wh173b0y writes "Tom's Hardware reports that AMD is planning to release both it's dual-core desktop and mobile chips at the same time. This news comes after AMD, who have been fairly quiet since the release of the Athlon FX-55, came up shorter than intel on the release dates for it's dual-core processors. Intel on the other hand has been busy planning more than a dozen different chips to release as well as pressing its software designers to embrace its 64-bit architecture."

The site Clickable Culture has a piece on a game coming soon to a mobile device near you. The game, Tringo, comes from an unusual source: the virtual world Second Life. From the article: "Tringo, invented by SL resident Kermitt Quirk over his Christmas holidays, blends the sensibilites of Tetris and Bingo. It's a game of skill, but the stakes can be quite high. Not only is Tringo well-designed, taking Second Life's technical parameters into consideration, but its popularity is growing."

Rollie Hawk writes "Remember how the Mac mini was designed by Apple to steal PC customers? Now Intel wants to steal them back. Adopting a shockingly similar lunch box shape and light-weight design, Intel's upcoming Mini PC features all the sleekness and portability (physical, that is) of the Mac mini with none of the Mac benefits. Well, at least it will probably have a faster processor. Now if only someone would make a Cobalt Qube knock-off for me."

Archangel Michael writes "Microsoft announced today that is testing a new toy / robot to watch over kids. My question is, if the toy BSOD does it take the kid with it? Now we are letting inanimate objects raise our kids! When will it end?"

An anonymous reader writes "If you have a camera phone, you may soon have to take a picture of yourself before making a call or accessing data stored on the device. A Japanese company has developed face recognition software for camera phones that it says can authenticate users within one second of clicking the shutter. Omron (Japanese) will demonstrate its Okao Vision Face Recognition Sensor at tomorrow's Security Show Japan in Tokyo."

MailtoDelete asks: "I have most of my electronic gear plugged into a couple power strips hanging off a UPS. Most of these devices have big block-type transformers which, besides being bulky, are a bit of an eyesore. I have been trying to find a product out there somewhere that would allow me to have one central transformer that would distribute DC power at variable voltages, depending on what devices I wish to plug into it (think one AC input and 9 or so DC outputs individually adjustable). I found this device that resembles what I have in mind, but it does not have sufficient output for my router, switches, and various other devices. Is there a product on the market already that would do this? Can I build one with my marginally above average soldering and electrical schematic skills? Have any of you found a better way to eliminate these blocky plug-hogs?"

Foobaz writes "Until now, the only application that can play audio on Apple's AirPort Express has been Apple's own iTunes. But Rogue Amoeba, makers of Audio Hijack, just released Airfoil, a program that lets you redirect anything to your AirPort Express, like streaming audio from mplayer, RealPlayer, or VLC."

phaxx writes "Dubbed 'WaveHunt', this is the Irish take on DefCon's RunningMan competition. Contestants will have three attempts, each an hour long, to locate a moving Linksys WRT54g running OpenWRT Linux. They must positively identify the person carrying the hidden acccess point and report this back to base. The first prize is two hundred euro, and it takes place this coming Saturday, March 5th. The intended venues are a large park, a defined area of winding streets in Dublin City Centre, and a multi-level shopping centre!"

blastard writes "Seems some students will be getting to use their Linux handhelds in school without getting into trouble. BBCNews has a story on fifth-graders in Kenya who will be using "E-slates" from EduVision. The EduVision site is available in German, English and Swahili."

An anonymous reader asks: "I'm in the market for a Leatherman style multitool, but some new players have come to the table in the past few years, and I've heard a couple of anecdotes that Leatherman might have been eclipsed. So, I'm asking Slashdot for lots of anecdotes; what are your experiences with your multitool? What's the best one you've seen or used? Have you ever broken one? Do the tools wiggle around after a lot of use? Those are some general questions, but there are two specific ones. First, does the knife blade lock? The quickest way to hurt fingers is using a folding knife when a fixed blade is the right tool, but you can't carry a fixed blade knife into many places. The second question is, how long is the main knife blade? You can't carry a folding knife with tool long of a blade, either (unfortunately). Thanks for any and all help!"

Hack Jandy writes "NVIDIA dominates a large percentage of AMD chipset sales already, and next week they will reportedly make the announcement to pursue Intel based platforms as well. NVIDIA's General Manager claims March 1st (during the Intel Developer Forum) will be the date the world gets to see NVIDIA's SLI chipset running on a Socket 775 Intel motherboard."

