On Monday, we asked you for questions for industry legend Sid Meier. Today, we're asking for question to put to the folks behind the technology of Civilization IV. Besides the actual coding and development that went into the game itself, the team has made Civilization IV infinitely moddable through technologies such as XML, Python, and a fully developed SDK. Led by lead designer Soren Johnson, the team will answer your questions about the creation of the fourth chapter in one of the most influential game series out there. So, fire away with your questions. One per comment, please, and keep them topical. We'll pass the ten best questions to Johnson and the team, and the answers will be posted as soon as we have them in our hands.

An anonymous reader writes "LinuxDevices.com has an article about a development kit for prototyping device displays based on electronic paper technology. The kit includes a 170dpi, 6-inch (diagonal) SVGA (800 x 600) EPD (electronic paper display) module supporting four shades of gray, and a small computer module that runs the display. EPDs provide bright, high-contrast, thin, lightweight displays that remain legible under 'any lighting condition' -- much like newsprint. Once an image has been 'printed,' no power is needed to hold it."

commonchaos writes "Recently a company named Zimbra has come out of nowhere and released an open source Exchange replacement. The exciting part is a front end that uses AJAX. There is an impressive flash demo, you can download the source or try out a "live" version of the code yourself." Interestingly, this open source system seems to be very similar to the recent Yahoo announcement covered on Slashdot.

Fahrenheit 450 writes "The results of the The Eighth Annual ICFP Programming Contest are in, and it looks like this was the year for Haskell and Dylan, with Haskell programs taking first & third prizes, and Dylan claiming second prize and the coveted Judges' prize. This year's contest was a simulated game of cops and robbers, with a twist to the rules thrown in after the participants had submitted their initial entries. Step through the transcripts of the contests or just download the PDF version of the presentation slides and tell us all how you could have wiped the floor with the winners using your carefully crafted COBOL or awk submission."

greywar asks: "While the preferred method would be simply use Linux, unfortunately my company is using Microsoft Visual Studio 6.0 with C++. I have been asked to recomend if we should upgrade to the new upcoming visual studio 2005. Has anyone got any real life experience with moving a project of about 220,000 lines of code, 60,000 lines of comments from the old MSVC to the new Studio 2005 which is currently in Beta? What benefits are there, and what things do we lose? What problems will occur?"

Brian "Krow" Aker (Former Slashdot Coder now MySQL Employee) writes "I am pleased to announce the release candidate for MySQL 5.0. This version has been in development now for three years. We have worked to add update-able views, ansi stored procedures, and triggers. In addition we have added a number of fun features that we are experimenting with and resolved issues with bad data inserts (which personally annoyed the hell out of me when we rewrote Slashdot a couple of years back so I am happy to see this issue go away). We look forward to feedback on the candidate and will show some love for bug reports."

Ember writes "The results of Google Code Jam are in. The winner is Marek Cygan from Warsaw University. Second prize goes to Erik-Jan Krijgsman from University of twente (Holland) and third to Pyotr Mitritchew from Moscow State University." Registration for the event took place back in July and Google reported a total of 14,500 registrants which is almost twice as many as last year, making for some stiff competition.

sebFlyte writes "Builder UK is reporting that Linus Torvalds is concerned that the Linux production kernel maintainence process might be overly taxing Andrew Morton, saying: "One issue is that I actually worry that Andrew will at some point be where I was a couple of years ago -- overworked and stressed out by just tons and tons of patches. If Andrew burns out, we'll all suffer hugely." Morton himself wants to make -mm releases more often. He sees bugs as more of a problem, rather than patches themselves. His solution is simple: "I'd like to release -mm's more often and I'd like -mm to have less of a wild-and-crappy reputation. Both of these would happen if originators were to test their stuff more carefully.""

An anonymous reader wrote to mention an IBM article examining the role that older workers, experienced with legacy systems, should play in system maintenance. From the article: "Many enterprises still execute critical business operations ... via older software systems that run on large, mainframe computers rather than individual PCs. To meet changing business needs, these companies continually update, extend, and integrate their systems. Paradoxically, many of these companies also have policies that threaten the single greatest source of knowledge about their older systems: their most senior personnel. Although the aging workforce represents a vast pool of talent and experience, these businesses neither actively recruit senior workers nor provide incentives to retain those on staff.1 Instead, they mistakenly assume that they can hire younger, lower-paid people to perform the same tasks."

