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Data Storage

Femtolaser-switched magnetic storage->

Submitted by
MrSeb
MrSeb writes "Hold onto your hats: Scientists at the University of York, England have completely rewritten the rules of magnetic storage. Instead of switching a magnetic region using a magnetic field (like a hard drive head), the researchers have managed to switch a ferrimagnetic nanoisland using a 60-femtosecond laser. Storing magnetic data using lasers is up to 1,000 times faster than writing to a conventional hard drive (we're talking about gigabytes or terabytes per second) — and the ferrimagnetic nanoislands that store the data are capable of storage densities that are some 15 times greater than existing hard drive platters. Unfortunately the York scientists only detailed writing data with lasers; there's no word on how to read it."
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Education

Let's Make the Human Right to Education a Reality->

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes "In the wake of Apple's education event everyone is talking about the implications of the new technological possibilities for the future of learning. Yet, the revolutionary developments outside of Apple's world of strangling license agreements and shiny but expensive hardware are generally overlooked. iTunes U is only a relatively limited extension of what has been around for about a decade now: open content. Even after the update Apple's offerings are neither interactive, nor social. Open education thought-leader David Wiley, however, was right when he pointed out: "If you didn't need human interaction and someone to answer your questions, then the library would never have evolved into the university."

So what's next? We need more than just access to learning materials. We need to build communities around content!

It is proven that the standard university lecture is ineffective and that there are better ways to teach students.

A powerful example of what can be achieved by leveraging technology is Professor Sebastian Thrun's Artificial Intelligence class that he taught last semester at Stanford University. He opened it up to the rest of the world. And the world joined him. Thousands of independent learners signed up. By the time the New York Times wrote about the class 58,000 students had signed up. After the article appeared that number jumped to 130,000.

At this year's DLD conference Thrun presented a gripping account of the powerful dynamic that played out:

        "We spent endless nights recording ourselves on video, and interacting with tens of thousands of students. Volunteer students translated some of our classes into over 40 languages; and in the end we graduated over 23,000 students from 190 countries. In fact, Peter and I taught more students AI, than all AI professors in the world combined."

He sums up this experience as follows: "I saw the true power of education, there is no turning back. It's like a drug. I won't be able to teach 200 students again, in a conventional classroom setting." The story of one of his students from Afghanistan who completes his homework assignments hiding from mortar shells is going to give you goose bumps — and will make you understand why he decided to quit his professorship at Stanford to focus entirely on building open online courses.

It is important to note that this is not a one-off phenomenon: massively open online courses (Mooc) have been taught at many institutions with thousands of participants. Salman Khan has shown how an individual can teach millions of people from at home — all it takes is a webcam and a digital drawing tablet.

In a country like India, a mere 5% of the population have access to any kind of higher education. As Wiley highlights the use of technology under those circumstances is a simple matter of necessity as "[w]e are about to double the number of people who seek access to tertiary education. In India alone 2400 new universities would be needed in the next 25 years." What that means is that a new university would have to open every two weeks. While it might be possible to construct the necessary plant, who is going to teach there?

We will have to make use of peer to peer teaching and grading to scale instruction.

In light of what is now possible Shai Reshef, founder of the University of the People, recently declared: The Tragedy of Those Shut Out of Higher Education: It Needn't Be Anymore. For his own, entirely virtual, university he reports "over 90% satisfaction rate among students."

In his TED-talk Sugata Mitra told us about the granny cloud: senior citizens in Britain that use Skype to teach young Indian children English. This is what development assistance should look like in the global knowledge society of the 21st century.

At iversity we have thus decided to launch an academic cloud. We call on faculty members and Ph.D. students everywhere to join us. Open up your courses to the world and let us help you bring your courses online for free. Those interested may sign-up at: www.iversity.org/opencourses/signup.

Each course may only be a small step, but taken together this would be a huge leap towards making universal access to education a reality."
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Foundation "dismayed" at publication of public domain manuscript->

Submitted by john83
john83 writes "The Irish Times reports that publication of a new children’s story by a Dublin publishing house has been criticised by The Zürich James Joyce Foundation, which owns the original manuscript of the story. In a statement, the foundation said it “never permitted, tolerated, condoned or connived in this publication, and it rigidly dissociates itself from it”.

The Dublin publisher, Ithys, said the unpublished works of James Joyce were in the public domain as of January 1st. The attempt by “the Zürich Joyce Centre” (sic) proprietarily to assert some right on the document was “preposterous”. “The said centre has no rights in law in the copyright of the papers donated (given free) by Dr Jahnke.”

The stated goals of The Zurich James Joyce Foundation include "... keeping alive the memory and work of the Irish writer James Joyce ..."

Joyce died in January 1941."
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Comment: Re:Then why did Apple (Score 1) 373

by pegdhcp (#35938598) Attached to: Steve Jobs: 'We Don't Track Anyone'
Assuming that you have complete control on the OS in question (assumption based on your definite guarantee that my data is safe in my phone, forever), can you please explain why such data I have not asked to be stored in the first place stored there. I fortunately have nothing to hide from my wife and boss, but I really would not like to see our competitors to access my meeting times and locations. I am in progress of switching to a safer smartphone, so I am not objective at the moment. However I really do not need to be objective in such a BS smelling situation

Many pages make a thick book.