Much like the multi-million dollar jet systems that inspired it, the Saitek Pro Flight X65F joystick/throttle system for PCs doesn't move at all. That's right, not an inch, and yet the controls were compared to mind control. [ars technica]

The X65F uses "force sensing" tech, just like military planes today. In layman's terms, that means no moving parts.

Apply subtle pressure to the 'stick, and your plane banks and turns on a dime.

Twist the controller for precise rudder control, writes ars technica, and then before you know it the joystick is performing almost like an extension of your hand.

Dual engine control for games that support it, or lock them together for games that don't.

Saitek claims that with the X65F there are 608 possible commands a player can issue without ever taking their hands off the controls.

And while the X65F won't cost you millions, it certainly isn't cheap at $400. This is not including the optional "Saitek Pro Flight Instrument Panels" that you can bolt on the back for a crazy amount of realism. [Saitek via ars technica]

Anyone feeling extra geeky today? Well you should. Today's date, when written in a six digit format (MMDDYY), is a binary style number. Updated.

Writes reader Eric, who tipped us off about the date earlier this morning:

It just occurred to me that today's six digit date format (MMDDYY or YYMMDD) is in binary style. Thought this was interesting and wanted to share it with the Gizmodo team. From what I can tell, this looks like it will be the only year it happens and will happen four times (January 1st and 10th and October 1st and 10th).

As you can see, this neat little phenomenon will happen a few more times throughout this year and next. 2010: Geekiest year ever? Update: As noted below, "Oct. 10th 2011 November 11, 2011 will be the last binary day of this century."

OLED displays are already something beautiful, but this unnamed Japanese company, spied at CES, has taken the technology and turned it into some truly awe-inspiring artwork.

The individual panels seen in the video actually line up to form a flowing scene. The effect is kind of cool, popping into place only when the cameraman views it at the right angle. There's also an elaborate fan toward the back of the booth that we glimpse momentarily, as well as a number of OLED flowers.

Like most things OLED, none of the stuff seen here is cheap. Purported asking price for the first piece is $100,000. The flowers go for a more modest $100 apiece.

Really, it's only a matter of time before society comes around to the idea of moving OLED artwork and something like this is sharing space in a museum with a da Vinci, don't you think? [OLED Info]

We give them 10 seconds; they give us the best pitch they can huck.

I love Casio slow motion cameras, even if their stills are generally not all that great. The new EX-FH100 is pocketsized, has a 10x zoom and a new 120frame per second mode that doesn't have low light issues. Love it.

Older cameras would be impossible to use at 300FPS indoors, because the grain and exposure would become an issue. A quick test on the floor of CES showed that even zoomed in, the 120FPS mode, benefiting from the highly light sensitive backlit CMOS, did really well. And truthfully, 120FPS is better for sports, etc than 300FPS, in my opinion. The 120FPS mode also has another benefit — 640 x 480 pixel res, which is more usable than the old 300FPS mode's 512 x 384 res. It has modes up to 1000FPS, though.

I'm getting one of these, without a doubt.

D-Link's giving your popularity the benefit of the doubt by offering 8 Ethernet ports on their new DIR-632 802.11n router. If you're worried about all those open ports bumming you out, D-Link has 3 other new devices to check out.

If the DIR-632's 8 ports seem like overkill, there's the D-Link Rush (DAP-1560), the Touch (DAP-865), and a new 802.11n pocket router that has no epithet.

The Rush is a secure, powerful access point designed to beef up your current home network for bandwidth intensive content, like HD movies. The Touch, as its name suggests, has a 3" touch screen for, you know, changing all those settings you change on your router. The pocket router can function as its own router or as an access point, extending an existing network.

The new routers will be available in the first half of 2010, and prices will be announced at launch. In the case of the DIR-632, that gives you just a few months to secure your LAN party RSVPs. [GDGT]

D-LINK ANNOUNCES THREE NEW 802.11n
WIRELESS HOME ROUTERS FOR GREATER SPEED,
DISTANCE AND PORTABILITY

The D-Linkâ Rush™ and D-Link Touch™ in Fast Lane of Home Connectivity; Wireless N Pocket Router
Provides Unlimited Mobility

LAS VEGAS, CES Booth 36232, South Hall, LVCC, Jan. 6, 2010 - D-Link today announced three innovative 802.11n wireless devices for the home - one that boosts network speeds to unprecedented levels for existing routers, another that combines high speed and range with stylish functionality in the digital home, and yet another that offers convenient wireless connectivity on the go.