An anonymous reader writes "In a recent interview, ESR shocked a lot of people when he said, 'We don't need the GPL anymore.' Federico Biancuzzi contacted RMS, founder of the Free Software Movement and initial developer of the GNU system, to talk about the past, the present, and the future of the GNU GPL. Among other things, they discussed the new clauses of the upcoming GPL version 3."

UltimaGuy writes "Yahoo! News is reporting that Palm Inc. is teaming up with Microsoft Corp. to launch a Windows-based version of the Treo smart phone, marking the first time the handheld computer pioneer will sell a device based on its former rival's software. 'In terms of the level of importance, this would be - in this space - the same thing as Apple announcing they were going to be using Intel processors.'"

iliketrash writes "The Wall Street Journal has a long front-page article describing how Jim Allchin approached Bill Gates in July, 2004, with the news that then-Longhorn, now-Vista, was 'so complex that its writers would never be able to make it run properly.' Also, the article says, 'Throughout its history, Microsoft had let thousands of programmers each produce their own piece of computer code, then stitched it together into one sprawling program. Now, Mr. Allchin argued, the jig was up. Microsoft needed to start over.' And start over they did. The article is astonishing for its frank comments from the principles, including Allchin and Gates, as well as for its description of Microsoft's cowboy spaghetti code culture."

Gamecloud has a piece on the moddability of Civilization IV. The article goes into detail about the numerous levels at which content creators can change the game of Civilization. From the article: "The next level offers Python and XML support, letting modders with more experience manipulate the game world and everything in it. XML (eXtensible Markup Language) files can be edited in standard text editors or in special XML file editors that have ease-of-use features like a grid view. Editing these files will allow players to tweak simple game rules and change or add content. For instance, they can add new unit or building types, change the cost of wonders, or add new civilizations." This is a more detailed look at a topic we've discussed before. Gamespot has a preview of the upcoming title, as well.

An anonymous reader writes "The OSS/developer community at large is paying more attention to the trademark issue, especially since Linus Torvalds bid to trademark the name 'Linux' in Australia failed recently. Branden Robinson, Debian's project leader, says the current trademark policy needs updating to ensure it has the appropriate level of protection against legal challenges. Robinson said there are various questions that project members must address when deciding how to change the policy. These include whether Debian Linux should have a trademark at all, and whether the trademark can be used to penalize those who 'prey upon' the community."

chromatic writes "Perl.com has just published Larry Wall's Ninth Annual State of the Onion address from OSCON 2005. In previous talks, he's used screensavers, music, and Unicode to explore Perl and open source. This year, he introduced the cast of characters in the Perl community in terms of spy movies and metaphors."

jondaw writes "Builder UK says that Nokia is to become more involved in the direction of the Open Source IDE, Eclipse. 'Nokia has increased its level of involvement in the Eclipse project by becoming a board member and strategic developer. It will take the lead in developing tools for mobile applications based on the Eclipse platform. One if its aims will be to extend the Java-based IDE to have full support for J2ME.'"

An anonymous reader wrote to mention an article on IBM's site detailing the fundamentals of Java-based Ajax. From the article: "This article gives you a good understanding of the fundamental principles of Ajax, and a nuts-and-bolts knowledge of the client and server side components that participate in an Ajax interaction. These are the building blocks of a Java-based Ajax Web application. In addition, you will be shown some of the high-level design issues that come with the Ajax approach."

Preda asks: "I have been recently tasked with generating API documentation for new and legacy code. Given the amount of legacy code (in C, VB6, VB.NET, PHP, and other languages) and new code that needs to be documented, are there any easy auto generating API programs out there. I have done a few searches but nothing that I have found stood out as a 'use me' solution. Does anyone have any advice?"

RandomPrecision writes to tell us Wired is reporting that computer programmer Igor Kholodov has created a game designed to make learning the basics of programming fun. From the article 'The board game turns players into skiers who must race down a mountain in the quickest way possible. With each roll of the die, players must follow instructions that are similar to computer program codes. Using basic math, players have to figure out which paths are open to them and then decide the fastest way to the finish line.'"

mparaz writes "SpecOps Labs, the makers of the "David" Windows emulator previously accused of ripping off WINE, are offering $10,000 to a team who can build a Windows XP emulator in 15 days. " This whole thing reads really strangely to me.