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802.11x is great for around the house but is it time to look for another solution for hotspots. I usually don't give much attention to these things since most won't be seen for years but this is here and now thanks to a company IPWireless and the use of 3G technology.

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It's kind of like Wi-Fi, but with a big, big difference.

"The big difference is the range. The range of 'free-air' of 802.11 is typically 1,000 feet. We have a maximum range in free-air of 29 kilometers," Gilbert says.

"Anywhere you go, anything you want to do on the Internet, or be connected with, is possible with this," IPWireless CEO Chris Gilbert says.

The 5Ghz band has been under fire from the military as it overlaps some radar frequencies. A compromised has now overcome this and a 300Mhz slice has been given to companies. Well, to anyone, it is in the unliscensed portion. In comparison, only 83Mhz is given in the 2.4Ghz spec. Now, two senators want an addition 255Mhz in the 5Ghz spec.

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The resolution will also apply to the additional spectrum that is being requested by Sens. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., and George Allen, R-Va., under the proposed Jumpstart Broadband Act. The bill proposes opening up an additional 255MHz of contiguous spectrum in the 5GHz band. A 300MHz slice of the 5GHz band is being used for wireless networking, while only 83MHz of spectrum is being used in the 2.4GHz band.

This rather long story on News.com talks about WiFi and more. It goes into why companies pay for free access to consumers, hotspots, utility access, and more. Read it if your interested in WiFi or wireless in general.

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"Wi-Fi is going to get cheaper and easier to deploy," said Schmidt of NYCWireless. "As people encounter these networks increasingly for free, they are going to expect them for free--as a facility service, just like AC, heating or water."

You might think of a phasor or a blaster as pretty far off. But it seems we are taking the first steps to be there. Using energy as opposed to ammo is the logical step, cuts costs and stuff.

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The U.S. Air Force is developing a high-power microwave, or HPM, weapon that generates a massive electromagnetic pulse capable of frying the insides of digital electronic systems, disabling enemy military equipment, analysts said.

Want to learn how to make those cool looking UV fans? As a plus, you use something that most houses carry in them to clean your cloths with!



Find out how by reading this guide.

This edition is dedicated to Columbia. I will list some stories relating to it.

Columbia investigation begins.

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In the meantime, the shuttle program has been put on hold as the NASA community will take time during the next few days to remember astronauts Rick Husband, Willie McCool, Kalpana Chawla, Laurel Clark, Mike Anderson, David Brown and Israel's first space flyer, Ilan Ramon.

ISS Crew can hold to June.

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Saturday's disastrous shuttle mission has no direct affect on the space station, but NASA will want to determine the cause of the disaster before sending one of Columbia's sister vehicles into space. Meanwhile, many officials inside and outside NASA made it clear that the shuttle program does not have the luxury of a lengthy wait, such as the two-year grounding that occurred after the 1986 Challenger disaster.

Columbia debris illegal to sell.

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Taking a part of an aircraft involved in an accident is a federal offence, U.S. attorneys in Texas warned, and a conviction could result in up to 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

Life goes on.

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A Russian cargo rocket carrying food and fuel blasted off for the International Space Station on Sunday, a day after the U.S. shuttle Columbia broke up minutes before landing, killing seven astronauts.

This simple guide will show you how to make your very own UV reactive fans. And it uses something that you probably have in the house if you're clean!Next Page »

This is the same kind of thing when an artist dies, the work goes up in price. The $5 collectable coin went for $13 THOUSAND. Sad day for Columbia, but people are reaping the profits.

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How long Columbia prices remain lofty is an open question, however. Several patches featuring the Challenger space shuttle that exploded on takeoff in 1986, were fetching less than $10 on Saturday.

Well, I'm going to hold off a guide that I was going to put up today. I'll put it up tomorrow. We also have two new monthly things coming out this coming week. Stay tuned for that. I'll hold off on the comments for now, just let's give Columbia a bit more silence .

AutoDeletePro Red Maple Leaf Fan Grill @ MTB.
Crucial vs Sapphire R9700 @ 3DV.
Chameleon case @ PC Abusers.
Coolermaster ATCS @ Hexus.
AOpen AK77-8XN @ Techseekers.
FIC AU11 @ 3DGM.
SilenttMax ST-11 @ TecCentral.
Stealth-X case @ OCA.
Connect3D R9500 Pro @ Hexus.

