GrumpySimon asks: "ABC News is reporting that High School kids are dropping out of high school in 'epidemic proportions', with an estimated 2,500 kids quitting daily. What's wrong with our school system that so many kids prefer working 40 hours a week instead? How can this be fixed?" It seems to be an America truism that "things get better after High School," and it wouldn't be surprising if most of you readers feel the same way. However, why does it have to be this way? What's the big problem with American High Schools where more and more children are feeling that it's better to risk the "real world" than to continue on with their education? Of course, another question that should be asked is: Is High School really the problem, or is it America's Educational system as a whole?

GameSpot reports that GameStop will be resupplied with Wii and PS3 units within the next few weeks. They have some details on how the two console did in comparison (more games bought with the Wii than the PS3), and point out the best sellers for both systems. From the article: "The executives also recapped the launch performances of the two systems. For the PS3, Sony's Resistance: Fall of Man and Electronic Arts' Madden NFL 07 were the biggest sellers, while Nintendo's The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess and Ubisoft's Red Steel stood out from the pack of Wii launch titles ... While GameStop and its EB Games brand collectively account for about 25 percent of the US gaming market, the company believes it didn't receive that much of either system's day-one shipments. Executives said that they've never been satisfied with their launch day allocation of any new machine, but added their main concern now is the flow of follow-up shipments — which both Sony and Nintendo have promised will come at a steady pace."

PreacherTom writes, "As recently as a few months ago, the wireless industry showed little apparent interest in partnering with companies like Sling, Skype, and ISkoot. After all, they make products that threaten to compete with services that mobile-phone companies are eager to sell. Times are changing, at first in Europe and perhaps soon in the U.S. A few days ago, Sling Media's CEO sat down with execs from Hutchison Whampoa, Nokia, and Sony Ericsson for discussions. Skype isn't far behind, while ISkoot is in 'advanced discussions.' According to analyst Krishna Kanagarayer, 'This could turn the U.S. wireless industry on its head. The advent of mobile access to full-blown home PC and TV applications could lead to a revamp in pricing of wireless service providers' data plans, possibly to tiered pricing. And as applications such as mobile Skype take hold, data and voice use will become indistinguishable.'"

thatguywhoiam writes "Slate's Eric Sofke takes a few considered shots at Nintendo's latest console. He claims the Wii Remote has major accuracy problems, which are compensated for by too-easy games. Meanwhile, just next door, Chris Suellentrop says the Wii is even better than the PS3. Check out both sides of the issue." From the Sofke article: "The new Nintendo's flaws make me question who the Wii's audience will be. Kids don't want embarrassingly easy games. Casual gamers of any age will bail out the first time their crosshairs go AWOL. And hardcore gamers like me aren't going to bother with a magic wand that makes us less efficient at killing aliens. For a console that wants to start a revolution, making users doubt their reflexes is a serious design flaw."

pete314 writes, "Open source databases can cut the total cost of ownership of a database by up to 60% compared to the cost of running proprietary databases from Oracle, Microsoft or IBM. According to data collected by Forrester Research, the savings average about 50%. Open source databases however still struggle to reach mission-critical enterprise applications because enterprises perceive them to be less secure and stable."

Epic's Gears of War has finally ousted Halo 2 as the most-played game on the Xbox Live service. It's not too surprising, given the game's popularity. Epic was apparently expecting that; GameDaily spoke with Microsoft Corporate VP of Global Marketing Jeff Bell, who as much as says that Gears is the first chapter in a trilogy. From the article: "Gamers today demand an excellent story in their games; they need to know what's at stake, and why they should care. Excitement tops the list of desired emotions, but they want to be scared, too. They want the rush that comes from being scared by an enemy or trapped in a dark room and escaping with their lives. The goal of this ad is to establish Marcus Fenix as the hero of the Gears of War trilogy. The intention is to create emotional connection with him that is lacking in typical third-person action title marketing, by communicating a sense of desperation, loneliness, overwhelming odds, and the ultimate futility of the situation he faces."

OriginalArlen writes, "In a story so surreal I had to check the primary source, the Register reports that the (London, UK) Metropolitan Police are trying out the use of eight tiny cams, mounted in the police helmet, to provide 360-degree evidence gathering in the event that an officer witnesses a crime. The press release also gives more evidence of the stealth spread of ubiquitous ANPR systems across the country as a spin-off 'benefit' to the London car congestion-charging scheme, which is likely to be rolled out across the country in the next few years. Are we already living in a Panopticon Society?" According to this report from the information commissioner for Great Britain, yep.

the_psilo writes, "My friend just got back from the Supercomputing conference in Tampa, FL where she and the rest of the Purdue Envision Center rocked the High Performance Computing Bandwidth Challenge by streaming a 2-minute-long, 125-GB movie over a 10-Gb link at 7.5 Gb/sec. They used 6 Apple Xserve RAIDs connected to 12 clients projecting onto their tiled wall (that's 12 streams in all). Lots of accolades from the people who set up the challenge. More links to articles and reviews can be found at the Envision Center Bandwidth Challenge FAQ page." The two-minute video is a scientific visualization of a cell structure from a bacterium. The Envision Center site hosts a reduced version of the video.

