ZDNet reports that Sony has launched its second generation of robotic pet, the ERS-210, successor to the Aibo.

Copmuter News Daily discusses the advent of the Chief Privacy Officer, a relatively new post in corporations that has been adopted by several companies recently.

A Swedish team has spent 70 years of processing time to solve what had been billed as the toughest code challenge ever set. MSNBC has the story.

Computer manufacturer Dell is preparing to announce a recall of an estimated 27,000 laptop batteries, after one overheated and caught fire. The story at Computer News Daily.

LinuxPR touches on the issue of Linux’ usage and popularity with women.

Australian IT reports: “The simple way to do multi-monitors is with a single
multi-output video card. One card, more than one
video connector. Multi-output cards suitable for
ordinary PCs have been around for some time, but they always used to use low
quality video chipsets, and be alarmingly expensive. Four years ago, you could drop
$AUD900 for a twin-output card using a pair of S3 Trio 64V+ chipsets, with a mere
1Mb of RAM for each one.”

Jack Kilby of TI, who invented the integrated circuit, and Professor Herbert
Kroemer of the University of California at Santa Barbara (UCSB), who devised
semiconductor heterostructures, won the physics prize this week. The Royal Swedish
Academy of Sciences also conferred a physics prize on Russian Zhores I. Alferov,
who worked in parallel but separately from Kroemer on heterostructures. From eeTimes.com.

Nando Times reports that Microsoft Corp. opened a new technology center Thursday designed to allow
online retailers and other dot-coms to design and test a variety of tools.

Canada has come with a novel way of dealing with URL disputes. From
1 November it has decided to tear up all its country’s domain names and
start again. We thought someone was having a laugh when they
informed us the new non-profit organisation set up to deal with .ca
domains, the Canadian Internet Registration Authority, had decided to
make everyone reapply for their URLs. From The Register.

According to the Daily Radar, until now there were uncertainties as to whether the
build-your-own-civilization game Cultures, developed by
German-based Funatics, would hit American shores. A
THQ spokesperson has assured FGN Online that “it will
be published over there [America] but it is not decided
yet whether THQ will be publishing it.”