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The FCC is going to require firewire on all cable boxes.

link

Gizmodo has a post-NDA review roundup.

article about blue tooth and tracking kids in a zoo which is more or less the same I guess.

My cats have an implanted RFID chip. The other day I was just kidding about implanting such a chip in kids on birth. (for obvious reasons)

"Would the owner of 123-513-00132 come to the informationdesk please. 123-513-00132 seems to be lost and is asking for his parents..." (or by SMS ofcourse ;)

Gizmodo ran this story a few weeks ago. Still seems like the best take on the situation ...

FRIDAY, MAR 26 2004
In-Flight WiFi Suddenly Safe

Boeing has developed a special system that protects airplane avionics from interference from passengers' WiFI devices using a special 'money shield.' By offering airline passengers its unlimited internet access 'Connexion' at rates between $9.95 and $29.95, Boeing is able to generate a 'Profit/Safety Phase Array,' suspending the effects of any previously claimed dangers from in-flight WiFI use by harnessing proven economic principle. The service is scheduled to start on Lufthansa flights at the end of April.

I can't help but notice that you are not Chris Drake, the person originally credited with this comment.
--

JOEL JOHNSON -- After reading the story about Kohei Minato's super-efficient motor, reader Chris Drake wrote in with this explanation:

All Minato's power calculations appear to be wrong (apparently it's a common mistake many scientists make); you can't measure input power using a multimeter when the current drain isn't constant. You can see his workshop in his videos - all his calculations are done using common multimeters and a desktop calculator. Minato motors use an optical sensor to "switch on" the "stator" (electromagnet) for a fraction of each RPM, so he'd need an oscilloscope and some funky math to figure out how much current the motors are really sucking up (or a stopwatch; and wait for the driving battery to go dead, then estimate based on the battery capacity). It's still a super neat idea though - which seems to boil down to "drive motors from the outside using aligned permanent magnets and momentary pulses from the stator" instead of the traditional "sick the stator in the middle" idea.

Now that's interesting. If there's one thing the patent office knows how to handle, it's inventions that claim to break the laws of thermodynamics. I have a friend in the patent office and he's told me a bunch of stories of clever prototypes with hidden batteries.

I guess the trick is he's not claiming perpetual motion. As other posters suggested, the magnets might deplete very quickly. Although this whole thing is ringing a bell. I thought I read about this on another site and the explanation was that his method of taking measurments are wrong. He has to measure the drain over a period of time because of the peaks related to switching on and off or something like that. I'll see if I can find the link.

Oh... here is is.

A Gizmodo reader wrote in, throwing some water on the magic motor. -Berylium

This was covered over at gizmodo awhile back, with more details and a link to a mini interview: gizmodo link.

My favorite part has been the "hints on future improvements" they dropped down: ...Dawson dropped a hint of future developments with the scubadoo - "we're already working on the next model and think we can improve it in a host of ways. For example, currently you need to put your head under the water when you get into it. The next model will have a hinged hood so you don't need to get your head wet at all."

So... we have a fairly large, slow-moving (3mph?), and brightly painted foreign object traveling underwater. Can you say shark bait? Wouldn't it make some kinda sense for one of the first 'improvements' in this thing to be a mesh wrap-around cage for the back of the person?

Not as though you're gonna outrun the shark who happens to think you're a giant tasty angelfish, and if you even try you're just turning your exposed back to it... these things are gonna fade out the minute some tourist ends up in a kraken's belly.

Except that the woman in the DVD incident was a "frequent faller." She had nine "accidents" in Wal-Mart stores, and has filed personal injury suits against six stores. From Gizmodo.

More mockups

Another from the first place

mockups from Lik-sang

DS Mock-Up / Bounty

This magazine (see link) is offering a bounty for photos. They put up their own Mock-up. I say it looks good, but it needs about a ton more buttons. 2 was insane for the GBA, let alone the generation after.

I'm not claiming this is real, just a picture that I thought you might enjoy.

Read the last paragraph in that article:

"... We're betting that the real thing will be just as good as these designs."

But they did happen to get their mits on a pic of Xbox-2!

As long as we're posting wild speculation and rumors, why not take a look at this *achem* "mock-up" of the DS?

his mail rides around a school

I guess this is the last time HE will call slashdot unpopular.

