Forgot your password?

Close
typodupeerror

The placebo effect not just on drugs

Submitted by dvdme
dvdme writes "It seams like the placebo effect isn't just valid on drugs. It's also a fact on elevators, offices and traffic lights. An article by Greg Ross on http://www.futilitycloset.com/2010/11/04/placebo-buttons/ says, and I quote:
"In most elevators installed since the early 1990s, the “close door” button has no effect. Otis Elevator engineers confirmed the fact to the Wall Street Journal in 2003.

Similarly, many office thermostats are dummies, designed to give workers the illusion of control. “You just get tired of dealing with them and you screw in a cheap thermostat,” said Illinois HVAC specialist Richard Dawson. “Guess what? They quit calling you.”

In 2004 the New York Times reported that more than 2,500 of the 3,250 “walk” buttons in New York intersections do nothing. “The city deactivated most of the pedestrian buttons long ago with the emergence of computer-controlled traffic signals, even as an unwitting public continued to push on.”"

Is Telstra violating the GPL?->

Submitted by daria42
daria42 writes "Uh oh ... looks like Australia's largest telco Telstra hasn't exactly been paying attention to its responsibilities under the GNU GPL. Australian coder Angus Gratton has been investigating the company's branded T-Hub, T-Box and T-Touch products — all based on Linux, and all without any source code or GPL license attached. Naughty. However it's not as though Telstra is the only one to blame — the goods are manufactured by Sagem, Netgem and Huawei respectively."
Link to Original Source
Power

No Energy Savings with Daylight Savings Time

Submitted by
Pickens
Pickens writes "For nearly a century, Americans have been springing forward and falling back, and this morning was no different as we all snuggled soundly in bed while the clock fell back an hour. But Michael Downing, a teacher at Tufts University and the author of "Spring Forward: The Annual Madness of Daylight Saving Time," says messing with the clock doesn’t really save energy. “Daylight saving is still a boon to purveyors of barbecue grills, sports and recreation equipment and the petroleum industry, as gasoline consumption increases every time we increase the length of the daylight saving period." A report in 2007 by the California Energy Commission's Demand Analysis Office agrees concluding that, "The extension of daylight saving time (DST) to March 2007 had little or no effect on energy consumption in California (PDF).” According to Downing the petroleum industry has known since 1930 that DST increases gasoline comsumption. "Daylight Saving really pushes Americans out of the house at the end of the day. And when Americans go out of the house, they may go to the ballpark, they may go to the mall, but they don't walk there. They get into their cars." So is daylight saving time a fait accompli or is there light at the end of the tunnel? “Since 1966, every 20 years, Congress has given us another month of daylight saving. We're up to eight months now,” says Downing. “And there is every reason to believe that the [U.S.] Chamber of Commerce, the national lobby for convenience stores — which account for more than 80 percent of all gasoline sales in the country — and Congress will continue to press for extensions until we adopt year-round daylight saving. And then, why not spring forward in March or April and enjoy double daylight saving time?”"

Comment: Re:Attempt to delaying uptake of competing product (Score 1) 657

by fdragon (#33864466) Attached to: GM Criticized Over Chevy Volt's Hybrid Similarities

Texas has a speed limit of 80 mph between San Antonio and El Paso on Interstate Highway 10. Other roads in that area have similar day time speed limits. Texas is also quirky in that it is a Reasonable and Prudent state which means under various conditions the posted speed limit means nothing and you can be giving a speeding ticket for driving too slow, or too fast when driving the posted speed limit all depending on what other traffic or the weather is doing.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_limits_in_the_United_States

All of this means that in Texas, you can be a very short trip away from a road where the only safe speed to drive is over 70 mph. Never mind the large number of private race tracks people use with various club events like SCCA, or various performance car owners clubs.

And having the gas engine kick in and drive the wheels directly at 70 mph or with low batters is an interesting issue in and of itself. If you are in the middle of turning the car to a new direction, the results could even potentially cause the car to suddenly change handling characteristics.

Technology

Computing in the new world: Scaling to 1e6+ Cores-> 2

Submitted by mattaw
mattaw writes "In my* blog post I describe a system designed to test a route to the potential future of computing. What do we do when we have computers with 1 million cores? What about a billion? How about 100 billion?

