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+-   X11 Chrome outperforms Windows and Mac?[->] on Monday November 02, @07:11AM Anonymous Coward

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 02, @07:11AM
google
An anonymous reader writes "In a curious contrast to conventional wisdom, there are reports of X11 Chromium being faster than Windows or Mac versions. In the thread titled "Why is Linux Chrome so fast", a developer speculates that it is due to the use of X11 capabilities: "On X-windows [sic], the renderer backingstores are managed by the X server, and the transport DIBs are also managed by the X server. So, we avoid a lot of memcpy costs incurred on Windows due to keeping the backingstores in main memory there."

Has the design of X11 withstood the test of time better than people tend to give it credit for?"
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+-   Facebook ditches App Verification Program[->] on Thursday October 29, @08:13PM angry tapir

Submitted by angry tapir on Thursday October 29, @08:13PM
angry tapir writes "Facebook has abruptly decided to pull the plug on its Application Verification program, which let external developers pay to have their applications certified as exceeding certain requirements. "We're retiring the formerly optional Application Verification brand, submission process, fees and badge; the program's higher standards will be required and applications will be subject to review at any time," wrote Facebook official Ethan Beard in a blog post."
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+-   Oracle sheds new light on future of Sun[->] on Thursday October 29, @06:28PM angry tapir

Submitted by angry tapir on Thursday October 29, @06:28PM
oracle
angry tapir writes "Oracle has provided new details about its plans for certain key Sun Microsystems technologies, including the GlassFish application server and the NetBeans application development toolkit. According to an FAQ released by Oracle (PDF) on the acquisition, the company plans to "continue evolving" GlassFish."
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+-   Service Oriented Architecture with Java on Wednesday October 28, @01:44PM Martijn de Boer

Submitted by Martijn de Boer on Wednesday October 28, @01:44PM
books
Martijn de Boer writes "The book has been written to provide the reader with a short introduction to the concepts of Service Oriented Architecture with Java. The book covers the theory and analysis from the start and is progressing to a more intermediate level slowly throughout the different chapters. This book has been written for software architects and programmers of the Java language who have an interest in building software using SOA concepts in their applications. The cover hints to a series called “From Technologies to Solutions”, and that is exactly what this book tries to do, it tries to explain the SOA technology with different case studies and a path for solutions for your applications.

When I ordered the copy of the book, I was under the impression that I was required some familiarity with terms used in the world of SOA but I was rather fond of the easy explanation of terms in the first chapter. The first chapter starts off with a small introduction to the role of software architecture when thinking about a software project. The chapter covers alternatives to SOA and tries to get the reader onto the right path for the rest of the book.

Later on in the book different subjects pass, the first few chapters start off with the basics of using XML as a communication layer. The third chapter introduces the audience to different implementations of web services in the Java world including the most familiar names as Apache Axis, Spring and XFire. The reader will be shown and guided to the install process of these web services and is being shown around the process of working with the software. The pros and cons of every piece of software are shown when following the steps throughout the chapters.

The book ends with chapters providing case studies of real world examples of SOA and alternatives. I have found this to be the most informative section of the book when looking to make decisions on how to architect a software project as it provides several examples on when to use which aspect of SOA. The different case studies allow you to put some weight and foundations into your decisions. The last chapter of the book is basically a conclusion of what we have learned throughout the book and provides a clear summary of goals of using service oriented architecture.

The reader is expected to have understanding of Java to follow the examples throughout the book. Examples are demonstrated on Windows machines, but could be followed on any other platform as well without having the hassle of setting up a different environment. That is one of the advantages of Service Oriented Architecture with Java, because it basically can be ran everywhere.
When you work your way throughout the book, you will discover different clearly illustrated diagrams and other informational graphics. There are more than enough images to make the image not a boring theory book, as the images often provide a better understanding of different explanations of architecture and setups throughout the book.

