benrothke writes "The book Digital Archaeology: The Art and Science of Digital Forensics starts as yet another text on the topic of digital forensics. But by the time you get to chapter 3, you can truly appreciate how much knowledge author Michael Graves imparts. Archaeology is defined as the study of human activity in the past, primarily through the recovery and analysis of the material culture and environmental data that they have left behind, which includes artifacts, architecture, biofacts and cultural landscapes. The author uses archeology and its associated metaphors as a pervasive theme throughout the book. While most archeology projects require shovels and pickaxes; digital archeology requires an entirely different set of tools and technologies. The materials are not in the ground, rather on hard drives, SD cards, smartphones and other types of digital media." Keep reading for the rest of Ben's review.

First time accepted submitter Sara Konrath writes "The App Generation gives an overview of how digital media and technology may affect young people's perceptions of themselves, their ability to relate to others, and their creativity. As the director of the Interdisciplinary Program on Empathy and Altruism Research (iPEAR), my research finds that there have been generational changes in personality traits related to social functioning. For example, we find that narcissism has been rising while dispositional empathy has been declining in recent generations. I also study the relationship between such traits and the use of social media. Considering this, I was excited to get a copy of the book ahead of its release date." Keep reading for the rest of Sara's review.

A few weeks ago you had the chance to ask the President of edX, Anant Agarwal, about the future of education and the growth of MOOCs. Below you'll find his answers to your questions.

A while ago you had a chance to ask oceanographer and Director of Special Projects at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, David Gallo, about the mysteries of the deep and the tech we're using to get there. Below you'll find his answers to your questions.

Last week you had a chance to ask former Republican staffer Derek Khanna about his well publicized firing, copyright law, and the state of the government. Read below to see his answers to your questions.

A few weeks ago you had the chance to ask Jack Horner about dinosaurs, science funding, and extinction level events. He's sent back his responses and commented: "Very impressive audience you have!" Read below for more flattery and his answers to your questions.

benrothke writes "In its first week, Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief was #3 on the New York Times Best Sellers list and will likely be #1 soon. The fact that the book is in print is somewhat miraculous given the voracious appetite Scientology has for litigation. It is the first time that such an expose could have been written and found such wide-scale reading. An interesting analysis of this fact is found in Why the Media Is No Longer Afraid of Scientology by Kim Masters. But as mesmerizing an expose as the book is, I doubt that this will be more than a speed bump to Scientology's growth and fund raising." Keep reading to be clear about what Ben has to say.

A while ago you had the chance to ask Bruce Perens about how open source has changed in the past 15 years, what's happening now, and what's to come. Bruce has been busy traveling, but he's found some free time and sent in his answers. Read below to see what he has to say.

You asked questions of Bas Lansdorp, who's behind a project to send a quartet of astronauts to Mars — on a one-way trip. Lansdorp provides below his answers to inquiries about food, fuel, suicide, privacy, and more. So whether you're curious enough to put in for a Mars-bound ship or skeptical that this enterprise will get off the ground, read on.

Dangerous_Minds writes "Drew Wilson of ZeroPaid has an interesting look at file-sharing. It all started with a review of a Phoenix study that was used to promote SOPA. Wilson says that the study was long on wild claims and short on fact. While most writers would simply criticize the study and move on, Wilson took it a step further and looked in to what file-sharing studies have really been saying throughout the years. What he found was an impressive 19 of 20 studies not getting any coverage. He launched a large series detailing what these studies have to say on file-sharing. The first study suggests that file-sharing litigation was a failure. The second study said that p2p has no effect on music sales. The third study found that the RIAA suppresses innovation. The fourth study says that the MPAA has simply been trying to preserve its oligopoly. The fifth study says that even when one uses the methodology of one download means one lost sale, the losses amount to less than $2 per album. The studies, so far, are being posted on a daily basis and are certainly worth the read."

