Cappella writes "It is confirmed. Alcatel and Lucent are combining to form a USD $25 billion entity. This marks a new wave of telecommunications company consolidation in the next few months to come." They first tried to work out a merger five years ago, but finally, at long last, it's come to fruition.

Roberto writes "Gorgeous nerd Annalee Newitz hacked a political interpretation to recent vacuum cleaner cockfights at O'Reilly's ETech: 'Hollywood corporations have finally admitted that the real reason they built digital restriction management (DRM) software into PVRs and DVD players was to stop geeks from turning their recording devices into back-alley combat machines. You haven't seen ugly until you've watched what a DVD player without DRM can do to a TiVo.' Don't try to even think of this at home."

Since nothing else really interesting is happening, here is a CNN story about Apple vs Apple where you can read about the latest developments in the latest round of the never ending court battles as two bazillion dollar companies fight over who gets to use the word 'Apple' to sell music.

An anonymous reader writes "PC World's Techlog has a short piece talking about the upcoming emergence of 'Windows Vista Capable' PCs." From the article: "The Vista Capable designation doesn't promise that a PC will provide a great Vista experience, or even that it'll support all Vista features or features...just that it'll be able to run Windows Vista Home Basic in some not-very-well-defined-but-apparently-adequate way. At the moment, there are still new PCs on store shelves that don't meet the Vista Capable guidelines--for instance, low-end systems still sport 256MB of RAM in some cases. Wonder if that means that that A) we'll see some cheap systems that still have XP even after Vista ships; or B) the specs on even the cheapest machines will be beefed up; or C) we'll see machines that have Vista preloaded but which don't qualify as Vista capable?"

News.com has an article up looking at something I find interesting and somewhat confusing. The Vcom ATM is an attempt to make people's lives more convenient by adding unexpected functionality to the standard Teller Machine. Besides dispensing cash, new ATMs can fulfull the roles of PayPal (by sending money to people), bank (by cashing checks on the spot), and cellphone store (by selling Verizon services). From the article: "The Circle K and Exxon Mobil machines are far more basic than 7-Eleven's Vcoms, which have been called overengineered. Several dozen customers polled informally outside a 7-Eleven in Winter Springs, Fla., recently said that they had never used the Vcom inside, and one woman who said she did use it once to withdraw cash complained that it was 'confusing' and 'complicated,' and added that she would not use it again. 'There were just too many steps,' said the woman, Peggy Baker, who teaches French in Winter Springs. 'And the $1.75 transaction fee was too much--it was painful.' She said she was not interested in the other Vcom features, which require users to enroll and enter a Social Security number on a touch screen."

chr1sb writes "The Age has a commentary piece outlining how Apple's domination of the online media market is continuing to grow, but speculating that significant competition from the likes of Nokia and Motorola will rapidly relegate Apple's presence in the market to a corner, just as clone manufacturing of IBM PCs dominated the initial success of the Macintosh. From the article: 'The iPod/iTunes system will move into a niche with Macintosh computers because Steve Jobs has again stuck with closed architecture and total control. This will happen quickly because mobile phones are being turned over about every year.'."

dtjohnson writes "A new Swedish study has found that heavy users of cell phones had a 240 percent increase in brain tumors on the side of their head that the phone was used on. The study defined 'heavy' use as more than 2,000 total hours, or approximately one hour of use per workday for 10 years. An earlier British study was previously discussed here that didn't find an increased risk, although that study covered fewer subjects and only followed one type of brain tumor for a shorter period of time. Or course, the biggest epidemiological study of all is the one we are all participating in whenever we use our cell phone. The results from that study won't be available for a while."

bagsc writes "BBC News reports Twentieth Centruy Fox confirms The Simpsons are going to the movies! Should hit theatres in 2007." From the article: "A 25-second trailer for the film has been shown to US audiences at screenings of Ice Age: The Meltdown, promising to introduce 'the greatest hero in American history'. It then cut to Homer Simpson, wearing only his underwear, who admitted: 'I forgot what I was supposed to say.'"