This is a truely a sad day, this is worse than the Challenger disaster. Shuttle Columbia has disintegrated in the atmoshpere. It is looking like a heat shield failure as I look at the pictures. You can read more about this disaster at these numerous sources. This will be on your local news channel as well.

CNN.

Space.com.

News.com.

There are more, but CNN will be updated with the complete story as details come in. Columbia is the oldest space shuttle, and now, it is no more. My heart goes out to the families affected by the crash. If you are reading this and you live in northern Texas, please be careful of falling debris. This is truely a sad day.

Image running a nuclear reactor on Windows. And it crashes. Opps! Linux provides better security and more. Even Unix is being phased out.

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Verano plans two Linux-related products. Control software called Performux, which runs on Red Hat's Advanced Server version of Linux, is now shipping. And in February, the company plans to announce a bundle that includes the control software, SELinux, and security features for tasks such as detecting intrusions.

As we know the TCP/IP protocol today, it is a serial based protocol. You can only send and receive once at a time. This new one is a parrallel approach. Funny, hard drives are moving to serial, and the internet to parrallel.

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For many years computer scientists have been proposing protocols to improve the efficiency of distributed computing systems, but Park asserts that his method works with greater efficiency for time-critical applications. The current protocol is generally known as the Order-based Deadlock Prevention Protocol, according to Park. While the performance results of the new protocol have impressed analysts, they note that other more critical issues holding back collaborative Internet computing and Web services need to be addressed first.

The Chess battle is at a tie in the third game. I'm betting on Deep Junior to win. Read this quote to find out why I think that.

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Kasparov, 39, said he becomes fatigued during the games, which can last for hours, while the computer doesn't.

Heh, to make it fair, let's just give the computer some dirty power .

AMD is going to delay the Athlon 64. September launch date now, but the Opteron is not delayed.

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The company has indicated that its main priority right now is the new 64-bit Opteron processor for servers. That chip will be the keystone of AMD's 2003 strategy to push further into the business market and compete with Intel. Opteron is on track and is set to officially debut on April 22 in New York City.

Scientists at North Carolina State University are working to create computer games that are less storyline based, and give the player almost endless options. The game interactions will re-write themselves according to what paths you take so far in the game, and change the world.

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Keen gamers can rejoice as US scientists are working on ways to make computer games that never end. The researchers are adapting AI techniques used for robot navigation to manage game worlds that constantly present fresh challenges to players. Games created using these techniques will be less like scenes from a film and more like a reactive and interactive world that players can explore almost endlessly.

A post by DOOM creator John Carmack and his thoughts on the new Nvidia and ATI video cards, how well doom runs on each, and good/bad points of the NV30. I'm pretty pysched for whenever DOOM 3 comes out , and im sure alot of you are too.

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At the moment, the NV30 is slightly faster on most scenes in Doom than the R300, but I can still find some scenes where the R300 pulls a little bit ahead. The issue is complicated because of the different ways the cards can choose to run the game.

And in other news, they are losing Ted Turner. What a shame, and $100 billion is a huge loss.

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The announcement came just shortly after the company reported a net loss of $98.7 billion for 2002. Those results included a $45.5 billion fourth-quarter charge related primarily to depreciation in the value of its America Online unit, as well as a first-quarter charge of $54 billion in accordance with accounting rules changes that took effect last year.

The popular video format of file sharing if hitting the big time. Look for Divx support in consumer electronic devices soon.

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The San Diego-based company on Wednesday released DivX 5.03, technology that helps deliver full-motion video over IP (Internet Protocol) networks and now also onto DivX-compatible consumer electronics, including DVD players and handheld devices. The code, popular for encoding video files on the PC, is compatible with MPEG-4, an emerging standard for multimedia delivery on applications ranging from downloadable Internet video to satellite radio.

EA isn't getting the amount of people it forcasted to play the Sims Online. The game was good offline. Why try to make more money by making a horrible online version?

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Game industry observers and EA executives have touted "The Sims Online" as the ultimate test of whether online gaming, currently dominated by fantasy role-playing games, can attract a mass-market audience. Inside EA, the game was seen as the main tool for pushing the company's money losing EA.com online business to profitability during the next fiscal year.

Looks like it is going to fail.

Well, well... Just some minor editting and some touch up work and the user articles will be done. Next week, systems! Moving right along. We got some nice stuff for review soon, stay tooned.

