Mockingbird writes "DARPA announced 40 semifinalists for the 2005 Grand Challenge autonomous robot race today. Notable remaining teams include the Carnegie Mellon University Red Team, Stanford Racing and a high school team, the Palos Verde Road Warriors. 78 teams missed the cut. The race, which will take place on Oct. 8, 2005 features a $2 million prize for the first team whose robot crosses 175 miles of the Mojave in under ten hours. The robots must be fully autonomous, with no team intervention allowed once the vehicle is launched. The first race was held in 2003, when the most successful team managed to log only 7.4 miles."

jvptoad writes "The NY Times is reporting that United Airlines has received approval to offer Wi-Fi Internet access on its planes. Although it will be over a year before the service is available, I wonder if this will impact the discussion on cell phone usage in planes (which seems to be centered around the annoyance of people talking loudly on the phone). Add a headset and Skype, and you don't need a cell phone to have loud, annoying phone conversations on an airplane."

VirtualUK writes "The BBC News website is running a story about a team of engineers headed by Andrew David Cheok over at the Mixed Reality Lab, University of Singapore. They've developed a Human Pacman game which is played out on the streets of Singapore. The screenshots of what the players see is pretty interesting with users of both the mixed reality version and the virtual reality version being able to interact. The system comprises of a bunch of wearable computers that use GPS and wireless network connections to relay information regarding position. People in the US can see it showcased at the Wired NextFest in Chicago, June 24-26."

ps writes "Bill Buzbee has constructed a hand-made CPU, complete with hardware address translation, memory mapped I/O, and DMA, out of 200 74-series TTL chips wired together with thousands of individually wrapped wires. By using a port of Adam Dunkels' uIP TCP/IP stack to the Magic-1, it currently serves up live web pages at an amazing speed of 3 MHz. See the website for photos and schematics."

wintermute1974 writes "According to a new report by Current Analysis, laptops have overtaken sales of desktops for the first time in computing, ever. Figures are for the U.S. market, but presumably this is part of a world-wide trend." From the article: "Notebook prices fell 17 percent during the past year while desktop prices dipped only 4 percent. Some of the features common in most notebooks are longer-lasting batteries, CD burners and wireless capability."

Ashutosh Lotlikar wrote to mention an article on the Business 2.0 site stating that chip producer Transmeta is going out of business. From the article: "The company's Crusoe family of microprocessors promised lower power consumption and heat generation, enabling the creation of laptops with longer battery life. Critics bashed the chips for being underpowered compared with Intel's latest and greatest. Transmeta struggled to find a market, and recently it sold off most of its chipmaking business for $15 million to Culturecom Holdings, a Hong Kong company better known for publishing comic books."

pallmall1 writes "The Inquirer has an official statement from Intel claiming the Computerworld Today Australia story from May 27th was incorrect, and the Pentium D and the 945 chipsets do not have unannounced DRM technology embedded in them. The statement says Intel products support or will support several copy protection schemes such as Macrovision, DTCP-IP, COPP, HDCP, CGMS-A, and others. The statement concludes: 'While Intel continues to work with the industry to support other content protection technologies, we have not added any unannounced DRM technologies in either the Pentium D processor or the Intel 945 Express Chipset family.' The Intel Chip with DRM story has been previously reported on Slashdot. Update: 06/05 20:12 GMT by Z : Fixed the Macrovision link.

Lothar writes "If you are looking for another reason to throw out that old CRT and upgrade to LCDs here it is. The DoubleSight DS-1900 packs two 19" LCD panels in a neat package and will take up less total space than that cathode ray tube whic has created the permanent bow in your desk. You will end up with 2560x1024 pixels of screen real estate, enough to increase productivity substantially, but you won't have to sacrifice too much space due to the reasonable size of the display's footprint. Just another reason to go LCD..."

An anonymous reader writes "Archos has just announced their newest portable audio/video player the AV 700 Mobile DVR. The new unit has a 480x234 pixel widecreen display, a hub to record from TV and DVD, and offers a 100GB drive. The sucker is heavy though weighing in at over a pound. Cost is $799 for the 100GB model and $599 for the 40GB. MP3 Newswire also has Part 1 of its MP3 players for summer. Most interesting are Creative's new Neeon and a high end unit from Bose."

