Slashdot Mirror

ILuvJoesMom writes "Hot on the heels of Wednesday's news story, Warcry has an editorial up with strategies for defending the video game industry from the oncoming hordes. 'If you're sick of hearing politicians kvetch about video games, make it worth their while to stand up for them by voting for them and supporting them. Given the choice between a hundred thousand overprotective moms with ballots in hand and a million gamers at their computers, I'm going 'mom vote' every time, and I imagine any politician hoping to stay a politician feels the same. This is that 'elected' thing I was talking about earlier. If you're over 18 and not a felon, then odds are you have the right to vote, and that's more powerful than a thousand 'I think Congress sucks, who's with me?' threads on the message board of your choice.'"

PalletBoy asks: "I live in BFE (read 'remote') Pennsylvania where BroadBand is not available in any form save satellite, which is no good for price and latency reasons (curse my MMO addiction!). My big question is: what is the -actual- current status of WiMAX technology? Different sites have me believing different things and I can't find an exact answer to the question 'When will I be able to buy a WiMAX router and cards so I can remotely receive broadband?' When will WiMAX (802.16) be solidly standardized, out, and affordable? Or is it already there?"

red_flea asks: "I've got a couple of CDROM bays that I'm not using. Besides another CD or DVD ROM drive, what else can you put there? I know some people who use that space to cool their Cheetah or Raptor drives. Anything else? Please reply with gratuitous linking to products, articles or modder blogs."

angrysponge writes " Russia to Build World's First Floating Nuclear Power Station for $200,000. I don't know what impresses me more, the engineering chutzpah or low-ball pricetag." From the article: "The mini-station will be located in the White Sea, off the coast of the town of Severodvinsk (in the Arkhangelsk region in northern Russia). It will be moored near the Sevmash plant, which is the main facility of the State Nuclear Shipbuilding Center. The FNPP will be equipped with two power units using KLT-40S reactors. The plant will meet all of Sevmash's energy requirements for just 5 or 6 cents per kilowatt. If necessary, the plant will also be able to supply heat and desalinate seawater."

RingDev asks: "I'm working on a system integration project for my CIS capstone. One of the systems we are integrating is a Windows MCE PVR. One of the topics that came up implementing a movie on demand or rental system using an existing online content provider. But the question we have run into is, are there any? Is the only option for online video content (TV shows, movies) P2P and BT clients? Is there no company out there that handles licensing and provides DRM'd content?"

EconolineCrush writes "The Tech Report has posted an in-depth review of Hitachi's half-terabyte Deskstar 7K500, the largest hard drive available on the market. The drive is compared with five of the latest drives from Maxtor, Seagate, and Western Digital, so the review serves as a good round-up of the fastest Serial ATA drives on the market. Performance testing is quite extensive, covering desktop applications, load times, file copy tests, multi-user workloads, disk-intensive multitasking, and even noise levels and power consumption."

deglr6328 writes "Recent research has seen the use of the pyroelectric effect, the compression of bubbles using ultrasound and gas jet irradiation for producing nuclear fusion on small tabletop-scales. Yet another method can now be added to the list which uses ultraintense laser irradiation striking a borated plastic target to heat a plasma to billion kelvin temperatures and achieves aneutronic (clean) proton-boron fusion. (The PRL paper can be read online.) Though, like the other recently discovered exotic methods of attaining fusion, it does not look like a method which can be scaled up to ignition or even anywhere near break even, it still may have important use in the laboratory for the examination of such incredibly high temperature plasmas."

EconolineCrush writes "Intel has revealed its next generation CPU architecture at the Intel Developer Forum. The new architecture will be shared by 'Conroe' desktop, 'Merom' mobile, and 'Woodcrest' server processors, all of which were demoed by Intel CEO Paul Otellini. Rather than chasing clock speeds, Intel is focusing on lowering power consumption with its new architecture. Otellini claimed that Conroe will offer five times the performance per watt of the company's current desktop chips. He also ran the entire keynote presentation on a Merom laptop, and demoed Conroe on a system running Linux."

Sigalarm writes "CNN is reporting that synthesizer pioneer and all-around vanguard of electronic music Bob Moog has passed away at age 71. Dr. Moog built his first electronic instrument -- the theremin -- at age 14 and made the MiniMoog, 'the first compact, easy-to-use synthesizer,' in 1964. He was the first to bring the electronic synthesizer within reach of most musicians, and his MiniMoog is still highly praised and often emulated, to this day."