The book covers a small setup with Apache Axis 1.3 and mentions to use this opposed to the more recent 2.0 version because more software is being implemented on top of the 1.x series of said web service. However because the reader is starting to learn about SOA, it would have been great to see some of the differences and read why 2.0 hasn't been adopted much yet. I would have liked to see a bigger comparison between those two versions, but as the authors point out, there is a great community for both versions which provides a lot more background information if you want to look further into the more technical information that isn't provided in the book yet.
This book is a good way to get your feet wet in using web services to build and architect powerful Java applications for your business. I am no big Java developer yet, and I needed this book to navigate me through the different pieces of software available, it succeeded very well at that point. I was fond of the clear writing style, which has always been the case by books from Packt Publishing. The book also has been written in a logical order, putting case studies at the end of the book so they are better to follow. Most technical books I own are written in a way that allows you to jump from chapter to chapter in an order that you need them, but I found this book to be a solid line of information of which the difficulty grade builds up from beginning to end. As a developer and software architect I am really appreciating how well this book has been written for this audience, it's almost as if it was written especially for me and the knowledge I had of service oriented architecture before starting with this book.

http://www.packtpub.com/service-oriented-architecture-for-java-applications/book
http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Service-Oriented-Architecture-With-Java/Malhar-Barai/e/9781847193216/?itm=2&USRI=Java%2CService+Oriented+Architecture"
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+-   Applications for Large UML Diagrams on Monday October 26, @01:45PM OSDever

Submitted by OSDever on Monday October 26, @01:45PM
programming
OSDever writes "I'm currently formulating an idea for a project that is likely to require several hundred or even thousand separate classes, and, in order to keep everything organized, I would like to make use of the Unified Modeling Language. For some of my previous personal work I've used the open source application BOUML for UML diagramming; however, I'm well aware of its faults and would hesitate using it as my primary modeling application, especially if involving others (specifically since the documentation is desperately in need of an English editor to remove the French grammatical syntax, and the program has a bit of a learning curve for beginners unless they immerse themselves in the rather cryptic documentation.) As a result, I'm currently looking for a stable, well-tested modelling application capable of handling a large number of UML entities (but not necessarily displaying them all on one screen,) that allows easy integration into a versioning system, and preferably doesn't break the bank for a small startup project. What has /. used in its larger pet projects?"
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+-   Are Software Developers Naturally Weird? on Sunday October 18, @10:25AM jammag

Submitted by jammag on Sunday October 18, @10:25AM
jammag writes "Well, c'mon, yes — let's admit it. As a veteran coder discusses as he looks at his career, software development is swelled with the offbeat, the quirky and the downright odd. As he remembers, there was the 'Software Lyrics' guy and the 'Inappropriate Phone Call' programmer, among others. Are unique types drawn to the profession or, are we 'transformed over time by our darkened working environments and exposure to computer screen radiation.'?"
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+-   The Sad State of the Mobile Web[->] on Thursday October 15, @02:29PM snydeq

Submitted by snydeq on Thursday October 15, @02:29PM
snydeq writes "Despite being the much better development platform for today's smartphones, open Web standards still face an uphill battle on mobile devices, Fatal Exception's Neil McAllister writes, nothing that here, as on the desktop, the main hurdle is scalability. But whereas successful Web development for the desktop is a matter of scaling up, mobile Web development calls for applications that can effectively scale down as well — an imperative that is fast making the state of the mobile Web 'even sadder,' McAllister writes. 'The more that modern Web applications take advantage of the new client-side technologies available in desktop browsers, the more the divide between the desktop Web and the mobile Web widens.' As a result, developers are forced to fall back on basic Web technologies — a tactic that too often translates simply into writing separate UIs for mobile users. 'The result? Mobile Web applications are in pretty much the same boat as they were when the first WAP-enabled handsets appeared: two separate development tracks, one for the desktop and one for mobile. Call that an opportunity if you want. I call it a waste of potential.'"
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+-   Doubts raised about legal soundness of GPL2[->] on Thursday October 15, @10:30AM svonkie

Submitted by svonkie on Thursday October 15, @10:30AM
programming
svonkie writes "Two prominent IP lawyers have warned that the all-pervasive General Public License version 2 (GPLv2) is legally unsound. They claim GPLv3 and AGPLv3 are much better suited for the realities of modern open source software. "If you go back in time to when GPLv2 was written, I don't think people were aware of just how ubiquitous this license would become and how closely scrutinized it would be," said Mark Radcliffe, partner at the firm DLA Piper and general counsel for the Open Source Initiative (OSI). "At that time, open source was not something as broadly used as it is now." Radcliffe was joined by Karen Copenhaver, partner at Choate Hall & Stewart and counsel for the Linux Foundation, for a GPL web conference hosted by the license-sniffing firm Black Duck software"
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Comments: 1 +-   Mickos urges EU to approve Oracle's MySQL takeover[->] on Thursday October 08, @04:26PM mjasay

