Technology

World's First Ultra-Thin Multilayer Circuit Board 126

neutron_p writes "Seiko Epson has developed the world's first 20-layer circuit board. Multilayer circuit boards are normally produced by using a photolithography. However, the industry has struggled to produce thin, lightweight, high-density multilayer circuit boards. Seiko Epson uses an inkjet-based manufacturing process, which has many advantages over a traditional photolithography process."
Wireless Networking

Introducing The Wi-Fi-Mobile 63

tech writer writes "A Twin Cities tech entrepreneur has retrofitted an old TV-station truck to serve as a roving hot spot for Internet access. His technology firm has blanketed the metropolitan area with WiMax transmitters atop local skyscrapers, so all he needs to do is grab bandwidth using the truck's telescoping mast and convert it to Wi-Fi for use in the vehicle's immediate surroundings. The dude happens to be in a band, so his wireless arrangement has been great for streaming outdoor Savage Aural Hotbed performances!"
Intel

New Intel Chipset and Extreme Edition CPU Tested 202

Steve writes "Today sees the launch of both a new CPU and chipset from Intel. The CPU takes the form of a 3.46Ghz Pentium 4 Extreme Edition, running at 1066FSB, and the chipset is the i925XE, the first Intel chipset to support this new FSB. HEXUS.net have a review of both. It looks like AMD still have the lead when it comes to performance, despite Intel's attempts to counter the Athlon 64 FX-55." Hack Jandy links to more reviews at AnandTech, HardOCP, and ExtremeTech.
Hardware Hacking

Water Cooling With A Car Radiator 282

sH4RD writes "Why go out and buy a water cooling system when you can do it with an old car radiator? That's exactly what One of The Twelve figured when he used the radiator from his brother's 1979 Toyota Corolla to cool his system. His Athlon64 3000+ can hit 2.5GHz smoothly now. Check out the original forum post complete with benchmarks."
Hardware Hacking

Ahanix D5 Media Center Enclosure 90

VL writes "Ahanix has delivered an enclosure that gives you everything you would desire in an HTPC. The versatility of using MicroATX or Standard ATX motherboards, the look and feel of high end audio/video equipment and a VFD information center that gives the added information of what is playing. It comes at a hefty price tag mind you, but in this particular situation, you get what you pay for." Now that's what I'm talking about. Anybody know of any other commercially available cases as well suited to putting in a stereo system?
Portables

More iPod Killers Introduced for the Holiday 264

An anonymous reader writes "MP3newswire.net has just released part III and part IV of their iPod Killers for Xmas list. Standouts are a $1200 24K gold-plated player from Jens of Sweeden, a 137 Gig unit called the Xclef, Sony's first true MP3 player, and iRiver's MPEG-4 video jukebox. If you missed them, here are parts I and II."
Data Storage

Experiences w/ Software RAID 5 Under Linux? 541

MagnusDredd asks: "I am trying to build a large home drive array on the cheap. I have 8 Maxtor 250G Hard Drives that I got at Fry's Electronics for $120 apiece. I have an old 500Mhz machine that I can re-purpose to sit in the corner and serve files. I plan on running Slackware on the machine, there will be no X11, or much other than SMB, NFS, etc. I have worked with hardware arrays, but have no experience with software RAIDs. Since I am about to trust a bunch of files to this array (not only mine but I'm storing files for friends as well), I am concerned with reliability. How stable is the current RAID 5 support in Linux? How hard is it to rebuild an array? How well does the hot spare work? Will it rebuild using the spare automatically if it detects a drive has failed?"
Hardware Hacking

Getting a USB Peripheral Idea to Market? 67

WillAdams asks: "I have an idea for an almost embarrassingly simple USB device, which I believe would be fairly popular --- no hardware or device driver development skills though. Ideally I'd like to approach a company, hand the product idea off and just collect a small royalty. Unfortunately the most obvious choice doesn't accept product submissions. Any suggestions?"
Books

The Cult of Mac 374

cgjherr (Jack Herrington) writes "The Cult of Mac, a new book by Leander Kahney, is a love letter to the Macintosh community. The book seeks to simultaneously define and evangelize the Apple cultural phenomenon. With 25 million users (in the author's estimation) there is a lot of culture to go around. The tattoos. The modified machines. The pilgrimage to MacWorld. The sub-cult of iPod. It's all here." Read on for the rest of Herrington's review.
Displays