TheRaindog writes "In addition to announcing the Quake III source code's impending release, John Carmack's QuakeCon 2005 keynote also covered the programmer's thoughts on Microsoft and Sony's next-gen consoles, physics acceleration in games, and what he'd like to see from new graphics hardware."

andyic3 asks: "College starts in a month. I've been searching for a very simple, tiny, modern PDA for storing due dates on. I've looked at the REX 6000, but it's too simple. I've looked at PocketPC's, but can't seem to find anything smaller than the old iPaq H1910. I've looked at Palm solutions, but can't find anything there. What's the best PDA for this application?"

EconolineCrush writes "Command queuing has long been a feature of high-end SCSI drives meant for demanding multi-user environments, but it's now starting to pop up in the latest generation of desktop Serial ATA drives. Desktop Serial ATA drives are generally subjected to far less demanding single-user loads, making command queuing's benefits a little harder to quantify. However, it turns out that Native Command Queuing can significantly improve the performance of Serial ATA hard drives with disk-intensive desktop multitasking. With dual-core processors trickling into the mainstream and multitasking poised to become more popular, Native Command Queuing could prove essential for desktop hard drives."

Tycow writes "The BBC are reporting that Discovery needs emergency repairs - dangling material has been spotted on the belly of the shuttle, and NASA are worried they could cause overheating on re-entry. 'Nasa is concerned the dangling material - called gap fillers - could cause part of the shuttle to overheat as it re-enters the atmosphere.The type of repairs being planned have never been conducted by astronauts on a spacewalk before.'"

TheRaindog writes "AMD has bolstered its dual-core processor lineup with a more affordable dual-core Athlon 64 X2 3800+ that will sell for only $354. Despite its comparatively low 2.0GHz clock speed and only 512KB of L2 cache per core, the X2 3800+ is often faster than Intel's fastest dual-core chips, including the $999 Pentium Extreme Edition 840. The new X2's incredibly low power consumption is also impressive, especially when compared with that of power-hungry Pentium D processors that consume 50-90% more power under load."

colinemckay writes "The fight over a levy on iPods and other digital music devices ended Thursday when the Supreme Court of Canada refused to hear any further arguments on the matter. That means there will be no levy applied to digital audio recorders such as Apple's popular iPod and iPod Shuffle as well as other MP3 players like iRiver."

Bond_James writes "Ars Technica is reporting that an 85-year old New York woman has filed a civil suit against Rockstar Games and Take-Two Interactive. She alleges that the defendants 'engaged in misleading and deceptive practices in packaging and selling' the game, which she purchased for her 14-year old grandson. This will be interesting, and scary, to watch unfold in the courtrooms. Will the M (17+) rating of the game save Rockstar?"

kushboy writes "According to an article on CNN.com, there is video of debris falling off Discovery during its launch earlier today. While the debris does not appear to hit the shuttle, extra precaution and more video will be analyzed due to the Columbia mission of 2003. 'NASA has taken steps to minimize the amount and size of debris falling off the shuttle's exterior tank during its ascent. But the space agency has said it's impossible to eliminate falling launch debris.'"

EconolineCrush writes "Intel's Pentium M processor is widely regarded as the company's most compelling chip, and although desktop versions of it won't be available until next year, a new adapter from Asus allows users to run a Pentium M on existing Socket 478 motherboards. When coupled with a compatible motherboard, the CT-479 adapter is much cheaper than existing Pentium M desktop platforms, and also offers better performance by allowing the processor access to dual-channel memory configurations. Considering the Pentium M's frugal power consumption and great clock-for-clock performance, this could be an interesting upgrade for those looking for a low-noise system."

RyuMaou asks: "I'm about to move a small company from an old, ailing Windows server to some flavor of Linux and I want to make sure they're proprietary information is safe. Here's the problem: I've only run Linux as an application server, behind the firewall, in a Novell environment. Time is short and I have limited resources and want to read at least one really great book on Linux security, then follow that up with some good reinforcement. I know the information is mostly available on the Internet for free, but I like reading actual books, not printouts. So, if you had to pick five books, or fewer, on Linux security, what would you read?"

