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Submission + - Boltzmann equation solved, the new way

Submitted by xt
xt writes: The Boltzmann equation is old news. What's news is that the 140 year old equation has been solved, using mathematical techniques from the fields of partial differential equations and harmonic analysis, some as new as five years old. This solution provides a new understanding of the effects due to grazing collisions, when neighboring molecules just glance off one another rather than collide head on. We may not understand the theory, but we'll sure love the applications!
Businesses

Submission + - Adobe Calls Out Apple with Ads in NY Times, WSJ 3

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens
Hugh Pickens writes: "Businessweek reports that Adobe has taken out newspaper advertisements in the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times today and posted an open letter to call out the tablet-computer maker for stifling competition. "We believe that consumers should be able to freely access their favorite content and applications, regardless of what computer they have, what browser they like, or what device suits their needs," the letter states. "No company — no matter how big or how creative — should dictate what you can create, how you create it, or what you can experience on the web." The letter is part of a widening rift between Apple and Adobe. Two weeks ago, Apple Chief Executive Officer Steve Jobs wrote a 29-paragraph public missive panning Adobe’s Flash as having “major technical drawbacks.” U.S. antitrust enforcers also may investigate Apple following a complaint from Adobe, people familiar with the matter said this month. Adobe has also launched a banner ad campaign to let you know that they love Apple. The two-piece banner ads are composed of a 720 x 90 pixel “We [heart] Apple” design, followed by a 300 x 250 pixel medium rectangle that reads: “What we don’t love is anybody taking away your freedom to choose what you create, how you create it, and what you experience on the web.”"

Comment Re:One good idea (Score 1) 495

by virgilp (#32155796) Attached to: A Peace Plan To End the Flash-On-iPhone Fight

Com'on, Flash is already "standard" / fully documented & all. And ActionScript was supposed to become "JavaScript 2", Adobe worked with the standard bodies to standardize it as ECMAScript.... but nobody else seemed interested, so they eventually gave up. But a draft standard ECMAScript4 exists (much like a draft HTML5 exists :P ).

This decision is nothing about technical reasons, Apple didn't ban CS5's Flash2iPhone exporter because it doesn't work..... but because it DOES.
GNU is Not Unix

Submission + - Can Employer Usurp Copyright On GPL-derived Work? 4

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: I am a recent graduate, and I've been working on my own on a project that uses GPL-licensed libraries. Later a university department hired me to develop this project into a solution that they needed, on a part-time basis. The project's size increased over time and soliciting help from the open source community seemed like the natural way to go, however when I suggested this, my boss was not interested, and it was made clear to me that the department's position was that copyright of the whole thing belonged to them. Indeed by default work created for an employer belongs to the employer, so I may have found myself in the same trap as described in this story: "http://developers.slashdot.org/story/02/03/21/0139244/Beware-Employment-Contracts". Even though I want to release my code to the public I don't know whether I have the legal right to do so, and many people are likely in the same position, working for a university without realizing that their work may not belong to them.

I am wondering whether there is room for hope, since
(1) I started the project on my own, and since no written or verbal agreement was ever made to transfer copyright over to my employer I question whether they can claim that they now own the extended version of the project.
(2) The whole project relies on GPL libraries, since from the start I intended to release it under GPL, and without those libraries it would be useless. Can they still claim copyright and prevent me from publishing the source code even though it is derived from GPL software?

Comment Re:Scribd adds what value, exactly? (Score 2, Insightful) 177

by virgilp (#32123166) Attached to: Scribd Switches To HTML5

Furthermore, I find their "major reason" that HTML5 supports all the major points of the site's previous functionality to be a blatant lie. To give one example - ok, HTML5 supports webfonts... but how exactly are you going to license the fonts from Adobe (or any other font foundry that doesn't give away the font for free)?

Don't get me wrong: the ability to select, search (*) and so on is great, and could be a very good reason per se to switch. But I don't think that the solution is to flame things up.... just go the Google way, they added HTML5 video on youtube (where possible(!) ) and didn't make so much fuss about scrapping a plugin that enabled them to have a business in the first place.

I'm pretty sure that this is going to backfire for scribd in the future, as they have set some not-so-realistic expectations with their messaging, in the hopes of getting lots of publicity. This whole HTML5 craze reminds me of the similar period when XML was fashionable and thought (by some) that it will replace SQL databases, and would become the universal-good-for-all-storage-format. Guess what, Oracle is still around :)

(*) Search doesn't really work in my experience... check http://www.scribd.com/documents/30964170/Scribd-in-HTML5. If you select text in a box you can then search (& find stuff in that box), but not in all boxes; for instance, try searching "me three".
Businesses

Submission + - iPad is not "killing" netbook sales (winsupersite.com)

Submitted by mantis2009
mantis2009 writes: Paul Thurrott, the prolific technology analyst and Windows expert, reacts strongly to an article highlighted on Slashdot. Thurrott takes numbers from IDC and the Wall Street Journal, indicating that netbook sales have not in any meaningful way been affected by sales of Apple's tablet computer, the iPad. Money quote: "...netbooks and sub-12-inch machines[] will sell 45.6 million units in 2011 and 60.3 million in 2013. If I remember the numbers from 2009, they were 10 percent of all PCs, or about 30 million units. Explain again how the iPad will beat that. Please. Even the craziest iPad sales predictions are a small percentage of that."
AMD

Submission + - AMD undercuts Intel with six-core Phenom IIs (techreport.com) 1

Submitted by EconolineCrush
EconolineCrush writes: As Slashdot readers are no doubt aware, Intel's latest "Gulftown" Core i7-980X is an absolute beast of a CPU. But its six cores don't come cheap; the 980X sells for over a grand, which is more than it would cost to build an entire system based on one of AMD's new six-core CPUs. The Phenom II X6 line starts at just $200 and includes a new Turbo capability that can opportunistically raise the clock speed of up to three cores when the others are idle. Although not as fast as the 980X, the the new X6s are quick enough to offer compelling value versus even like-priced Intel CPUs. And the kicker: the X6s will work in a good number of older Socket AM2+ and AM3 motherboards with only a BIOS update.

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