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Comment: Re:why do stable chances increase the likelyhood? (Score 1) 575

by Wylfing (#33746286) Attached to: Earth-Like Planet That Could Sustain Life Found

You misunderstand natural selection. Reproductive rates drive natural selection, not the environment per se: i.e., members of a species produce more offspring than can survive (in the local environment, which, it is important to remember, includes other species filling ecological niches that "crowd" the species under investigation). It doesn't matter what the environment is if species produce too few descendants.

Comment: Re:Flashbacks to X-Wing ... (Score 1) 122

by Wylfing (#33012828) Attached to: BioWare's <em>Star Wars</em> MMO To Have Space Combat
I would be much more inclined to play Vendetta Online (http://vendetta-online.com/). It's not open source, but there is a native Linux client, and they're working on a native Android client. V-O is one of those games like Guild Wars where people keep coming up with new "builds" and ways of dogfighting.

Comment: Re:Moving east? (Score 2, Insightful) 346

by Wylfing (#30578364) Attached to: North Magnetic Pole Moving East Due To Core Flux

I've also read postulations that glaciers were not caused by 'ice ages' per se, so much as they were the remains of the north pole ice cap after a shift. I can't find the link right now to the information I found truly interesting (correlation of past poles with existing glaciers) but there's a fair amount of info out there about it. (Some people are correlating it with 2012/doomsday, so be forewarned.)

Oh good grief. TFA is about movement of the magnetic north pole. This has nothing whatever to do with the axis of rotation of the Earth, or its axial tilt. A wandering magnetic pole isn't going to cause glaciers, or probably any other climatic effect for that matter. A useless compass is about the maximum inconvenience you're likely to encounter. I suspect this "fair amount of info" about glaciation you're referring to is found on the same web sites as the 2012 apocalyptic garbage you seem to believe.

Comment: Re:Prior art? Try 1991 (Score 1) 106

There are, of course MUD's far older than that which were persistent worlds.

Yes, MUDs are c.1986 or so. However, the patent in question specifies 3D graphics, so MUDs per se are not prior art. They should be...I mean, I am sure I am not the only one reading Slashdot who frittered away thousands of hours on Epic and Bigboy at the end of the 80s, and more than once thinking "I wonder if there's a way for this kind of game to have graphics?" That idea probably occurred to huge numbers of MUD nerds a huge number of times. It can hardly be called an original idea by the time 2000 rolled around.

Music

Stretchable, Flexible, Transparent Nanotube Speakers 76

Posted by timothy
from the buzzword-bingo-now-proven-soluble dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Chinese researchers have realised that a sheet of nanotubes behaves like a speaker when you send an audio current through it. The technology opens the way for a range of new versatile speaker systems. A video shows the speakers in action — some are stretched, one has even been sewn into a flag."

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

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