0R35T35 asks: "I'm currently in the process of building an Asuro mobile robot, and am startled to find (through Google) that there aren't any English speaking community sites for this robot kit. Does anyone know of sites or resources devoted to this cute little guy, or have an Asuro of their own?"

Moby Cock writes "Jason O'Grady has posted a story on his ZDNet blog detailing the state of the current legal trouble he is embroiled in with Apple. He views it as another salvo in Apple's efforts to stamp out rumour sites posting 'trade secrets' prior to the official announcements. The discussion becomes rather pointed and goes as far as to suggest that the case is really a case in support of freedom of the press." From the article: "At issue was a series of stories that I ran in October 2004 about an upcoming product that was in development. Was it the next great PowerBook? Maybe the a red hot iPod? Maybe a killer new version of the OS? Nah. The stories about a FireWire breakout box for GarageBand, code-named 'Asteroid.' Yawn."

emf2268 asks: "I'm looking to either purchase or build (I'll do the circuitry myself if I have to) several dozen, small screens for an arcade game that uses a touch interface. Each screen, which should be around 6-10 inches, needn't be extremely advanced in the display department, since 16 colors will do just fine. An LED or LCD would do the job. But each screen also needs to be touch sensitive...it only needs to know if it's been touched, not where it was touched. How, can I build this as cheaply as possible?"

Anonymous writes "A Florida county is posting the Social Security numbers, bank account info and other sensitive data of hundreds of thousands of current and former residents on its public Web site, Computerworld is reporting. A county official says there's no problem, since the postings are in compliance with state law requiring public availability of records." From the article: "The breach stems from the county's failure to redact or remove sensitive data from images of public documents such as property records and family court documents, Hogman said. Included in the documents that are publicly available are dates of birth and Social Security numbers of minors, images of signatures. passport numbers, green card details and bank account information."

Retrogaming with Racketboy has a piece looking at some of the console-defining titles we miss from that little white box. From the article: "Phantasy Star Online - Sega was one of the main pioneers in online console gaming. While they had modest online offering with both the Genesis and Saturn, the Dreamcast was the first of their consoles to have online capabilities built into the stock machine. The Dreamcast came standard with a 56k modem and also had a (expensive) LAN/Broadband adapter available as an upgrade. Phantasy Star Online paved the way for Sega's groundbreaking online network and for later networks like XBox Live."

An anonymous reader writes "C|Net is reporting on a protestation by Dell's CTO, Kevin Kettler, who says quite loudly that they are not Microsoft and Intel's puppet." From the article: "Essentially, Kettler argued, Dell was responsible for selecting, if not necessarily developing, many of the technologies in today's desktop computers and servers. Among standards for which he said Dell deserves credit are 802.11 wireless networking, PCI Express communications technology and 64-bit extensions to Intel's x86 line of processors."

dylanduck writes "Good news for rover fans - Spirit is safe for the winter. It had been heading for a north-tilting spot to make sure its solar panels got enough sunlight during the imminent winter to survive, when a sand trap appeared. But, despite its busted wheel, it scooted round and is now sitting pretty. From the article: 'We've got a safe rover,' says principal investigator Steve Squyres. 'That's huge news for us.'"

bbsguru writes "How much do we know that we still don't know? A story in The Register points out that little has changed since Francis Bacon proposed combining knowledge to learn new things 400 years ago, despite all the computer power we now have. Scientific (and other) data is still housed in unrelated collections, waiting for some enterprising Relational Database Programmer to unlock the keys to understanding. Is RDBMS still a Brave New Frontier, or will Google make the art obsolete once they finish indexing everything?"

Survey firm Piper Jaffrey has results saying that teenagers are losing interest in videogaming. From the Gamasutra article: "Interestingly, almost 80 percent of teens indicated that they intend to spend less time playing video games in 2006 and nearly 70 percent indicated that their interest in playing video games is decreasing." What do you think could be causing this drop in interest from young people? Sequels? Mature themes? Sequels?

mjdroner writes "CNN has a story on an employment consulting firm report showing job cuts in the tech sector are down 40 percent." From the article: "Despite the inevitable job-cutting that typically follows mergers, the job market picture for the nation's tech workers is definitely improving. Many job seekers in high-demand fields such as storage systems administration and information security are probably finding themselves in the driver's seat when it comes to negotiating employment terms"

Edge Online has a short blurb mentioning a project at the University of California turning the Guitar Hero guitar into a real instrument. From the article: "For the final project of their Computer Audio course, University of California students Travis Chen and Sunny Chan have created Guitar Hero Hack, a plugin for sequencing software Max/MSP that lets players assign switchable banks of samples to each of the controller's buttons, utilizes its tilt switch as a way to clear current audio on any given track, and, the two hope, might be on its way to a fully functioning live instrument." His incredibly impressive demo video is well worth watching.

vitaly.friedman writes to mention an Ars Technica story on the ABC's newest bid to stay relevant in the Information Age. As of the end of this month the network will be airing certain popular television shows on the ABC website, starting the morning after their first broadcast. From the article: "All programs will be shown in their entirety, including commercials which cannot be avoided. That's a smart move on ABC's part, as it ensures that advertisers will get another shot at hawking their wares to an audience that might otherwise change channels during commercial breaks or fast-forward through them if recorded. Aside from being unable to avoid commercials, watching the programs will be similar to watching timeshifted content in that viewers will be able to pause, fast forward, and rewind."

Next Generation reports that NOA's George Harrison expects there to be 20 titles for the system at the Revolution launch. From the article: "The other thing we recognized is that you really make your reputation in the first year ... You've got to deliver software, not just at launch, but you've got to deliver software in the first six to nine months after launch. It has to be solid software. In GameCube, we didn't have that, we had kind of a drought for six months after it launched. By that time your reputation starts to solidify and it's hard to reverse that after awhile."

rafemonkey writes "Looks like the first hard info on a revolution game has hit the internet. The game, from Ubisoft, is called Red Steel. It's a FPS where the Revo's positional controller takes the place of the mouse. And, for those of you that were worried, the graphics look nice." PointlessWasteofTime points out that it doesn't actually look like an FPS, but more of a GunCon title, in a piece called A FanBoy Intervention. Elite Bastards has a brief history of the Revolution console. From the Waste of Time article: "Look at the Red Steel screens again. Never mind that Ubisoft has a habit of publishing concept renders and claiming they're in-game screenshots, and never mind that shots like that in magazines tend to have usually been 'touched up' a bit. Just look at the screens, then look at the inset photos of the people pointing and shooting with their Rev controllers: Guys... it's just a freaking light gun game. Tell me it's not. This isn't a badass 'Halo killer.' It's next-gen Duck Hunt."

1up has taken several of the more popular recent PC titles to Apple Boot Camp, and report back on how they handle the MacBook Pro hardware. From the article: "With all settings on medium, F.E.A.R. is absolutely playable. Again, none of the silky-smooth 60 fps that hardware freaks clamor for, but it looks good and plays well even with tons of characters onscreen. Annoyingly, F.E.A.R. offers a really pitiful selection of resolutions, all of which are constrained to the old-fashioned 4:3 aspect ratio -- meaning that play on the MacBook's widescreen is stretched, and kind of ugly. That's not a hardware issue so much as limited programming, and presumably anyone with a widescreen PC is in the same pickle."