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Given Truth, the Misinformed Believe Lies More Screenshot-sm 961

Posted by samzenpus from the don't-let-the-truth-get-in-your-way dept.
SharpFang writes "In a series of studies in 2005 and 2006, researchers at the University of Michigan found that misinformed people, particularly political partisans, rarely changed their minds when exposed to corrected facts in news stories. In fact, they often became even more strongly set in their beliefs. Facts, they found, were not curing misinformation. Like an underpowered antibiotic, facts could actually make misinformation even stronger."

Comment What I use (Score 1) 70

by Xamusk (#32818992) Attached to: Good IC / Electronic Component Inventory Software?
I use plain osCommerce. Has good features to track what needs buying in an inventory. Also, it's good, though not necessary, to reference which drawer gets what. If not using drawer references, just keeping stuff categorized on the drawers works too. As noted by other commenters, the problem is keeping it up-to-date. Don't even bother tracking resistor/capacitor usage. Just buy a lot of them to have stock... you'll notice when one of them runs too low. The best reason to keep such inventory is for those parts that are not that common, which you may have few but want to keep control.
Education

Home Computers Equal Lower Test Scores 278

Posted by timothy from the but-better-typing-speed dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Politicians and education activists have long sought to eliminate the 'digital divide' by guaranteeing universal access to home computers, and in some cases to high-speed Internet service. But a Duke University study finds these efforts would actually widen the achievement gap in math and reading scores. Students in grades five through eight, particularly those from disadvantaged families, tend to post lower scores once these technologies arrive in their homes."
Toys

Set Free Your Inner Jedi (Or Pyro) 463

Posted by Soulskill from the sharks-sold-separately dept.
sirgoran writes "We've all thought about being the hero fighting off evil-doers and saving the day ever since we first saw Star Wars. The folks at Wicked Lasers have now brought that a little closer to reality with their latest release: a 1-Watt blue diode laser that can set skin and other things on fire. From an article at Daily Tech, where they talk about the dangers of such a powerful laser: 'And here's the best (or worst) part — it can set people (or things) on fire. Apparently the laser is so high-powered that shining it on fleshy parts will cause them to burst into flames. Of course it's equally capable of blinding people.' The thing that caught my eye was the price: $200. I wonder if they'll be able to meet the demand, since (if it works as advertised) this will be on every geek's Christmas list."

Comment Re:Computers should be designed for an OS (Score 1) 263

by Xamusk (#32314914) Attached to: Asus Budget Ultraportable Notebook Sold Sans OS
Buying a Linux-based laptop doesn't get us free from driver troubles. Once I bought an Acer laptop with a Linux-that-nobody-uses, and even from factory the webcam wouldn't work because it didn't have proper drivers. Luckily enough, I just had to wait a few months before smart people made an experimental gspca driver for it.

Comment For geometry (Score 1) 467

by Xamusk (#31720870) Attached to: Help Me Get My Math Back?

If you're looking for geometry learning, try to make an asteroids-like game.

It's not too challenging as to turn someone down, but lots of fun and you'll learn how to apply geometry. Specially sine and cossine, which my teachers did a terrible job in teaching what that was all about (only teached transformation formulae, never applying them). I only learnt what it was meant to do when I tried to do a subspace-like game.
Linux Business

Can Ubuntu Save Online Banking? 462

Posted by timothy from the make-that-virus-throw-an-error dept.
CWmike writes with a pointer to this ComputerWorld mention of an interesting application of Live CDs, courtesy of Florida-based regional bank CNL: "Recognizing that most consumers don't want to buy a separate computer for online banking, CNL is seriously considering making available free Ubuntu bootable 'live CD' discs in its branches and by mail. The discs would boot up Linux, run Firefox and be configured to go directly to CNL's Web site. 'Everything you need to do will be sandboxed within that CD,' [CNL CIO Jay McLaughlin] says. That should protect customers from increasingly common drive-by downloads and other vectors for malicious code that may infect and lurk on PCs, waiting to steal the user account names, passwords and challenge questions normally required to access online banking." (But what if someone slips in a stack of doctored disks?)
Biotech

Scientists "Print" Human Vein With 3D Printer 94

Posted by CmdrTaco from the because-we-can dept.
An anonymous reader writes "3D Printing technology has recently leapt into a new realm — we've seen printers that can create entire buildings out of stone, delicious meals out of simple ingredients, and now — perhaps weirdest and coolest of them all — a printer that can build body parts from cells!"
Wireless Networking

Auto-Scanning the Names People Choose For Their Wireless APs 422

Posted by timothy from the just-name-them-all-hidden dept.
MichaelSmith writes "I code on the tram, going to and from work, and I noticed that there are a lot of WiFi access points along the way. So one week I made it my job to write an automatic scanner which runs from a cron job every minute during commuting times. My backup script pushes the new AP names to my web server and you can read it online. It is a mixture of the straightforward, naive and funny, with a few pop culture references along the way. The first column in the file is the number of access points with that name. The second column is the AP name, in brackets to pick up white space." Why can't "Dress Me Slowly" and "Domestic Bliss" just share an AP?

Comment Re:I dont use... (Score 1) 896

by Xamusk (#31551866) Attached to: What Free Antivirus Do You Install On Windows?

Nice... Keep thinking that you're safe, and I won't tell you how I would have gotten a virus just today when I downloaded a basic app for my HP calculator, were it not for my AV software, which detected it just when I downloaded the installer from HP's official site.

I hope you never download anything from anywhere, including sites which should be safe and trustful, but just aren't.

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