Reaching for perfection is a funny thing. By aiming for a high mark of quality, you ensure that your end product is as good as you can possibly make it. The reality is, of course, that perfection is unattainable. Every work of art, be it book, painting, movie, or videogame, is going to be flawed in some way; this is the reality of being human, after all. Gears of War, on that note, is far from perfect. The much-hyped and highly anticipated Xbox 360 shooter from Epic suffers from some truly terrible AI, a brief single-player campaign, and some unfortunately rough storytelling. Just the same, the flaws in this particular gem make the whole gleam that much brighter. Gears may just be the best game to be released on the 360 this year, and deserves the attention of anyone who enjoys holding a controller. Read on for my impressions of CliffyB's masterpiece, spots and all.

brian0918 writes, "A seven-member international consortium has signed a formal agreement to build the $12.8 billion International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER). From the article: 'Representatives from China, the European Union, India, Japan, Russia, South Korea, and the United States signed the pact, sealing a decade of negotiations. The project aims to research a clean and limitless alternative to dwindling fossil fuel reserves, although nuclear fusion remains an unproven technology.' ITER will be built 'in Cadarache, southern France, over the course of a decade, starting in 2008.'" If ITER is successful, a commercial reactor could be built by 2040. Funny, I seem to remember fusion researchers from Livermore in the 70s say that commercial power was 20 years away...

os2man writes "After the Month of Browser Bugs and the Month of Kernel Bugs, December will have a Week of Oracle Database Bugs. This project will release, every day for a week, a new 0-day bug specific to Oracle in order to show the current status of its [in]security. They are currently asking for new bugs, in order to extend the publication of new exploits a few more days."

eldavojohn writes "What makes a planet a planet? Slashdot covered the great debate about whether or not Pluto qualified and Space.com now has up an article explaining why we'll never have the term 'planet' defined to a point that everyone can agree on. Divisions in the scientific community currently stand over whether or not it has to be in orbit around a star, the dynamics of the body in question and apparently the country you come from plays a part in it too. Some feel the United States is the dominant deciding factor on the definition but the IAU has not turned to democratizing the definition yet." From the article: "In the broadest terms, a planet could be thought of as anything from an 800-kilometer-wide (500-mile-wide) round rock orbiting a dead star to a colossal gas ball floating alone in space."

nd01 writes "According to Gamepolitics.com, Bill OReilly has a few choice words for gamers and computer geeks in general. The well-known conservative pundit has harsh words for iPod owners, gamers, the PS3, and all of us 'disconnected from reality' by modern technological contrivances." From the article: "Basically what you have is a large portion of the population, mostly younger people under the age of 45, who don't deal with reality — ever. So they don't know what day it is; they don't know temperature it is; they don't know what their neighbor looks like. They don't know anything... because they are constantly diverted by a machine. Now what this does is it takes a person away from reality because they've created their own reality..."

applejax writes "SecurityFocus is running an article regarding some concerns about Vista's activation terms. Do you have the right to use properly purchased but not validated software? What happens if Microsoft deactivates your OS that was legally purchased? The article goes into some detail about Vista's validation and concerns." From the article: "The terms of the Vista EULA, like the current EULA related to the 'Windows Genuine Advantage,' allows Microsoft to unilaterally decide that you have breached the terms of the agreement, and they can essentially disable the software, and possibly deny you access to critical files on your computer without benefit of proof, hearing, testimony or judicial intervention. In fact, if Microsoft is wrong, and your software is, in fact, properly licensed, you probably will be forced to buy a license to another copy of the operating system from Microsoft just to be able to get access to your files, and then you can sue Microsoft for the original license fee."

Matthew Wecksell asks: "Several years after getting a digital camera, I find myself with far too many pictures to keep track of, with multiple folders titled 'At the Beach' and so on. Picassa will not let me assign multiple labels to a picture and then search against those labels the way iTunes will with my music (eg: Show me all pictures with '"Grandma Foo" and not "Grandma Bar"' to find pics that have just one of my two grandmothers). Also, I'd like to find a solution that lets me export the meta data or keep it in the picture files, not a proprietary database, so that in ten or twenty years, I can use another program on another platform and still have useful tags assigned to my pictures that I'm taking today — I have no interest in re-tagging my pics. Has anyone found a good solution to the picture organization problem? Is there any standard 'ID3' style for putting metadata into an EXIF header?"