duffbeer703 writes "As a UNIX guy dragged kicking and screaming into the Windows world, I've never really been able to enjoy Windows programming. Charles Petzold, who is a long-time developer for DOS & Windows really laid out the reasons for me at the NYC .NET Dev group. Visual Studio and Microsoft tools force you to adopt programming techniques designed around implementation speed, not understanding or quality."

An anonymous reader writes "IBM DeveloperWorks has an interesting article on operator ad hoc polymorphism (operator overloading for the uninitiated). With the increase in Java popularity and their banning of operator overloading (among other things) the author decides to show some of the great benefits that operator overloading can bring, as long as it is served with a 'healthy dose of caution.'"

Nattfodd writes "Almost two months after the projects, deadline, partial (but fairly complete) results of Google Summer of Code are here. The completion rate of projects (and thus payment of the students) was approximately 90%, which would certainly qualify for a 'huge success' of the operation. Summer of Code paid more than 400 students of 49 countries to spend their summer helping open-source projects, 4500$ on completion. Now we just have to wait for the T-shirts..."

An anonymous reader writes "A new study shows that companies hire foreign workers for cheap labor, not skill." From the article:"When you look at computer job titles by state, California has one of the biggest differentials between OES salaries and H-1B salaries. The average salary for a programmer in California is $73,960, according to the OES. The average salary paid to an H-1B visa worker for the same job is $53,387; a difference of $20,573 ... H-1B visa workers were also concentrated at the bottom end of the wage scale, with the majority of H-1B visa workers in the 10-24 percentile range. 'That means the largest concentration of H-1B workers make less than [the] highest 75 percent of the U.S. wage earners,' the report notes. "

Psy writes "I attended Phreaknic this weekend where Acidus released TinyDisk, a shared file system that runs on top of TinyURL or his own implementation NanoURL. TinyDisk compresses a file, encrypts it, and dices it into clusters. Each cluster is submitted to TinyURL as if it were a url. This clusters can be read back out of the database, making TinyDisk a global file system anyone can use. There are safeguards in the default config to prevent people from dumping gigs of MP3s into TinyURL. While file-system-on-web-applications are nothing new (GMail file system anyone?) this hack shows how easy it is to accidentally design a web application insecurely despite the default PHP protections. See his presentation for more info"

chicagoan writes "MySQL AB today announced the general availability of MySQL 5.0, the most significant product upgrade in the company's ten-year history. The major new version delivers advanced SQL standard-compliant features such as stored procedures, triggers, views & new pluggable storage engines. Over 30 enterprise platform and tool vendors have also expressed enthusiastic support for the new release of the world's most popular open source database."

TossCobble asks: "With table-top roleplaying giant Wizards of the Coast (makers of Dungeons & Dragons, for those not in the know) broadcasting an open call for adventure designers and developers (including an entertaining developer test to gauge your own game-design talent and knowledge), I found myself once again considering the odd appeal of gaming for us programming types. It's interesting that something so free-form-ishly creative, socially dynamic, and utterly fantastical be fun for folks so grounded in logical programming. Of course, my theory is that gaming and programming actually have more in common than we might think. Tabletop roleplaying involves coming up with creative solutions to problems set in a clearly-defined ruleset, involve constant data-tracking and minor mathematical equations, and involve working together with small groups of people toward like-minded goals. Conversely, love of roleplaying can illustrate how important creativity is to good programming. What do you think?"

Ruvim writes "A Michigan State audit shows a software glitch let some prisoners get out early. From the article: 'The audit report shows errors in the release dates of 23 prisoners between October 2003 and March 2005. Some were let out early, while others were let out late... A flaw in computer programming caused State jails to release 8 prisoners anywhere from 39-161 days early, prisoners who were doing time for everything from embezzlement and drugs to bad check writing.'"

jg21 writes "In the continuing saga of the decision by MySQL previously discussed here on Slashdot to make a deal with SCO Group, the company's CEO Marten Mickos has now granted an interview in which he addresses the inevitable criticism that the deal has provoked in the F/OSS community. His main defense seems to be that other companies have ported to SCO too. He admits money too played a part." From the article: "We believe that porting a GPL version of MySQL for the SCO OpenServer platform gives thousands of users more options when it comes to choosing a database -- which is a good thing. The deal produces revenue for us and this allows us to hire more open source developers. We didn't make the decision lightly; we knew SCO was a sensitive subject with the free software and open source communities."

Aviran Mordo writes "News.com reports that a small software developer plans to seek royalties from companies that use XML, the latest example of patent claims embroiling the tech industry. Charlotte, N.C-based Scientigo owns two patents (No. 5,842,213 and No. 6,393,426) covering the transfer of 'data in neutral forms.' These patents, one of which was applied for in 1997, are infringed upon by the data-formatting standard XML, Scientigo executives assert."

seanyboy writes "The Register is running the story of how the UK banking system could have collapsed in the early 1990s, how easy it was at the time to withdraw against other people's accounts and the worrying case of a Bank's rogue IT Department." From the article: "What quickly became clear was that the law needed a system to provide proof that events had happened so that legal cases could be made. You might say that 'the computer debited the account', but to a barrister (and more importantly, a judge) that's not enough. Did the computer do it at random? In that case it's like a tree branch falling - an accident. Or did a person program it to do so? In which case the person must be able to testify about the precise circumstances when a debit could happen. Sounds daft, but the law rests on proving each step of an argument irrefutably."

