Want to read Slashdot from your mobile device? Point it at m.slashdot.org and keep reading!

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
The Military

Mystery of the Dying Bees Solved 347

Posted by Soulskill from the flower-counterattack-theories-disproved dept.
jamie points out news of a study attempting to explain the decline of honeybee populations across the US. As it turns out, the fungus N. ceranae that was thought to be killing off bee colonies had a partner in crime — a DNA-based virus that worked in tandem with N. ceranae to compromise nutrition uptake. From the NY Times: "Dr. Bromenshenk's team at the University of Montana and Montana State University in Bozeman, working with the Army's Edgewood Chemical Biological Center northeast of Baltimore, said in their jointly written paper that the virus-fungus one-two punch was found in every killed colony the group studied. Neither agent alone seems able to devastate; together, the research suggests, they are 100 percent fatal. 'It's chicken and egg in a sense — we don't know which came first,' Dr. Bromenshenk said of the virus-fungus combo — nor is it clear, he added, whether one malady weakens the bees enough to be finished off by the second, or whether they somehow compound the other's destructive power. 'They're co-factors, that's all we can say at the moment,' he said. 'They're both present in all these collapsed colonies.'"
PC Games (Games)

Blizzard Boss Says Restrictive DRM Is a Waste of Time 563

Posted by Soulskill from the what-about-lan-play dept.
Stoobalou writes "Blizzard co-founder Frank Pearce reckons that fighting piracy with DRM is a losing battle. His company — which is responsible for one of the biggest video games of all time, the addictive online fantasy role player World of Warcraft — is to release StarCraft 2 on July 27, and Pearce has told Videogamer that the title won't be hobbled with the kind of crazy copy protection schemes that have made Ubisoft very unpopular in gaming circles of late. StarCraft 2 will require a single online activation using the company's Battle.net servers, after which players will be allowed to play the single-player game to their hearts' content, without being forced to have a persistent Internet connection."
Australia

Man-Made Atomic Clocks the Best In the Universe 267

Posted by timothy from the take-that-you-buncha-pulsars dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The widespread belief by astrophysicists that pulsars and white dwarfs are the best clocks in the universe is wrong, say two Australian physicists. John Hartnett and Andre Luiten from the University of Western Australia have recently shown that man-made terrestrial atomic clocks take the crown, contrary to numerous claims in astrophysical literature that the natural timing provided by pulsars and white dwarfs is the most precise. The preprint of their paper, available on the arXiv, shows that terrestrial clocks exceed the accuracy and stability of the astrophysical 'clocks' by all sensible measures, in some cases by several orders of magnitude."

Comment Re:Philosophy is fundamental (Score 1) 515

by MadLad (#31588434) Attached to: Of the options below, I'd most like to learn more ...
A "History of Western Philosophy" necessarily tells only half the story: the western side. If you're into philosophy, you own it to yourself to explore Eastern philosophy, which is (also) the hotness. Try Nagarjuna particularly, if you're into epistemology, or even just into having your head blown open, laughing stupidly and asking "What is the matrix?"
Earth

China To Tap Combustible Ice As New Energy Source 185

Posted by timothy from the undra-the-tundra dept.
lilbridge writes "Huge reserves of "combustible ice" — frozen methane and water — have been discovered in the tundra of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau in China. Estimates show that there is enough combustible ice to provide 90 years worth of energy for China. Burning the combustible ice may be a far better alternative than letting it just melt, releasing tons of methane into the air."

Comment Worldwide movement (Score 1) 44

by MadLad (#31328396) Attached to: Man Defends His Right To Flip Off the Police
Robert J. Ekas is obviously the American representative of what will become a worldwide movement.

