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Comment Re:Also skeptical (Score 1) 133

by ColoradoAuthor (#41699325) Attached to: How Hair Can be Used To Track Where You've Been

Here's one reference in the literature about the technique (co-authored by the same guy featured in TFA):

Ehleringer, J.R., Bowen, G.J., Chesson, L.A., West, A.G., Podlesak, D.W., Cerling, T.E. (2008). From the Cover: Hydrogen and oxygen isotope ratios in human hair are related to geography. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 105(8), 2788-2793. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0712228105 (geolocation based on oxygen isotopes in hair)

Notice that isotope analysis indicates that a person was or was not in a set of regions at a given time, as in "possibly Texas or Florida." So it's better at narrowing down a list of possibilities than at pinpointing someone's travels. Or as the NOVA story says, it's a "a starting point" for an investigation, not a smoking gun to show off at a trial. (At work, I get to play with some of this stuff, blasting microscopic objects with laser beams and analyzing the atoms that fly off. How fun is that?)
Programming

Submission + - Beyond Agile Myths: What the research shows

Submitted by
Esther Schindler
Esther Schindler writes: "Scott Fulton wrote two in-depth articles about the current state of Agile development, based on research from two computer scientists about what developers really do, rather than what the developers might like to think they do. And, as the newscasters teasers say, the results might surprise you. (Don't worry. Nobody is saying that Agile Sucks. This is more about how it's being used in the real world, and what successful Agile teams have in common.)

First, in “Agile” Often Isn’t, Scott looked at the cultural effects of Agile methodologies on workforces. The researchers made two unanticipated discoveries, he reports: One, companies adopting Agile actually struggle more to cope with the side-effects. Two, development teams that succeed in producing better products and pleasing customers aren’t exactly using Agile after all. For example:

Entitled “Agile Undercover,” the first report from Hoda and her colleagues demonstrated conclusively that Agile development teams were failing to communicate with their customers — not just occasionally, but mainly. And in order to ameliorate the impact of these failures, teams and their companies were making active, intentional efforts to keep customers in the dark about their development practices, including their schedules of deliverables. ...

“Teams are very keen on pleasing their customers, and it’s hard for them to bring up issues with customer collaboration,” Hoda tells me. So to keep the customer at bay and out of their hair, development teams hire or appoint a customer proxy. An ambassador, if you will. Or, to be more truthful, a sales associate.

The second article, Is Teamwork Dead? A Post-Agile Prognosis, looks more at the dichotomy of "team success." Culturally, when we "win," we tend to give credit to the team ("Gosh, it wasn't just me...") but when a project fails, there's an assumption it's one person's fault, even if we don't look for a scapegoat. Making a team more than a bunch of people in the same room is a special skill, and one that Agile methodologies rely on — remember the part about self-organizing teams? "Though they may not go about this process consciously or intentionally, individual group members employing Agile for the first time, Hoda’s team found, tend to adopt one of six roles," Scott reports, such as mentor, coordinator, and promoter.

See if the research agrees with your Agile experience."

Comment Re:Crony capitalism and security theatre (Score 2) 88

by ColoradoAuthor (#41312645) Attached to: GAO Slams DHS Over BioWatch Biological Defense System

No, according to the cited article, 1,200 deaths per year (initially, then declining year to year) occurred because of more people driving rather than flying "attributable to the effect of 9/11."

"Two primary reasons explain the 9/11 effect on road fatalities. First, the 9/11 effect may capture the fear of flying. ... Second, the 9/11 effect may be attributable to the inconvenience of flying post-9/11" [page 9 of the paper]. The authors were unable to measure these two factors independently. I think it would be reasonable to say that for most people, the choice to drive rather than fly was due primarily to a fear of terrorism (for which security theater might arguably be a solution). Only for a small but savvy minority was the choice to drive due to the TSA itself.

Businesses

Submission + - There is no Tablet Market, Only a iPad Market 1

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens writes
Hugh Pickens writes writes: "James Kendrick writes that after Apple introduced the iPad, companies shifted gears to go after this undiscovered new tablet market but in spite of the number of players in tablets, no company has discovered the magic bullet to knock the iPad off the top of the tablet heap. "What's happening to the 7-inch tablet market is what happened to the PC market several times. Big name desktop PC OEMs, realizing that consumers didn't care about megahertz and megabytes — yes, that long ago — turned to a price war in order to keep sales buoyant," writes Adrian Kingsley-Hughes. "Price becomes the differentiating factor, and this in turns competition into a race to the bottom." Historically, when a race to the bottom is dictated by the market, it's more a sign of a lack of a market in general. If enough buyers aren't willing to pay enough for a product to make producers a profit, the market is just not sufficient. Price is a metric that most people know and understand because it's nowhere as ethereal or complicated as CPU power or screen resolution. Given a $199 tablet next to another for $299, the $100 difference in the price tag will catch the eye before anything else. But if price is such an important metric, why is the iPad — with its premium price tag — so popular? Simple, it was the first tablet to go mass market, and cumulative sales of around 85 million gives the iPad credibility in the eye on potential buyers. "So the problem with the Kindle Fire — and the Nexus 7 — is the same problem that's plagued the PC industry. Deep and extreme price cuts give the makers no wriggle room to innovate", writes Kingsley-Hughes. "By driving prices down to this level so rapidly, both Amazon and Google have irrevocably harmed the tablet market by creating unrealistic price expectations.""
Displays

