Babstar writes "Discussed numerous times on Slashdot, the quiet PC is the holy grail for many, and one step in the right direction could be using a Pentium M (designed for notebooks) in a desktop machine. Here's a review of a desktop Pentium M motherboard. Surprisingly it's also a great game machine."

Pascal writes "Lik Sang received an initial batch of Nintendo DS systems and went ahead with their own hands-on reviews. Apart from some interesting GBA SP accessories cross-testing and their own impressions about the new Nintendo baby, they also had one of their traditional open-up sessions, exposing the guts of the new handheld to the public." Kotaku has a look from earlier in the week as well.

Roland Piquepaille writes "When your newspapers write something about RFID tags, it's almost always about Wal-Mart or how these tags are threatening our privacy. But they often miss the important innovations brought by this technology. For example, in Florida, RFID drives highway traffic reports on more than 200 miles of toll roads. Or take DHL, which is tracking fashion with RFID tags on more than 70 million garments in its French distribution center. Elsewhere, in Texas, 28,000 students test an e-tagging system which promises better security for them. And what about RFID tags which could prevent surgical errors and have just been approved in the U.S last week? So, what do you think? Are these innovations promising a better future for us or not? For your convenience, this overview contains the essential details from the different articles mentioned above."

Nedward asks: "For Christmas I would like to give a friend all the equipment to build a small (approx 1 ft^3) mobile autonomous robot. I have looked up some kits online, but I would like more freedom than the kits offer (fully programmable, etc). The challenge: I only have $200.00 to spend. Has anyone put together a robot (CPU, motor, sensors and so forth) with that kind of a budget? Any other suggestions?"

Daemon8666 asks: "I've searched for three days with no luck. A client of mine has developed a brand new type of 3D display. To make it work, he needs me to come up with a way to synchronize 3 simultaneous video feeds on one box, and output them to 3 separate devices, as follows: Comp playing Videos A, B, and C in sync, and outputting Video A to Monitor X only, Video B to Monitor Y only, and Video C to monitor Z only. He is currently using 3 off-the-shelf DVD players that he controls with one remote (he pushes play, and all three separate DVDs start together), but he really wants a single-unit solution. Any ideas what hardware/software I should use?"

dark_requiem asks: "I've been digging around online to find some way to pump a bit more power out of my Radeon 9800 for Half-Life2, and I ran across DNA-Drivers. According to the developer, these are hacked versions of the official Catalyst drivers, optimized for speed and image quality. I've been trying to find a good review of the performance of these drivers, but haven't found much. Has anyone tried these before? Are they stable? What kind of performance advantage do they offer?"

ruiner5000 writes "NVIDIA has just made a surprise announcement about their cross license agreement with Intel to make chipsets. This means that the bragging rights AMD users have had about having the superior nForce chipsets is about to end, and it will also bring NVIDIA's superior Linux support to Intel users. We have a statement and press release from NVIDIA about planned shipment dates, and expected products NVIDIA will be aiming their chipsets at. With the nForce 4 NVIDIA is aiming for desktops, laptops, workstations, and servers."

burnWell asks: "I work for a software publisher, and when preparing CD media for final distribution to the manufacturer (the Gold Master if you will), we often find that our CD and DVD burns are not very good quality. Are there any recommendations for professional grade, highest quality CD-R and DVD-R writers? Are there any tools or metrics we should use to verify how 'good' a particular burn happens to be, and to that end, how well behaved some brands of media are versus another? Are there recommendations for the very highest quality CD-R and DVD-R duplicators?"

neutron_p writes "Finally HP announced plans to include Blu-ray Disc drives across many of its product lines, including select consumer desktop and notebook PCs, personal workstations and digital entertainment centers. They will start selling PCs equipped with Blu-ray Disc drives in late 2005. An optical disc technology, Blu-ray Disc is poised to replace current DVD technology and become the next standard for personal computing data storage and viewing high-definition movies. More than 70 of the world's leading technology and entertainment companies have committed to the Blu-ray Disc format. Recently, Sharp unveiled Blu-ray disc recorder with Hard Drive/DVD which will be introduced on the Japanese market in December."

gollum123 writes "Reuters reports Taipei city planners are building what they say will be the world's biggest Wi-Fi network, making cheap, wireless Internet access available almost everywhere in the Taiwan capital. The project will build on the network available in Hsinyi, an up-and-coming shopping and financial district that is home to the world's tallest building, the 508-meter (1,667-foot) Taipei 101, and the city government headquarters. The city-wide network will be built by Q-Ware Corp., a unit of the Uni-President group, which also holds the 7-Eleven franchise in Taiwan. Q-Ware will deploy at least 20,000 access points throughout Taipei at a cost of US$70 million. Q-ware is aiming for a basic monthly fee of T$150-T$400 (US$4.5-US$12), far less than the T$800-T$1,000 (US$24-US$30) that fixed-line broadband providers demand in Taiwan. The network will cover 90 percent of the city by the end of 2005."

