organs, synthetic blood and mechanical breathing systems."

putko writes "Mike Singer has an article at ZDNet called Five reasons for Palm's slide which describes succinctly how Palm went from owning the palmtop platform -- OS and apps -- to getting chopped into pieces (some recently sold to a Japanese firm), using an OS from Microsoft and teaming up with Microsoft. The author claims, among other things, that Palm's stuff never worked well enough with Windows (while the RIM Blackberry did), which ultimately allowed Windows Mobile to eliminate them. A hard fall for a company that really did innovate."

An anonymous reader writes "LinuxDevices.com has an article about a development kit for prototyping device displays based on electronic paper technology. The kit includes a 170dpi, 6-inch (diagonal) SVGA (800 x 600) EPD (electronic paper display) module supporting four shades of gray, and a small computer module that runs the display. EPDs provide bright, high-contrast, thin, lightweight displays that remain legible under 'any lighting condition' -- much like newsprint. Once an image has been 'printed,' no power is needed to hold it."

pete314 writes "The Trusted Computing Group has unveiled that it is working on a mobile version of its TPM security chip. It should prevent the phone world from being hit by the same virus and hacking issues that face computers. However, the EFF is not amused, stating that the chip will be used for DRM, and could even limit which software the owner installs on his cell phone."

imashoe writes "CNet's News.com reports on the wireless future of VoIP. Similarly BonaFideReviews.com has published an interesting article that attempts to predict what the future of voice communications will be like. The two editorals seem to agree that VoIP is going mobile and in a big way."

Lam1969 writes "Robert Mitchell of Computerworld has written an article about the decline of the desktop in the workplace. He also notes in his blog: 'This theme of 'squeezing' more hours out of workers came up a few times as this story came together. Using technology to increase productivity is a good thing, but in some cases productivity wasn't increasing -- employees were simply expected to work more hours.'" From the article: "After almost a quarter of a century as the personal computing device of choice for business, the desktop PC is sliding off its pedestal. It has withstood assaults by technologies such as the Windows terminal, the Web and the network PC, but the mighty desktop has been humbled by user demand for the one thing it can't deliver -- mobility."

uptime asks: "I've got a friend that needs some help with his web server availability. On two separate occasions, his server has had a problem that caused it to be unavailable for a period of time. One was early on and was probably preventable, but this latest one was due to two drives failing simultaneously in a RAID5 array. As a web business moves from a small site to a fairly busy one, availability and reliability becomes not only more important, but more difficult to accomplish it seems. Hardware gets bigger, services get more expensive, and options seem to multiply. Where could one find material on recommended strategies for increasing server availability? Anything related to equipment, configurations, software, or techniques would be appreciated."

xanthines-R-yummy writes "OQO has announced the availability of the OQO Model 01+. The new model has more RAM and USB 2.0, which were probably the main deficiencies in Model 01." They now start just short of $2k but they still look very yummy.