KindMind writes "IBM, in partnership with International Broadband Electric Communications, appears to be bringing back powerline broadband back from the dead. This time, the idea is to build out in rural areas not currently serviced by broadband, and isn't for competing with other broadband solutions. From the article: 'Their strategy is to sign up electric cooperatives that provide power to sparsely populated areas across the eastern United States. Rather than compete toe-to-toe with large, entrenched cable or DSL providers, IBEC is looking for customers that have been largely left out of the shift to high-speed Internet.'"

An anonymous reader writes "From Kay Arno's blog we see that David Axmark, MySQL's Co-Founder, has resigned. This comes on top of the maybe, maybe not, resignation of Monty. We saw earlier this year that Brian Aker, the Director of Architecture, has forked the server to create a web-focused database from MySQL called Drizzle. The MySQL server has been 'RC' now for a year with hundreds of bugs still listed as being active in the 5.1 version. What is going on with MySQL?"

An anonymous reader writes "US News makes a mint off its college rankings every year, but do they really give meaningful information? A pair of mathematicians argues that the data the magazine uses is all likely to be at least somewhat relevant, but that the way the magazine weights the different statistics is pretty arbitrary. After all, different people may have different priorities. So they developed a method to compute the rankings based on any possible set of priorities. To do it, they had to reverse-engineer some of US News's data. What they found was that some colleges come out on top pretty much regardless of the prioritization, but others move around quite a lot. And the top-ranked university can vary tremendously. Penn State, which is #48 using US News's methodology, could be the best university in the country, by other standards."

David Shiga writes "Astronomers have identified many objects out there that they think are black holes. But could they be portals to other universes called wormholes, instead? According to a new study by a pair of physicists, we wouldn't be able to tell the difference. They have discovered that wormholes with the right shape would look identical to black holes from the outside. But while a trip into a black hole would mean certain death, a wormhole might spit you out into a parallel universe with its own stars and planets. Exotic effects from quantum physics might produce wormholes naturally from collapsing stars, one of the physicist says, and they might even be produced in future particle accelerator experiments."

MattSparkes writes "Many images you see in a magazine are Photoshopped, and it's getting less and less likely that what you see at the cinema is any more genuine. In the film 'Blood Diamond', tears were added to Jennifer Connolly's face after a scene was shot. According to The Times, digital effects artists can even change actors' expressions. 'Opening or closing eyes; making a limp more convincing; removing breathing signs; eradicating blinking eyelids from a lingering gaze; or splicing together different takes of an unsuccessful love scene to produce one in which both parties look like they are enjoying themselves.' The article mentions the moral qualms digital effects people have over performing these manipulations, and the steps actors are taking to protect their digital assets."

nanopolitan writes "Wired has a story on harmonious website design according to Vastu, 'the Indian counterpart of feng shui'. The graphic accompanying the story has an analysis of Slashdot's design by Dr. Smita Narang. Her verdict? This site is 'in desperate need of balance'." From the article: "Thirty-year-old Smita Narang is rapidly becoming one of India's hottest Web designers. Her method: applying vastu shastra, the Indian counterpart of feng shui, to the online realm. The process entails mapping page attributes - HTML, colors, graphics - to elements like fire, water, and air. 'Any disturbance of these established elements can cause an imbalance in the site that directly affects its business,' Narang says."

[TheBORG] writes to mention a Space.com article about the Sun's departed solar siblings. Our own medium-sized yellow star was far from alone when it was formed, with hundreds of fellow solar bodies and a supernova to keep it company. From the article: "The evidence for the solar sisters was found in daughters--such as decayed particles from radioactive isotopes of iron--trapped in meteorites, which can be studied as fossil remnants of the early solar system. These daughter species allowed Looney and his colleagues to discern that a supernova with the mass of about 20 suns exploded relatively near the early Sun when it formed 4.6 billion years ago; and where there are supernovas or any massive star, you also see hundreds to thousands of sun-like stars, he said. The cluster of thousands of stars dispersed billions of years ago due to a lack of gravitational pull, Looney said, leaving the sisters 'lost in space' and our Sun looking like an only child ever since, he said."

Viraptor writes, "Debian is ready to change the name of Firefox in its distributions, beginning with Etch. They say it can be done within a week. The reasons stem from Mozilla's recent insistence on trademark fidelity and its preferences regarding Firefox patches. Debian doesn't want to accept the original trademarked fox & globe logo; they don't see it as really 'free' to use. On the other hand, Mozilla doesn't want Firefox distributed under that name if it lacks the logo. Mozilla also wants Debian patches to be submitted to them before distribution, and claims that's what others (Red Hat and Novell) are already doing. But some believe development and releases will slow down if distribution-specific patches have to be checked and accepted first. We will surely see more clashes between copyright claims and 'really free' distros such as Debian. Ubuntu is also asking similar questions." No word yet what the new name will be or what the logo will look like.

PygmySurfer writes "According to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Nintendo is going to announce today that the Wii will go on sale on November 19th in North and South America, at a cost of $250. It will come bundled with Wii Sports and channels for such things as viewing photos, as well as news and weather. Finally, Wii will also make it possible to browse the web on your television. Nintendo will also announce that 25-30 games will be published this year, as well as about 30 classic games available on the virtual console, costing about $5-10."

amyandjake writes "Business 2.0 has a story about Vista's delays, the amount of time wasted by Microsoft bringing Vista to market, and the fact that it doesn't seem to have any compelling features for upgrading. The last paragraph of the story says 'Boycott Vista. Keep your old Windows XP PC around. Don't buy a new one. That's the only way we have to let Microsoft know Vista is an overhyped, late, and pointless update to XP — a perfectly fine operating system.'" Relatedly, torrensmith writes "Paul Thurrott is at it again with his seemingly never-ending supply of information about Windows Vista. This time, he discusses the things he dislikes about the program, in the article The Dark Side of Windows Vista RC1."

anthemaniac writes "Space.com reports that the American Astronomical Unions Division of Planetary Scientists recognizes the IAU's authority to make a new planet defintion but expects it to be altered. Separately, 300 astronomers have signed a petition saying they won't use the definition. All this stems from the discontent over how only 424 astronomers voted on the proposal that demoted Pluto. Looks like this little dog is on the comeback trail."

Carl Bialik from WSJ writes "Google is set to introduce a test version of its GBuy online-payment service as early as this week, presaging a shake-up in the online-payments market now dominated by eBay's PayPal, the Wall Street Journal reports. From the article: 'Here is how the service will work: Consumers who search for items like "shoes" or "strollers" on Google's search site will see text ads with a symbol or icon designating advertisers that accept GBuy payments. Shoppers normally would have clicked on an ad and been linked to that merchant's Web site. Now, while they will still be linked to the merchant's site, they will go through a different checkout process integrated with Google if they choose GBuy for their transaction. Details of the service could still change before Google's official GBuy announcement.'"

FleaPlus writes "Blue Origin, the secretive company started by Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos, has recently released a number of new details about their suborbital launch plans and their private desert launch facility. The vehicle will be fully reusable, and similar in many ways to the vertical-takeoff-and-landing DC-X. The details were part of a 229-page environmental impact statement the company filed to comply with federal regulations. The company plans to start launching test vehicles later this year, with commercial operations beginning in 2010."