News

Todd Bradley will take over the day-to-day operations at the Palm Solutions Group, overseeing the company's handheld computer hardware; software such as enterprise e-mail applications; and add-ons such as keyboards and expansion cards. - CNET

Will biochip implants become the way of the future? Hey, if I don't have to go to college, just insert a chip into my body and know the skills I need to work, I'm game! Of course these 'robo-rats' are a little different than biochips.

The remote-controlled ``robo-rats'' can be made to run, climb, jump or turn left and right through electrical probes, the width of a hair, implanted in their brains. Movement signals are transmitted from a computer to the rat's brain via a radio receiver strapped to its back.

One electrode stimulates the ``feel good'' center of the rat's brain, while two other electrodes activate the cerebral regions that process signals from its left and right whiskers. - CNET

Basically, it is like reigns of the horse, just remotely controlled.

Everquest 2, the sequel to the ever popular Everquest will be targetted to debut in 2003 according to Cnet.[PAGEBREAK]
EverQuest II, which is slated to arrive in the winter of 2003, will feature a new 3D engine and will allow gamers to own real estate, ride horses, command ships, and to use new enhanced spells, quests and events.

The game centers on an online fantasy world called Norrath, where players create characters, engage in online activities and gather elements such as armor and weapons. Through the Internet, players can interact with each other, fighting, talking and trading, and building up more power.

Read More at CNET

Voodoo Extreme has some pics up from the upcoming game Star Trek: Elite Force 2.[PAGEBREAK]
Check it out at Voodoo Extreme

The nine states' attornies effectively railed him enough to dismiss his case.[PAGEBREAK]
But an attorney for the states, which have rejected a proposed settlement of the landmark case, sought to portray Madnick as unfamiliar with details of the rival remedies and unsure of his facts.

Asked if he knew of any other companies besides Microsoft that made an operating system like Windows with an Internet browser inextricably bound to it, Madnick initially said "yes."

When pressed, Madnick could list only two pieces of software, which he subsequently admitted were not operating systems.

Read more at ZDNet

This is looking to be more and more like the Matrix. What's next? They can think?

Big Blue is demonstrating a second phase in its eLiza plan to build autonomic computers that can anticipate and recover from problems without human intervention. Now IBM is showing software called Enterprise Workload Manager that governs not just single servers but groups, monitoring the machines and shifting work among them.

IBM is aggressively researching ways to get groups of servers to work together without human intervention, but it isn't the only one. Sun Microsystems in February uncloaked "N1," which treats groups of computers like a single pool of processing and storage power. And Hewlett-Packard plans a " utility data center" to simplify management of data centers crammed with computing equipment.

Hop-On and Intel have a partnership to produce disposable cell phones. These things better have really low costs to be practical. I already have a cell phone, and I'm sure that most people that want a cell phone already have one. But the idea is novel.

Hop-On said Intel will provide chipsets using the TDMA cell phone standard for use in its disposable phones worldwide. Initial target markets will be in the United States and Latin America, the company said.

Hop-On's disposable cell phones, which it says are recyclable, will carry an hour's worth of prepaid calling minutes in the United States. - ZDNet

"It's a videogame console. No, Wait. It's a work of art." Yoshi DeHerrera Has fit every beloved gaming system into one amazing machine. From the Atari 2600 to a custom PC, this piece of heaven has it all.

-Atari 2600
-Nintendo Entertainment System (8-bit)
-Microsoft Xbox
-Nintendo GameCube
-Sony PlayStation 2
-A custom PC

Click Here for More Details

This case looks pretty with it's side-panel fans, but does it stand up to the challenge of cooling off an over-clocked system? Find out Here

Even though Nvidia is still in litigation with Microsoft over Xbox pricing, it has said in this ZDNet article that they will only make AMD chipset motherboards because they don't want to pursue an Intel P4 bus license.

The company also plans a follow-on to its nForce chipset, which works with Advanced Micro Devices' Athlon processors but not with Intel's Pentium 4. Huang said the company will continue to focus on chipsets for that market, rather than pursue a license to work with Intel's chips.

An open source file format called Ogg Vorbis (wtf) may benefit from this whole Winamp glitch deal.[PAGEBREAK]
Although the vulnerability is a setback for Nullsoft, it could help the team of programmers behind the Ogg Vorbis format. The group has been attempting to convince a crowd of online music fans to make Ogg Vorbis their format of choice instead of MP3 or other proprietary formats such as Microsoft's Windows Media. While MP3 is the best-known and most popular online music format, developers must pay royalty fees to patent holder the Fraunhofer Institute to include support for the technology in their products.

Emmett Plant, chief executive of the Philadelphia-based Xiph.org Foundation, a nonprofit that serves as a parent for open-source development efforts, said the Ogg Vorbis group was sorry to hear about Winamp's security vulnerability. However, he said if somebody gains access to the group's codec by way of an upgrade that happened because of a security vulnerability, "that's OK with us."

Cnet has more

In two recent cases involving domain name disputes, the judges ruled in favor of the big coporation or the celeb. That is wrong, while I don't like squatters, but many people that aren't squatting stand to loose their family website because some big coporation wants the name, or it sounds like them...[PAGEBREAK]
The organizations charged with mediating domain name disputes issued two rulings last month against individuals who registered their family names, turning over the sites to guitarist Peter Frampton and to Miller Brewing.

The issue of whether people have the rights to their name in Web addresses has been a tricky one. Several celebrities, including singer Madonna and actress Julia Roberts, have won such cases. However, others, including President George W. Bush and Maryland Lt. Gov. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, haven't succeeded.

ZDNet

Damn college students, thinking they can get the same deal as big large schools!

Apple said the $999 and $1,199 prices it announced are for educational institutions, which will make up the vast majority of eMac purchasers. Apple typically offers college students prices that are better than the retail price, but not as low as those offered to schools and colleges.

The two models listed for college students were the high-end model, at $1,249, as well as a $1,516 custom-built model that included more memory and a tilt-swivel stand.

Ha, what are students thinking ?

Following their 6 month product cycle, Nvidia will release the NV30 sometime in August.

Also on Monday, Nvidia raised its financial outlook for the just-ended quarter, and Huang said he sees continued market share gains this year leading to more growth. Some of that will come from a new graphics chip slated to arrive in August.

The new chip will be manufactured on Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co.'s latest 0.13-micron manufacturing process, Huang said. Huang did not reveal the name or specific features of the chip, but did say it was a fundamentally new architecture from the GeForce 4 Titanium introduced earlier this year. - CNET

The NV30 will feature 3dfx technology, this should be interesting to see.

Lavasoft has released a new version of thier popluar spyware removal tool Ad-aware. Version 5.8 upgrades are available from the Lavasoft site. As always the software is free to all who would like it to remove those nasty bits of software that invade our computers unknowingly or through wordinging buried in the EULA argeement you agree to when installing software. The new update includes....[PAGEBREAK]
Ad-aware 5.8 uses a new referencefile format.
This change was necessary to handle more tasks through the referencefile, and avoid too frequent
updates of the Ad-aware binary. The new referencefiles are named "reffile.awr".

The manual installation is performed like with the old "reflist.sig" files.
A new Refupdate application is in progress, and will be available shortly.

Ad-aware 5.8 features the same user interface like the previous 5x versions. It has been further improved to perform additional checks, and to handle the
new referencefiles.

The referencefile included in this distribution (005-29-04-2002) targets DownloadWare, NetworkEssentials, IEPlugin, OpenMe.exe, GoHip and several additional browser hijackers.