highwaytohell writes "News.com.au has an announcement that NTT DoCoMo in collaboration with NEC and Panasonic have developed a Linux based software platform for third generation cell phones. 'The main advantage of the new platform will be easy integration of advanced multi-media applications and efficient use of software,' NEC spokeswoman Akiko Shikimori said." This was first reported about a year ago, but the platform looks to be mostly done by now, and a new press release timed to remind us of its impending release.

robbarrett writes "CNN reports that the Mixed Reality Lab at the National University of Singapore is "taking Pacman out of the arcade hall of fame and setting him loose on the streets." With Human Pacman, just strap on a computer and you too can eat virtual cookies while being chased by (real) ghosts."

kurtz_tan writes "Creative Technology is spending 100 million in a marketing blitz to 'regain its rightful place in the audio industry' by trying to dominate the MP3 market which is now led by the Apple iPod (54% of the market last year for MP3 players that use hard disks). Creative is second with 16.5%. Does Creative Zen sound as cool as Apple iPod ?" And reader TheMediaWrangler writes "The Register reports that Apple will build a stockpile of flash-based iPods to be shipped as early as January or February of 2005. AppleInsider had the original scoop."

BatonRogue writes "Apparently ATI provided a few Half Life 2 benchmarks to the press and some websites are actually using the benchmarks for their Half Life 2 performance reviews. AnandTech and HardOCP seem to be the only reputable sources of Half Life 2 performance data as they both put together their own benchmarks representative of Half Life 2 gameplay. AnandTech apparently went through every Half Life 2 level and put together a list of the 11 most stressful levels and then created 5 demos, while HardOCP put together two long benchmarks for their review. AnandTech and HardOCP's results appear to agree with each other, while the ATI-backed benchmarks show ATI with a huge performance lead in Half Life 2. Apparently (according to the AnandTech article), ATI was allowed to make their demos while at Valve before Half Life 2 was released, while Valve would not let NVIDIA remove any data from their time at Valve until the game was released. Politics at work as usual."

Akai asks: "With HDTV DVR's costing upwards of a thousand US dollars or more, I was looking for a HiDef capture card that would work with Linux and an external HD receiver. The pchdtv card looks nice but it's RF input only for HiDef content, and only supports OTA at this point. Both DirecTV and DishNetwork HD STBs can be hacked with FireWire ports, but it's not cheap, so I was trying to find a capture card with either DVI or Component inputs, or a converter to take either of those to FireWire. The old Dish Network model 5000 receivers had an option to output HDTV RF but they are no longer compatible with Dish's current HDTV broadcasts. Google has not been helpful in this regard, and all I've found is professional (>$2000US) format conversion gear. Is there a PC (hopefully Linux) based video capture solution that can capture the output of a cable of DBS STB (RGBA, DVI, or Component out) without a significant loss of image fidelity?"

parasew writes "Nanoloop 2.0 for GameBoy Advance is Out! The GBA-Cartridge features a 8-voice Synthesizer an 8-Track Sequencer, a Song Editor and a HD-Recording Option, rendering the GBA one of the most cool digital gadgets for musicians that travel a lot. Extra-gear is a GameBoy-MIDI-Adapter and a Lowpass Filter Cable. Some Reviews of Nanoloop are available in the Web from samplepoolz, HarmonyCentral, nanoloop.de and a German one from Parasew. Demo sounds in MP3 format can be downloaded from the site."

huckin_fappy writes "One great bonus of my job, I can be effective anywhere I can get a broadband point. If someone have a wireless router running, even better! The downside? Hauling the gear. The hazard of the job is that I need to be running WindowsXP and Linux. I experimented with all sorts of VMWare, Bochs, Wine, etc, and none of it cuts it for my needs. So assume you find yourself lugging around 2 IBM A31P laptops everywhere, with wireless cards, power supplies, wireless mice, etc. What's the best solution? Is there a large bag out there that is designed for such a load? Or am I better with two smaller bags? If smaller, are there bags designed to attach together in bizarre ways to mke them easier to lug?"

bhtooefr writes "The Tech Report got their hands on a reference board of the nV 6600GT AGP, and did some benchmarks. Interestingly, even with a slower memory clock on the AGP card, it was FASTER in some benchmarks than the PCI-E card. Tests performed were: Doom 3, CS:Source, Far Cry, 3DMark05, Rome: Total War, and Xpand Rally (the last two tested with FRAPS)." pacmanfan contributes links to more reviews at Extreme Tech, Hard OCP and PC Perspective.

TheMeuge writes "The New York Times is reporting a new development in the unrelenting progress of the RFID juggernaut. The school district of Spring, Texas has adopted RFID as a way to track students' arrival and departure. Upon being scanned, the data are transmitted to both the school administrators, as well as city police. I guess cutting class is no longer an option."

Jackie O writes "According to an employee blog on the Liftport Group website, their prototype robot for the Space Elevator has just successfully climbed a 260-foot building (in a driving snowstorm, no less) at MIT. Now all they have to get it to do is climb over 60 thousand miles into space, carrying things. Good luck there." Update: 11/17 05:17 GMT by T : Liftport has posted some photos from the ascent, too. Thanks!