They also asked CmdrTaco the same question recently.

Banryu is nothing new. It was running around Tokyu Hands Shibuya-ten back in April '03 when I saw it.

The Banryu guard-robot

There's a pretty good image of it here.

Compgeeks has them for $144.50; you can check the site for the specs. It has MP4 capability, which is nice for you Xvid fans. For those of you who don't understand why we're griping that it has no CF slot, perhaps you'll understand better after I tell you that people have been getting cheap 4GB minidrive CF cards by cracking open devices such as the Creative Lab's Muvo2 MP3 player -- i.e. the higher capacity drives/memory cards so far, tend to be CF cards. It's still up in the air whether or not the 4GB minidrive from the Apple iPod can be used in devices that support CF Type II cards.

Gizmodo

I have a co-worker who is directing/producing film and video and uses his iPod ... as a presentation external hard drive.

You know you could get brownie points by letting your co-worker know about Personal Video Players (PVPs), systems from Archos and RCA and Creative and others that not only store video, but also play it back, either on-screen on using video outputs. The iPod seems a little limited in this respect - it's just a storage medium, with a mnonochrome display that does not, in fact, display video. Even the old Archos Recorder can now display 30fps video (mono!). PVPs were super-hot at CES... Apple better get a move on releasing that video iPod.

Nintendo's got ya covered.

iQue

WiFi & Flash Memory combo cards look more promising for wireless downloading of decent resolution digital images. Although intended for PDAs, these cards might be adopted for use in cameras (if the vendor will support them and if they will fit in the camera). Or, you might wait for Fuji's Wifi digicam. Anyone know of others?

Either way, I'd look for a Wifi solution, not Bluetooth.

First off, the DirecTivos probably have the worst QC of any DVR on the market and I found myself shipping my first DT off and waiting *are you ready for this* 4 months for a replacement. The fan decided to stop and burned out the card reader.

A few months later the HD broke. So I pulled it out and got the linux-based rescue CD-image from someone at the excellent tivocommunity forums. Luckily that old drive had a little life left in her and I managed to do a DD copy onto a new 80 gig drive.

What Tivo should be doing is producing better products and stop punishing us who are trying to fix the junk they sold us. Making money off of a fauly product is ridiculous and those with the skills to be able to fix these things deserve access to the images.

If Tivo thinks I'm going to waste another 4 months on warranty service or pay for a damn OS image that should be mostly OSS they've got another thing coming.

Tivo, I'm afraid (because I truly love their product) will be non-existant once the Comcast and Dishnetwork DVRs start coming free with the service. You can take at look at them at gizmodo. If Tivo wants to compete they need to kiss more customer ass, not spit on existing customers with lemons.

Actually Napster has teamed up with some companies to produce Napster-branded MP3 players. You can read some details here. I think this was reported on Slashdot recently, too.

Dear god! I hope that second picture was staged and those things dont actually have enough strength to climb up into a seat by themselves...

bah, I can't stand people who are too lazy to make the click clickable.

Alchemy-based? Does that mean some medieval folk at AMD put some copper and lead powder together in a conical flask and boil it in an attempt to make Gold and they ended up with a reference design? On a seperate note; the AMD device reminds me of Dell's recent Digital Music Jukebox. The oblong buttons along the bottom and the white rounded rim certainly have a similar appeal, although both lacking the style of their rivals (the iPaq and iPod respectively).

According to several articles I have read, such as the one on gizmodo.com, the Rio Karma will have USB 2.0 as its native interface; it will also come with a dock that will plug into an Ethernet network.

If you can just use standard file server protocols (NFS or SMB, I don't care) to put files on the Karma, I will buy one. If you have to run some modified jukebox app to move the files, so it can wrap your files in DRM junk, I won't buy one.

steveha

This is simply a (il)logical progression:

Fan->Toothbrush->Hot Cup->iGrill

1. FlyFan ? USB Fan
   http://www.kensington.com/html/1265.html
2. USB Toothbrush
   http://www.watch.impress.co.jp/akiba/hotline/20030 222/image/tooth1.jpg
3. USB Hot Teacup
   http://www.dct-net.co.jp/special/usb_hot.html

props gizmodo!