Triumph The Insult C writes "About a month ago, the dot carried a story about the city of Tempe, AZ, laying claim to be the first major metropolitan area to provide city-wide broadband internet access. Well, things haven't gone exactly as planned, as one of the companies involved, MobilePro Corp, is now being investigated by the state for not holding the appropriate permits. As a resident of downtown Tempe, I hope the rollout isn't successful, as I would much prefer to see a more community-based effort, such as in Seattle, Austin, and New York City."

prostoalex writes "Earthlink and Microtel are offering cheap Xandros-based computers to anyone who's willing to sign up for Earthlink dial-up service at $22 a month. The desktops on Microtel Web site start at $70 for a basic AMD Sempron machine, Microtel laptops start at $399. ExtremeTech says there is also a SkypeOut gift certificate: 'All Xandros PCs and laptops include free Skype-to-Skype calling worldwide, plus an exclusive bonus voucher for up to 120 minutes of SkypeOut calling to any phone number in the world.'"

ATMosby writes "The BBC has an article that pretty much sums up everything you might need to know if you wanted to refine nuclear fuel and build some atomic weapons." From the article: "Uranium is the basic raw material of both civilian and military nuclear programmes. It is extracted from either open-cast pits or by underground mining. Although uranium occurs naturally all over the world, only a small fraction is found in concentrated ores. When certain atoms of uranium are split in a chain reaction, energy is released. This process is called nuclear fission."

didde writes "The people over at Tom's Hardware are running a story on Gigabytes experiments with quadruple GPU's on one motherboard. Perhaps we'll need something cooler than liquid metal to keep this beast from running hot?" From the article: "About half a year ago, we learned that Gigabyte was working on a graphics card that integrates two GeForce 6600GT graphics chips. While we were impressed with the out-of-the-box approach from Gigabyte, there was of course the question, whether two of those cards could be combined for a total of four graphics chips."

RobMcCool writes "At Stanford KSL, we really like the Semantic Web. So we've taken many of our favorite web sites, scraped them, and put together a huge pile of RDF, which we'll let you download. We've used that RDF to create a search application, in the spirit of Google Q & A or Microsofts recently announced MSN Search extensions. Our search can answer simple factual queries like the previously discussed population of Portugal but can also answer some more complex ones. We also have a smart autocomplete system, type "tom hanks birth" slowly to see it in action (best with Firefox). We're looking for people to be a part of this search system by running their own search sites, and by putting their data on the Semantic Web. Come check it out!"

Glenn Fleishman writes "Victrola Cafe and Art in Seattle is a popular coffeeshop that offers free Wi-Fi--except on the weekends. In an experiment, the cafe started shutting down its Wi-Fi network on Saturdays and Sundays after watching their culture erode: the shop became full (and was turning away customers) with six-to-eight hour Wi-Fi squatters, many of whom didn't even purchase anything. Their second Sunday without Wi-Fi was one of their best revenue days in some time. I don't propose a Wi-Fi (or free Wi-Fi) backlash, but it's interesting how with some time under their belt, the clash of inward facing technology and outward facing culture hit these particular entrepreneurs' limit."

AndersBrownworth writes "Earthlink Research and Development has released a firmware load for the Linksys WRT54G wireless access point that supports end-to-end IPv6. They suggest features such as extremely large address space, stateless autoconfiguration and low cost restoration of end-to-end addressability will revolutionize IP communications. It would be interesting if releases like this significantly boost the IPv6 take-up rate but as far as I know, Earthlink doesn't supply end-to-end IPv6 yet."

msftmichael writes "CoolTechZone reviews Logitech's latest LX500 and LX700 Cordless Desktop Duo products. The author discusses problems with software, compares and contrasts the two products, and talks about wireless technology in a very in-depth review. Here's a quote: "Both of the products we are reviewing use RF (Radio Frequency) receivers to communicate between the mouse and your computer. It operates on the 27 MHz frequency, which is good for short range communication through less than 2 physical barriers. At this relatively low frequency, interference can occur due to proximity to other electronic devices, which is why Logitech recommends that you keep the receiver 8 inches (20 cm) away from your monitor or computer. They also recommend against putting it on a metal surface, and for good reason. While on top of our steel computer case, we could not get the keyboard or mouse to communicate with the receiver."

MojoDog writes "Today Intel has officially taken the wraps off their new mainstream Pentium D 820 Processor and i945 Express series chipsets. Additionally, they also cranked up the Pentium 4 6XX sequence line-up to include the new Pentium 4 670 at 3.8GHz. The Pentium D 820 is Intel's new dual core CPU clocked at 2.8GHz, which contains two Prescott cores per die but doesn't support HyperThreading like the Pentium Extreme Edition 840. The i945 is their new mainstream PCI Express based chipset, one version of which has Integrated Graphics and both supporting these new dual core CPUs. Additionally, Intel took their Pentium 4 6XX sequence processor, based on the Prescott 2M core, for a speed bump to 3.8Ghz."

cranos writes "Fast on the heels of his previous article claiming the kernel is at risk of Bad Things over the BitKeeper fuss, Daniel Lyons has released a new article where Larry McVoy attacks the Open Source movement as non-innovative and dependent on the kindness of corporations. The following quote says it all: 'The open source guys can scrape together enough resources to reverse engineer stuff. That's easy. It's way cheaper to reverse engineer something than to create something new. But if the world goes to 100% open source, innovation goes to zero. The open source guys hate it when I say this, but it's true.'"

