michaelMSFT writes "Cooltechzone has a column stating that Intel has already lost the dual-core war against AMD. From the article: 'From the performance numbers published on numerous online publications, Intel has lost the Dual-Core War. The only competing factor that Intel has right now is the possibility to keep their prices low enough to attract those with strict budget...I would like to forward a special note to Intel: Please make sure your next generation of processors aren't as atrocious as the Prescott, as AMD is making you look pretty silly right now.'"

Timberwolf0122 writes "Computer scientists in the US have developed a robot that could help blind people to shop or find their way around large buildings. Utilising a RFID tags to find products and a laser range finder to avoid obsticals. The prototype was developed at Utah State University, is this the end of guide dogs?"

Bjorn writes ""Gaming Hacks" by Simon Carless dives into a spectrum of topics, ranging from emulators to MMORPG lingo to playing LAN-only console games online. If you're looking for something that covers topics like these, but don't want to waste your time searching the Internet for answers, this book is for you." (Simon, formerly Slashdot's Games editor, is now Managing Editor for the online arm of Game Developer Magazine, Gamasutra.com.) Read on for the rest of Bjorn's review.

Wil Harris writes "bit-tech.net has reviewed the XGI Volari V3XT card, which XGI hope will compete with the low-end graphics cards from ATI and Nvidia. Unfortunately, it performs apallingly, with blue screens in Half-Life 2 and 10FPS in Doom 3. Whatever happened to all those XGI promises about having a market-leading card? What happened to their dual-GPU technology? This just shows how much catching up they have to do if they ever want to be a player, even in the low-end. Heck, even S3 stand a better chance than them right now."

hende_jman writes "Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire is condensing its phone, cable TV, and Internet services all into Wi-Fi, as reported by the New York Times (free registration required). The project, which started in 2001, has added 1400 WAPs and 24,000 wired ports. All that, and cost effective too."

Annoyed.Gamer writes "Today ATI announced their first 512MB graphics card, the X800 XL 512MB. I have some systems that don't have more than 512MB of system memory, much less on a graphics card. According to AnandTech, the 512MB card can't outperform its 256MB counterpart and costs 50% more. ATI's favorite Half Life 2 showed the only real performance increase in the entire article. Overall a disappointment, especially because ATI for some reason didn't outfit their highest end GPUs with 512MBs, only the mid-range X800 XL."

karvind writes "The USB specification may be an example of that hybrid de jure or de facto standard, one that clearly earned wide acceptance through its technical merit. Peter Seebach has posted an interesting article in Power Architecture Technology Newsletter on the ins and outs of USB. Article tells history of the USB standard and some of its benefits to users and vendors, as well as where it missed the boat"

An anonymous reader writes "The Open Graphics Project was formed last year to create a free and open source friendly graphics card. According to this article on KernelTrap, the project lost their company backing a couple of months ago, but has decided to go forward with the effort with money from the developer's own pockets. The team plans to release a prototype card to the public in November, at which time they'll need to find $1 million dollars for the effort to continue." I continue to wonder about the Open Hardware projects but call me skeptical- people contribute to Open Source because it typically costs little more than time.

An anonymous reader writes "The OASIS Group announces that the third Committee Draft [PDF] of the Open Document Format for Office Applications (OpenDocument) v1.0 Specification has been approved as an OASIS Standard. The submission of the approved standard can be found at here.
The OpenDocument format is intended to provide an open alternative to proprietary document formats including the popular DOC, XLS, and PPT formats used by Microsoft Office. Organizations and individuals that store their data in an open format avoid being locked in to a single software vendor, leaving them free to switch software if their current vendor goes out of business or changes their software or licensing terms to something less favorable."

Panaphonix writes "The Register reports that Orion Multisystems is shipping the first 96-node desktop cluster. 'With the new, larger system, customers get pretty much the most powerful computer around that can plug into a standard electrical socket.' According to the spec sheet, the DS-96 runs Fedora Core 2 and gets 110 GFlops sustained, 230 GFlops peak."

Eh-Wire writes "OpenBSD is now up and running on the Sharp Zaurus C3000. A photograph of the OpenBSD powered Zaurus shows it sitting beside another fine Western Canadian product that can boast an equal measure of integrity as that of the OpenBSD/Zaurus OS - Big Rock Beer! The world now has a fully capable ssh machine that fits in a shirt pocket. Good work guys!"

