The Internet

What Really Happened with Mambo? 107

Posted by Hemos from the to-every-season dept.
Anonymous Coward writes "What Happened with Mambo? There is a good article about the recent events that resulted in a changing of the guard at Mambo. Jem Matzan does his best to objectively debunk what happened. It looks like much research was conducted to produce this article and it is very informative. Check it out!" In the interest of full disclosure as well, our corporate parent also hosts Joomlaforge.
Portables (Games)

PSP Programming Tutorials 41

Posted by Zonk from the new-year's-project dept.
A Reader writes "Since its inception, the PSP Homebrew Community has been hacking away at their little jem of a portable console. Its valiant efforts in the fight for open hardware have not been well received by Sony. Regardless, Yeldarb, a homebrew programmer, has released a PSP Programming Tutorial Series. It covers everything from setting up the development environment to writing your first program to sprucing up your programs with a little graphics programming. The tutorial series is a must read for anyone interested in joining the PSP hacking community."
Biotech

Biotech Data Mining 33

Posted by Zonk from the squirmy-thought-worms dept.
Roland Piquepaille writes "In the last ten years, biotech companies have been busy accumulating mountains of data. And it's becoming more and more difficult to find useful information about interactions between genes and proteins for example. It's one of the reasons why the European Union has started the BioGrid project. In Mining biotech's data mother lode, IST Results describes this project. Among current results, the researchers involved in it have delivered a better search engine for PubMed by analyzing over-expressing genes and predicting the protein interactions that are likely occurring. And many of the tools developed by BioGrid are available for public use -- even by yourself. For more information, this overview contains additional details, pictures and references about this project."
The Internet

WordPress 2.0 Released 105

Posted by Zonk from the highly-recommended dept.
cyberchucktx writes "Version 2.0 of the Wordpress open source blogging software has now been released." From the post: "In the past if you were linking to a number of posts or pinging a lot of update services, your posting time could appear to slow to a crawl even though everything was instantly done on the backend. We've modified how this works now so posting should be near-instantaneous, like everything else in WordPress."
Businesses

Hot Tech Skills For 2006? 494

Posted by Zonk from the switch-jobs-now-avoid-the-rush dept.
linumax writes "Computerworld is running a 3 page story on what tech skills will be in demand for the coming year. They suggest developers, security experts and project managers are in demand. It also comes up with some good news. FTA: 'Despite the notion that hordes of U.S. IT jobs are being sent offshore, in reality, less than 5% of the 10 million people who make up the U.S. IT job market had been displaced by foreign workers through 2004, says Scot Melland, president and CEO of Dice Inc., a New York-based online jobs service. The numbers of jobs posted on Dice.com from January through September for developers, project managers and help desk technicians rose 40%, 47% and 45%, respectively, compared with the same period in 2004, says Melland.'"
OS X

Python IDE for Mac OS X? 113

Posted by Cliff from the fruits-and-snakes dept.
benbranch asks: "I am presently learning the Python programming language. The language itself is brilliant and seems very easy to pick up, however my problem is finding a decent IDE. I use Mac OS X (as Windows is excruciating), and though I love Linux (Debian/Ubuntu) all my work computers are Mac's. Can anyone advise me as too a good open source IDE for Mac? If there are any Python programmers out there using Macs, I would love to hear from you."
Businesses

Pushing the Need for Bug Tracking? 113

Posted by Cliff from the persuading-management-for-the-right-tools dept.
NorthwestWolf asks: "I am the sole developer for a medium-sized company. My work consists of developing intranet applications for the production, accounting, shipping and engineering activities at all of our locations. My dilema is that my boss is dead set on the idea that we DO NOT need a bug tracking system, nor does he feel that we have a need for version tracking. As much as I strive to write perfect code...that doesn't happen. Most recently, I asked to install a lightweight piece of bug tracking software that would not tie into the database, and was written in PHP (what our apps are already developed in). This was to be for me, and me alone; although my boss does produce some code and is the reason that I would like version tracking (he has made changes to my code that I was not aware of until I noticed problems with certain functions). So, to those of you who are, or have been in a similiar situation...what are you doing, or what have you done to get critical development tools such as these implemented at work?"
Microsoft

Give Mac Explorer to the People? 242

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the zen-and-the-art-of-public-image dept.
An anonymous reader writes "In an article on the BBC News site, Bill Thompson suggests that Microsoft release the source for IE:Mac to the world so that others can continue to develop the product. While this may be a pleasant fiction, Microsoft does seem to be making an effort to change their image. Could we see more OSS interaction from the software giant in the near future?"
Programming

Steve Jobs thinks Objective C is Perfect? 784

Posted by Hemos from the good-or-bad dept.
josht writes "Nitesh Dhanjani has posted an e-mail thread between Steve Jobs and himself. Dhanjani argues "I'd like to see Apple developers gain more choice. With every iteration of OSX, there seems to be so much effort put into innovation of desktop components, but the development environment is age old." I agree with Dhanjani. What has Apple done recently to wow the developers, and make it fun to code Cocoa components? I've looked into the Objective C and Xcode environment but compared to Microsoft's .NET solutions, it doesn't impress me at all. I think Apple can do a lot better. Steve Jobs disagrees. What do the readers think about Objective C and Xcode?"
Programming

Ruby Off the Rails 325

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the train-of-thought-derailed dept.
An anonymous reader writes "IBM DeveloperWorks has an interesting writeup on Ruby that takes a look at the programming language as a stand-alone solution rather than defining it in terms of Rails. From the article: 'Ruby on Rails is just one facet of what makes Ruby great, just like EJB is only part of the Java enterprise platform. Andrew Glover digs beneath the hype for a look at what Java developers can do with Ruby, all by itself. Ruby's syntax is quite different from that of the Java language, but it's amazingly easy to pick up. Moreover, some things are just plain easier to do in Ruby than they are in the Java language.'"
Programming