You asked Phil Plait, aka The Bad Astronomer, questions on topics ranging from debunking superstition to extraterrestrial life to funding space exploration; read on below for his answers. Thanks for taking part, Phil!

terrywallwork writes "Lance Flavell and Apress have been busy writing another Blender 2.5 based book. Lance Flavell (known as Lancer in the Blender community) is a very knowledgeable Blender user. So I was very interested to find out about this book when Apress announced its availability. So off I went and ordered the Ebook version of the book in PDF format." Read on for the rest of Terry's review.

brothke writes "CyberForensics: Understanding Information Security Investigations is a new book written by a cast of industry all-stars. The book takes a broad look at cyberforensics with various case studies. Each of the book's 10 chapters takes a different approach to the topic. The book is meant to be a source guide to the core ideas on cyberforensics." Read on for the rest of Ben's review.

eldavojohn writes "Beautiful Data: The Stories Behind Elegant Data Solutions is an addition to six or so other books in the 'Beautiful' series that O'Reilly has put out. It is not a comprehensive guide on data but instead a glimpse into success stories about twenty different projects that succeeded in displaying data — oftentimes in areas where others have failed. While this provides, for the most part, disjointed stories, it is a very readable book compared to most technical books. Beautiful Data proves to be quite the cover-to-cover page turner for anyone involved in building interfaces for data or the statistician at a loss for the best way to intuitively and effectively relay knowledge when given voluminous amounts of raw data. That said, it took me almost two months to make it through this book, as each chapter revealed a data repository or tool I had no idea existed. I felt like a child with an attention deficit disorder trying my hand at nearly everything. While the book isn't designed to relay complete theory on data (like Tufte), it is a great series of short success stories revolving around the entire real world practice of consuming, aggregating, realizing and making beautiful data." Keep reading for the rest of eldavojohn's review.

asgard4 writes "Coming up with sound, elegant, and easy to implement designs is not a trivial matter, as Fred Brooks, author of the classic book The Mythical Man-Month, acknowledges in his latest book The Design of Design. In many disciplines — especially in software development — the design process and how to produce good designs is relatively poorly understood. Teaching the design process to students is even more difficult. In the form of opinionated essays, Brooks attempts to summarize what we know about the design process, how it has changed over time, and how we can produce better and more elegant designs. Brooks has decades of experience designing large systems and is well known for his involvement in the design of IBM's OS/360. Even though Brooks is a computer scientist, the book applies equally well to many other disciplines outside of software development that have a formal design process, such as architecture. A lot of his examples come from other engineering disciplines and architecture. But of course he presents the obligatory OS/360 case study as well." Read on for the rest of Martin's review.

Last week you asked Jazz technical lead Erich Gamma questions about Jazz or anything else in his realm of expertise. Here are his answers, along with many external links and places to continue the conversation if you are interested.

stoolpigeon writes "The US Army's Future Combat Systems program calls for one third of their fighting strength to be robots by 2015. The American pilots seeing the most combat in Iraq and Afghanistan right now do so from flight consoles in the United States, and they are controlling Predator unmanned vehicles. Every branch of the US military has aggressive robotics programs in place. This is not anything unusual. Other nations are also developing and purchasing robotic systems designed to be used in combat. Advances in communications, software and hardware make it inevitable that robotics will have a profound effect on conflict in the future. The development of these systems has been rapid, and while technology hurtles forward, culture and understanding seem to lag behind. Similar to the way our legal codes are playing catch-up with new technologies, combat-enabled robots raise questions and issues that did not even exist a short time ago. Wired for War by Dr. P. W. Singer is an excellent opportunity for anyone interested to dive into just what is going on all over the world with regards to robotics and their use by the military." Read below for the rest of JR's review.

Aeonite writes "Featuring a subtitle that is almost longer than the preface, Vintage Games: An Inside Look at the History of Grand Theft Auto, Super Mario, and the Most Influential Games of All Time offers a retrospective look at those games which authors Bill Loguidice and Matt Barton feel were, in their words, 'paradigm shifters; the games that made a difference.' As the preface points out, these are not necessarily best-selling games, innovative games, or novel games, but rather titles that, 'in their own special way changed videogames forever.'" Keep reading for the rest of Michael's review.

r3lody writes "An extremely large amount of the information we get on a daily basis comes from what we see. Imagery is therefore very important to those who want to communicate with us. When computers had advanced enough to be able to process images in a digital fashion, the market opened up for programs that could manipulate them in many ways. While many professionals would opt for the paid programs, there is a free alternative: GIMP (Gnu Image Manipulation Program). The only stumbling block is learning how to use it properly. That is where Beginning GIMP: From Novice to Professional, Second Edition by Akkana Peck comes in." Read below for the rest of Ray's review.

TechForensics writes "Outliers, by Malcolm Gladwell, is subtitled "the story of success." It is a book that purports to explain why some people succeed far more than others. It suggests that a success like Bill Gates is more attributable to external factors than anything within the man. Even his birth date turns out to play a role of profound importance in the success of Bill Gates and Microsoft Corporation." Look below for the rest of Leon's review.