Submitted by mjasay on Thursday October 08, @04:26PM
business
mjasay writes "Former MySQL CEO Marten Mickos has written to EU Commissioner of Competition Neelie Kroes to urge speedy approval of Oracle's proposed purchase of Sun, including the open-source MySQL database. The EU is has been worried that Oracle's acquisition of Sun could end up hurting competition by dampening or killing MySQL's momentum. But in his letter, Mickos separates MySQL, the community, from MySQL, the company, arguing that Oracle's takeover cannot hurt the MySQL community: "Those two meanings of the term 'MySQL' stand in a close mutually beneficial interaction with each other. But, most importantly, this interaction is voluntary and cannot be directly controlled by the vendor." In a follow-up interview with CNET, Mickos indicated that he has no financial interest in the matter, but instead argues he "couldn't live with the fact that [he's] not taking action," and is "motivated now by trying to help the employees still at MySQL and Sun, and by an urge to bring rational discussion to the matter.""
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Comments: 4 +-   Do we need to know basic math as programmers?[->] on Tuesday October 06, @03:25PM Anonymous Coward

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 06, @03:25PM
programming
An anonymous reader writes "How much math does a programmer need to know to do his job? These days with all the frameworks that exists you don't need to know how to do a square root, a power function or a quick sort these will likely already be built in...but do you need to know basic math?"
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+-   Interview with Bell Labs' legend, Brian Kernighan[->] on Tuesday October 06, @05:30AM Tri

Submitted by Tri on Tuesday October 06, @05:30AM
programming
Tri writes "Computerworld interviews Brian Kernighan, the K in K&R, the K in AWK and co-author of the Practice of Programming."
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+-   Interview with Brian Kernighan of AWK/AMPL fame[->] on Monday October 05, @10:59PM oranghutan

Submitted by oranghutan on Monday October 05, @10:59PM
programming
oranghutan writes "In this interview, Brian Kernighan — who helped popularise C with his book (co-written with the creator Dennis Ritchie) The C Programming Language and contributed to the development of AWK and AMPL — talks about his tips for up and coming programmers, who he thinks are the icons of the programming world, and what his thoughts on Ruby, Perl and Java are.

He also discusses whether the classic book The Practice of Programming, co-written with Rob Pike needs an update. Plus he highlights Bill and Melinda Gates as two people doing great things through computer sciences for the world and says "a typical programmer today spends a lot of time just trying to figure out what methods to call from some giant package and probably needs some kind of IDE like Eclipse or XCode to fill in the gaps. There are more languages in regular use and programs are often distributed combinations of multiple languages. All of these facts complicate life, though it's possible to build quite amazing systems quickly when everything goes right."

Another good quote for programmers is: "Every language teaches you something, so learning a language is never wasted, especially if it's different in more than just syntactic trivia."

http://www.computerworld.com.au/article/321082/an_inteview_brian_kernighan_co-developer_awk_ampl?cache=4"
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+-   Oracle Fined for Benchmark Claims on Wednesday September 30, @09:22AM pickens

Submitted by pickens on Wednesday September 30, @09:22AM
business
pickens writes "Information Week reports that the Transaction Processing Council, which sets benchmarks for measuring database performance, has fined Oracle $10,000 for Oracle's ads published August 27 and September 3 on the front page of the Wall Street Journal which violate the "fair use" rules that govern TPC members by "comparing an existing TPC result to something that does not exist." The ads said to expect a product announcement on October 14 that would demonstrate that some sort of hybrid Oracle-Sun setup would offer two-digit performance on the TPC-C online transaction processing test compared to IBM's 6 million transaction per minute result on its Power 595 running AIX and DB2. The TPC Council serves as a neutral forum where benchmark results are aired and compared. "At the time of publication, they didn't have anything" submitted to the council says Michael Majdalany, administrator of the council adding that that Oracle is free to use TPC numbers once it submits an audited result for the Sun-Oracle system. Fines by the TPC are infrequent with the last action a $5,000 fine levied against Microsoft in 2005 for unsupported claims about SQL Server. "It takes a fairly serious violation to warrant a member being fined," says Majdalany. Oracle published the claims as the company faces steepening losses of Sun Sparc customers to IBM and HP, which have seen the period of uncertainty over the future of Sun's hardware as a time to poach Sun customers."
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+-   Google Wave Backstage[->] on Tuesday September 29, @05:52AM snitch

