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Cellphones

Submission + - AT&T Dead Last in Satisfaction Survey (ibtimes.com)

Submitted by
redletterdave
redletterdave writes: "Consumer Reports' latest ratings survey of cell phone carriers revealed that Verizon Wireless scored the highest satisfaction score out of the four major U.S. service providers, earning particularly high grades for texting and data service. Verizon was followed closely by Sprint and T-Mobile USA, but all three companies earned scores lower overall than their figures from last year. AT&T was at the very bottom of the list for the second year in a row. While AT&T's satisfaction score in 2011 wasn't as bad as its score from 2010, the Dallas-based cell phone provider, which recently discontinued its bid to acquire its better rival T-Mobile, still ranked at the bottom of the pack. Last year, AT&T was the only carrier for the Apple iPhone, but still managed to receive the lowest scores. The company is a bottom-feeder when it comes to keeping customers happy, even though
AT&T boasts more than 100 million subscribers, adding 2.1 million customers in the third quarter alone. AT&T is notorious for its dead zones and dropped calls, which was partially why AT&T wanted to buy T-Mobile in the first place. A separate J.D. Power and Associates customer care survey gave AT&T its lowest score, with Verizon Wireless similarly taking the top score."
Medicine

Submission + - Common Cause of All Forms of ALS Discovered (sciencedaily.com)

Submitted by intellitech
intellitech writes: The underlying disease process of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS and Lou Gehrig's disease), a fatal neurodegenerative disease that paralyzes its victims, has long eluded scientists and prevented development of effective therapies. Scientists weren't even sure all its forms actually converged into a common disease process, but a new Northwestern Medicine study has identified a common cause of all forms of ALS for the first time. The basis of the disorder is a broken down protein recycling system in the neurons of the spinal cord and the brain. Optimal functioning of the neurons relies on efficient recycling of the protein building blocks in the cells. In ALS, that recycling system is broken. The cell can't repair or maintain itself and becomes severely damaged. The discovery by Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine researchers, published in the journal Nature, provides a common target for drug therapy and shows that all types of ALS are, indeed, tributaries, pouring into a common river of cellular incompetence.

Submission + - SPAM: How to get things back under control? 1

Submitted by
dmgxmichael
dmgxmichael writes: "At my company over the course of a year we've lost good version controlling of our software. Right now we have different deployments to eight clients. We are down to two programmers, myself and one other, due to a higher than normal turnover rate of employees (17 in the last 2 years).

I'm trying to devise a means to get our code back into reliable release pattern instead of hot fixing production servers.

The production versions are relatively stable. Trunk in subversion is a bloody mess. Sandboxes for myself and my coworker are stable, little else is. I'm guessing I can merge the production codebases into each other one at a time, but it will take awhile.

I estimate this will take longer than it would take to replace the software, but management cannot be convinced. If anyone has any ideas on how to better make that argument I'm all ears. In the meanwhile the first step is to at the least get some modicum of sanity and only have one active deployment of the software instead of 8.

If it helps our version control system is subversion and our bug tracker is Mantis. The codebase is in PHP and like many PHP apps this thing has grown without any design or stable API's thought of. The code is theoretically MVC Object Oriented, but in practice it is so poorly implemented the work of MVC is just added onto the things to do list when writing pages. In all about 4000 files not counting the fact nearly every class has an interface that is used only once — for that class. Sections of the code haven't been touched in 6 years and are PHP 4. I have found several severe security breaches in my 9 months here and can only imagine how many more exist.

I need help (retorts to 'find another job' aren't help)"
Portables

Razer Unveils Portable Gaming Device Concept 66

Posted by Soulskill from the dude-what-if-the-keys-on-your-laptop-were-huuuuuge dept.
MerelyASetback writes "Razer has shown a new concept for a gaming device that uses a pair of 7-inch multitouch displays as well as a layer of tactile, dynamic keys on the lower screen. Much like the Optimus Maximus of yesteryear, this keyboard would enable gamers to place different screens underneath depending on the title, and even within a game — you could imagine the keys shifting to account for different POVs, levels, scenarios, etc. Internally, the concept is based around an Intel Atom processor, but there's no word on what kind of GPU would work alongside of it."
Hardware

Submission + - Razer unveils portable gaming device concept (engadget.com)

Submitted by MerelyASetback
MerelyASetback writes: Razer has imagined it using a pair of 7-inch multitouch displays as well as a layer of tactile, dynamic keys on the lower screen. Much like the Optimus Maximus of yesteryear, this keyboard would enable gamers to place different screens underneath depending on title, and even within a game, you could imagine the keys shifting to account for different POVs, levels, scenarios, etc. Internally, the concept is based around an Intel Atom processor, but there's no word on what kind of GPU would work alongside of it.

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