An anonymous reader writes "A Flexbeta article covers the basics of WiF security. The article mentions mentions various ways of securing a WiFi network, how easy it is to crack WEP, and what the IEEE is doing about WiFi security. From the article: 'In order to address the security issues of WEP and the current Wi-Fi standards of 802.11a/b/g, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is developing a new standard that is called 802.11i. This standard was developed with security in mind. The new standard implements new security entitled Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA), which takes advantage of the Temporal Key Integrity Protocol (TKIP), is easier to setup using a pre-shared key, and can use RADIUS authentication.'"

Luke writes "Sprint and Nextel received approval from the Federal Communications Commission to merge to form the number three wireless company on Wednesday. FCC commissioners gave the companies unanimous support for the merger. The companies, which announced the merger on Dec. 14, 2004, expect to finalize the merger soon."

SimilarityEngine writes "Intel is planning to terminate production of its 910GL, 915GL and 915PL chipsets by the end of August, as part of a shift in focus towards higher-spec products, possibly with support for new FSB architectures, multi-core processors and a host of other much-requested features relating to virtualisation and security."

kamikaze-Tech writes "Being reported on the Vonage VoIP Forum in an article entitled Vonage, Wimax Provider Team Up it appears Vonage is partnering with TowerStream to allow you to make calls up to 30 miles away via WiMax. WiMax, another name for the 802.16 standard for wireless broadband, has a range of up to 30 miles and can deliver broadband at a theoretical maximum of 75 megabits per second, which is more than 20 times the speed of the fastest wired broadband available commercially. WiMax serves as a partial successor to the popular Wi-Fi wireless protocol, which works over far shorter distances, measured in feet rather than miles."

An anonymous reader asks: "I've been running Linux for a little while and usually hardware problems have shown up quite easily - kernel panic, no module, no networking, etc. - but recently I've encountered some problems with network disk access causing very high load, which I think might be hardware related. Under Windows I'd fire up SANDRA or the like and run a full system scan. I did a quick search and nothing really stood out. I was wondering if any Linux gurus out there would like to share their expertise on Linux diagnostics?"

EconolineCrush writes "Command queuing has long been a feature of high-end SCSI drives meant for demanding multi-user environments, but it's now starting to pop up in the latest generation of desktop Serial ATA drives. Desktop Serial ATA drives are generally subjected to far less demanding single-user loads, making command queuing's benefits a little harder to quantify. However, it turns out that Native Command Queuing can significantly improve the performance of Serial ATA hard drives with disk-intensive desktop multitasking. With dual-core processors trickling into the mainstream and multitasking poised to become more popular, Native Command Queuing could prove essential for desktop hard drives."

vandon writes "Linux hackers have demonstrated a way to inject or record audio signals from passing cars running insecure Bluetooth hands-free units. The Trifinite group showed how hackers could eavesdrop on passing motorists using a directional antenna and a Linux Laptop running a tool it has developed called Car Whisperer."

hanser writes "Ars Technica is running an in-depth review of the new Apple "Mighty Mouse." From the review: "As it turns out, Apple blew the description of its "aural feedback" and "touch sensitivity" out of proportion and led most of us to believe that 1) there was some sort of speaker built into the mouse with synthetic mouse sounds coming out of it, and 2) the shell might be solid-state touch-sensitive like our beloved iPod wheels.""

ickoonite writes "The BBC is reporting that wi-fi enabled Pocket PCs running open source software are being used as digital textbooks in classrooms in Kenya, where 'real' books are hard to come by. The story says that the scheme, in its trial stages, currently only affects 54 pupils, but all of them are enthralled by the devices - unsurprising in a country where electricity is a scarce commodity. The article does not make it clear what is running on the Pocket PCs, but this seems a wonderful example of how the free and open spirit of open source can make a real difference." A follow-up to a story from March.

GuitarNeophyte writes "The Register reports three of the major players in forming the 802.11n standard have agreed to join forces in order to bring the new protocol into reality. Speculation states that the speeds using the new standard could be in the 540Mbps area! "Rather than see the 802.11n standards-setting process become deadlocked, as has happened in other cases, most notably ultrawideband, TGn Sync and WWiSE have clearly realized it makes more sense to work together than against each other.""

