Do you want a high-end disk to go with your ultra-fast InfiniBand setup? (We do.) Texas Memory Systems has just built some super-speedy solid state storage that can operate in pure InfiniBand (that’s an extremely fast serial data connection) and mixed-InfiniBand environments, and due to its low latency and high speed, the company claims that its disk is the fastest storage in the world. The RamSan drive has seriously ludicrous access times — usually in the neighborhood of 15 microseconds, 250 times faster than your garden-variety hard drive for mere mortals. Further, it’s got up to 50,000 random I/Os per second per single-ported controller, which is more than 100 times quicker than regular off-the-shelf drives. We’re not sure how much this will cost, but you can bet that it’ll be a lot more than the under-a-dollar per gigabyte trend that we’ve been seeing lately, and will be used only by very particular businesses for very particular needs. Like ours, for, um, whatever the heck we want.

[Via TechWorld; thanks, Evan]
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from engadget

We know Epson’s engineering team prides itself on cranking out the tiniest, most miniscule products they possibly can, and the company has veered from the printing / scanning world for a bit to unveil its Endeavor ST100 “micro PC.” While the Endeavor NA101 did its wee thing on the laptop side, the ST100 packs an Intel Core 2 Duo (T7200, T7400, or T7600) processor, ATi’s Radeon Xpress 200M graphics chipset, up to 2GB of DDR2 RAM, 40GB to 160GB SATA drive options, and a dual-layer DVD burner. It also sports a ho hum port assortment including VGA, audio in / out, Ethernet, 56k modem, and six USB 2.0 ports with a pair of them being on the front panel. While it doesn’t quite undercut the Mac Mini’s 6.5- x 6.5- x 2-inch enclosure and 2.9-pound weight, this PC weighs in at just over five pounds while boasting a 7.28- x 7.68- x 2.95-inch package. Those looking for an ultraportable desktop on a budget shouldn’t find much to complain about here, as the ST100 starts at just Â¥59,850 ($508), but we’re sure adding a speedier CPU and gobs of RAM will ratchet that right up.

[Via Akihabara News]
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from engadget

We make no bones about the fact that we’re not experts when it comes to audio engineering, but last we checked, headphones work pretty well when they’re inserted directly into the ear. Clearly this isn’t the case at the Next Generation Computing Show 2006 in Korea, where N.Tech demoed its latest front-wear (NVP200) and rear-wear (NVP100, pictured) vibration, or bone-conduction, headphones. The idea is that sound vibrates into the skull and then straight on to the auditory nerve; though if someone is blasting their iPod next to you on the train ride home, it would seem your auditory nerve is going to be getting a lot more noise than signal. Plus, constantly pressing buttons situated very near to your cerebellum and brain stem can’t be a good idea, either. But we’ll defer to the authorities on this one.

Read – NVP200
Read – NVP100

from engadget

Call us fickle, but if the rumored specs on this thing are even close to accurate, we’re quite ready to put the whole Nokia N97 debacle firmly behind us. In fact, this so-called “Xda Flame” for O2′s networks (read: not us poor, smartphone-starved Americans) has us salivating uncontrollably to the point where we’re embarrassing ourselves. Skeptical? Check this: a 3G radio (HSDPA, we’re guessing), 2GB of internal storage, 802.11b/g, a 2 megapixel cam, surround sound, TV out, and an XScale PXA270 clocked at 520MHz, all paired up to a 3.6-inch VGA (yes, we said VGA) display powered by an NVIDIA GoForce 5500. Breathtaking, is it not? Sounds too good to be true, in fact — but we should know some time next year when this thing’s allegedly lined up to hit store shelves. Now go back to your 8525s, folks, and we’ll let you know when you can buy one of these suckers.

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This shows why everyone should use stronger Windows passwords for security reasons. You know what they say: “It’s better to be safe than sorry.” Click Video link for more info. Short disclaimer from the video’s creator:

Why should you use strong passwords? This video shows how to crack windows passwords. It is only intended for educational purposes, to show you why it is important to use stronger passwords. Don’t use this information illegally

Video here
From techeblog

Our mother always used to tell us, “you’d lose your head if wasn’t screwed on,” but we’re sure that had she grown up in this decade she’d say, “you’d lose a USB key carrying sensitive data if Microsoft didn’t patent a technology to counteract the problem.” Or something like that. As you might’ve guessed, Microsoft has a new patent, and this one is to help that hapless soul charged with setting up a wireless home network, who, Microsoft admits, “faces a daunting task” at such a prospect. See, Windows can load network set-up details onto a CD or other form of removable storage, but if the user loses the item, they also compromise their network security. We figured this could be solved by some sort of “don’t be an airhead” message on the box, but Microsoft put its brain to the task and came up with self-destructing USB memory keys, with enough juice in them to power the key for one hour, after which the data disappears fuhevah. The keys are brightly colored so the user doesn’t slap anything important on them, but it seems like an interesting solution to a completely ridiculous interesting problem.

[Via New Scientist]
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from engadget