MSNBC.com | Robots to offer Japan’s elderly new lease on life

Slashdot | Update on the Optimus Keyboard

According to a newly-added FAQ, the Optimus Keyboard will be real. They’re apparently aiming for it to be available sometime in 2006…and the FAQ indicates that it’ll cost “less than a good cell phone”. I can’t wait!

Slashdot | Optimus Keyboard with OLED Display Keys

I need one of these!

WoW General Discussion | 1.6 Patch Notes

Looks like 1.6 is going live today - lots of big changes! Warriors and Warlocks both get a respec because of all the talent changes in this patch. I really have no idea what talents I’m going to aim for… I’d really like to pick up Improved Healthstone, now that the benefit extends to anyone you give a stone to. Master Demonologist looks interesting, but I really have no idea what it’ll do to me in normal gameplay. I’d like to pick up Curse of Exhaustion for PvP, but I’m not sure if it is important enough to me to actually spend the points on it.

New graphics for the Fellheart gear, it’s turning neon green and tentacle-y. I think it looks pretty neat, actually, though I know a lot of people have been complaining about it. I wish they’d updated my Nemesis Skullcap - the turban just doesn’t look terribly impressive.

New content as well - BlackWing’s Lair goes live in this patch. From what I understand, we’ve got absolutely no chance of killing Nefarion as it is now. He’s got some kind of nasty attack that is just plain not surviveable without an Onyxia Scale Cloak, and we don’t have nearly enough of those yet. Still, I believe there’s more to the new instance than just Nefarion, so maybe we can have some fun in there even without the cloaks. Regardless, even if it means a messy death, I’m very eager to see what’s in there.

Hopefully this patch will go through with little trouble and I’ll be able to enjoy an evening of WoW tonight. We’ve got a Molten Core raid scheduled for tonight that I’ve really been looking forward to. I can’t wait to get back in there and start killing stuff again…

Tom’s Hardware Guide | Longhorn’s Secret Modder Surprises

Alright, so maybe I was a bit hasty is completely dismissing Longhorn’s improvements earlier today… It looks like Microsoft is going to make it easier on those of us who like to play with our hardware. As it stands now, in WinXP, making any significant change to your computer’s hardware usually requires a complete re-install of Windows. Under Longhorn, it looks like Windows will automatically detect your hardware changes and re-install the necessary components itself.

It also looks like Windows will be able to optimize your hardware to meet the task at hand, to a certain degree. Longhorn will apparently be able to enable and disable devices as well as change hardware settings and configuration to optimize your system for gaming or general use - assuming that the developers properly utilize this new feature. My best guess is that it’ll be completely unused except for a few Microsoft published pieces of software here and there, which means that drivers and hardware will have poor support for it as well, which means that even those pieces of software that do utilize this feature won’t see much of an improvement. Still, a couple years down the line, this could become something very nice.