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Submission + - Freescale and IBM Team Up

Submitted by xlordtyrantx
xlordtyrantx writes: The news at ZDNet is running an article about Freescale Semiconductor and IBM teaming up for chip development. From the article: "Freescale Semiconductor, formerly Motorola's chip group, will join a semiconductor technology alliance largely headed by IBM. Under the alliance, Freescale will participate in developing rules and technology for manufacturing 45-nanometer chips. It also has the option of producing chips at IBM's factories."
United States

Submission + - American Healthcare Still Poorest

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: According to a recent study, Americans still suffer from poorer health than other developed countries, with a lower life expectancy, and an infantile mortality rate on par with some third world countries... all this despite paying considerably more per capita on healthcare. Is it time for the US to stop being the last industrialized country without nationally subsidized healthcare? Would the American people be ready to accept such a move?
Programming

Submission + - 53 CSS-Techniques You Couldn't Live Without

Submitted by Sushi
Sushi writes: CSS is important. And it is being used more and more often. Cascading Style Sheets offer a strict separation between layout, or design of the page, and the information, presented on the page. Thus the design of pages can be easily changed, just replacing a css-file with another one. Over the last few years web-developers have developed many useful techniques, which can save you a lot of time — of course, if you are able to find them in time. The article 53 CSS-Techniques You Couldn't Live Without lists essential techniques, which make the life of web-developers easier. Thanks to all developers who contributed to accessible and usable css-based design over the last few years. We really appreciate it.
Space

Submission + - China Tests Anti-Satellite Ballistic Missile

Submitted by Vicissidude
Vicissidude writes: US intelligence agencies believe China performed a successful anti-satellite weapons test at more than 500 miles altitude January 11th, destroying an aging Chinese weather satellite target with a kinetic kill vehicle launched on board a ballistic missile. The United States, Australia, and Canada have criticised China over the test. Neither the Office of the US Secretary of Defense nor Air Force Space Command would comment on the attack, which followed by several months the alleged illumination of a US military spacecraft by a Chinese ground based laser.
Software

Submission + - Is GAIM doomed to beta forever?

Submitted by
danbert8
danbert8 writes: "How long should a user be expected to wait for a final release for F/OSS software that is being actively developed? Or at least some progress updates?

I have been a GAIM user for years and 2.0 seemed like a breath of fresh air. But it has now gone through 5 betas in over a year. New features have been added, yet I find it no more stable now in beta 5 than it was in beta 2. Gaim's homepage http://gaim.sourceforge.net/ lists some news, and the new Planet Gaim http://gaim.sourceforge.net/planet/ has some additional insights, but neither has been posted on since November."
Privacy

Submission + - Do banks want your identity to be stolen?

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Do your banks' new security features make fraud even easier? Logging into my citicard account reveals non-standard ssl use, with unverifiable security (no https or even a certificate). Logging in takes you to a different site without the word "citi" even in its url. My old MBNA account used to send emails from "cardsatisfaction.com" and I still can't tell if the emails from "customercenter.net" were actually legit.

Why do banks actually expect customers to not fall for phishing attempts when they make it so easy? How do you protect your identity when you can't verify your connection is actually encrypted? How good are your banks at protecting your identity?
Education

Submission + - Engineering school grads, tradesmen or thinkers?

Submitted by
El Cubano
El Cubano writes: "ITworld is carrying a story (sorry, no printable version) saying that John Seely Brown (former chief scientist at Xerox and director of PARC, currently teaching at the University of Southern California) is encouraging engineering schools to change the way they educate. From the article:
"Training someone for a career makes no sense. At best, you can train someone for a career trajectory," said John Seely Brown.
What do slashdotters think? Should engineering schools be producing tradesmen (i.e., like an apprenticeship program) or should they be producing "thinkers" (i.e., people who can cope with a wide variety of problem inside and outside their area of expertise)?"
Sony

Submission + - Blu-Ray too slow for games?

Submitted by Hennell
Hennell writes: As if enough anti Sony/PS3/Blu-ray topics haven't discussed so far Opposable Thumbs is questioning the suitability of the Blu-Ray drive for games. Blu-ray's already been blamed with keeping the PS3 delayed and making its price high, apparently it's loading speeds may mean longer loading times or use of duplicate sectors, reducing its size advantage.