Enigma23 writes "White Wolf, Inc. has decided to enforce a licensing system upon those who run their games in their World of Darkness. Here is the full text of the license. The Licensing process will force those who have not already joined the Camarilla, White Wolf's official fan club, to pay a yearly $20 fee. They're not going to go after games that don't charge money for the event, but the wording is such that they can legally sue those who don't comply even if they only charge enough money to cover costs. The practical upshot is that technically the WW Stormtroopers could raid your house merely if everyone chips in a few quid for pizza. This is evidently doubly so if anyone in your gaming group is under the age of 18, which is against the membership policy of The Camarilla. There is a further discussion on RPG.net about the various issues involved." The BoingBoing discussion is interesting, as well.

kogus writes "LoJack is licensing its brand name to Absolute Software, which provides Computrace -- soon to be known as the 'LoJack for Laptops' line of computer theft recovery systems. When a stolen Computrace-equipped system is connected to the Internet, it automatically and silently sends locating data to Absolute Software, which then calls out the law. In some cases, Absolute Software customers are eligible for a $1,000 guarantee payment when a stolen system is not recovered within 60 days.

Mr. Blond writes "Here is a description of how to build your own chat-cord for only 7 euro. This is a solder free version of the hack shown in this earlier Slashdot article. Now you can use any plain old phone to make calls over the internet, using Skype MSN-audio or any other VoIP software. Even the software from chatcord works fine with it, to make and accept calls using the buttons of your phone."

Jack Tanner asks: "Is there such a thing as a high-quality Open Source conference management software in active development? I'm helping run a web site for an academic conference, and it seems like there's no good software to organize the meeting and facilitate peer review. The state of the FLOSS art is seems to be that there's a reasonably modern LAMP application called Open Conference Systems, but the developers have announced that it's discontinued. There are also several apps that are claim to be open source, but aren't, once one reads the license. At the same time, large academic conferences play musical chairs switching from one half-baked free or commercial service to another every year, or write their own apps from scratch, repeating the same errors and wasting hard-earned grants. What's a conference organizer on a budget to do?" "While no software will do all of these, the ideal application should:

• accept submission of abstracts and papers
• accept feedback on abstracts and papers from peer reviewers and automatically distribute it to authors
• keep a list of conference registrants (authors and non-authors)
• facilitate sending e-mail and snail mail announcements to registrants (all, only authors, only non-authors, only presenters, etc.)
• facilitate creation of the conference program (scheduling with separate concurrent tracks)

furry_wookie writes "A few minutes ago, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled unaniumously against Grokster today. This ruling means that developers of software violate federal copyright law when they provide computer users with the means to share music and movie files downloaded from the Internet. More info about the case here." That's not an entirely accurate statement -- what The Supremes said is that "One who distributes a device with the object of promoting its use to infringe copyright ... is liable for the resulting acts of infringement by third parties using the device, regardless of the device's lawful uses." The promotion is the key part of that statement. Update: 06/27 18:00 GMT by T : Reader SilentBob4 points out this interview with EFF attorney Wendy Seltzer on the decision.

jasonmicron writes "As previously reported on Slashdot, Microsoft has completed the aquisition of Sybari Software this morning. Before the ink was even dry, Microsoft cut all new antivirus support for all Unix and Linux definitions. Current customers will continue to receive support but new customers will not have the option to purchase the software under Unix / Linux. From TFA: Post acquisition, Syabri becomes a Microsoft subsidiary focusing on marketing anti-virus and anti-spam protection for Microsoft messaging and collaboration servers. It will continue to market Sybari's Lotus Domino products but will not sell Antigen versions for Unix and Linux."

kilgortrout writes "Dvorak has an interesting editorial up, where he links the recent stories of alleged 'security problems' and 'spyware problems' bittorent has been having with the recent MS announcement of research into a file sharing app called 'Avalanche'. concluding it's all part of an orchestrated MS disinformation campaign against BitTorrent." From the article: "The problem is that no big company controls it, and Microsoft, asleep at the wheel, let it slip too long to do much about it. So now I suspect Microsoft is playing dirty to discredit the thing. There is no other explanation for the recent series of coincidental stories and events." Especially interesting in light of Bram Cohen's take on the situation.

Oliver Kayas asks: "I'm a newcomer to Linux specifically the Ubuntu distribution. I have been searching for software that will allow me to manage bibliographies for my thesis. I've come across Kile/Latex however, this only works on KDE and I am using Gnome. Under Windows I was using Endnote 8 which even allowed me to link references to documents on my hard disk so I could easily search for papers I just wanted to read. I know I could use an emulator such as Wine to use Endnote but that defeats the object of switching to Linux. I was wondering if you know of any alternatives?"