In South Africa, a university student who may or may not have flipped off the police in a presidential cavalcade was summarily arrested, had a bag put over his head and was detained while his home was searched. Nice.

http://www.mg.co.za/article/2010-02-19-no-middle-finger-to-prez

Fortunately the media kicked up a big fuss about it. It's not illegal to be rude.
Games

Revisiting the "Holy Trinity" of MMORPG Classes 362

Posted by Soulskill from the or-druid-as-the-case-may-be dept.
A feature at Gamasutra examines one of the foundations of many MMORPGs — the idea that class roles within such a game fall into three basic categories: tank, healer, and damage dealer. The article evaluates the pros and cons of such an arrangement and takes a look at some alternatives. "Eliminating specialized roles means that we do away with boxing a class into a single role. Without Tanks, each class would have features that would help them participate in and survive many different encounters like heavy armor, strong avoidance, or some class or magical abilities that allow them to disengage from direct combat. Without specialized DPS, all classes should be able to do damage in order to defeat enemies. Some classes might specialize in damage type, like area of effect (AoE) damage; others might be able to exploit enemy weaknesses, and some might just be good at swinging a sharpened bit of metal in the right direction at a rapid rate. This design isn't just about having each class able to fill any trinity role. MMO combat would feel more dynamic in this system. Every player would have to react to combat events and defend against attacks."

Comment Put it on both sides of the keyboard (Score 1) 344

by MadLad (#29745227) Attached to: 10/GUI — an Interface For Multi-Touch Input
This looks really great. But for me, a mistake is that the touchpad is in front of the keyboard. You have to move your arms forward and back when you want to switch; using one hand on each is tricky if the touchpad registers your dangling sleeve or your wrist.

I think it would be much better if the total area of the touchpad was split between the two side of the keyboard. Then you could have both hands on the touchpad or one on the touchpad and one on the keyboard, and you wouldn't have to do the forward-back thing with your arms.

Comment Re:Celsius: It's for telling temperature (Score 1) 1233

by MadLad (#29579935) Attached to: At What Temperature (F) Do You Prefer Your Nerd Cave?
Take one meter. Make a cube of that side, a cubic meter. Fill that with water near the sea level and you get a volume of 1 Liter of water.

Um. Negative on that, Command. Our cubic metre seems to be holding not 1 but 1000 litres of water at sea level.

Regardless, the elegance of your system cannot be denied.

By the way, while you Americans are converting from F to C, please also convert from liters to litres, from center to centre, etc. Cos it's prettier our way.
Space

Astrophysicists Find "Impossible" Planet 436

Posted by CmdrTaco from the just-like-global-warming dept.
SpuriousLogic writes "Scientists have discovered a planet that shouldn't exist. The finding, they say, could alter our understanding of orbital dynamics, a field considered pretty well settled since the time of astronomer Johannes Kepler 400 years ago. The planet is known as a 'hot Jupiter,' a gas giant orbiting the star Wasp-18, about 330 light years from Earth. The planet, Wasp-18b, is so close to the star that it completes a full orbit (its "year") in less than an Earth day, according to the research, which was published in the journal Nature. Of the more than 370 exoplanets — planets orbiting stars other than our sun — discovered so far, this is just the second with such a close orbit. The problem is that a planet that close should be consumed by its parent star in less than a million years, say the authors at Keele University in England. The star Wasp-18 is believed to be about a billion years old, and since stars and the planets around them are thought to form at the same time, Wasp-18b should have been reduced to cinders ages ago."
Math

Big Bang Could Be Recreated Inside a Metamaterial 113

Posted by kdawson from the never-met-a-material-i-didn't-like dept.
KentuckyFC writes "Metamaterials are substances with a permittivity and permeability that has been manipulated in a way that allows fine control over the behavior of light. They have famously been used to create an invisibility cloak that hides objects from view. Now Igor Smolyaninov, a physicist in the US, has calculated how metamaterials could be used for a much more profound demonstration: to reproduce the behavior of light in various kinds of spacetimes, in particular a (2+2) spacetime (one having two dimensions of space and two of time). His method is to show that there is formal mathematical analogy between the way metamaterials and spacetimes affect light. He goes on to show how a phase transition in a (2+2) spacetime leads to the creation of a (2+1) spacetime filled with photons, an event analogous to the Big Bang." Here are the abstract and the preprint (PDF).

Slashdot Top Deals

THEGODDESSOFTHENETHASTWISTINGFINGERSANDHERVOICEISLIKEAJAVELININTHENIGHTDUDE

Close