Submitted by snitch on Tuesday September 29, @05:52AM
java
snitch writes "With the consumer release of Google Wave scheduled for the 30th of September, InfoQ had a Q&A with Core Engineer Dhanji Prasanna about some of its less known internals, details about how itâ(TM)s being developed by the Google engineers and best practices involved."
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+-   Learning Ext JS on Friday September 25, @02:25PM stoolpigeon

Submitted by stoolpigeon on Friday September 25, @02:25PM
books
stoolpigeon writes "Rich Internet Applications (RIA) have often been associated with some type of sandbox or virtual machine environment to make desktop features available via the web. Many applications though, have left behind the restrictions and demands of those technologies, implementing RIAs as pure web interfaces. One key technology in this area is JavaScript. It's been well documented that working with JavaScript can be problematic across various browsers. In response a number of JavaScript libraries have been created to alleviate the issues in dealing with different browsers, allowing developers to focus on application logic rather than platform concerns. One such library, focused on providing tools for building RIAs is Ext JS. For the aspiring developer looking to use Ext JS, Packt provides a guide to the library in the form of Learning Ext JS

The book is written for people with experience in doing web development. The authors state that a working knowledge of HTML and CSS are important, but experience with JavaScript is not essential. I think that a reader that has not used JavaScript may want to supplement this guide with something that covers the basics of JS. Experienced developers that haven't worked specifically with web programming should have no trouble keeping up. Anyone completely new to the idea of programming, scripting, markup, etc. really will need to take some time to get familiar with those concepts before they dive into this book. The authors do not spend time teaching programming, they are focused purely on realistic applications of Ext JS.

The authors begin by stating that, "Ext is not just another JavaScript library..." and it is understandable that they would feel this way. I am unsure why one wouldn't think so other than a personal preference for the product. That said Ext JS can be used alongside other JS libraries and does provide a lot of features 'out of the box' that make it an attractive choice. The emphasis on RIA widgets and building strong applications is nice as Ext JS is not working to be all things to all developers.

The book is heavy on code and examples but not so much so that it falls into the cook-book style of writing. Learning Ext JS is more of an extended tutorial with ample explanation to help the reader not only understand the code but why certain choices are made. Frederick, Ramsay and Blades have done a good job of working through the examples in a concise manner. While the book is the result of group work, it does not have the feeling of being written by a community. I did not run into an abundance of repetition and topics flowed well. Learning Ext JS also covers installation and integration of the library as well as a very quick survey of tools for development. While short these sections would be extremely important to anyone coming into web development with little experience.

It's a quick read, and doesn't delve extremely deeply into more advanced topics. Rather, a reader new to Ext JS will get a launch that should make the library usable in a practical way and also give them the framework to push deeper. The book was written and published just as Ext JS moved between versions. The new version is backwards compatible with the material in this book and a number of the changes in version three would not have fallen within the scope of this book, so it is still a good place to get started with Ext JS. Those who want to dig deeper will need to look elsewhere.

The brevity of the book wont work for those folks who want to really dig down deep into Ext JS. I on the other hand, wasn't looking for a massive tome to lug around and grind through. I was happy to have a very accessible tool that would get me started quickly and that is what I got. On the other hand I do like to be able to find what I need quickly and nothing is more important to me when learning than a solid index. Unfortunately the only really large ding I have for the book is that the index is weak. It would be a lot worse if the book were larger, so the brevity helps here a bit, but it's still unfortunate. This does make the ebook version a little more attractive. Packt will bundle them at a cost that makes the addition of the electronic copy very attractive. That said, the easy flow does it make it easy to read this book front to back while working the examples. Learning Ext JS just wont be my first choice when I need to quickly check a reference.

I've discussed the shallow coverage, but this does not mean that the book is not useful. The Ext JS library bundles enough functionality into the stock widgets, that decent applications could be written with nothing more. Creating custom widgets is covered and extending existing code as well, but this is later in the book. The material prior to that covers not only the use of the provided widgets but how to tie them together, theme an app and then handling data. This means the reader pretty much has everything in hand to build a stock application. The focus is on dealing with these issues on the client side. The examples do include a small amount of back end code when necessary for the execution of examples. All the examples are available to download from the Packt site and come packaged with all necessary scripts, images, etc.