Tenken writes "Looks like Apple has finally made available a PC version of QuickTime 7. It seems to perform on par with the Mac release, though the H.264 decoding for hi-def trailers will probably see much more optimization before QT is officially released. The main reason to upgrade is to check out the new hi-def trailers which you can find at the QuickTime site. There are 480p and 720p versions available for the few hi-def trailers, though I'm fairly certain there were also 1080p clips online a few weeks ago."

Ashutosh Lotlikar wrote to mention an article on the Business 2.0 site stating that chip producer Transmeta is going out of business. From the article: "The company's Crusoe family of microprocessors promised lower power consumption and heat generation, enabling the creation of laptops with longer battery life. Critics bashed the chips for being underpowered compared with Intel's latest and greatest. Transmeta struggled to find a market, and recently it sold off most of its chipmaking business for $15 million to Culturecom Holdings, a Hong Kong company better known for publishing comic books."

Kevlar Gorilla writes "I've had the privilege of working over the summer as a night time security guard and computer tech resident for the CNIB Lake Joseph Centre way up north in Muskoka, Ontario. There are many blind and visually impaired guests that find their way around computers efficiently using programs such as ZoomText, JAWS, and Window Eyes as well as memorizing plenty of keyboard shortcuts. Given a small budget, I've been charged with updating some software and perhaps some hardware too. What newfangled, affordable and recommended text-reading software should we invest in? What new hardware would be a welcome addition? Is there any decent Linux or Mac stuff? What are your experiences with helping the blind or visually impaired with computing and the internet?"

Tycoon Guy writes "It seems rumors of the franchise's demise were greatly exaggerated. TrekToday reports that according to Trek head honcho Rick Berman, a new film might come sooner than you think: 'If it gets done in two years or three years I think that timeframe for a new, fresh feature with a whole different outlook would be fine.' He's previously said that the film will feature a whole new cast and ship; it's being written by Band of Brothers screenwriter Erik Jendresen."

suezz writes " Eweek is running a story that Redhat is releasing Netscape Directory (LDAP) under the GPL - this is huge at least from my point of view. I know of at least two huge companies that have standardized on Netscape Directory for their web applications."

emerald demon writes "The world's authority on reviewing movies, Roger Ebert, has released his review of "Star Wars--Episode III: Revenge of the Sith." I noticed that Ebert & Roeper gave it a two thumbs up, but I assumed that Ebert was going to go for the minimum for giving his thumb up--two and a half stars. I was delighted to read his three and a half starred review. It seemed like he let a few things slip, but it's obvious that he enjoyed it. '"Episode III" has more action per square minute, I'd guess, than any of the previous five movies, and it is spectacular.' Bad dialogue as usual: 'To say that George Lucas cannot write a love scene is an understatement; greeting cards have expressed more passion.'"

DocMurphy asks: "I'm working with some dissidents who are looking for ways to use the Internet from within repressive regimes. Many have in-home Internet access, but think it too risky to participate in pro-freedom activities on home PCs. Internet cafés are also available, but although fairly anonymous, every machine may be infected with keystroke loggers that give governments access to and knowledge of 'banned' sites. Dissidents not only want to remain anonymous themselves, but also wish to not compromise the sites they access. Any suggestions for products/procedures/systems out there making anonymous access & publishing a reality under repressive regime run Internet access?"

Tycoon Guy writes "Be sure to tune in to UPN tonight, where they're going to show the 'true finale' of Enterprise with the episode Terra Prime, followed by the post-season coda, These Are The Voyages. The latter will feature appearances by Troi, Riker, and a completely CGI Enterprise-D."

Marthisdil points out a News.com story which reports that "Two vulnerabilities in the popular Firefox browser have been rated "extremely critical" because exploit code is now available to take advantage of them." Security firm Secunia reported the vulnerabilities (and the "extremely critical" rating is theirs), but the News.com story points out that thus far, "no known cases have yet emerged where an attacker took advantage of the public exploit code." Update: 05/09 20:20 GMT by T : Rebron of the Mozilla Foundation sends a correction; this is really the same flaw reported yesterday. He suggests that you glance at the Mozilla security alert on this hole (as well other alerts at the Mozilla Security Center), and says "The Mozilla Foundation has made changes to our update servers that will protect users from this arbitrary code execution exploit."