Albatrton i845PE @ Reviewnation.
Seagate serial ATA drive @ OCA.
OCZ PC2700 @ Viperlair.
Translucent USB drives @ 3DGM.
Shuttle SK41G @ Hexus.
Spin 45 crappy speakers @ Monkeyreview.
DFI i845PE @ Zephirtech.
Some mod thing @ Systemcooling.

Yes, the technology that really never came into play is moving into version 2.0. Opterons will use Hypertransport 1, but the 2.0 spec calls for 20 to 40 gigaBYTES per second!!!!!!

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HyperTransport 2.0 will provide data transfers between chips at 20 gigabytes to 40 gigabytes per second, depending on the system architecture. Such speeds will greatly increase the performance and versatility of servers or desktops, said Gabriele Sartori, president of the consortium and director of strategic alliances at AMD.

Wow, IBM wants to phase out their version of Unix in favor of Linux. This will happen over the course of a few years.

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A replacement "won't happen overnight," Mills said, but years of experience designing operating systems at IBM and other companies means developers know just where Linux needs to go. "The road map is clear. It's an eight-lane highway."

Scientists find that sitting at your computer for extended time can cause blood clots. That pretty much includes all college students i think. There naming the condition e-thrombosis, which if your wondering can be avoided by physically getting up and stretching every once and awhile.

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New Zealand researchers have found that sitting at a computer for hours on end can cause fatal blood clots, just as long flights can lead to deep vein thrombosis (DVT), known as economy-class syndrome. They discovered the link when a 32-year-old man who sat at his computer terminal for up to 18 hours a day nearly died after he developed a blood clot in his leg which travelled to his lungs.

You gotta love Linux. It makes you wonder though, where is the source code to this?

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The media PCs appear to be a scaled-back response to Microsoft's heavily touted Windows XP Media Center, a version of the operating system that focuses on digital entertainment functions. The Lindows PCs lack several basic functions found in the Windows version, such as the ability to record TV programs and a remote control.

Pretty light day for reviews. Speaking of Lights, did you see the UVs here? Anyway, I'm just going to finish up the User Articles soon and then work on system. Comments are pretty much working and will be added to systems soon. All in all, it has been a pretty good programming week. I've also fixed a bug that made changing your username impossible, that's fixed. Anything else, you know where to reach me at.

A really nice case mod @ OCHardware.
OCZ PC 3500 @ NexusHardware.
Logitech Z640s @ Designtechnica.
Geil PC3500 @ Monster-Hardware.
iRock Bling @ Viperlair.
HighSpeed PC TX50 Wearable USB Drive @ MTB.
Belkin wireless mouse and keyboard @ 3DV.

Well, I'm sure there are plenty to go around. This story only points out one developer.

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Petitjean runs a small company in Frankfort, Kentucky, that writes software programs for the state government and businesses. He's used Microsoft's Windows operating system since the early versions of the software but now he wants to swap to Linux because he says Microsoft is too expensive, too difficult to use and not reliable enough.

Brand new version 3.1 of KDE released this morning. It's available now for download, check out their site for details and screenshots.

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The KDE Project today announced the immediate availability of KDE 3.1, a major feature upgrade to the third generation of the most advanced and powerful free desktop for Linux and other UNIXes. KDE 3.1 ships with a basic desktop, an integrated development environment and seventeen other packages (PIM, administration, network, edutainment, utilities, multimedia, games, artwork, web development and more). KDE's award-winning tools and applications are available in 47 languages.

The SQL wormie even got Microsoft with their pants down. Seems that even they are too lazy to patch up their servers.

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The messages put Microsoft in an awkward position: The company relies on customers to patch security flaws but the events of last weekend show that even it is vulnerable. In this case, Microsoft urged customers to fix a vulnerability in the SQL Server 2000 software, but it apparently hadn't taken its own advice. Moreover, despite its 1-year-old security push, the software giant still had critical servers vulnerable to Internet attacks.

Been awhile since we've seen price cuts from either CPU company. Intel will be slashing $25-$50 off each of their CPUs. Even larger drops for OEM prices I'm sure.

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Intel regularly cuts its prices as part of a predetermined plan in which it brings out faster processors and moves its existing chips down in price. The company typically notifies its customers of intended price moves well in advance. In this case, the price move will help make way for a 3.2GHz desktop Pentium 4 chip due out later in the quarter, sources said.

Ultraviolet. I really can't think of anything really witty to say.



Might as well just read the review, it is pretty good.