The D-Linkâ Rush™ (DAP-1560) is D-Link's fastest, most far-reaching and most secure wireless device yet. It takes home networking to a new level of performance for homeowners who demand the fastest streaming possible of high-definition content, such as movies, HD video and photos. There is no need to replace the home router - its unique 4x4 antenna design helps boost the power of any existing 802.11 a, b, g or n router with up to 600Mbps* speed and greater signal coverage.

The dual-band selectable device transmits in 2.4GHz wireless band for applications such as surfing the Internet or in 5GHz wireless band for HD media streaming, online gaming and large data file transfer. The latest D-Link AP can also be used as a wireless client to Ethernet-enabled media devices such as video game consoles, Digital Video Recorders (DVR), and Digital Media Adapters (DMA) for seamless access to the Internet.

The D-Link Touch™ (DIR-865) blends power, speed, range, security, functionality and energy efficiency into one economical and attractive router for homes or small businesses with ever-growing multimedia applications. It sports a 3-inch interactive touch screen for easy setup, configuration and management of the router and Internet traffic.
Its concurrent dual-band capabilities and three data streams support data transfer rates up to 450Mbps*, allowing users to stream HD content faster than ever before in the 5GHz wireless band, while surfing the Internet without lag-time and checking email on the 2.4GHz band. The 802.11n Wi-Fi router is backward compatible to earlier standards (802.11 a/b/g).

The D-Link Wireless N Pocket Router is an ideal travel companion featuring multi-mode functionality. It can be used either as a wireless router to create an 802.11n Wi-Fi network anywhere one is needed, or as an access point (AP) to add Wi-Fi to an existing wired network. It is small enough for travellers to carry with them, includes a travel case for convenience and SharePort™ technology to enable users to share USB devices. The device also can be used to connect an Ethernet-ready device, such as a desktop PC or Xbox 360®, to a Wi-Fi network for increased flexibility and convenience.

Lightweight and compact with its own travel case, the Pocket Router is small enough to carry while traveling and sets up easily to share an Internet connection or connect to an existing wired network in a conference room, hotel room or anywhere a Wi-Fi network is needed. It delivers powerful 802.11n performance and offers the latest wireless security features to help prevent unauthorized access.

Price and Availability

The D-Link Rush, the D-Link Touch and the D-Link Wireless N Pocket Router will be available in the first half of 2010 through the company's network of retail and etail outlets, and at D-Link's online store, http://www.dlinkshop.com. Pricing will be announced when the products ship.

Taser, not content just helping cops electrocute old people and the handicapped, has decided to focus some of its energy on stopping sexting and texting while driving. Not with electrocution, sadly.

The tech itself is pretty ho-hum: it lets parents monitor texts and control when they can use their phone. Why the hell they're doing this when they normally make, you know, tasers, is beyond me. But hey, power to you, Taser.

Last we saw marathon karaoke man, he was singing for nobody like he was singing for his life. There's no evidence that he's stopped since Wednesday, but he has accumulated a small fanbase. Feel, as your pity transmutes into respect.

Quick heads up that I will be moderating what promises to be a great panel on the future of GPS navigation, starting in a little under an hour here at the Las Vegas Convention Center—3pm, North Hall N260. We've got amazing people from TomTom, Garmin, Nokia, TeleNav and SiRF/CSR on the panel, and my guess is that Apple and Google will come up at least once each—every 3 minutes. Here are some more details: [CES]

China keeps growing like a giant red octopus fed by nuclear power and monosodium glutamate, a country that keeps spending money in pharaonic projects. Some useful, like the fastest train in the world. And some eerie and worthless, like Ordos.

The city of Ordos was founded on February 26, 2001. Ordos means "palaces" in Mongolian, and it's richer than Beijing. In fact, with a $14,500 GDP per capita, it's one of the richest in the whole country. With 1,548,000 inhabitants, Ordos is not exactly empty. But much of its modern architecture, sometimes awesomely futuristic, sometimes nafftastically overdeveloped and underdesigned, remains completely empty. The density of this city is only 17.8 people per square kilometer. By comparison, New York City has 157.91 habitants per square kilometer, San Francisco has 6,688.4, and Madrid 5,293.69. Even the city of Dubai, which has only grew in recent years, has 408.18 people per square kilometer.

