Manilal - Slashdot User

Submission + - Giant Magnetoresistance gets Physics Nobel!! (nobelprize.org)

Submitted by xrooles on Tuesday October 09, 2007 @12:44PM

xrooles writes: This year's Nobel Prize in Physics is awarded to ALBERT FERT and PETER GRÜNBERG for their discovery of Giant Magnetoresistance. Applications of this phenomenon have revolutionized techniques for retrieving data from hard disks. The discovery also plays a major role in various magnetic sensors as well as for the development of a new generation of electronics. The use of Giant Magnetoresistance can be regarded as one of the first major applications of nanotechnology. http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/2007/

Submission + - French students getting FLOSS on USB sticks (standblog.org)

Submitted by The Only Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 09, 2007 @12:38PM

The Only Anonymous Coward writes: The Paris-region (France) local government has started distributing 220 000 USB keys to students and teachers with Free and Open Source Software products on it, including Firefox, Thunderbird, OpenOffice.org, VLC Player and 15 others. The goal is to 'reduce the digital divide', said Jean-Paul Huchon, President of Region Ile-de-France, who has attributed a 2.6 million EUR ($3.67M) budget for this operation. The USB stick is linked to a Netvibes.com-powered customizable Website. Not counting those who will erase the content to store Britney Spears songs (or worse!) on it, this may be one of the biggest exposure that FLOSS products could get with the younger generation.

Submission + - AMD/ATi to release graphics specs

Submitted by Ganesh999 on Thursday September 06, 2007 @06:59AM

Ganesh999 writes: A recent Phoronix article hinted that despite the large number of substantially improved AMD/ATi drivers just released, there was more exciting news in the pipeline.

This seems to have been confirmed at the Linux kernel summit yesterday. From LWN :

'AMD's representative at the summit has announced that the company has made a decision to enable the development of open source drivers for all of its (ATI) graphics processors from the R500 going forward. There will be specifications available and a skeleton driver as well; a free 2D driver is anticipated by the end of the year. The rest will have to be written; freeing of the existing binary-only driver is not in the cards, and "that is better for everybody." Things are looking good on this front. More in the kernel summit report to come.'

General reaction from the kernel developers seems to be positive :

'It's definitely not a 'you're on your own' kind of proposition: this is exactly what was asked for, giving the community all the information it needs to complete a proper driver.'

Submission + - Belgium prosecutes the church of Scientology

Submitted by

sheean.nl

on Tuesday September 04, 2007 @06:59AM

sheean.nl writes: "The Belgian Federal Judicial Authorities plans to prosecute the church of Scientology. The church is accused of being a criminal organisation which involves itself with extortion, fraud, unfair trading, violation of privacy laws and unlawfully practicing medicine. Both the Belgian and the European departement should be brought to court, according to the authorities. An investigation has been started in 1999 after former Scientologists complained about extortion by the church, this investigation has now been completed and the authorities want the case to be put through. The Belgians call this case a world's first. In some countries, including the US, the church of Scientology is officially recognised as a religion, with high-profile followers such as Tom Cruise and John Travolta."

Submission + - Scientist must pay to read his own CC'd paper (cam.ac.uk)

Submitted by

Glyn Moody

on Tuesday September 04, 2007 @06:59AM

Glyn Moody writes: "Peter Murray Rust, a chemist at Cambridge University, was lost for words when he found Oxford University Press's website demanded $48 from him to access his own scientific paper, in which he holds copyright and which he released under a Creative Commons licence. As he writes, the journal in question was "selling my intellectual property, without my permission, against the terms of the licence (no commercial use)." In the light of this kind of copyright abuse and of the PRISM Coalition, a new FUD group set up by scientific publishers to discredit open access, isn't it time to say enough is enough, and demand free access to the research we pay for through our taxes?"

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