From the Article:
Of course, if you use data redundancy to boost speeds the way Bethesda is, you may very well eat up the extra space of that Blu-ray disc without being able to fit any more information on the disc than you would have put on a standard DVD-9. The advantage of the media is compromised, and all that remains is a higher price.
User Journal

Journal Journal: French WoW player reaches level 70 in 28 hours

Journal by Alien54
A die-hard World of Warcraft player has reached level 70 within 28 hours of The Burning Crusade's release. Gullerbone, a 24-year-old French WoW player, reached level 70 at 4:04 am (CET) on January 17, 2007. He is believed to be the world's first. The fact that a player has managed to reach level 70 so fast will not please developers Blizzard, who had hoped to see th
Businesses

Submission + - Verizon spins off rural lines

Submitted by ffejie
ffejie writes: Verizon has announced that it will be spinning off rural assets to FairPoint Communications. The deal will close sometime in 2007 and is worth $2.7 Billion. 1.6 Million phone lines, 234,000 high speed (DSL) subscribers and 600,000 long distance customers will be moved to FairPoint in an effort for Verizon to shed it's low margin lines in rural areas. The sale has been rumored since at least the summer. With Verizon offering high speed FiOS (FTTP) to only it's local service areas, what will happen to the consumers stuck with a smaller telco like those moving to FairPoint? In the future, will there become an even deeper digital divide between the rural users and the high revenue areas?
Democrats

Submission + - Democrats May Reinstate Fairness Doctrine.

Submitted by Slithe
Slithe writes: Last week at the National Conference for Media Reform, Dennis Kucinich stated that Fairness Doctrine may be reinstated. The Fairness Doctrine was an FCC regulation that required broadcast media to present controversial issues in an honest, equal and balanced manner. It was repealed in 1987, and the Supreme Court ruled that the Doctrine was constitutional when applied to radio stations because of "the limited nature of the public airwave spectrum." Critics of the Fairness Doctrine have stated that it was only used to intimidate and silence political opposition. At the convention, Kucinich said, "we know the media has become the servant of a very narrow corporate agenda. We are now in a position to move a progressive agenda to where it is visible."
Communications

Submission + - Airbus consolidates to Toulouse

Submitted by Z00L00K
Z00L00K writes: According to Swedish newspaper Ny Teknik (Swedish article, I haven't found any info about this elsewhere) Airbus moves all the A380 manufacturing to Toulouse instead of having part of the construction made at the Airbus plant in Hamburg.

One of the reasons behind the troubles with the Airbus problems is that different versions of the CAD program Catia was used in Germany and France. The Germans used Catia 4 while the French used Catia 5. Bloomberg has an old article about this.

I hope that somebody will learn a lesson from this and figure out that it is a good idea to be consistent of software use within a corporation.
Nintendo

Submission + - World of Warcraft unlikely for consoles

Submitted by
jtorry
jtorry writes: "Blizzard developer talks down rumours of WoW on consoles. Wii version definitely not happening. A Blizzard developer has suggested massively popular MMO World of Warcraft would not translate well to the Nintendo Wii. Speaking to Pro-G at the launch of the game's first expansion, the Burning Crusade, Blizzard game designer Jonathan LeCraft said using the Wii Remote wouldn't work with the PC hit.

A number of user generated videos have appeared on the internet showing gamers playing World of Warcraft with a Wii remote, but LeCraft poured scorn on the possibility.

"You really do need a keyboard to play WoW," he said. "I've seen some mods where people have hooked up WoW to their Wii. When I saw that I was like, well, that's got to be pretty easy to PVP against, honestly. It's not something we're looking at right now."

The aptly named LeCraft also revealed Blizzard currently has no plans to port the game to the Xbox 360 or PS3, despite the success of Xbox Live and the development of the PS3's online service.

"We don't have any plans for it specifically," noted LeCraft. "We always keep all our options on the radar, but there are no plans for the immediate future."

Adding fuel to the fire of speculation about where Blizzard will take their other popular franchises, Starcraft and Diablo, LeCraft didn't rule out the possibility of the studio hosting another huge MMO alongside World of Warcraft.

He said: "I think we have the capacity for another one [MMO]. It [World of Warcraft] means that there's going to be some other cool games coming from the studio because we're very successful. And I think they're even going to be a step above what people expect.

"We're always considering our licenses when we think about our next product. They are really strong, well known licenses. We own them completely so we can do whatever we want. We can take the fiction in whatever direction or apply whatever gameplay we want."

However, LeCraft wouldn't budge when pressed on whether work on other titles had already begun, with a "Maybe" being all he'd say on the subject.

http://www.pro-g.co.uk/news/15-01-2007-4497.html"
The Internet

Submission + - High Latency on my Internet Connection

Submitted by
Hoganchild
Hoganchild writes: "For the past week, my connection has been troubled with bouts of unusually high ping. Anyone who plays games online knows how frustrating it can be trying to play an FPS with a ping of about 150-200... It just doesn't work. It started sometime last Sunday, and has been popping up here and there ever since. It usually lasts a few hours, then goes away. I've scanned for spyware with spybot and adaware, and removed some "threats". I did the same with my antivirus (used AVG free, and avast!). When this didn't work, I promptly phoned my ISP, and was on the phone with tech support for at least an hour, trying to fix it. Alas, this was to no avail. My question is, is there anything I can do on my end, by tweaking my connection settings, or anything else, that can help stop this lag? I'm not running on a router or anything, my modem is hardwired directly to my pc. Any help would be greatly appreciated."

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