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Intel

Submission + - Intel to buy smartphone chipmaker Infineon for $2B 1

Submitted by sylverboss
sylverboss writes: Intel Corp., the world’s largest chipmaker, is close to an agreement to buy Infineon Technologies AG’s wireless business, three people with direct knowledge of the discussions said. When it comes to desktop, laptop and server chips, Intel’s pretty much got a lock on the market but everyone can see the writing on the wall: mobile chips and architectures are the future of computing thanks to the popularity of smartphones, but Intel doesn’t have anything to offer in that regard. Don’t know Infineon? You should: they are the guys who have supplied Apple with their iPhone baseband chips since 2007.

Submission + - Gun buy back in Aust --stunning fall in suicides (smh.com.au) 6

Submitted by Phurge
Phurge writes: TEN years of suicide data after John Howard's decision to ban and then buy back 600,000 semi-automatic rifles and shotguns has had a stunning effect.

The buyback cut firearm suicides by 74 per cent, saving 200 lives a year, according to research to be published in The American Law and Economics Review.

A former Australian Treasury economist, Christine Neill, now with Wilfrid Laurier University in Ontario, Canada, said she found the research result so surprising she tried to redo her calculations on the off chance the total could have been smaller.

''I fully expected to find no effect at all,'' she told the Herald. ''That we found such a big effect and that it meshed with a range of other data was just shocking, completely unexpected.''
Programming

Submission + - Sorting Algorithm Breaks Giga-sort Barrier (google.com) 2

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Researchers at the University of Virginia have recently open sourced an algorithm capable of sorting at a rate of one billion (integer) keys per second using a GPU. Although GPUs are often assumed to be poorly suited for algorithms like sorting, their results are several times faster than the best known CPU-based sorting implementations.

Submission + - IE worldwide marketshare drops below 50% (statcounter.com) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: For the second weekend in a row the combined marketshare of all Internet Explorer versions around the world dropped below 50%
Portables (Apple)

Submission + - Apple Netbook Rumors (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by jshackney
jshackney writes: According to one of the unnamed sources, the machine will "likely" have a touchscreen between 9.7" and 10" in size. That's in line with many current popular netbook models, which have 9" screens. Beyond that, however, "other specifications and functions are still under evaluation," according to Dow Jones Newswires.
Apple

Apple Intros 17" Unibody MBP, DRM-Free iTunes 1079

Posted by kdawson from the life-after-jobs dept.
Phil Schiller delivered the keynote at MacWorld, the first after the Steve Jobs era of keynotes. Here is Engadget's live blog. The big news, predicted by many rumor sites, was the introduction of the unibody 17" MacBook Pro. As rumored, the battery is not removable, but it's claimed to provide 8 hours of battery life (7 hours with the discrete graphics): "3x the charges and lifespan of the industry standard." $2,799, 2.66 GHz and 4 GB of RAM, 320GB hard drive, shipping at the end of January. There is a battery exchange program, and there is an option for a matte display. The other big news is that iTunes is going DRM-free: 8M songs today, all 10+M by the end of March. Song pricing will be flexible, as the studios have been demanding; the lowest song price is $0.69. Apple also introduced the beta of a Google Docs-like service, iWork.com.
Cellphones

Submission + - SPAM: Garmin Nuvifone: iPhone wannabee or breakthrough p

Submitted by
WirePosted
WirePosted writes: "The airwaves are buzzing with news of yet another iPhone challenger, the Garmin Nuvifone, a touchscreen handheld that attempts to bring together the best of GPS navigation and phone functions, with web browsing and entertainment thrown in. The Nuvifone is not slated for release until Q3 but everything about it from its 3.5 inch touch screen menu based display to the way users place calls smacks of iPhone copy. That said, the Nuviphone does promise to deliver a number of things not available on the iPhone — yet."
Link to Original Source
Windows

Submission + - Vista SP1 due Monday

Submitted by
headkase
headkase writes: "Tech ARP brings word that the long awaited Service Pack 1 Final for Windows Vista is due to be released on Monday, February 4th, 2008. Initially it will only be available in English, French, Spanish, German and Japanese. Another version will be release one to two weeks later that supports all 36 basic languages."
Movies

HD DVD Group Cancels CES Meetings

Posted by Zonk from the lights-are-growing-dim dept.
The announcement that Warner Bros. is no longer backing the HD DVD format was bad enough. It appears speculation about the larger impact of the announcement has hit home with other backers of the medium. The HD-DVD group has cancelled their CES meetings as a result. "In a mass email to CES attendees, a representative for the group said they are 'currently discussing the potential impact of this announcement with the other HD DVD partner companies and evaluating next steps.' If these 'next steps' don't include lining the pockets of every remaining film publisher on the market to convince them your format's still viable, HD DVD could go the way of the Betamax with a quickness." Could we be seeing the end of this chapter in the format war already?
Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft finally bows to EU antitrust measures

Submitted by Rogue Pat
Rogue Pat writes: From the Reuters press article: "Microsoft ended three years of resistance on Monday and finally agreed to comply with a landmark 2004 antitrust decision by the European Commission."

From other news sources: Competitors will be able to buy interface protocols for 10.000 Euro to make their software work better with Windows. Moreover, Microsoft won't appeal the 500 million Euro fine any further.

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