ChocolateJesus writes "Weeks after formally announcing its dual-core Athlon X2 desktop processor, reviews are finally trickling out. The Tech Report's coverage tests two flavors of the Athlon 64 X2 against a whopping 17 competitors, including AMD and Intel's fastest single- and dual-core offerings. They've even thrown in a handful of dual-processor systems (and dual-core, dual-processor systems) for good measure. Testing focuses on multi-threaded applications, and the X2s deliver remarkable performance. Perhaps even more impressive is the fact that unlike Intel's dual-core Pentiums, AMD's X2s consume no more power than single-core chips." Looks like this story has come out of embargo - if you've find more reviews, post them in comments.

Espectr0 writes "A software tool launched by Google on Wednesday that speeds up the process of downloading Web sites (covered recently on Slashdot) has caused some users to worry about their privacy. A ZDNet article discusses problems that users have been experiencing with the information that is cached by the software. On a Google Labs discussion group, one user said that 'I went to the Futuremark forums and noticed that I'm logged in as someone I don't know...'" Commentary also available on Signal vs. Noise and BlogNewsChannel.

Anonymous Coward asks: "After trying to merge several sets of media files that I've had laying around across several PC's (and looking at the short-comings of my own Perl script), I began looking at some commercial products and was overwhelmed. Does Slashdot have advice for organizing MP3 collections and what software works well for them?"

Slashback tonight with updates and clarifications on recent Slashdot stories (and story arcs), including a downright Operatic end to Jon S. von Tetzchner's cross-oceanic attempt (or was that just in fun?), the status of post-death email privacy, minimizing the dangers of RFID passports, and more - read on for the details.

Actually, it's taking tests that reduces IQ. The guys at Mind Hacks have dissected the widely reported story that 'email destroys the mind faster than marijuana' [Posted on Slashdot a few days ago -- T.] and found that it is more spin than science. The results show simply that people do worse at IQ tests when distracted, although Hewlett-Packard are not releasing details of the experiment, so others cannot even evaluate if the research is sound. The use of psychobabble for marketing marches on.

One day this will all be commemorated as ... an opera. GreyPoopon writes "It looks like Jon's attempt at swimming the Atlantic has ended in early failure. Taking the blame once again is is PR Manager, Eskil Sivertsen. The raft he was using was somehow punctured this morning, and Jon had to abondon his trek to perform a heroic rescue. Perhaps someone should take on the task of sending our downtrodden adventurer a cup of Mom's hot chocolate."

PCP theorem simplified, still way over my head. Stridar writes "Sanjeev Arora's proof of the PCP theorem was a great acheivement. This theorem, a reduction of NP to PCP, allowed for many striking results on the difficulty of finding approximate solutions to NP-Hard problems. However, his original proof is long and technical, focusing on the arithmetization of booelan formulas. It has long been an open problem to simplify this result. Now Irit Dinur , a mathematician at the Hebrew University, has given a purely combinatorial proof of the PCP theorem, in her exciting paper "The PCP Theorem by Gap Amplification" ."

I think several other things end at death, too. microbee writes "The Register reports that Yahoo has complied with a court order to give a dead soldier's email account to his parents. It's not clear to me from the news whether they got direct access to the actual mail box, or just hard copy of those emails. If the former, it's a bit funny to read "the family complain they have only got emails received by Justin, not those he wrote." People have to wonder whether their privacy ends at death."

Haven't they ever seen The Killing Fields? valdean writes "Following up on past Slashdot stories, Wired News reports that the State Department is now considering adding a password to the new RFID passports, in response to 'criticism from computer security professionals and civil libertarians.' According to the article, 'The data... would be locked and unavailable to any reader that doesn't know a secret key or password to unlock the data. To obtain the key, a passport officer would need to physically scan the machine-readable text that's printed on the passport page beneath the photo... The reader would then hash the data to create a unique key that could be used to authenticate the reader and unlock the data on the RFID chip.'"

Anything with LEDs in it makes me happy. HunterD writes "Apparently a company called DigitalBlue purchased the rights to the Intel Play series, which included the Intel QX3 microscope. Well, DigitalBlue has released an upgrade called the QX5 that features an Ultrabright LED, a better camera, and a number of other upgrades."

Randeep Igochyorjob writes "Reuters is reporting that Bill Gates is asking for the removal of quotas for guest workers by removing the caps on non-immigrant alien workers. In a mild attempt at balance, buried near the end of the story, the article also says "Undersecretary of Commerce Phil Bond, a top Bush administration technology official, pointed out that the unemployment rate for engineers is above the national average." I'm wondering if raising wages might attract the "needed" workers from domestic sources or is Gate's request "necessary to remain competitive and innovative"."