I've always worked primarily with desktop applications. I've done some work with web applications, but it seems to me that increasingly the tools that I use the most are web based. With technology like Google Gears making those applications available whether I'm connected or not they have become much more attractive. Tools like Ext JS make it much easier for me to transition over to this new way of developing applications. I've found that Learning Ext JS has been a valuable resource in taking what is a great resource and allowing me to get the most out of it more rapidly than I would have otherwise. Reviewer: JR Peck Title: Learning Ext JS Author: Shea Frederick, Colin Ramsay, Steve 'Cutter' Blades Publisher: Packt Publishing Pages: 309 ISBN: 978-1-847195-14-2 Rating: 8/10 Tagline: Build dynamic, desktop-style user interfaces for your data-driven web applications."
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Comments: 1 +-   The Duct Tape Programmer on Thursday September 24, @10:09PM theodp

Submitted by theodp on Thursday September 24, @10:09PM
programming
theodp writes "Joel Spolsky sings the praises of The Duct Tape Programmer, who delivers programming teams from the evil of architecture astronauts who might otherwise derail a project with their faddish programming craziness. The say-no-to-overengineering attitude of the Duct Tape Programmer stems not from orneriness, but from the realization that even a 50%-good solution that people actually have solves more problems and survives longer than a 99% solution that nobody has because it's in your lab where you're endlessly polishing the damn thing. Like Steve Jobs, Duct Tape Programmers firmly believe that Real Artists Ship."
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+-   Why Developers Get Fired[->] on Sunday September 20, @09:11AM jammag

Submitted by jammag on Sunday September 20, @09:11AM
jammag writes "Other coders get canned — but never you, right? From a developer who's now a manager (and who admits being fired himself) comes the inside story on how the Big Ax might sneak up on you. To prevent it, he recommends some strategic bragging, keeping a CYA folder to document your efforts, and making sure that your talent isn't frittered away so much that even your most mediocre colleagues look good. Cover your butt!"
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+-   iPhone Gets .Net App Development[->] on Monday September 14, @12:34PM snydeq

Submitted by snydeq on Monday September 14, @12:34PM
snydeq writes "Novell has announced MonoTouch 1.0, a commercial SDK kit that allows developers to build iPhone apps using Microsoft's .Net Framework instead of the Apple-designated C or Objective-C languages. The SDK leverages Novell's Mono runtime for running Windows apps on non-Windows systems, allowing developers to utilize code and libraries written for .Net and programming languages like C#. With MonoTouch, the Mono runtime provides such developer services as garbage collection, thread management, type safety, and Web services, said Mono leader Miguel de Icaza."
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+-   Wordpress.org Warns of Active Worm Hacking Blogs[->] on Saturday September 05, @03:27PM Erik

Submitted by Erik on Saturday September 05, @03:27PM
security
Erik writes "Wordpress, the popular open-source Content Management System (CMS) for many thousands of bloggers worldwide, is under attack from a "clever" worm that automatically compromises unpatched versions of the Wordpress system. The particularly nasty bug crawls the web for vulnerable Wordpress installations, installing malware, deleting content, and generally wreaking havoc wherever it can. Today, Wordpress founder Matt Mullenweg eloquently implored Wordpress bloggers to update more frequently. Originally, updating the Wordpress system was a rather laborious process, however newer versions offer fast and simple one-click upgrades. The two most recent versions of Wordpress (2.8.3 and 2.8.4) cannot be attacked by the worm discovered this week, and blogs hosted at Wordpress.com are also apparently immune."
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+-   Nokia makes LGPL version of PyQt on Friday August 28, @01:39PM EtaCarinae

Submitted by EtaCarinae on Friday August 28, @01:39PM
software
EtaCarinae writes "Nokia didn't succeed in convincing Riverbank to change its licensing terms on PyQt and so decided to create their own LGPL:ed version of it. From the FAQ at the PySide site:


Nokia's initial research into Python bindings for Qt involved speaking with Riverbank Computing, the makers of PyQt. We had several discussions with them to see if it was possible to use PyQt to achieve our goals. Unfortunately, a common agreement could not be found , so in the end we decided to proceed with PySide.

Might Python/Qt be a more interesting platform for commercial development out there now?"

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