Spinneyhead writes "New Scientist reports on the Perspecta display, a goldfish bowl like device that displays moving images in such a way that they seem to "float" within the display. "To display the image, software inside the Perspecta chops a 3D model generated by the computer into 198 separate pieces, like slices of cake, which are then projected onto the screen in quick succession by a graphics accelerator that feeds image slices to an optical system mounted below the screen. The result looks to the viewer like a 3D image composed of 100 million "volume pixels" or "voxels".""

diamond writes "The NYT has an article on how Japan is squeezing to get the most out of the costly fuel. 'The government recently introduced a national campaign, urging the Japanese to replace their older appliances and buy hybrid vehicles, all part of a patriotic effort to save energy and fight global warming.'"

serutan writes "Extreme Tech just kicked off their weekly case mod contest. The first winning entry is a scale model of a Star Wars TIE Fighter that's both a computer case and a desk. The rig is crafted out of PVC, plywood, a pet exercise ball, and bondo (so basically it's pretty much like the real thing)."

leshert writes "After years of denying the problem with bad backup capacitors, Palm is settling a class action suit. If you have a dead Palm m100, m105, or m125, fill out the paperwork, and send it in, Palm will replace it with a new unit. No word yet on with what they'll be replacing it with, but I can imagine there are a lot of pack-rat geeks like me with one or more dead PDAs stashed away in a box."

Josilot writes "CNN.Com is running an article about a new self-replicating robot named RepRap. From the article: 'A revolutionary machine that can copy itself and manufacture everyday objects quickly and cheaply could transform industry in the developing world, according to its creator.' One part of the article that I think many slashdot readers will find interesting is near the bottom: 'To encourage that development, Bowyer plans to make the design of the RepRap available online and free to use, in the same way as open source software such as the Linux operating system or Mozilla's Firefox browser.' Is robotics the next big field for open source?"

Bios_Hakr writes "PC Stats is running an article on their experiences underclocking an AMD 4000+ processor. Their goal was to try and reduce the voltage requirements and lower the heat output. They benchmark using 3dMark01, 3dMark05, as well as SuperPi. From the article: 'This got us thinking though; what about under-clocking? Most modern processors and motherboards can just as easily run under a rated speed as it can run over... but is there a point to this? Well possibly.'"

telstar writes "According to C|Net, Apple has officially decided to drop IBM, and will use Intel processors starting in their '06 line of systems. This change was rumored last month. The announcement is expected Monday at Apple's Worldwide Developer Conference in San Francisco, at which Chief Executive Steve Jobs is giving the keynote speech." From the article: "Apple successfully navigated a switch in the 1990s from Motorola's 680x0 line of processors to the Power line jointly made by Motorola and IBM. That switch also required software to be revamped to take advantage of the new processors' performance, but emulation software permitted older programs to run on the new machines."

danaris asks: "I've been using a Logitech Cordless TrackMan with my PowerBook for some time now, and I'm very happy with it, except for one thing: I still have to plug it in. Not the trackball itself, of course, but the receiver. Now that I have a laptop with built-in Bluetooth, I'd really like to be able to use a trackball that doesn't -have- a receiver. However, after hours of searching, I found exactly one trackball (from MacMice) that uses Bluetooth, and it's not exactly what I'm looking for. It looks very awkward for someone used to the TrackMan, and (the killer) it only has 2 buttons. If I'm getting a brand-new Bluetooth trackball, I'm not settling for anything less than 4-5 buttons (the TrackMan has 8). So, has anyone else have better luck than me in finding such a thing?"

moon_monkey writes "Cryptographers have discovered a way to hack Bluetooth-enabled devices even when security features are switched on, according to a report from New Scientist.com. The discovery may make it even easier for hackers to eavesdrop on conversations and charge their own calls to someone else's cellphone. From the article: 'Our attack makes it possible to crack every communication between two Bluetooth devices, and not only if it is the first communication between those devices,'"

bostons asks: "California places the financial burden of dealing with the electronic waste on consumers, charging a $6 to $10 disposal fee on every computer and television purchased. Maine puts the onus on manufacturers, demanding they pay the full cost of recycling their computers or televisions and pick up a share of the recycling tab for products of unknown origin. Starting next year, Maryland will require manufacturers to offer free computer take-back programs or pay the state a fee. Which do you think is the most effective and appropriate option?"

Doggie Fizzle writes "For those who think you can drop a Xeon into your Celeron system for an upgrade... 'Although there are currently only two main players in the CPU market, AMD and Intel, the number of choices is still enough to make the typical consumer's head spin. Each manufacturer has a few different models to promote, and many of these models can be found in a few different form factors (namely, the "sockets" to which they connect) that exclude interchangeability. This two-part series of Tech Tips will look at a few details of each of the currently-supported CPU (Central Processing Unit) sockets and how they are all similar and different from one to another' "