None of our current programming models or computer architecture models apply to machines of this complexity (and with their corresponding component failure rate and other scaling issues). The current model of coherent memory/identical time/everything can route to everywhere just can't scale to machines of this size. So where did the scientists** at the University of Manchester (including Steve Furber one of the ARM founders) and the University of Southampton turn for a new model? They took one straight out of their own heads. Quite literally: their brains.

Our brains just don't work like any computers we currently make. Our brains have a lot more than 1 million processing elements (more like the 100 billion), all of which don't have any precise idea of time (vague ordering of events maybe) nor a shared memory and not everything routes to everything else but anyone who argues the brain isn't a pretty spiffy processing system ends up looking pretty silly (assuming they have one). In effect modern computing bears as much relation to biological computing as the ordered world of sudoku does to the statistical chaos of quantum mechanics.

Read the article*** to see a preview of the brain turned into hardware (and of course you will read all the papers from Manchester's website before posting won't you). Who says science is boring?

* Note the subtle declaration of interest. I also work at the University of Southampton, UK.
** I am not and have never been one of these mighty people trying to change the world. I claim no credit. At best I helped some of the PhD students and staff with a few bits and bobs plus the odd ARM development kit.
*** No free lunch here /. You may have to actually read the source article."
Link to Original Source

New Air Conditioner Process cuts energy use 50-90%-> 2

Submitted by necro81
necro81 writes "The U.S. National Renewable Energy Laboratory has announced that it has developed a new method for air conditioning that reduces energy use by 50-90%. The DEVap system cools air using evaporative cooling, which is not new, but combines the process with a liquid dessicant for pulling the water vapor out of the cooled air stream. The liquid dessicant, a very strong aqueous solution of lithium chloride or sodium chloride, is separated from the air stream by a permeable hydrophobic membrane. Heat is later used to evaporate water vapor back out — heat that can come from a variety of sources such as solar or natural gas. The dessicants are, compared to typical refrigerants like HCFCs, relatively safe for the environment."
Link to Original Source
Science

Why Being Wrong Makes Humans So Smart 1

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens
Hugh Pickens writes "Kathryn Schulz writes in the Boston Globe that the more scientists understand about cognitive functioning, the more it becomes clear that our capacity to make mistakes is utterly inextricable from what makes the human brain so swift, adaptable, and intelligent and that rather than treating errors like the bedbugs of the intellect — an appalling and embarrassing nuisance we try to pretend out of existence, we need to recognize that human fallibility is part and parcel of human brilliance. Neuroscientists increasingly think that inductive reasoning undergirds virtually all of human cognition. Humans use inductive reasoning to learn language, organize the world into meaningful categories, and grasp the relationship between cause and effect in the physical, biological, and psychological realms and thanks to inductive reasoning, we are able to form nearly instantaneous beliefs and take action accordingly. But our use of inductive reasoning comes with a price. "The distinctive thing about inductive reasoning is that it generates conclusions that aren’t necessarily true. They are, instead, probabilistically true — which means they are possibly false," writes Schulz. "Because we reason inductively, we will sometimes get things wrong." Schulz recommends that we respond to the mistakes (or putative mistakes) of those around us with empathy and generosity and demand that our business and political leaders acknowledge and redress their errors rather than ignoring or denying them. "Once we recognize that we do not err out of laziness, stupidity, or evil intent, we can liberate ourselves from the impossible burden of trying to be permanently right. We can take seriously the proposition that we could be in error, without deeming ourselves idiotic or unworthy.""
Sci-Fi

Doctor Who: what's in the Pandorica? (No spoilers)->

Submitted by
Mirk
Mirk writes "Season Five of Doctor Who — the first season to feature Matt Smith as the Eleventh Doctor — is drawing to a close. Only the final two-part story remains to be shown, consisting of The Pandorica Opens and The Big Bang. But what is inside the Pandorica? With only a few days left before the episode is broadcast, The Reinvigorated Programmer speculates, on the possibilities."
Link to Original Source
Privacy

What do you think about Abine acquiring T.A.C.O.?->

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes "Abine, a new company selling products and services related to privacy acquired Firefox's privacy tool T.A.C.O. and has declared it's intention to acquire other such privacy tools. I ask thy mighty slashdot, what do you know of this Abine and what to make of this deal?"
Link to Original Source

My father was a God-fearing man, but he never missed a copy of the New York Times, either. -- E.B. White