Timmus writes "Firingsquad is running a story on how to unlock all 16 pipelines in nVidia's GeForce 6800. By default the card only ships with 12 pixel pipelines enabled, but with a tool and a few mouse clicks, the card can be unlocked to run with all 16 pipes. Performance improvements are seen everywhere, so it's a pretty nice free upgrade. These cards are currently selling for $200 online, so a 16-pipe GeForce 6800 delivers great bang for the buck."

QT writes "Ars Technica has an in-depth look at the Xenon processor that will power the Xbox 360. It's the first technical look at the CPU itself, its design goals, and some of the differences between it and IBM's Cell processor. The Xbox 360's procedural synthesis capabilities look quite impressive, and I'm not as convinced as I was before that the PS3 would spank the Xbox 360."

Mike writes "US Patent & Trademark Office recently issued a patent to Iomega Corp. for its work with nano-technology and optical data storage. New technology, called Articulated Optical - DVD will allow 40-100 times more data (upto 850 Gb) to be stored on a DVD with data transfer rates 5-30 times faster than today's DVDs, and at similarly low costs. AO - DVD is a novel technique of encoding data on the surface of a DVD by using reflective nano-structures to encode data in a highly multi-level format."

Raynach writes "A friend of mine recently sent me a link for Das Keyboard, the keyboard for UberGeeks. This keyboard is unique in that it has no inscriptions on the keys, which the maker touts will make you type 100% faster in a few weeks since it will keep you from looking at the keyboard. This keyboard also features individually weighted keyswitches, "The keys are divided into groups and their feedback springs are weighted differently; from 35 grams to 80 grams, which correspond to the strength of the finger that touches the keys." But is this "UberGeek" keyboard really worth the high price tag?"

Nils Faerber writes "Today Nokia announced the introduction of the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet device along with the Open Source based Maemo Development Platform. With this new product Nokia enters several new worlds all at once. A new concept for the use of a handheld device, a new fully visible open source based development process and the explicit use of open source software in a commercial grade product. The typical use case for the Nokia 770 is to be the internet usability extension to your mobile phone or other wireless internet access equipment. It is extremely portable by its small formfactor, usable for almost all internet applications thorugh its exceptional resolution of 800x480 pixel and its multimedia capabilities by making use of a TI-OMAP CPU and a accompanying digital signal processor (DSP) core. The consequent use of open source software and technology basing on the Linux kernel 2.6, X11-server technology and the GTK+ toolkit the resulting new Hildon graphical user interface creates a fully new user interface experience for portable Linux devices."

Johnny writes "Unfortunately mice are one of the most overlooked computer peripherals, while in reality should be one of the first places where your hard earned cash should be invested in. TechSpot has posted a round-up of some of the best mice currently available in the market: Logitech's MX1000 and MX518, Razer's Viper and Diamondback, and from Microsoft, the Wireless Intellimouse Explorer and the Optical Mouse by S+ARCK."

gandell writes "CNET is reporting that after only two years, PalmOne is spending $30 million dollars to become "Palm" again. From the article: "PalmOne, which makes handhelds bearing the same name, plans to change its name to Palm later this year, the company said Tuesday. At that time, its product line, which currently includes the LifeDrive, Treo, Tungsten and Zire devices, will be branded under the Palm name..." Some will remember that Palm split into two companies, Pa1mOne and Palmsource (which made the Palm OS). According to the article, "...At the time the two companies created a third company, called Palm Trademark Holding, of which PalmSource held a 55 percent stake. That stake will now be transferred to PalmOne for $30 million, the companies said.'" As well, at a recent show Dave Nagel gave notice that Linux is PalmSource's platform for the future.

RexDart writes "The BBC Online has profiled Duane DeFreitas, an adventurer and guide living in Guyana. He's three hours away from the nearest town (in the dry season; three days away when it's raining), yet has full internet access via satellite. His latest project: setting up Skype for phone service, as soon as he can import a microphone and speakers. Yet more proof that the internet is truly everywhere. Mind the jaguar."

doc6502 writes "Samsung has announced flash-based disk drives with a 16 GB capacity, with an aim to get the drives to market by the end of the year. The (short) article suggests that this could be a big boost to laptop owners, as battery life could be seriously extended if there isn't a big high-speed motor to power constantly. The drives should be fast, too."

morcheeba writes "According to an EETimes article, IBM is planning on releasing the full specifications and software libraries for the powerful processor that will be in the Playstation 3. The goal is to stimulate open-source development for other applications of the chip. The article doesn't mention if there will be some affordable development systems for all these programmers -- I'm hoping for a ps3 devkit." From the article: "IBM is eager to find other opportunities for Cell, but it's going to take a lot of software work...Going to the open-source community makes sense, because they could attract a lot of pretty smart programmers who could spin out software and applications for Cell."