And yet, the city of Ordos keeps growing like its motherland, with no control and making little sense at times. If at all. [Wikipedia]

Adventurous Droid owners looking for something new can now load their phones up with the yet-to-be-released HTC Espresso's Sense UI update. If you have a rooted Droid, check out this guide for full instructions. [AllDroid via Redmond Pie]

CES week meant one thing: Absolute gadget overload. Here's the best of Gizmodo's dispatches from gadget hell, all in one place.

Monday—The Pre-Pre-Pre-Show

This is the day that the press starts to show up, and when the conference begins to assume its horrible shape. It's not really CES, but it's starting to feel that way.

• MSI's lineup semi-leaked, including a dual-screen ereader and a 3D laptop. These, nt coincidentally, will be concepts and words you'll be unbelievably tired of by the end of the week. GET READY FOR 3D EREADERS, Y'ALL.

• There was a washer/dryer with Android. Why? Why not? (But really, why?)

• And we did a little recon on the main CES building. What we found: 3D, 3D, 3D, 3D.

Tuesday—Day Zero

The show floor isn't open yet, but the press conferences are starting in full force. This means interesting announcements! And gadget spam. But mostly announcements.

• Lenovo dumped the first true banner products of the show, with the IdeaCenter 300a ultrathin AIO, the first Snapdragon smartbook, and a capacitive multitouch netbook tablet.

• Iomega figured out how to make your entire PC portable.

• This is kind of inevitable: A 24-hour 3D channel is coming in 2011. It will show Avatar on loop, I think.

• Vizio's aiming upscale for once, with 480Hz, locally dimming LED 3D TVs. And a bizarrely wide 21x9 TV, which is proportioned roughly like a billboard.

• A pico projector with a projection you can actually manipulate with your fingers.

• Asus confirmed their commitment to Bamboo-trimmed faux-eco-laptops, designer netbooks for the lay-deez, and ridiculous giant desktop replacements with dual trackpads. They also predicted the future, and gave it a stupid name: Waveface.

• We got to play with the Lenovo IdeaPad hybrid tablet...thing. It's got a ton of potential.

• An HDTV in a polar bear.

• I ran Spring Design's dual-screened Android ereader through its paces. It's a geekier Nook.

• We heard rumblings about a multitouch HP tablet, codeveloped with Microsoft. It sounds a little Courier-y, but almost definitely not the Courier.

Wednesday—Day One

The show floor still isn't open, but the new hardware is coming fast and hard.

• Sling unveiled three new ways to share your TV with yourself (it's what they do!), including a USB Slingbox. Their new remote control is supremely sexy, but also only available from your cable or sat provider.

• LG assured Plasma fans that they're still in the game, and put their LED TVs on a dangerous crash diet. Then they threw a hard drive into their top-line Blu-ray player, because nobody stopped them. Meanwhile, set-top boxes inched closer to obsolescence.

• Netgear's new wireless-N routers can receive and share both 3G and WiMax. Meanwhile, dedicated 3G and WiMax sharing hardware inched closer to obsolescence.

• Philips' Research Labs is making good on the color ebook reader promise, one tech demo at a time.

• AT&T will finally get some Android phones, courtesy of HTC, Dell and Motorola. They're also getting two webOS (Palm) phones, which could mean a lot of things right now. Hopefully more that just the Pre and Pixi.

• Toshiba claims that their new cell TVs can convert 2D content into 3D in real time. It may or may not look terrible.

• Samsung's LED TV line is pornographically thin.

• Panasonic showed us their dual-eyed 3D camcorder. It'll be $22,000 when it comes out in Fall. Speaking of 3D!

• More Panny news, but this definitely earns its own bullet: They've released another mega TV, this time at 152 inches—the largest ever—and with 4x by 2k resolution and 3D support. Awesome.

• Microsoft's Project Natal is coming in time for Christmas! Which is basically as far away as it could be, in 2010.

• Sony's BDP-S770 Blu-ray player Has 3D, Wi-Fi and Netflix. And you can control it with an iPhone.

• We got a hands-on with with Sony's Dash, a slick 7" internet viewer.

• Sony—they got busy this year—also released GPS and Compass enabled cameras. So your pictures will know where you are, even if you don't.

• We checked out the first 3D DirecTV broadcast, and it looked as good as any home theater 3D we've seen.

• We got the chance to flip the Motorola Backflip, the first folding Android phone. It is..interesting.

• Steve Ballmer's keynote! The moment everyone was waiting for! There was a Windows 7 HP "slate," but no Courier.

• We got our paws on Nvidia's tablet, an as-of-yet unnamed, 7" Android-running affair.

