NorbMan writes "Last month there was speculation about Microsoft's interest in joining forces with Yahoo! to battle Google. Today, a Merrill Lynch analyst recommended a Yahoo! takeover by Microsoft. From the article: "A Yahoo/MSN-Microsoft combination would have garnered approximately 41% share in the US of search queries [in April] versus Google with 44%.""

An anonymous reader writes "Earlier this week Jesse Keating announced the availability of Fedora Core 6 Test 1. New items in FC6T1 include Intel Macintosh support (well, mostly), update notification applet, GNOME 2.15, KDE 3.5.3, and the Fedora Core 6 Extras development repository is already available. With FC6T1's availability, Phoronix has published their own preview of this release. The article is focused on an editorial about changes to come for Fedora Core 6, as well as images from Fedora Core 6 Test 1. The next Fedora Core 6 testing release (Test 2) is due out in July, while the final release is due out this September."

bbyakk writes "After 6 months of development, Inkscape 0.44 is out. This version of the SVG-based vector graphics editor brings improved performance and tons of new features: Layers dialog, docked color palette, clipping and masking, native PDF export with transparency, configurable keyboard (including Xara emulation), Outline mode for complex drawings, innovative 'node sculpting' and lots more. Check out the full release notes, enjoy the screenshots, or download your package for Windows, Linux or Mac OS X."

UniGirlBot asks: "I am a distinction / high distinction student who normally doesn't have any major levels of stress during exams. Today I managed to have a major panic attack during an exam on databases and ended up leaving the room in tears about halfway through a 3-hour paper. This panic attack was an absolute first for me and I now have to begin the special consideration procedure, which I am grateful exists. For the record, I did study enough and the course was something I enjoyed doing. Does anyone out there have any advice on what I could do stop this from happening again, please?" If you've been in this position, how did you recover?

BlueCup writes "Mathematician Peter Woit of Columbia University describes string theory in his book Not Even Wrong,. He calls the theory 'a disaster for physics.' Which would have been a fringe opinion a few years ago, but now, after years of string theory books reaching the best sellers list, he has company."

Coudal points out a "Swell article from UK Magazine 'Design' from 1969," excerpting "Designing a computer is a continuous process in which technological breakthroughs must be matched by new hardware, and new hardware by new software, without invalidating the systems already in use."

Vicissidude writes "Since May, the Programmers Guild has filed 100 complaints with the U.S. Department of Justice, accusing several companies of advertising that they specifically want H-1B workers, a violation of U.S. law. The U.S. Immigration and Nationality Act requires that U.S. jobs must be available to U.S. workers. The complaints stem from ads containing wording such as "We require candidates for H1B from India," and "We sponsor GC [green card] and we do prefer H1B holders," the Programmers Guild said. The Programmers Guild, looking for ads on major online job boards, has so far targeted only ads seeking computer programmers, the guild said. It plans to file 280 more complaints over the next six months."

Bruce Perens writes "Senator John Sununu is proposing an amendment, H.R.5252, to strike both the broadcast flag and the radio flag from this year's U.S. telecommunications bill.

If the amendment does not pass, we will be faced with mandatory DRM in video and audio devices, and with a prohibition on the use of Open Source software for such devices (because it can be modified to remove DRM). Time is short, the committee markup of the telecommunication bill is proceeding now in Washington and it's important to show your Congressperson that there is constituent support to remove the broadcast and audio flags. Please see the alert and please use the information there to call your Congressperson today."

gbulmash asks: "Recently, I began working on a graphics project and wanted to use ImageMagick. As a PHP coder, I figured I'd use MagickWand for PHP. But after some investigation, I decided that an alpha at 0.1.8 with sparse documentation just wasn't going to be good enough for production use. I decided that PerlMagick would be a much better API, but I didn't want to code the whole project in Perl. In the end, I found a cool package for embedding Perl code in PHP scripts (with an article on its use) and it went to a 1.0.0 release, earlier this year. I think I've found my answer, but before I make a final decision and go ahead with it, I thought I'd ask the knowledgeable Slashdot crowd: Is there a better way of interfacing Perl with PHP so you can get the best of both worlds?" So you've got Perl in your PHP, is there a way to do PHP in your Perl?

The New York Times reports that now even summer camps are raising concerns about social networking sites such as MySpace, Friendster, and Facebook. Camps are worried about the ramifications of certain activities being associated with their summer programs after revealing pictures or postings are made online. Some camps are banning digital cameras, while others are instructing campers and parents to remove references to the camps from blog postings. Of course, the camps take the stance that they are merely trying to protect the children:

"The information that kids share today often is personal and private information that allows predators to track them down. We're also concerned about cyber-bullying."

An anonymous reader writes "Benchmarks can make a big difference if they are accurate in predicting performance. That's simple enough to describe; it's not nearly so simple to implement. Benchmarks can be an excellent tool for predicting performance and estimating requirements, but they also can be misleading, possibly catastrophically so. This article looks at benchmarks; the good, the bad and the ugly."

WestTexasWaltz writes "According to a teardown analysis, Toshiba is losing $200 per unit, of its new HD DVD player, in order to gain some marketshare. Interesting that integrated circuits account for more of the cost than the drive itself. Also, this particular analyst concludes that Blu-ray and HD-DVD will "not be a repeat of VHS vs. Beta" and that a stalemate is the likely outcome."

god4twenty writes "Google announced yesterday that they are testing ads on videos on the Google Video service, matching capabilities that other video services have had for a while. Up to now, Google Video uploaders could make their video available either for a fee or for free. The new ad-laced videos are available on Google Video's "free today" section. The new ads appear as banners above the video.

When the test concludes, Google plans to run auctions where advertisers bid to have their ads displayed on each video. The ad revenue will be split with the video owner. " Time for me to start collecting phat bank from the videos I have up there.

An anonymous reader writes "New Scientist has a story about the most intensive computer program ever created. It runs on IBM's big beast, Blue Gene/L, at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California and carries out 207.3 teraflops (trillion cacluations per second). The program, called Qbox, performs very complex quantum calculations to simulate the behaviour of thousands of atoms in three dimensions. Wow."