Annto Dev writes "Computer security expert, Bruce Schneier feels that vendors are to blame for 'lousy software'. From the article: 'They try to balance the costs of more-secure software--extra developers, fewer features, longer time to market--against the costs of insecure software: expense to patch, occasional bad press, potential loss of sales. The end result is that insecure software is common...' he said. Last week Howard Schmidt, the former White House cybersecurity adviser, argued at a seminar in London that programmers should be held responsible for flaws in code they write."

ficken writes "Web browser pioneer Marc Andreessen recently announced his prediction that PHP will be more popular than Java for building web-based applications." From the article: "Wooing programmers is nothing new in the computing industry, where players constantly jockey to establish their products as an essential foundation. Indeed, many credit Microsoft's success to its highly regarded programming tools, which make it easier for developers to write software that run on Windows. PHP has caught on widely. About 22 million Web sites employ it, and useage is steadily increasing. About 450 programmers have privileges to approve changes to the software. Major companies that employ PHP include Yahoo, Lufthansa and Deutsche Telekom's T-Online." Meanwhilie, Piersky writes "Zend has announced its rival to .NET and J2EE, with the Zend PHP Framework. In a press release, they stated that it will be 'A Web application framework which will standardize the way PHP applications are built. The Zend PHP Framework will accelerate and improve the development and deployment of mission-critical PHP Web applications'. This will for part of Zend's PHP Collaboration Project"

Thumpah writes "J, the Damned Vulpine, has just posted a report on the inequality panel from the latest meeting of the Austin Game Developers group. The panel consisted of Sheri Graner Ray of Sony Online Entertainment's Austin studio, Ellen Hobbs of Amaze, Chris Smith of Lois Earl Entertainment, Denise Fulton of Midway Austin, Matt Crump of Amaze, Suzanne Freyjadis-Chuberka of the Women's Game Conference, and Susan O'Conner (a freelance game author) to moderate the panel. He ties the discussion in with the recent IDGA Game Developer Demographics Report."

Monta writes to tell us that IBM DeveloperWorks has an interesting article about the pros and cons of 'adopting a standard before it becomes one'. From the article: "Whether a standard will succeed and be widely adopted is ambiguous at first, regardless of who endorses it -- a major player or a fringe element. So if most people don't like to welcome the new guy, why would they put all their eggs in a standards basket when that basket might not exist tomorrow?"

UltimaGuy writes to tell us eWeek is reporting that Microsoft will be reducing the number of licenses that it will use for its Shared Source Initiative. Instead of more than 10 different licenses they are aiming for just three core licenses. The first license format, Ms-PL (Microsoft Permissive License), is similar to the BSD license while the second, Ms-CL (Microsoft Community License), is based on the Mozilla Public License. The third format, Ms-RL (Microsoft Reference License), "has no open-source alternative and is a reference-only license that allows licensees to view source code in order to gain a deeper understanding of the inner workings of Microsoft technology."

Nuttles1 asks: "Ever since I became a professional programmer, 4 years ago, I have struggled with giving my superiors everything they want. For instance, I have a programming supervisor that stresses correctness in programming first, amount of time needed second, features third, but I also have upper management stressing features and amount of time needed first and correctness of programming a distant second. The nature of my job requires pretty strict deadlines so time is not very variable. So, things get done in a way that fits the time allotted. The problem is that I don't make my direct supervisor happy because of the time constraint shortcuts in correctness must be made. The other problem is that, because I perform within the time constraints, they think that the time constraint can either stay relatively the same or that they can be squeezed a little more. Upper management also expects the advantages of having a strict programmatically correct program (code reuse, loose coupling, ease of maintenance) and are at loss when things are less then perfect after the initial release. It doesn't seem like a programmer can come out ahead. I have read many books but they usually have a utopian viewpoint or view time to develop as a variable. In real life, how do programmers handle this situation?"

sendai-X writes "With the recently announced purchase of Innobase, Oracle has shown it's intention to further support open source. This is key as open source enters the mainstream in business and in light of the success IBM has had with the Eclipse project, and Sun recently looking at purchasing PostgresSQL. What do Slashdot users think about this merger? Is it beneficial to the market and database users by having the largest database vendor openly support MySQL and provide an upgrade path to Oracle? Or is it just another cog in the Oracle machine in their attempt to dominate the enterprise IT market? Will this change the database market landscape? Will it help or hurt IBM and Microsoft?"

An anonymous reader writes "IBM Developerworks is running an article that introduces using the Ruby Development Tools (RDT) plug-in for Eclipse, which allows Eclipse to become a first-rate Ruby development environment. Ruby developers who want to learn how to use the rich infrastructure of the Eclipse community to support their language will benefit, as will Java developers who are interested in using Ruby."

Andy Lester writes to tell us that the Perl foundation has named a new president and steering committee members. Bill Odom landed the seat of president, replacing Allison Randal who has occupied the seat since 2002. From the article: "Founded in 2000, The Perl Foundation (TPF) is a non-profit 501(c)(3) corporation based in Holland, Michigan, established to advance the use and development of the Perl programming language through open discussion, collaboration, design, and code."