Follow Slashdot stories on Twitter

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Science

Submission + - The IKEA Effect: Why We Love Things We Build (neoacademic.com)

Submitted by RichDiesal
RichDiesal writes: The IKEA Effect refers to the tendency for people to value things they have created/built themselves more than if made by someone else – in fact, nearly as much as if an expert with much greater skill had created the same item. Is this the reason that open source software proponents are so “enthusiastic” about their products while the general market resists them – because those proponents had a hand in developing them?
Education

Submission + - 61.9% of Undergraduates Cybercheat (neoacademic.com)

Submitted by RichDiesal
RichDiesal writes: A recent study of 1222 undergraduates found that 61.9% of them "cybercheat," which involves using the Internet illicitly to get higher grades. Some of the quotes from students are a bit troubling. As one 19-year-old engineering student put it, "As more and more people are using the Internet illegally (i.e. limewire etc.), I feel that the chances of being caught or the consequences of my actions are almost insignificant. So I feel no pressure in doing what ever everybody else is doing/using the Internet for."
Privacy

Submission + - Employee Monitoring: When IT is Asked to Spy (computerworld.com)

Submitted by CWmike
CWmike writes: It's 9:00 in the morning, or 3:00 in the afternoon, or even 10:00 at night. Do you know what your users are up to? More than ever, IT managers can answer 'Oh, yes' to that query. As corporate functions converge onto IP-based networks, more infractions are happening online. Employees leak intellectual property or trade secrets; violate laws against sexual harassment or child pornography; and waste time while looking like they are hard at work. Michael Workman, an associate professor at the Florida Institute of Technology's Nathan M. Bisk College of Business, estimates that monitoring responsibilities take up at least 20% of the average IT manager's time. Yet most IT professionals never expected they'd be asked to police their colleagues and co-workers in quite this way. How do they feel about this growing responsibility? Workman says he sees a split among tech workers. Those who specialize in security issues feel that it's a valid part of IT's job. But those who have more of a generalist's role, such as network administrators, often don't like it. Computerworld contributor Tam Harbert found a wide variety of viewpoints from IT managers, ranging from discomfort at having to 'babysit' employees to righteous beliefs about 'protecting the integrity of the system.'
Idle

Submission + - Over a third of the Internet is pornographic (thinq.co.uk)

Submitted by Th'Inquisitor
Th'Inquisitor writes: Pornography makes up 37 per cent of the total number of Web pages online, according to a new study published by Optenet, a SaaS provider.

According to the report, which looked at a representative sample of around four million extracted URLs, adult content on the Internet increased by 17 per cent in the first quarter of 2010, as compared to the same period in 2009.

Comment Re:Labeling (Score 1) 228

by RichDiesal (#32469402) Attached to: Urine Test For Autism
Life expectancy has been going up at a pretty consistent rate in the United States since 1968.

For either medicine or sanitation to have made a substantial effect on life expectancy, we'd expect the timeline of advances in each to mirror advances in life expectancy (e.g. major medical breakthrough in 1973 matching a substantial increase in life expectancy in 1980). That clearly doesn't happen. Sanitation and medicine are both only a small piece of a much larger puzzle.

Comment Re:Labeling (Score 3, Informative) 228

by RichDiesal (#32469358) Attached to: Urine Test For Autism
You clearly don't have or know anyone with an actual mental disorder. There is certainly harm done by false diagnosis/labeling, and some people certainly milk their diagnoses, but the majority of people with mental disorders find it somewhat of a relief when they discover that they have a condition that 1) is not their fault and 2) has treatment options.

Think of it this way - if you grew up, and throughout your elementary and even high school experience, you had skills and abilities that other people thought were bizarre, people always looked at you weird and you didn't know why, you had uncontrollable tics that other people just didn't, you were frustrated daily because you had a very difficult time controlling your own behaviors, and you constantly got in trouble because these behaviors were judged to be "bad."