Learning Java or C# as a Next Language? 817

Posted by Cliff from the decisions-decisions dept.
AlexDV asks: "I'm currently a second-term, CIS major at DeVry University. This coming term, I will have the choice of studying either Java or C# for my Object Oriented Programming class. Now I'm a diehard Linux user, so I'm slightly conflicted here. Which should I take?"
Upgrades

Blender 2.40 Released 264

Posted by CowboyNeal from the new-and-improved dept.
LetterRip writes "Googles Summer of Code has born fruit with the Blender 2.40 release. Thanks to their support and the hard work of the coders they supported Blender has fluid dynamics simulation done by Nils Thuerey, a powerful inverse kinematics system done by Brecht Van Lommel, and much improved boolean tools done by Marc Freixas. Of course Blender has had a huge number of improvements aside from the work supported by Google. The animation system got a complete rewrite by Ton Roosendaal, as well as other major improvements like flive UV unwrapping LSCM, and a Modifier stack system. It also has seen greatly improved ease of use since the last Slashdot announcement addressing all of the complaints raised- things like 3d manipulators, full undo system, etc. There is also a quick start guide for new users, and nice video and written tutorials on new features and a fairly up to date manual."
Java

Departure Of The Java Hyper-Enthusiasts? 678

Posted by Zonk from the just-calm-enthusiasts-left dept.
TomH writes "Bruce Eckel has an article at Aritma, where he posits that 'The Java hyper-enthusiasts have left the building, leaving a significant contingent of Java programmers behind, blinking in the bright lights without the constant drumbeat of boosterism.' Has the previous hype of Java and J2EE moved on to Ruby (on Rails) and Python?"
Programming

Is Ruby on Rails Maintainable? 348

Posted by Cliff from the would-you-want-to-edit-the-code-later dept.
kale77in asks: "I've become a big fan of Ruby over the past few months, but I'm not at all sure about Ruby On Rails. Automatic code generation sets of alarm bells in my mind; so that, to RoR's promise of 'Web Development that Doesn't Hurt', I automatically add '...until you have to maintain it'. On the other hand, some writers and coders I respect (like the Pragmatic Programming mob) seem to be fans. I've mainly written generators in Python, to produce PHP/SQL/Java from SQL files, but I've always gone back to well-constructed objects, where extension and overloading offers more precise and maintainable customization than auto-generation allows. So is Rails just a nice RAD tool for disposable, cookie-cutter apps (which have a place, of course)? Is high-level generation just a bad OO substitute? And what has your experience of Rails' maintainability been?"
Programming

A Dev Environment for the Returning Geek? 156

Posted by Cliff from the welcome-back dept.
InsurgentGeek asks: "I'm about 25 years into my career in technology. Over that time, I've done the standard progression from developer to architect to team leader to program leader to business unit leader. While I've stayed up to date on general technology trends (perhaps more than about 95% of my peer group) - I have started to really miss hands on coding - something I haven't done for almost 20 years. It's not for my job, and I don't plan to make any money at it - but I'd like to get back to coding on at least a recreational basis. Here's the rub: what are the right tools?"
Programming

Core Web Application Development with PHP & MySQL 149

Posted by samzenpus from the build-it-now dept.
jsuda writes "Core Web Application Development with PHP and MySQL is an intermediate to advanced-level guide for programmers and developers. It bills itself as >everything one needs to know about building robust database applications. That is a bit of puffery but this is a comprehensive practical guide for designing and building production-quality, database-enabled applications." Read the rest of John's review.
The Internet

Retrofit Your Web Pages For Wireless Compatibility 142

Posted by Zonk from the sunday-project dept.
An anonymous reader writes "You probably don't want to maintain Web and wireless versions of the same site or take on the overhead of Extensible Markup Language (XML) transformations. This article shows you a more practical approach to wireless compatibility. With some well-designed XHTML, a bit of CSS, and the media attribute, you can do wonders. Create more flexible, Mobile device ready, Web pages with XHTML and CSS."
Input Devices

What Will The Future Desktop Interface Look Like? 339

Posted by Zonk from the minority-report-reporting-in-sir dept.
b O b 1 9 19 A writes "The TechZone has an interesting article wondering where computer interfaces are going. They discuss some alternatives to the traditional desktop, and propose a framework in which future interface designs may be evaluated. From the article: 'The next 10 years will be a transitional phase for interface design. 3D rendering technologies already have a stable home in the entertainment, video game, simulation, and design sectors. Although 2D interfaces have dominated everything else, I expect we will start seeing more 3D incursions. Operating systems and applications are beginning to capitalize on what 3D has to offer. The precise nature of how and where 3D can best be incorporated is an open question, and a framework to evaluate these questions seems appropriate.'" Big-time ad alert. Set your ad and flashblockers to stun.
Windows

Vista's Graphics To Be Moved Out of the Kernel 555

Posted by Zonk from the just-like-in-the-constitution dept.
Tiberius_Fel writes "TechWorld is running an article saying that Vista's graphics will not be in the kernel. The goal is obviously to improve reliability, alongside the plan to make most drivers run in user mode." From the article: "The shift of the UI into user mode also helps to make the UI hardware independent - and has already allowed Microsoft to release beta code of the UI to provide developers with early experience. IT also helps make it less vulnerable to kernel mode malware that could take the system down or steal data. In broader terms, this makes Windows far more like Linux and Unix - and even the MacOS - where the graphics subsystem is a separate component, rather than being hard-wired into the OS kernel."

Slashdot Top Deals