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Submission + - Books to bring non-IT management up to speed?

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: I work for a fairly successful, small, IT-based company. We've got about ten members of technical staff, perhaps double that in other areas. Just recently a new member of senior management has arrived whose goal is to "take charge and invigorate the company". Their background is corporate and includes no management experience in small, IT-driven organisations. Their open gambit, in this regard was to send a "Strongly Agree...Strongly Disagree" style survey to technical staff with questions that displayed a radical lack of understanding of the way small, unstructured technical teams work. I'd really appreciate some recommendations for reading that might help in bringing them up to speed on the programmer mindset and how to manage programmers.

Comments of the form "Polish your CV! Flee! Run for the hills!" can be taken as read. :)

Submission + - Quantum trick to revolutionize smartphones (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by Whisperwolf
Whisperwolf writes: Handheld devices could soon have pressure-sensitive touch-screens and keys, thanks to a UK firm's material that exploits a quantum physics trick.

The technology allows, for example, scrolling down a long list or webpage faster as more pressure is applied.

A division of Samsung that distributes mobile phone components to several handset manufacturers has now licensed the "Quantum Tunnelling Composite".

The approach could find use in devices from phones to games to GPS handsets.
Programming

Game Development In a Post-Agile World 149

Posted by Soulskill from the slowly-but-surly dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Many games developers have been pursuing agile development, and we are now beginning to witness the debris and chaos it has caused. While there have been some successes, there have also been many casualties. As the industry at large is moving away from the phantasmagoria of Agile, Gwaredd Mountain, Technical Director at Climax Studios, looks at Post-Agile and what this might mean for the games industry."

Submission + - $1.5 million fine for leaked Mario game on Wii (smh.com.au)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A Queensland man will have to pay Nintendo $1.5 million in damages after illegally copying and uploading one of its new games to the internet ahead of its release, the gaming giant says. Nintendo said the loss was caused when James Burt made New Super Mario Bros for the Wii gaming console available for illegal download a week ahead of its official Australian release in November last year. Nintendo applied and was granted a search order by the Federal Court forcing Burt to disclose the whereabouts of all his computers, disks and electronic storage devices in November. He was also ordered to allow access, including passwords, to his social networking sites, email accounts and websites.
Censorship

Submission + - Oz minister wants Google to censor YouTube (apcmag.com) 1

Submitted by Janacek
Janacek writes: Australian Communications Minister thinks YouTube should be censored for Australian consumption by Google and admires their abilities in this area demonstrated in places like China and Thailand.

Calling the company “probably the world’s leading deep packet filterer, unbeknownst to most people,” Conroy told a Senate Estimates committee that he was discussing the possibility of getting Google to filter refused-classification materials from its YouTube video sharing site. “They have experience in blocking material in other countries at the behest of governments, including China, Thailand and a number of other countries," he added.
Apple

Submission + - Is iPhone the New Internet Explorer 6 (quirksmode.org)

Submitted by
brajesh
brajesh writes: "In a long blog post, Quirksmode blog argues that the iPhone is the Internet Explorer 6 once again. FTFA — "The iPhone has become an obsession. If we don't pay attention, we'll have a mobile web that only works on the iPhone. And then we'll have the real mobile web that wasn't made by us and doesn't give a shit about web standards and best practices." and "We have come full-circle back to developing for only one browser. Worse, we are congratulating ourselves on that bit of cleverness. Christ, do we really have to go through the whole standards movement once again?""

Comment Re:Another reason not to fly via Heathrow (Score 1) 821

by boethius78 (#30998862) Attached to: "No Scan, No Fly" At Heathrow and Manchester

Or you prefer to have your bits felt by some sweaty minimum wage security guard, and the risk of having to endure a full body cavity search on the whim of "that guy looks suspicious" ?

I'm honestly not sure I prefer one over the other, I just don't see the point of spending money on expensive scanners that can't detect a bomb inserted into a body cavity. I guess if it makes people feel safer, it's not that important whether it works. As a side note, I'm actually quite surprised that bin Laden can't find anyone more technically able to try and take down a plane. Does this mean the more capable attempts tend to get caught by surveillance etc, or were Richard Reid and Pantsman the creme de la creme?

Comment Re:Another reason not to fly via Heathrow (Score 1) 821

by boethius78 (#30996320) Attached to: "No Scan, No Fly" At Heathrow and Manchester
It's not OK, but I don't think I'd find the need to take naked pictures of everyone I meet just in case they're carrying a blunt knife as well. Have a peek at http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2010/01/skies-are-as-friendly-as-ever-911-al.html (also referenced elsewhere in this article, can't remember where) - the risk per flying passenger is actually quite low. Just because you're a nut job that wants to make an inept attempt to stab me doesn't mean I'm going to get paranoid about everyone else in the world. I've never been stabbed by a blunt knife wielding maniac before, so it's probably not going to happen again and I feel no need to change my behaviour to avoid this.

Submission + - Tweet is added to list of banned words (lssu.edu)

Submitted by weatherr
weatherr writes: Lake Superior State University in Northern Michigan just released their latest list of words banished from the english language. Included in the list along with "toxic assets" and "czar" was "And all of its variationstweetaholic, retweet, twitterhea, twitterature, twittersphere"

"People tweet and retweet and I just heard the word 'tweet' so many times it lost all meaning.” – Ricardo, Merida, Yucatan, Mexico.

Mikhail Swift of Hillman, Mich. says the tweeting is "pointlessyet has somehow managed to take the nation by storm. I'm tired of hearing about celebrity X's new tweet, and how great of a tweeter he or she is."

"I don't know a single non-celebrity who actually uses it," says Alex Thompson of Sault St. Marie, Mich.

Jay Brazier of Williamston, Mich. says she supposes that tweeters might be "twits."

Submission + - Machine Translates Thoughts into Speech (physorg.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Model of the brain-machine interface for real-time synthetic speech production. The stroke-induced lesion (red X) disables speech output, but speech motor planning in the cerebral cortex remains intact. Signals collected from an electrode in the speech motor cortex are amplified and sent wirelessly across the scalp as FM radio signals. The Neuralynx System amplifies, converts, and sorts the signals. The neural decoder then translates the signals into speech commands for the speech synthesizer.

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