• We tried out Kodak's Waterproof Playsport pocket cam. It might be our favorite one yet.

• Sprint is really, totally, officially launching WiMax with the Sprint Overdrive hub, allowing five people to suck down some serious bandwidth.

• We saw a laptop with a transparent OLED screen. We don't know how useful that is, but it sure is futuristic.

• Samsung's 3D OLED display brings us ever closer to being actually, literally paper-thin.

Thursday—Day Two

• We got a hands-on with the Skiff reader. The verdict: Kindle and Nook, get scared.

• Alienware showed off the M11X, a sub-$1000 netbook, which is about as alien to their usual line-up as you can get. We got to try it out.

• We love the slate concept from Dell (even though it sort of looks like a big iPod Touch). We got a quick look in a dark corridor. Very cloak and dagger.

• Here's how Plastic Logic's Que Reader felt to our hands: tall, slender, and blissful. The price tag, however? Not so slender.

• We were the first to get touchy feely with the Sling Touch Control 100 DVR remote.

• The Else Emblaze is a touchscreen smartphone David in a industry packed with Goliaths. But the underdog always has a shot, and there was a lot to like about the Else.

• We oohed and ahhed over Intel's double multitouch, Tweet-displaying wall. Once we picked our jaw up off the floor, we shot some video.

• The new wood-bodied Polaroid PIC-1000 might give you splinters, but it works with Polaroid 1000 Instant film.

• We got the first hands on with Skype TV and it seems like it's going to be a great way to keep in touch with your family. Whether that's a good thing or not is up to you.

• The Palm Pixi Plus and Palm Pre Plus were announced! They're coming exclusively to Verizon on January 25. We tried out the Pre Plus and the Pixi Plus and found that the updates were welcome, if not as extensive as we might like.

• We got to peer through the transparent-screened Samsung IceTouch PMP and couldn't help but appreciate its utter weirdness.

• We also scoped out Samsung's C9000 Ultra-thin TV, as well as their Wi-Fi-enabled, touchscreen, video-playing remote. It was just about as cool as it sounds.

• Haier cut the wires—all of em—on a prototype wireless TV, thanks to MIT's WiTricity and WHDI wireless video. Freedom!

• There's a lot of sadness going on at CES, in many different forms, but this karaoke-singing Sisyphus was doomed to sing for eternity. Or at least all of CES.

• If you only watch one four minute recap video of CES this year, make it Joel Johnson's four minute recap video of CES.

• ioSafe burned, drowned and crushed a hard drive to show that it was tough as nails. Afterward, it worked!

• Hard drives weren't the only things that we tried to break this year at CES. Gorilla Glass showed off their unbreakable, unscratchable panels.

• We tried out the $199 Freescale tablet and thought the UI was decidedly last-gen. One insulting example: you have to flick the browser's scroll bar to move down a web site.

• The Lenovo Skylight smartbook, despite its frisbee form factor, showed some promise despite not being quite so smart, yet.

• With all these new 3D TVs being announced, everyone's rocking 3D specs. Our gallery shows that some wear them better than others.

Friday—Day Three

• The As Seen On TV Hat, as seen on TV, blocks out all that boring real life stuff going on around you so you can focus on watching video on your iPhone.

• We got a real hands on with the 5" Dell tablet, and while we're not sure why we need it, we are sure that we like it.

• Pixel Qi's transflective LCD display gives you the best of both worlds: full LCD color and E-Ink-esque readability. E-Ink should be shaking in its boots.

• We took a look at Navteq's laser-based rig for 3D mapping. Suck it, street view.

• This year, mutant camcorder rigs popped up everywhere at the convention. We put together a gallery of the most mutantest we encountered.

• We put PR people on the spot by giving them 10 seconds to shill their product in a little segment we call Justify Your Gadget .

• We checked back in with the Saddest Man at CES on video and were happy to report that morale had improved at his karaoke stage.

• Fittingly, both being things that intrigue and disturb us, Taser and Sexting are now official enemies.

• Casio's Exilim EX-FH100, a slow-mo shooting point and shoot, is improving its tech and making us happy in the process.

• The meanest thing we did at CES this year wasn't very mean. The press room didn't have enough boxed lunch, so we ordered a bunch of pizza.

We do some moaning and groaning about CES and all of misery it entails, but in the end it's still a great time to see old friends, make new ones, and, of course, check out some really exciting gadgets. Here's Brian's post on the happiest moments of CES.

