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Math

Math Indicates Pollster Is Forging Results 319

Posted by Soulskill from the lies-damned-lies-and-statistics dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Nate Silver suggests the political pollster Strategic Vision is 'cooking the books. And whoever is doing so is doing a pretty sloppy job.' Silver crunched five years worth of their polling data, and found their reported results followed a suspicious pattern which traditionally suggests fraud. The five-year distribution of the numbers 'is not random. It's not close to random.' The polling firm had already been reprimanded by the American Association for Public Opinion Research for failing to disclose their methodology, though the firm argues they did comply with the organization's request. Their response to Silver's accusation? 'We have a call in to our attorney on this and fully intend to take action that will vindicate us.'"
Image

Geeks Prefer Competence To Niceness Screenshot-sm 300

Posted by samzenpus from the catching-more-geeks-with-vinegar dept.
Death Metal writes "While everyone would like to work for a nice person who is always right, IT pros will prefer a jerk who is always right over a nice person who is always wrong. Wrong creates unnecessary work, impossible situations and major failures. Wrong is evil, and it must be defeated. Capacity for technical reasoning trumps all other professional factors, period."
Television

Time Warner ToS Changes Could Mean Tiered Pricing, Throttling 162

Posted by timothy from the testing-what-the-market-will-bear dept.
Mirell writes "Time Warner Cable has recently changed their Terms of Service, so that they are allowed to charge you at their discretion via consumption-based billing. They were shot down a few months ago after raising the wrath of many subscribers and several politicians. Now they're trying again, but since they make exclusions for their own voice and video not to count against the cap, this could draw the attention of the FCC."
Science

Scientists Discover Common Ancestor of Monkeys, Apes, and Humans 391

Posted by Soulskill from the your-n-mother-had-a-lengthy-tail dept.
reporter writes "According to a report by the Wall Street Journal, scientists have discovered the common ancestor of monkeys, apes, and Slashdotters. The 47 million year old fossils were discovered in Germany. The ancestor physically resembles today's lemur. Quoting: 'The skeleton will be unveiled at New York City's American Museum of Natural History next Tuesday by Mayor Michael Bloomberg and an international team involved in the discovery. According to Prof. Gingerich, the fossilized remains are of a young female adapid. The skeleton was unearthed by collectors about two years ago and has been kept tightly under wraps since then, in an unusual feat of scientific secrecy. Prof. Gingerich said he had twice examined the adapid skeleton, which was "a complete, spectacular fossil." The completeness of the preserved skeleton is crucial, because most previously found fossils of ancient primates were small finds, such as teeth and jawbones.'"
Biotech

Scientists Create RNA From Primordial Soup 369

Posted by timothy from the that's-notional-primordial-soup-to-you dept.
Kristina at Science News writes "The RNA world hypothesis proposed 40 years ago suggested that life on Earth started not with DNA but with RNA. Now a team of scientists bolsters this hypothesis, having assembled RNA in the lab from a mixture that resembles what was likely the primordial soup. 'Until now,' Science News reports, 'scientists couldn't figure out the chemical reactions that created the earliest RNA molecules.' The new work started the RNA assembly chemistry from a different angle than what earlier work had tried."
Earth

Antarctic Ice Is Growing, Not Melting Away, At Davis Station 633

Posted by timothy from the weather-is-what-you-get dept.
schwit1 writes "A report from The Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research says that Antarctic ice is growing, not melting away. Ice core drilling in the fast ice off Australia's Davis Station in East Antarctica by the Antarctic Climate and Ecosystems Co-Operative Research Centre shows that last year, the ice had a maximum thickness of 1.89m, its densest in 10 years. The average thickness of the ice at Davis since the 1950s is 1.67m. A paper to be published soon by the British Antarctic Survey in the journal Geophysical Research Letters is expected to confirm that over the past 30 years, the area of sea ice around the continent has expanded."
Spam

Spam Replacing Postal Junk Mail? 251

Posted by kdawson from the connecting-the-dots dept.
TheOtherChimeraTwin writes "I've been getting spam from mainstream companies that I do business with, which is odd because I didn't give those companies my email address. It is doubly strange because the address they are using is a special-purpose one that I wouldn't give out to any business. Apparently knotice.com ('Direct Digital Marketing Solutions') and postalconnect.net aka emsnetwork.net (an Equifax Marketing Service Product with the ironic name 'Permission!') are somehow collecting email addresses and connecting them with postal addresses, allowing companies to send email instead of postal mail. Has anyone else encountered this slimy practice or know how they are harvesting email addresses?"
Businesses

Jobs On Track For June Return 122

Posted by CmdrTaco from the because-he-can dept.
nandemoari writes "On Tuesday, Apple shareholders gathered at Apple's Cupertino corporate campus continued their pursuit of details regarding Apple chief Steve Jobs' health. They didn't get a whole heck of a lot of information out of Apple's executives, but they did receive some encouraging news on Jobs' status. Timothy Cook, Apple's chief operating officer, assured shareholders that Jobs still planned to return to the company in June. Jobs obviously wasn't present at the meeting, which might have made it rather uncomfortable when several stockholders stood to sing 'Happy Birthday.' Jobs' 54th passed on Tuesday."

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Math is like love -- a simple idea but it can get complicated. -- R. Drabek

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