GFXguy writes "If you are looking to catch up on some hardware learning you may want to check out "SL Why?". It is a short article that goes over the basics of SLI graphics. The article goes over some strengths and weaknesses of this technology as well. It looks like one video card is not going to cut it any more, at least for the hardcore gamers out there. "

Dolda2000 writes "Seeking to achieve 100% software freedom, RMS is now calling for action for a free BIOS. From the article: "The most uncooperative company is Intel, which has started a sham 'open source' BIOS project. The software consists of all the unimportant parts of of a BIOS, minus the hard parts. It won't run, and doesn't bring us any closer to a BIOS that does. It is just a distraction. By contrast, AMD cooperates pretty well." For reference, there are currently two projects for a free BIOS that I know of: LinuxBIOS and OpenBIOS."

prostoalex writes "San Jose Business Journal talks about Nanochip, a company that's developing molecular-scale memory: "Nanochip has developed prototype arrays of atomic-force probes, tiny instruments used to read and write information at the molecular level. These arrays can record up to one trillion bits of data -- known as a terabit -- in a single square inch. That's the storage density that magnetic hard disk drive makers hope to achieve by 2010. It's roughly equivalent to putting the contents of 25 DVDs on a chip the size of a postage stamp." The story also mentions Millipede project from IBM, where scientists are trying to build nano-scale memory that relies on micromechanical components."

webmind writes "As some may know there is an open source firmware for the Archos jukebox and the iriver h1x0 harddisk mp3 players called Rockbox. now for the iriver version there is also a gnuboy port.. no more lugging around loads of gameboy cardridges, just upload and play."

danwarne asks: "With VoIP becoming rapidly more popular, quality of service (QoS) settings in home routers are also emerging as a key piece of functionality for the average user. QoS settings, which allows important or time-sensitive network traffic to be prioritized over less important packets, used to only be offered for corporate-level routers. Now, many hardware manufacturers have started including such capabilities in their mainstream routers, some doing it simply by a firmware upgrade without any change to the power of the underlying hardware. The emerging problem is that most home routers don't do a very good job at all with QoS, especially under heavy load (from P2P apps, for example), and home routers don't seem to have what it takes to prioritize sending Voice over IP packets first, leading to glitchy VoIP calls. VoIP operators around the world are facing this problem as they try to turn VoIP into a 'consumer-friendly' plug-and-play service. Does anyone know if someone has done extensive testing on home routers and modem/routers that investigates their ability to deliver QoS? Also, what hardware elements would be required in a router to do QoS reliably?"

Roland Piquepaille writes "After a patient has been hospitalized for a surgical intervention, he usually wants to return to his normal life. But doctors would like to monitor him to be sure that the operation was successful. How can they manage this without being too intrusive? In "Health Care Monitoring of Mobile Patients," Italian researchers offer a three-layer networking solution. First, a body area sensor network would continuously record your cardiac activity or your body temperature. A second level would involve a home sensor network, including for example a PC wirelessly receiving this information. Finally, this home network would be able to alert an hospital network if needed. Right now, this whole idea is at the proof-of-concept level, but it really looks promising."

tyrani writes "Spring is just around the corner and the front of the house isn't going to decorate itself. Build a Hard Drive Wind Chime and show your neighbors what a cool geek you really are." He's honest, too. From the article: "Many people linking this page on their blogs claim that this is a secure way of destroying your hard drive and its sensitive data. It is not completely true! The platters are never used in this HOWTO and could potentially be stolen by ninjas while you're making a wind chime and the data recovered by ninja-hackers."

nganju asks: "Hard Drives have finally reached the size where I can rip down 1000 CDs directly to WAV files, and skip the compression step (read: headache) altogether, ensuring that the audio playback is what the original CD author intended. Now the question is, how do I get that WAV data off the computer and into the amplifier with minimal distortion? Are there D/A PCI cards comparable to high-end CD players? Or is the best solution some direct digital output card (SPDIF) and a standalone D/A converter component? Specific model names would be greatly appreciated."

Ant writes "A CommsDesign article reports that China walked out of a wireless standards meeting this week, accusing the International Organization for Standardization of favoring the IEEE's 802.11i ANSI-certified wireless LAN security scheme over its own controverisal proposal, EE Times has learned. The gambit came after China's Wireless Authentication and Privacy Infrastructure (WAPI) security scheme was withdrawn and placed on a slower track by the ISO." From the article: "China initially agreed last year to refrain from making its WAPI security scheme mandatory for wireless LAN equipment in China. It then approached ISO with a fast-track submission in an effort to make WAPI an international security standard."