Finding out "other people have this problem too, and here's what you can try to alleviate the symptoms" is important to help these people become "normal, productive members of society." Your assertion that diagnosis will "lead the majority of them to make excuses" is completely unfounded.
Programming

Submission + - How to get a game-obsessed teenager into coding 6

Submitted by looseBits
looseBits writes: I have a friend who's 14 year-old son spends all his time gaming like any normal teenager however she would like to find a more productive interest for him and asked me how to get him into coding. When I started coding, it was on the Apple II and one could quickly write code that was almost as interesting as commercially available software however times have changed and it would probably take years of study if starting from scratch to write anything anyone would find mildly interesting. Does anyone have any experience in getting their children into programming? How did you keep them interested if the only thing they can do after a week is make the computer count to 10 and dump it on the screen?
Crime

Submission + - Hi Tech Burglars Get Longer Sentences in Louisiana

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens
Hugh Pickens writes: "Burglars and terrorists should be careful not to use Google maps if they plan on committing crimes in the state of Lousiana. Nola reports that a bill approved 89-0 by the Louisiana House will require that judges impose an additional minimum sentence of at least 10 years on terrorist acts if the crime is committed with the aid of an Internet-generated "virtual maps." The bill, already approved by the Lousiana Senate, defines a "virtual street-level map" as one that is available on the Internet and can generate the location or picture of a home or building by entering the address of the structure or an individual's name on a website. If the map is used in the commission of a crime like burglary the bill calls for the addition of at least one year in jail to be added to the burglary sentence. The House measure is now being sent back to the Senate for approval of clarifying amendments made by a House committee."

Submission + - QuantumTeleportation Achieved Over Ten Miles (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by
staryc
staryc writes: "Scientists have had success teleporting information between photons over a free space distance of nearly ten miles. However, rather than picking one thing up and placing it somewhere else, quantum teleportation involves entangling two things, like photons or ions, and then moving the quantum state from one to the other. While photons are good at transmitting information, they are not as good as ions at allowing manipulation, an advancement we'd need for encryption."

Submission + - Violent Video Games for a Release That Never Comes (neoacademic.com)

Submitted by RichDiesal
RichDiesal writes: A recent article in Psychological Science investigates the use of violent video games by people to experience catharsis — a "release" associated with pent-up aggressive energy. They found that when angered, people are more likely to seek violent video games (academic article behind a paywall) for an emotional release, despite the fact that playing violent video games does not seem to actually provide that release.

If you’re not familiar with the idea of catharsis, consider this quote from a participant in the study: “How could I squelch the urge to set my manager on fire if I couldn’t set people on fire in video games?”
Earth

"Argonaut" Octopus Sucks Air Into Shell As Ballast 72

Posted by timothy from the 8-legs-good dept.
audiovideodisco writes "Even among octopuses, the Argonaut must be one of the coolest. It gets its nickname — 'paper nautilus' — from the fragile shell the female assembles around herself after mating with the tiny male (whose tentacle/penis breaks off and remains in the female). For millennia, people have wondered what the shell was for; Aristotle thought the octopus used it as a boat and its tentacles as oars and sails. Now scientists who managed to study Argonauts in the wild confirm a different hypothesis: that the octopus sucks air into its shell and uses it for ballast as it weaves its way through the ocean like a tiny submarine. The researchers' beautiful video and photographs show just how the Argonaut pulls off this trick. The regular (non-paper) nautilus also uses its shell for ballast, but the distant relationship between it and all octopuses suggests this is a case of convergent evolution."
Earth

Submission + - How Deep Is the Ocean? (foxnews.com)

Submitted by Velcroman1
Velcroman1 writes: Using lead weights and depth sounders, scientists have made surprisingly accurate estimates of the ocean's depths in the past. Now, with satellites and radar, researchers have pinned down a more accurate answer to that age-old query: How deep is the ocean? And how big? As long ago as 1888, John Murray dangled lead weights from a rope off a ship to calculate the ocean's volume — the product of area and mean ocean depth. Using satellite data, researchers from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute (WHOI) set out to more accurately answer that question — and found out that it's 320 million cubic miles. And despite miles-deep abysses like the Mariana Trench, the ocean's mean depth is just 2.29 miles, thanks to the varied and bumpy ocean floor.
Image

Using Augmented Reality To Treat Cockroach Phobia 126

Posted by samzenpus from the virtually-fixed dept.
RichDiesal writes "In this blog post, I describe a new use for augmented reality — treating people for cockroach phobia. A recent paper in the academic journal Cyberpsychology, Behavior and Social Networking discusses a system where people suffering from cockroach phobia sit at a desk with a virtual reality headset. The headset has a camera on the front so that patients see the desk they're sitting at — but covered in cockroaches. In the study, researchers managed to elicit a fear response to virtual cockroaches similar to what would be experienced with real cockroaches. Sounds like a little slice of hell to me."

Slashdot Top Deals

"The one charm of marriage is that it makes a life of deception a neccessity." - Oscar Wilde

Close