TECHNOCULTURE: Washington Post 05/14/03 Middle Schoolers, Letting Their Fingers Do the Talking: Instant messaging is overtaking both email and telephone communication for today's middle schoolers. Of course for a minute there, they might have learned to type, but now they'll just develop really good thumbs.

COMPUTERS: All New Transportable Extreme Gaming Machine MaxVision® Releases MaxPac® War Fighter for the Extreme LAN Party Gamer: MaxVision leverages their expertise in building hig-performance briefcase systems for military applications for a tougher environment - gamers! The MaxVision Warfighter keeps much of the military hardware, but loses the DOD price tag.

Wired 05/19/03 Apple: Bye-Bye IMac, Hello Gore: Apple retires the iMac and hires Al Gore. This is progress? Of course, Apple did invent the GUI and Gore did invent the Internet, so maybe it's a marriage made in virtual heaven. Of everyone knows the GUI was created at Xerox's Parc facility. Right?

Fujitsu PR: TechRevu Fujitsu Unveils World's Smallest Full-Feature Notebook PC with Intel® Centrino™ Mobile Technology: "This 3.4-pound notebook breaks all the norms. It is powered by an Ultra Low Voltage Intel® Pentium® M Processor 900MHz and features the Intel® PRO/Wireless Network Connection 802.11b and Intel® 855GM chipset."

TRANSPORTATION:

Popular Science June '03 Ford Builds a Ferrari Beater: An engineering team races to complete the rebirth of the legendary GT40. Goals: deliver it in an impossible 16 months and send a signal that the company is firing on all cylinders again.

Toyota 05/19/03Toyota Prius - Hybrid's Next Generation: It's hard to believe that Toyota has been making the fuel efficient hybrid for 5 years, but they have and for its 5th anniversary they're giving it a serious makeover. The new Prius will be bigger, faster, and even more fuel efficient. How? Read on.

SCIENCE: NYTIMES 05/15/03 Wired to the Brain of a Rat, a Robot Takes On the World: The nerve center of a conventional robot is a microprocessor of silicon and metal. But for a robot under development at Georgia Tech, commands are relayed by 2,000 or so cells from a rat's brain.

NYTIMES 05/16/03 Fishing for Clarity in the Waters of Conscious-ness: Do fish feel pain? An article in Field and Stream considering consciousness and brain structure leads essayist James Gorman to troll for the truth. If you hook a fish and it squirms, is it experiencing pain or just reacting to stimulus? And what about the worm?

WIRELESS: O'Reilly Network [05/10/03 The NoCat Night Light - How many cats does it take to screw in a light bulb?: What if you could house an AP in a package the size of a large light bulb, and install it in an existing light socket? This seemed like a good idea, but how would you get network access to it without running CAT5 to the socket? Easy: Powerline Ethernet. (suggested by Dan Spisak)

Wireless Starter Kit (update) 2003 Wireless Networking Starter Kit 802.11g Update: With the rapid acceptance of 802.11g, Engst and Fleishman have put up a 3000 word addendum to their popular book to cover the standard and implementations by Apple (Airport Extreme), D-Link, Linksys, and others.

Wireless Report April 2, 2003Does Intel’s Centrino Portend WLAN Security Concerns?: Embedded 802.11 will make it easier to access your own network, but by the same token it will make your network easier for other to access. Still, you don't have to leave the door open. Michael Maggio talks about risk and prevention.

PHOTOGRAPHY: DCRP 05/12/03 Review: Sony Mavica MVC-CD500: Sony's newest CD Mavica is big, black and looks like a prop from an SF movie, but it takes 5 MP pictures and stores them unalterably onto onto a CD, which means that Scully and Mulder can take their UFO photos with confidence that the truth will stay in there....

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