Submission + - Optical Displays Made of Nothing But Air And Water (inhabitat.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Finnish scientists have developed a new optical display that works using using nothing more than air and water. Based out of Aalto University, the researchers took their inspiration from the superhydrophobic properties of the lotus leaf and fabricated a surface with structures in two size scales: microposts that have a size of ten micrometers and tiny nanofilaments that are grown on the posts. This two-level surface allowed the air layer to exist in two different shapes, or wetting states, while corresponding to the two size scales. The team also found that they could easily switch between the two states locally using a nozzle to create over- or under-pressure in the water

Submission + - MIT Researchs Ampilfy Invisible Detail in Video (mit.edu) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: MIT researchers have invented an algorithm which is able to amplify motion in video that is invisible to the naked eye — such as the motion of blood pulsing through a person's face, or the breathing of an infant. The algorithm — which was invented almost by accident — could find applications in safety, medicine, surveillance, and other areas.
Hardware

Submission + - 40 Years of Tech Ads' Finest: '80 Mbytes of storage for under $12k!' (computerworld.com)

Submitted by
CWmike
CWmike writes: "After looking over four decades of Computerworld in print given the publication's 40th anniversary, we found some smokin' deals — and some really funny stuff: Guess which 80MB disk system costs less than $12k — and even better, 300MB for under $20k! What the heck is electronic mail? That's the question posed in this Honeywell ad, which explains: 'Simply put, it means high-speed information transportation.' What year do you think an advertisement would be using a model in hot pants? Headline hints: 'Univac 9700 Offers Compatibility, Price'; 'Technology Makes Move Out of Core City Feasible.'"

Submission + - Ask Slashdot: Security Digests for the Home Network Admin?

Submitted by
halcyon1234
halcyon1234 writes: "I'm currently cutting the webhost cord, and setting up a simple webserver at home to host a couple hobby websites and a blog. The usual LAMP stuff. I have just enough knowledge to be dangerous; I know how to get everything set up and get it up to date, but not enough to be sure I'm not overlooking common, simple security configurations. And then there's the issue of new vulnerabilities being found that I'm not even aware of. The last thing I want is to contribute to someone's botnet or spam relay.
What readings/subscriptions would you recommend for security discussions/heads up? Obviously I already read (too much) Slashdot daily, which I credit for hearing about some major security issues. Are there any RSS feeds or mailing lists you rely on for keeping up to date on security issues?"

Submission + - Quantum Dots Are Behind New Displays (ieee.org)

Submitted by ArmageddonLord
ArmageddonLord writes: "Liquid crystal displays dominate today’s big, bright world of color TVs. But they’re inefficient and don’t produce the vibrant, richly hued images of organic light-emitting diode (OLED) screens, which are expensive to make in large sizes. Now, a handful of start-up companies aim to improve the LCD by adding quantum dots, the light-emitting semiconductor nanocrystals that shine pure colors when excited by electric current or light. When integrated into the back of LCD panels, the quantum dots promise to cut power consumption in half while generating 50 percent more colors. Quantum-dot developer Nanosys says an LCD film it developed with 3M is now being tested, and a 17-inch notebook incorporating the technology should be on shelves by year’s end." --IEEE Spectrum

Comment Re:Bad examples, anyway (Score 1) 640

I'd love to see a citation of this assertion.

Kaplan, Matt (2011). "Archaeopteryx no longer first bird". Nature, published online 27 July 2011. doi:10.1038/news.2011.443

Lee, M.S.Y. and Worthy, T.H. (2011). "Likelihood reinstates Archaeopteryx as a primitive bird. Biology Letters, published online before print October 26, 2011, doi:10.1098/rsbl.2011.0884

Xing Xu, Hailu You, Kai Du and Fenglu Han (28 July 2011). "An Archaeopteryx-like theropod from China and the origin of Avialae". Nature 475 (7357): 465–470. DOI:10.1038/nature10288

Comment Bad examples, anyway (Score 5, Informative) 640

Whichever side of the origins debate one subscribes to, good riddance to the horse and Archaeopteryx examples!

The typical horse progression still shown in many textbooks is oversimplified and incorrect. The "horses" shown in the progression, particularly Eohippus, really belong on "branches" of a quite complex tree. I know I've personally met creationists for whom learning about the incorrectness of that picture was the turning point in their abandonment of textbook paleobiology.

Likewise, the Archaeopteryx is often criticized as a particularly weak example even by the most dedicated evolutionists. Archaeopteryx may yet be accepted as an early member of Avialae, but there just isn't sufficient evidence of that yet.
Space

Submission + - NRO gives NASA two space spy telescopes more powerful than Hubble (nasawatch.com)

Submitted by mknewman
mknewman writes: "The U.S. government's secret space program has decided to give NASA two telescopes as big as, and even more powerful than, the Hubble Space Telescope. Designed for surveillance, the telescopes from the National Reconnaissance Office were no longer needed for spy missions and can now be used to study the heavens. They have 2.4-meter (7.9 feet) mirrors, just like the Hubble. They also have an additional feature that the civilian space telescopes lack: A maneuverable secondary mirror that makes it possible to obtain more focused images. These telescopes will have 100 times the resolving power of the Hubble, according to David Spergel, a Princeton astrophysicist and co-chair of the National Academies advisory panel on astronomy and astrophysics."
Security

Submission + - Flame Abused Windows Update to Spread (net-security.org)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: You have probably already heard that Microsoft released an out-of-band update that revokes three rogue certificates that were used to sign a couple of modules of the recently discovered Flame (SkyWiper) toolkit. What you might still not have heard is how some of the malware's modules — namely ones called "Gadget" and "Munch" — were responsible for spreading Flame to other machines in the same network as an already infected one. Initially, Kaspersky Lab experts thought computers were infected via an unknown 0-day vulnerability, as fully patched Windows 7 machines were being infected over the network in a very suspicious manner.

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