Laser Powered Virtual Display 278

Tedger writes "The Feature has an article discussing an interesting portable display system developed by the University of Washington. Unlike your traditional mini displays mounted in glasses this system has no display, it is a 'virtual' display created by lasers and microscopic fast moving mirrors. The image is in fact printed onto the retina and has feasibly a infinite resolution. Can anyone say true VR?"
Handhelds

Waterproof MP3 Player Uses Bone Conduction 257

An anonymous reader writes "Aquatic training product manufacturer Finis has just released a waterproof digital music portable for swimmers and surfers that claims to solve a problem with such devices in the water. Regular earphones don't work well because they need an uninterrupted air channel to function. What makes the SwiMP3 unique is that it uses bone conduction to stimulate the inner ear and deliver sound."
Security

Big 3 Roll Out 'Trusted Mobile Platform' 9

An anonymous reader writes "In an effort to enhance the security of 'advanced' e-commerce services in mobile devices and guard against viruses and other software attacks, NTT DoCoMo, Intel, and IBM have jointly released a security specification known as the 'Trusted Mobile Platform.' The spec is said to define a set of hardware and software components that can be built into devices to provide varying degrees of security. Implementation of the platform is said to consist of applying well-established, strong security techniques to hardware and software architectures, resulting in a trusted execution environment that protects the device at boot time and during device operation. The hspec is available ere."
Sun Microsystems

The Return of the Sun Workstation, With AMD's Help 235

Hack Jandy writes "Would you be surprised to hear Sun is the lowest cost Tier 1 dual-Opteron provider? AnandTech benchmarks Sun's newest w2100z and includes some sneak peaks at Solaris 10 and Java Desktop System 2. The biggest surprise at the end - it costs less than IBM and HP's configurations. Has Sun learned from the demise of SGI workstations that relying on one processor architecture is harmful?" CrzyP adds "They perform various benchmarks including 2D/3D rendering, compiling, encryption, and thermal and noise performance, and compare the 64-bit Sun box with various other configurations, including varying operating systems."
Books

Car Hacks & Mods for Dummies 373

donour (Donour Sizemore) writes "I recently bought a high-performance automobile that has a reputation for its tuning potential. Before making the purchase, I joined several online forums for enthusiasts in order to get a good reading on how happy people are with the particular model. I was amazed at the vibrant communities built around websites such as evolutionm.net and nasioc.com. A wealth of information is available, but the data is surrounded by noise. For every knowledgeable enthusiast, there are many more misinformed or incorrect speculators whose opinions usually spring from personal preference or a need to hear themselves talk. Enter David Vespremi's Car Hacks & Mods for Dummies." Read on for the rest of Sizemore's review.
Hardware

It's 2004: What Are The Best Remote KVM Options? 67

Tocano33 writes "Saw a story regarding this quietly residing in the /. Story Retirement Home (tm), but it was from over 2 years ago and wanted to see if anyone had some new insight. We have about a dozen servers in our one rack - not a terribly large setup. However, our admins are not located in the server room and while we can use RDP/SSH/VNC/etc for everyday maintenance, we need to be able to perform offline work and may need to evaluate POST information on bootup, etc. So we're currently looking at KVM options - IP based specifically (ie Raritan Dominion) but we're wondering if there are cheaper options and wanted to know what slashdot readers would recommend."
Portables

40GB RCA Lyra: Apple Fans Needn't Fret 314

PaulEshoreLives writes "The Globe and Mail isn't taking too kindly to RCA's Lyra 40GB iPod 'competitor.' Amongst its gripes are a crazy-slow FFW. How slow? Like 6 minutes to get to the end of a 60 minute file. Gotta wonder how these things get missed at the beta stage."
Databases

Why IBM Open Sourced Cloudscape 108

An anonymous reader writes "A common and a consistent framework for accessing information enables developers to do more things with more people more often. This article shares how Derby fits into IBM's developer strategy, the Java application stack, its intention to drive more innovation around Java on Linux, and why they want to make the Derby database become as ubiquitous as the Apache HTTP server." (Derby is the new name for the project based on the formerly commercial Cloudscape database.)

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