SilentBob4 writes "Mad Penguin has published a comprehensive review of the latest Libranet release. New in this release are an improved installer and revamped/modernized AdminMenu that rivals Mandriva's MCC and SUSE's YaST. Aside from major desktop versions lagging behing a version or two, this release easily puts Libranet in the same league as Ubuntu, and the review has sparked some "Ubuntu vs. Libranet" arguements so far, one on the Libranet forum itself. Check it out for yourself. The review is complete with many screenshots as well as Flash movies of the AdminMenu & installer in action."

Tycoon Guy writes "TrekToday reports that the TrekUnited fan campaign a few weeks ago partnered with a group of Canadian production companies to pitch a co-production deal for 'Star Trek: Enterprise' to Paramount. As part of this deal, production would be moved up to Canada, and TrekUnited and the Canadian group would share the costs of a fifth season with Paramount. Apparently Viacom executives are considering the proposal, despite another branch of Paramount saying the cancellation was final just a few days ago."

SilentBob4 writes "Bricolage is an example of the power of an open source project to survive its proprietary origins. As you will read below, Bricolage was originally started in-house by Salon magazine, and then open sourced by About.com. I imagined how very frustrated David Wheeler, a Salon employee, would have been had he been forced to watch the code he helped develop just die on the shelf. Never underestimate the strength of the human passion to create, and to see one's creations bloom in the light of day." The full story is at Mad Penguin."

EconolineCrush writes "The Tech Report has put together an intriguing comparison of TV tuner cards with hardware MPEG2 acceleration from ATI, eVGA, and Hauppauge. The article examines CPU utilization for typical PVR tasks and highlights some very apparent image quality differences between the three cards. Testing was apparently done with Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005, but does anyone have experience with the cards in MythTV?"

EconolineCrush writes "Slashdot recently covered the launch of NVIDIA's nForce 4 SLI chipset for Intel processors, and although early reviews fawned over the chipset's performance, closer examination reveals several shortcomings that the initial wave of coverage failed to document. Problems with stability, drivers, and the chipset's oft-praised hardware-accelerated firewall and Gigabit Ethernet controller escaped the scrutiny of many reviews."

Victor Cheng writes "In developments that bring together a variety of technologies including robotics and digital imaging the Wasp Micro Air Vehicle is one of the Pentagon's latest tools currently in testing of the Nimitz Carrier Strike Group (although I'm thinking its not going to need a carrier to get this one up and flying). The 13 inch Wasp comes equipped with 2 video cameras, GPS and has a myriad of possible applications. Next time you hear something Buzzing around when you're at a family picnic you might think twice before swatting it could be an expensive action."

SilentBob4 writes "Apache recently held a week-end "infrathon" to sweep the dust out of the corners, squash a few old bugs, drink a wee bit of ale (maybe a wee bit more than a wee bit) and get their hands dirty with the Zen of maintaining their infrastructure. MadPenguin.org crashed the party in search of the secrets of getting into the "zone" while peeking into the grittiest of the nitty gritty with one of the darling projects of open source, Apache." From the article: "The guys that I interviewed were among some of the brightest minds in open source; Brian Behlendorf; Upayavira; Greg Stein; and Roy Fielding, all of whom are well known and regarded (or deserve to be). These guys have the skills to be Microsoft millionaires, but instead flew thousands of miles to sit slouching on couches and squatting on cushions hacking infrastructure maintenance for free, primarily just to hang out with each other, even though they could have done the same thing on line."

ls129 writes "KHR-1, the Japanese Robo-One humanoid robot kit from Kondo (previously mentioned here), is finally open for creative software development. The first unofficial implementation of the PC-controller API has just been posted. Using the SDK, the 17 servos that give the robot its mobility can be remote controlled by the PC via WiFi or bluetooth, and their current position can be retrieved several times per second. This unique feature will allow robot fans to go beyond simple performance of motion sequences or low-level gyro-based motion correction and develop algorithms that involve feedback control and AI." Update: 04/05 16:59 GMT by T : As originally posted, I erroneously changed the robot's nationality from Japanese to Korean; that was a boo-boo; the linked site with an English translation is Korean, but the robot itself is Japanese. Apologies to the submitter, who had it right.

mboverload was one of several readers to note that you can purchase aircraft tracking laser today at ThinkGeek. (TG is owned by OSTG, the parent company of Slashdot, so activate all conspiracy theories now). You can also look into the new iPod accessory iCopulate which allows intimacy between mp3 players never before fantasized. And for the suit that has everything, Executve Pong.