An anonymous reader writes "A high-end Linux-based Sharp Zaurus PDA thought to be discontinued in the US is actually available from two sources. The SL-6000L is available from stock from 10East, a seller of vertical market systems for the railroad industry which has established a direct manufacturing relationship with Sharp Japan, it says. The Wi-Fi equipped SL-6000L is also available in single quantities from SDG Systems, which, incidentally, is porting Linux to several PDAs that normally run Windows, including the super-rugged TDS Recon."

johnsee writes "Microsoft is working with Ford Motor Co towards car that can't crash. The future of cars according to Gates will involve high-definition screens, speech recognition technology, cameras, digital calendars and navigation equipment with directions and road conditions." From the article: "Also on Friday, Microsoft unveiled its Performance Peak Initiative -- a line of computer systems to help the auto industry better coordinate supply chains, streamline design, production and sales and fill vehicles with computer gadgets."

IceFoot writes "Bored with water cooling? Try a liquid metal cooler. It's a proven technology, used in nuclear reactors for decades because it carries heat away much better than a heat sink, heat pipe, or water cooling."

amichalo writes "Apple has updated the popular consumer level Mac, the iMac G5. So better support the now standard Mac OS X Tiger, Apple has made significant improvements to all standard configurations including 512MB RAM, Radeon 9600 128MB graphics, and on 2.0 GHz models (17" and 20"), a slot-loading dual-layer 8x SuperDrive is standard. The 1.8 GHz 17" model includes a slot-loading Combo Drive. Also standard are Apple's AirPort Extreme 802.11g WiFi and Bluetooth. Pricing remains at $1300, $1500, and $1800 respectively for 1.8 GHz 17", 2.0 GHz 17", and 2.0 GHz 20", though 2.0 GHz models include additional upgraded features. These improvements are significant as this line has not seen a refresh in about a year and the upgrade to a Radeon 9600 graphics card will allow the new iMac to take better advantage of Tiger features such as Core Image, which is significant because the video card cannot be upgraded. Lastly, Apple is continuing the interactive chat and QuickTime support program for the iMac G5."

CptnKirk writes "Alienware is now offering their high-end PCs pre-pimped with Star Wars themes. These systems have the usual assortment of configuration options. They're then additionally modded with your choice of Light Side or Dark Side themes. External decals, light kit and desktop theme. They even throw in a membership to the official Star Wars online fan club. I admit, booting the system to "what is your bidding my master", sounds appealing."

gManZboy writes "Ever wonder where database technology is going? This is something that Turing award winner Jim Gray from Microsoft has given a lot of thought to. He recently published an article in which he looks at the many forces pushing database technologies forward, and what those new technologies will look like. Gray writes, 'the greatest of these [research challenges] will have to do with the unification of approximate and exact reasoning. Most of us come from the exact-reasoning world -- but most of our clients are now asking questions that require approximate or probabilistic answers.'"

gnetwerker writes "John Markoff of the New York Times has written a new book on the pre-history of the PC, and the convergence of that history with the 1960s drug culture and anti-Vietnam War movement in the Bay Area. I was privileged to receive a pre-publication copy." Read on for gnetworker's review of Markoff's What The Dormouse Said: How the 60s Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Industry.

dtjohnson writes " Lost Circuits has carefully measured the power consumption of four recent Athlon 64 cores and has found that power consumption has been dramatically reduced in the new 'Venice' core from the relatively-low (compared to Intel P4) numbers of the original 2003 'Clawhammer' core to less than 30 watts under load and less than 10 watts for Windows at idle. This huge power reduction was apparently accomplished by a combination of 90 nm die shrink, Silicon-on-Insulator technology, and something called 'dual-stress liner technology' As Lost Circuits points out, power consumption worldwide has been exploding as more CPUs come online and the CPU power requirements increase so a significant power reduction will reduce the burden on electrical grids everywhere."

Cybro writes "Toshiba has demonstrated some cool applications for the Cell Microprocessor. They also revealed that they have written their own OS for the new processor. However the article on TechOn does not reveal the license of the OS."