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Government

US Gov't Pays IT Contractors Twice As Much As Its Own IT Workers 382

bdcny7927 writes "The U.S. federal government pays outside IT contractors nearly twice as much for computer engineering services as it pays its own computer engineers, and 1.5 times more for IT management work, according to a non-profit watchdog group. 'The study points out that IT specifically "is widely outsourced throughout the federal government because of the assumption that IT companies provide vastly superior skills and cost savings." The Project on Government Oversight says its salary comparisons prove that those cost savings are not being realized. However, the comparisons do not address any cost savings that might be achieved through the skills, processes or systems that private IT services companies might deliver. The POGO researchers say that the federal government itself does not know how much money overall it saves or wastes with its sourcing decisions and has no system for doing so.'"
Security

How Bug Bounties Are Like Rat Farming 140

Gunkerty Jeb writes "In a keynote speech at the United Security Summit, Stephen Dubner, co-author of Freakonomics, drew parallels between the increasingly popular (and successful) practice of software vendors offering bug bounties and a new industry springing up in Johannesburg, South Africa, where the population has recently found itself beset with a growing rat problem. In order to help mitigate their rodent problem, officials in Johannesburg began offering a small monetary rewards for each dead rat turned in. It was wildly successful, and it didn't take long for fresh batch of entrepreneurs to pop up and exploit the situation. Of course, I'm talking about rat farming. Evidently, business minded individuals have taken to breeding rats, only to kill them and turn them in for rewards. Obviously, rat farming is somewhat unscrupulous, but security researchers are doing the same thing: breeding bugs in the lab, then leading them to the slaughter for a nice payday. And it's a good thing."
Firefox

Mozilla Labs Introduces the Webian Shell 216

kai_hiwatari writes "Mozilla Labs has introduced its concept of a desktop replacement called Webian Shell. The Webian Shell basically consists of a browser which will replace the traditional desktop, and web applications are given more importance than the native applications. Right now, the prototype of the Webian Shell is nothing more than a full screen browser with a dock which holds the tabs and the clock." The project's blog offers more about the ideas and underpinnings; there's even more on the home page of developer Ben Francis.
Science

Why We Have So Much "Duh" Science 299

Hugh Pickens writes "Eryn Brown writes in the LA Times that accounts of 'duh' research abound as studies show that driving ability worsens in people with early Alzheimer's disease, that women who get epidurals experience less pain during childbirth than women who don't, that young men who are obese have lower odds of getting married than thinner peers, and that making exercise more fun might improve fitness among teens. But there's more to duh research than meets the eye writes Brown as experts say they have to prove the obvious again and again to influence perceptions and policy. 'Think about the number of studies that had to be published for people to realize smoking is bad for you,' says Ronald J. Iannotti, a psychologist at the National Institutes of Health. 'There are some subjects where it seems you can never publish enough.' Kyle Stanford, a professor of the philosophy of science at UC Irvine, thinks the professionalization of science has led researchers — who must win grants to pay their bills — to ask timid questions and research that hews to established theories is more likely to be funded, even if it contributes little to knowledge. Perhaps most important, sometimes a study that seems poised to affirm the conventional wisdom produces a surprise. 'Many have taken the value of popular programs like DARE — in which police warn kids about the dangers of drug use — as an article of faith,' writes Brown. 'But Dennis Rosenbaum of the University of Illinois at Chicago and other researchers have shown that the program has been ineffective and may even increase drug use in some cases.'"
Science

All Languages Linked To Common Source 318

Old Wolf writes "A New Zealand evolutionary psychologist, Quentin Atkinson, has created a scientific sensation by claiming to have discovered the mother of all mother tongues. 'Dr Atkinson took 504 languages and plotted the number of phonemes in each (corrected for recent population growth, when significant) against the distance between the place where the language is spoken and 2,500 putative points of origin, scattered across the world (abstract). The relationship that emerges suggests the actual point of origin is in central or southern Africa, and that all modern languages do, indeed, have a common root." Reader NotSanguine points out another study which challenges the idea that the brain is more important to the structure of language than cultural evolution.
Canada

Canadian Researchers Develop Permanent Anti-Fog Coating 146

cylonlover writes "Tired of your glasses fogging up on cold days, or of having to spit in your dive mask before putting it on? Those hassles may become a thing of the past, as researchers from Quebec City's Université Laval have developed what they claim is the world's first permanent anti-fog coating. Just one application is said to work indefinitely on eyeglasses, windshields, camera lenses, or any other transparent glass or plastic surface."
The Courts

Lawmaker Reintroduces WikiLeaks Prosecution Bill 389

angry tapir writes "New legislation in the US Congress targets WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange for espionage prosecution. Representative Peter King, a New York Republican, introduced the Securing Human Intelligence and Enforcing Lawful Dissemination, or SHIELD, Act (read the bill here [PDF]). The bill would clarify US law by saying it is an act of espionage to publish the protected names of American intelligence sources who collaborate with the US military or intelligence community."
Television

TiVo To Brick All Remaining UK PVRs On June 1 286

handelaar writes "Perhaps in order to 'encourage' existing users of UK Tivo units to change their TV service to Virgin Media, pay £149 for a new 'Virgin TiVo' that they won't actually own, plus £34.50 per month in service charges, Tivo is to cancel all EPG data service to all the Tivos still in use in the country — and existing units will become basically nonfunctional at that time. The faithful aren't amused, having stuck by the company for several years, and mostly paying £120 per annum for service until now. 50% of UK residents aren't able to avail of this generous upgrade offer even if they want to — the cable company in question only covers about half the country."

Comment Re:swinging and spinning (Score 1) 162

The payload is suspended from the balloon and is essentially a pendulum. Any buffeting or motion takes a while to damp down. Just the simple motion of the balloon itself might be enough (I don't know the damping function well enough to figure out what frequencies and amplitudes of forcing functions are relevant).

Comment Re:I'm confused. (Score 1) 506

In the Big Bang theory, the Universe did not start out as an extremely compact volume. The theory states that it started at an infinite density and temperature. If the Universe is infinite, then it was also quite possibly infinite at the beginning. As other posters have mentioned, it's also the case that spacetime is allowed to expand faster than the speed of light.

Comment Re:Distant Galaxy Now even Further (Score 1) 225

My understanding of general relativity, special relativity, and cosmological expansion are perfectly fine. But my ability to explain things clearly and unambiguously are probably more suspect. I was trying to explain why there were perfectly reasonable reasons to talk about several different definitions of distance.
"In our frame of reference, it really currently is 13.2 billion light years away"
We have to precisely define "currently" and "away"? There are several reasonable and different definitions for each of those. What would you like to mean by those words? Once we define that, then we can calculate whatever distance is the appropriate one for those definitions.

Comment Re:Distant Galaxy Now even Further (Score 2) 225

It's not really about preferred frame of reference, it's the different meanings of distance that arise in general relativity. In this case there are two meanings being discussed:
1) How long has that photon been traveling to get to Earth ("light travel time")? 13.2 billion years
2) How far away is that galaxy right now ("proper distance"). I.e., if each galaxy had a clock that counted seconds since the Big Bang and could instantaneously extend a long ruler to the other galaxy and the ruler was sent and received at the same time has measured by those clocks, how long would that ruler be? 32 billion light years

There are other definitions, and you can make this arbitrarily more complicated by considering moving reference frames.

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