Luke82385 - Slashdot User

Comment Hot Lava (Score 1) 346

by Luke82385 on Saturday August 08, 2009 @01:37PM (#28996855) Attached to: Finding New and Unintended Ways of Playing Games

You know that game "hot lava" that kids (definitely never me as an adult...) play where you can't step on the ground because its made of, you guessed it, hot lava, and you had to jump from rock to rock to get anywhere? Yesterday I found myself playing hot lava in Oblivion for a good 15 minutes before i realize just how useless i've become since graduating collage.

Steps Toward a Universal Flu Vaccine 177

Posted by kdawson on Monday February 23, 2009 @07:59PM from the one-antibody-to-rule-them-all dept.

Plasmoid writes "The NYTimes is reporting that scientists have starting developing what could turn out to be a 'universal' flu vaccine. They created antibody proteins that can neutralize different strains of the influenza virus, including the deadly H5N1 bird flu, the virus behind the 1918 epidemic, and common seasonal strains. These new antibodies target part of the virus that is shared between different strains and thus appear to be broadly effective. However, some experts question whether a universal vaccine of this kind is even possible, since the human body has been unable to come up with an antibody solution. An article on nature.com describes the work further."

NASA's Orbiting Carbon Observatory Set For Launch Tomorrow 183

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Monday February 23, 2009 @05:26PM from the door-to-door-to-get-the-gas dept.

bughunter writes "The Orbiting Carbon Observatory (OCO) is slated for launch tomorrow, February 24, 2009. OCO is the first earth science observatory that will create a detailed map of atmospheric carbon dioxide sources and sinks around the globe. And not a moment too soon. Popular Mechanics has a concise article on the science that this mission will perform, and how it fits in with the existing 'A-train' of polar-orbiting earth observatories. JPL's page goes into more detail. And NASA's OCO Launch Blog will have continuous updates as liftoff approaches and the spacecraft reports in and checks out from 700km up."

Microsoft Asks For a Refund From Laid-Off Workers [updated] 424

Posted by timothy on Sunday February 22, 2009 @07:50PM from the sorry-for-any-inconvenience dept.

An anonymous reader writes "The large print giveth, the small print taketh away. Microsoft, which recently laid off 1400 employees, is now claiming that some of those lucky schmoes were inadvertently overpaid on their severance package. A letter from the company, which was subsequently circulated on the internet, states: 'We ask that you repay the overpayment and sincerely apologize for any inconvenience to you.' Microsoft has confirmed the authenticity of the letter, but it's not known what the amounts in question are, or how many of the 1400 were affected." Update: 02/24 14:00 GMT by T : VinylRecords writes "Well, now Microsoft has recanted, saying that the situation has resulted in unfortunate amounts of bad press and public relations. 'This was a mistake on our part,' said a Microsoft spokesman in an e-mailed statement. 'We should have handled this situation in a more thoughtful manner.'"

Researcher Warns of "Digital Dark Age" 367

Posted by Soulskill on Tuesday October 28, 2008 @07:10PM from the evaporating-digital-culture dept.

alphadogg writes "A assistant professor from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is sounding a warning that companies, the government and researchers need to come up with a plan for preserving our increasingly digitized data in light of shifting document management and other software platforms (think WordPerfect and floppy disks). Jerome P. McDonough, who teaches at the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, says there exists about 369 exabytes worth of data, and that includes some pretty hard to replace stuff, including tax files, email and photos. Open standards could play a key role in any preservation effort, he says. 'If we can't keep today's information alive for future generations, we will lose a lot of our culture,' McDonough said. Even over the course of 10 years, you can have a rapid enough evolution in the ways people store digital information and the programs they use to access it that file formats can fall out of date.'"

Birth of a New African Ocean 261

Posted by kdawson on Sunday October 05, 2008 @02:53PM from the interesting-times-interesting-places dept.

Khemisty writes "Formation of an ocean is a rare event, one no scientist has ever witnessed. Yet this geophysical nativity is unfolding today in one of the hottest and most inhospitable corners of the globe. Africa is splitting apart at the seams. From the southern tip of the Red Sea southward through Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, and Mozambique, the continent is coming unstitched along a zone called the East African Rift." This stretching of the earth's crust has been going on for 20 million years, and within another 10 million the Red Sea will have broken through to create a new sea.

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