Google calls Nexus One a superphone, thinking that we're all a bunch of imbeciles who would think it's better that the rest of the smartphones. After all, "Superphone" beats "Smartphone", right? Tell that to Batman. [JoyofTech—Thanks Robert Grossman]

MOTO Development Labs devised a simple method of analyzing capacitive touch screens using drawing programs. They put the iPhone, the Nexus One, the Droid, and the Droid Eris through the paces and proved not all touch screens are created equal.

Using only your fingers and a drawing app, MOTO shows how you can test out the accuracy of your smartphone's touch screen. The test is simple: draw some slow, steady lines across the screen with your finger. If they're smooth and straight, your touch screen is tracking with relative accuracy. If they're wavy or jagged, your phone might not be giving your fingers the attention they deserve.

MOTO's test showed the iPhone tracking the most accurately of the four, with smooth, straight lines. The Motorola Droid fared worst of the bunch, its crossing lines tracking so jaggedly that the screen looked like a jigsaw puzzle. The Eris and the Nexus One landed somewhere in between.

If jagged lines are the symptoms of a subpar touch screen, MOTO suggests that the affliction can be any combination of too large a sensor, too low a touch-sampling rate, or too inaccurate an algorithm. [MOTO Development Labs - Thanks Sabrina]

Death Calls the Tune, a project by German designers lab binaer, looks like a regular turntable, until you turn the lights off. Instead of playing "California Dreamin'," this record displays text messages in phosphorus.

Rather than producing sound, this hacked record player produces light. By covering the record platter with four bands of light-sensitive phosphorescent paint and replacing the turntable's cartridge with a LED light, the player creates beautiful bands of green that quickly spring to life and then fade away

A microcontroller determines the pulse of the LED cartridge, allowing for the display of individual letters and, in turn, the fading 50-character messages seen in the video. It's just too bad this psychedelic project's messages are so hung up on death and destruction. [Hackaday via Make]

Base jumping, one of the world's most dangerous sports, is very cool. The Burj Khalifa AKA the Burj Dubai, the world's tallest building, is also very cool. The two together? Well that's just God damn crazy.

See that little speck falling off that building? That's either Nasir Al Niyadi or Omar Al Hegelan, two extremely extreme extreme sports dudes, flying all 2,716 feet down the side of the recently-opened Burj Khalifa, the world's tallest building.

Head over to The Guardian for video of the amazing feat.

The video includes helmet-cam footage of the world record-setting, half-mile drop. One of the jumpers moments before taking the plunge: "You're still looking at us like we're crazy." Uh, yeah. [The Guardian via @designobserver via Fast Company]

The United States Consumer Product Safety Commission has issued recalls on Acer's AS3410, AS3410T, AS3810T, AS3810TG, AS3810TZ, and AS3810TZG laptops, all 13.3" models, due to bad internal wiring of the microphone. Apparently three incidents of short circuiting have been reported, causing the laptop's plastic cases to melt.

For more information, check out the CPSC website or contact Acer. [CPSC via SlashDot via Engadget]

Not only that: a big-ass telescope that you can attach a camera to.

The Celestron CGE 1400 Aplantic Telescope is not for amateurs, unless you're an amateur with $10,000 to blow on a telescope that looks like it wouldn't fit in most single-car garages. For all you true Astrophotographers out there, the full details are available from Celestron. For those of you who'd rather just make jokes about what Adam Frucci may be looking at, I highly recommend the comments section below.

Hint: It's not from an episode of I Love Toy Trains

It's actually Princeton physicists calibrating a nuclear fusion reactor with a TOY TRAIN

Ok, it's not as absurd as it sounds, according to the NY Times. In order to fine tune the neutron sensors inside the reactor, scientists at the Plasma Physics Laboratory ran the train on a circular track for three days inside the reactor, carrying a chunk of californium-252 that released neutrons as it disintegrated.

Previously, neutron calibration had been carried out with a stationary chunk of the same element, but scientists at the lab discovered calibration is 10x more accurate if the element is moving around during the reactor maintenance. The reactor is part of a larger Spherical Torus experiments, which is looking at ways to fuse hydrogen atoms at high temperatures, in a similar manner as the sun.

And for all it's troubles, the train was able to return to it's spot around the laboratory X-mas tree afterwards. But don't worry, californium-252 is hardly radioactive, so everyone was safe. [NY Times]

Usually, people know better than to actually use a display toilet, especially one that's on a show floor for an event with tens of thousands of people in attendance. Usually.