TheRaven64 writes "Hot on the heels of the announcement of x86 Macs, Apple announced a multi-button mouse, known as the Mighty Mouse. It appears that the entire surface is touch-sensitive, allowing the mouse to be programmed as a single-button, multi-button or scrolling device."

obiquity writes "The Augmented Reality lab is at it again with an extension of their 'smart projector' methods. In 'Enabling View-Dependent Stereoscopic Projection in Real Environments' they demonstrate a method for point-of-view dependent 3-D image projection onto almost any surface using multiple projectors for VR/AR applications. There are still several problems that need to be solved, but how far off is this technology from a holodeck type implementation?"

dpa writes "The ability to climb and descend stairs (5M mpg) is one of the unexpected behaviors of this new home-brew off-road autonomous robot platform. The robot has a custom chassis and uses standard suspension and drive components scavanged from old R/C monster trucks. Here is a link to the build log, and here is a link to a hi-res version of the video (20M mpg)."

ptorrone writes "If you couldn't get to Vegas this year for the annual DEFCON Conference, we have a special spot on MAKE Magazine with all the project centric activities from DEFCON, enhanced audio, images, posts and more. It was a logistically challenging event to cover, but we hope you enjoy what we were able to capture."

An anonymous reader submits "I thought this was interesting. Up till now, ZigBee was only available as a chipset or some rudimentary modules. Now regular schmucks like me that don't want to mess with a soldering iron can use ZigBee and see if it sucks or not. These radios have a range of almost a mile and cost less than $100. Not bad since nobody else seems to offer anything like this (yet). Now I can get my laptop to communicate with some of my robotics projects without an RS-232 umbilical cord." (WikiPedia's page on ZigBee a is a good way to figure out whether this is interesting to you; in short, a low-power, medium-range radio spec for all sorts of interesting uses.)

The Inquirer has the word that Nintendo has launched a massive theatre-based advertising blitz for the DS. The campaign launch features a trailer length film entitled "The Sad, Agonizing Tale of Bhuvan Ganguly". From the IGN Story: "'There is a great element of surprise to this ad,' says Nintendo's advertising manager Kelli Koenig. 'The spot opens on a very dramatic situation that you just wouldn't expect to be related to video games or Nintendo. The spot clearly demonstrates Wi-Fi as it relates to the Nintendo brand with a nod to Mario Kart DS and it does this in a magical, clearly ownable by Nintendo kind of way.'"

Jason Striegel writes "Team iFibre Redwire smashed the WiFi distance record, successfully linking a distance of over 125 miles at this year's DefCon WiFi Shootout. They maintained a full 11Mbit unamplified connection for 3 hours using Z-com 300mw PCMCIA cards, surplus satellite dishes, Linux, and a great deal of hacker ingenuity. The best part: yesterday afternoon they said that they expect this rig would work at distances of over 300 miles. Here's additional team info, a couple pictures of one of their rigs, and some more technical details." I still wish I could find truly out-of-the-box Linux-friendly USB adapters, so I could get some tiny fraction of this distance, cheap.

TheRaindog writes "AMD has bolstered its dual-core processor lineup with a more affordable dual-core Athlon 64 X2 3800+ that will sell for only $354. Despite its comparatively low 2.0GHz clock speed and only 512KB of L2 cache per core, the X2 3800+ is often faster than Intel's fastest dual-core chips, including the $999 Pentium Extreme Edition 840. The new X2's incredibly low power consumption is also impressive, especially when compared with that of power-hungry Pentium D processors that consume 50-90% more power under load."

paella_dodger writes "The BBC is reporting on a recent UK court case whereby a man was fined £500, sentenced to 12 months' conditional discharge and had his laptop confiscated for browsing the 'net on his neighbour's wireless Internet conenction. Perhaps I should secure my neighbour's wireless connection for him before Windows automagically connects to it and gets me arrested!"

An anonymous reader writes "LinuxDevices has profiled a new portable game- and media-player based on embedded Linux. The GPX2-F100 features dual ARM9 processors, USB 2.0, a 3.5-inch color LCD, and support for both native and emulated games. A Linux SDK (software development kit) will be available when the device ships. Hmmm... I wonder how hard it'll be to get GPE and OPIE running on it?"