The Menlo Briefs

Video Game Addiction Linked to Asperger's Traits - New research shows that people who spend excessive amounts of time playing video games exhibit the same personality traits as people with Asperger's Syndrome, a form of autism. [more]

Robot to Conduct the DSO - The Detroit Symphony Orchestra and Honda have combined forces to bring music education to children in Detroit. How? On May 13, the Honda ASIMO robot will conduct the Detroit Symphony Orchestra -- and Yo-Yo Ma -- in a performance of Impossible Dream. [more]

The OS That Just Won't Die - Microsoft has declared the death of Windows XP: June 30, 2008. After that date, no new copies of XP can be sold off the shelf. But some tricksy OEM suppliers have found a loophole -- the "downgrade" feature that is offered as part of Vista. [more]

U.S. Cell Phone Users Open to Texting Their Vote for President - Samsung Mobile conducted a survey which showed surprising bipartisan support for voting via text message rather than going to the polls. More than half of all Democrats, Republicans and Independents surveyed say that if allowed, they’d text in their Presidential vote. More than six in ten respondents of legal voting age said they would be open to voting by text. [more]

Glitches Set High-Tech Census back a Decade - Despite plans for a multibillion-dollar high-tech Census, the government says it will go back to counting the nation's 300 million people the old-fashioned way — with pen and paper. While the new high-tech devices purchased by the government will be used to verify every residential street address in the country, they will not be used to collect demographic information due to "glitches" in testing last year. [more]

Still Don't Own an iPhone? - If you're one of the folks who has been waiting for the price of iPhones to drop, your goal may be within reach. According to this article, when the new 3G iPhone is released this summer, there will be subsidies of $100-$200, bringing the phone's price down to a mere $199. [more]

One Web Page Infected Every Five Seconds - According to security vendor Sophos, web threats have risen sharply during the first quarter of 2008 with an average of 15,000 compromised websites. In addition, there has been a rise in spam-related Web pages--a daily average of 23,300 such pages were tracked during the first three months of 2008. This is equivalent to one spam Web page being discovered every three seconds. [more]

Regenerative Medicine - The Department of Defense recently launch a new effort to leverage cutting edge stem cell technology to assist service members who suffer severe wounds during service. The Armed Forces Institute of Regenerative Medicine (AFIRM) will have an overall budget of about $250 million for the initial five-year period, of which about $80 million will be provided by the Defense Department [more]

Life in the Looking Glass - Sometimes when I look at our industry I start feeling like Alice when she fell through the looking glass. Nearly all companies have failed investments in software initiatives -- many in the six and seven figure range -- and yet they insist on acting as if nothing's wrong! Curiouser and curiouser, indeed! The good news is that the leading causes of these failures can be avoided by applying Menlo's High-Tech Anthropology^® practice. Join us for the next FREE 90-minute presentation on May 23rd to learn how our approach creates the right software for the right application.

Forget the Donuts - Last June Microsoft quietly distributed a USB thumb drive to a handful of law-enforcement agencies. The drive contained the Computer Online Forensic Evidence Extractor (COFEE), which can dramatically cut the amount of time it takes to collect digital evidence. It eliminates the need to seize a computer itself, which typically involves disconnecting from a network, turning off the power and potentially losing data. Instead, the investigator can scan for evidence on site. [more]

Don't Point That Thing at Me - Due to a recent rash of hooligans flashing laser pointers at planes and helicopter pilots, Australia has declared them "controlled weapons." People who own or use the lasers illegally will now face a $4,000 fine or 12 months jail. [more]