Salandarin asks: "Until recently, I was convinced that my destiny involved a degree in CS, stemming from my love of video games. I've really enjoyed what I've found so far, and I enjoy the art of programming and the study of algorithms. However, from what I'm told, more advanced study requires a strong knowledge of mathematics. Mathematics, much like the hard sciences, are not my interest. Although I'm not ready to abandon CS just yet, I'm starting to examine other options. I enjoy the world of technology more than any other, and as such I would really like to stay here, no matter what field I choose. I am specifically curious about jobs that involve some form of journalism, writing, and/or communication, but I'm open to everything at this point. What other careers are available in technology, for a person like me?"

biohack writes "BBC News reports that results from the MINOS experiment have confirmed that neutrinos have mass. To look for neutrino oscillations, scientists created muon neutrinos in a particle accelerator at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab). After passing through a particle detector at Fermilab, a high intensity beam of neutrinos travelled to another particle detector 724km (450 miles) away in a disused mine in Soudan, US. The set up established that fewer particles were being detected at the Soudan site than had been sent from Fermilab, which confirmed that some neutrinos changed their flavor on the way - an effect called neutrino flavor oscillation, which requires them to have mass. 'To put it simply, if they are heavy, it means that there is a lot more mass in the Universe than we thought there was,' said Professor Jenny Thomas from University College London."

_iris asks: "Most software creators offer screenshots of their software in action. Screenshots are also included in most 3rd party software reviews and previews. The screenshots are usually focused on the unique features of the program. When I am evaluating software, I am usually interested in how the software differs in the more mundane ways. I'm more interested in differences in the file open/save dialogs, what program presents to me when I first open it, how the help system is integrated into the system, etc. My reasoning is that if there is only one or two programs that accomplish my needs, it doesn't matter much how it works or what it looks like because I am stuck either using it or writing my own. Do you care about the unique features or do you care about the slight differences in the common features or do you focus on something else entirely?"

wh0pper writes "Designtechnica has an excellent article on the state of digital music in 2006. Digital music accounted for only six percent of total music sales in 2005. Yet even that is a massive increase over the year before, a whopping 194 percent, which is fiscally valuable as the sales of CDs continue to decrease (although even with digital sales, the record labels experienced another downturn in 2005). While the young, usually the first to adopt and adapt to new technology, have been downloading and swapping music for quite some time, there's been a ripple effect into the older, warier area of the population, one that will only increase. Thank--or blame--Apple and its iPod, or any of the many other makes selling like hotcakes in the stores.

vladd_rom writes "Wikipedia maintains an up to date list with April Fools hoaxes from this year. The list already includes hundreds of entries. Among the most popular, one could find Google Romance, a new Google.com project, Google Browser, as well as Yahoo!'s desire to buy all Web 2.0 companies on the web. However, it seems that this year hoaxes will be more interconnected: the wiki page already includes some websites that announced that they have been bought by Yahoo!, and linked to Yahoo!'s blog post from their pages."

tini1212 writes "LIKE OMG!! Have you guyz seen Barbie Linux!!??!?!?!? It's like totally cool! It's open source too!!! We can spend long nights patching the kernel, and look at pictures of that total hottie, Linus Torvalds!" From the site: "Making a bid for a piece of the emerging desktop Linux market, Mattel, Inc. announced the immediate availability of downloadable beta ISOs for BarbieOS 0.99, and said it hoped the final 1.0 retail version would be on store shelves in time for Christmas. The new OS was created by Mattel to power the upcoming revision of its popular B-Book line of laptops for girls between the ages of four and eleven. The original B-Book laptop, which ran a modified version of PalmOS, was a huge hit with consumers last holiday season, so much so that many stores had trouble keeping them in stock."

ScaryFroMan writes "Gamespot has a preview up of Blizzard's new MMO, World of Starcraft. From the article: "To put it mildly, the human brain cannot possibly fathom and the English language cannot possibly express how amazingly incredible the next massively multiplayer game from Blizzard is going to be. First screens and details!""