The Inconstant Constant

By Roland Piquepaille

But (if some australian researchers are right) this is pretty incredible. The value of a constant named alpha (read the story to get a full explanation) might have changed between 2 billion and 9 billion years ago. This specific *constant* has increased by 0.0006%.

Then it stayed constant. Puzzling...

Source: The Economist, Apr. 4, 2002

I don't know what is the percentage is in France, but BusinessWeek writes that only one-fifth of blind people in the U.S. can read Braille. Which means problems to get cash.

It seems that ATMs should be audio-enabled in a not too distant future.

Source: Suzanne Robitaille, BusinessWeek Online, Apr. 11, 2002

It's no mystery that Microsoft has put lots of people to work on more secure software in the last couple of months. Now, a Microsoft exec is saying that his company already has done many more men-years securing its software that the open-source community ever did.

The author found a book published in 1975: "The Mythical Man-Month," by Frederick P. Brooks, an IBM veteran (I insist, a veteran in 1975). This guy looked at large projects at IBM, which were almost behind schedule. He wrote something which is still true: "Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later."

He also concluded: "The man-month as a unit for measuring the size of a job is a dangerous and deceptive myth."

Source: Scott Rosenberg, Salon, Apr. 11, 2002