gse writes "The friendly folks at Laszlo Systems (of which I am one) have just announced the release of OpenLaszlo 3.0. Cool new features in this release: SOLO deployment (compile standalone .swf applications that don't need a proxy server), dynamically loadable libraries, a drawing API, and a bunch of optimizations. Info and downloads are at openlaszlo.org. (OpenLaszlo has been covered before on Slashdot.)"

prostoalex writes "Interesting statistics from VentureOne and New York Times on open source venture capital investments: "In 1999 and 2000, according to VentureOne, venture capitalists invested $714 million in 71 open-source companies." Even more interesting stats: "Most of those projects collapsed." The article talks about both successes and failures: Red Hat, TurboLinux, JBoss."

the.admin.man writes "There's been quite a bit of buzz around using PHP as a backend to AJAX-based web applications (the same development methodology on which some Google applications), lately, particularly after the release of JPSpan, a framework that helps building XML-based interfaces between Javascript and PHP apps. Just yesterday, Joshua Eichorn gave a presentation to the Arizona PHP Group on developing AJAX applications for PHP--he's posted the slides online, and will give his presentation again through a free webcast hosted by php|architect."

CowboyRobot writes "I was going through some code from 2002, frustrated at the lack of comments, cursing the moron who put this spaghetti together, only to realize later that I was the moron who had written it. An essay titled Comments Are More Important Than Code goes through the arguments that seem obvious only in hindsight - that 'self-documenting' code is good but not enough, that we should be able to write code based on good documentation, not the other way around, and that the thing that separates human-written code from computer-generated code is that our stuff is readable to future programmers. But I go through this argument with my colleagues, who say that using short, descriptive variable names 'should' be enough as long as the code is well-organized. Who's right?"

An anonymous reader writes "Horst Knorr released a new test version of Knoda. With this release Knoda is the first KDE database frontend reading MS Access databases natively and is getting closer to its goal to be a full replacement for MS Access. Knoda is a database-frontend for KDE. Besides tables and queries Knoda comprises forms and reports, which are scriptable via Python."

bonch writes "Well, Longhorn beta 5048 was released a day before the start of WinHEC 2005, suggestive of the fact that it is not terribly impressive. Paul Thurrott (a Windows writer whose previously reported review of Mac OS X Tiger was updated after user feedback) confirmed this today in day two of his blog from WinHEC. Microsoft needed something big to kill the hype of competitors, but screenshots show minor visual updates from the last beta, and to quote Thurrot: 'This has the makings of a train wreck.'"

An anonymous reader writes "According to ZDNet, Microsoft plans to add the software equivalent of a 'black box' flight recorder to Windows. According to the article, 'The tool will build on the existing Watson error-reporting tool in Windows but will provide Microsoft with much deeper information, including what programs were running at the time of the error and even the contents of documents that were being created.'" Commentary available via C|Net as well.

mshiltonj writes "You know its what we've all been waiting for: RMS weighs in on the BitKeeper debacle. An excerpt: "I want to thank Larry McVoy. He recently eliminated a major weakness of the free software community, by announcing the end of his campaign to entice free software projects to use and promote his non-free software. Soon, Linux development will no longer use this program, and no longer spread the message that non-free software is a good thing if it's convenient."

Landreth writes "There is currently an ongoing petition taking place at OS2 World to get IBM to open source either the whole part or parts of OS/2 to the community. I would highly encourage the Linux community to take part of this open source petition as well due to the fact there are lots of interesting code base the they could benefit from. To sign the petition: http://www.os2world.com/petition/" Despite the jokes about it, there was some good stuff in OS/2; however, I'd rank the ability to open it up fairly low, since I suspect there's a fair amount of legal restrictions on elements of the code.

John writes "Beehive is a new Apache project that simplifies Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition (J2EE) and Web services programming. This article shows how to get started with Beehive and offers a sneak preview of Pollinate, an Eclipse plug-in that creates Beehive applications."

fief writes "John Cleese explains why tape based backup solutions will drive a manager insane in a viral marketing bit for Live Vault. (flash required) Produced by the Captains of Industry. Links provided via AdRants" Barely an ad, mostly just hilarious. Also contains Michael Dorn. Use as directed.

Anonymous Coward writes "IBM has released a Linux based technology enabling spatiotemporal modeling of infectious agents across the United States, providing scientists and public health officials with a powerful tool for understanding, and potentially preventing, the spread of infectious diseases. The new STEM technology provides Geographic Information System (GIS) data for every county in the United States supplied by TIGER files."

kupci writes "The 'x considered harmful' cry is a little overused, but there is a Forrester report that discusses some of the pro's and con's of Aspect-oriented Programming, and includes some interesting links. It is mainly based on papers from the University of Passau. It's worth it just for Clark's 'COME FROM' article." From the article: "Aspect-oriented programming (AOP) is intended to address common problems that object-oriented programming (OOP) doesn't address well, plus some problems that OOP itself created. However, AOP is a risky solution: It is a very generic mechanism for solving some very specific concerns and has been likened to a kind of "GOTO" statement for OOP. Like GOTO, it can cause more harm than good."

Brandon writes "Looks like the IE team is trying to catch up to some of the major OS browsers. They have finally added proper PNG support and have fixed numerous CSS bugs. The full post is on The Official IEBlog." From the post: "We're doing a lot more than this in IE7, of course, and we're really excited that the beta release is almost here - we're looking forward to the feedback when we release the first beta of IE7 this summer. Stay tuned for more details as we get closer to beta."

ricochet81 writes "The Register is reporting that Borland has released the base version of JBuilder as open source on Eclipse! Is this just the next company to use open source as part of a marketing tool, akin to Sun, IBM and Oracle's opensource IDE push? Is the future of enterprise IDE open?"

bonch writes "Bjarne Stroustrup is confident about the future of C++. He says there is a backlash against new languages like Java and C#, and that developers are returning to C++." From the article: "He claimed the main reason why people are not aware of this is because C++ doesn't have a 'propaganda campaign.' Sun Microsystems has touted the use of Java in the Mars Rover program, for example, but Stroustrup asserts that C++ was also used.

jira writes "BBC has an article confirming the trend of using inbox as a sort of personal database. At my workplace I can personally attest to the growing sizes of those pst files and an unwillingness to erase any emails because of 'loss of information'." From the article: "The trend has become more pronounced as the services have dramatically increased their storage capacity in response to upstart Gmail offering a free service with 1,000 megabytes (Mb) of storage." Update: 04/22 23:03 GMT by Z : To reflect that the story is at respected news organization BBC, not a BBS.

Eh-Wire writes "OnLamp is reporting on the MySQL Users Conference that is currently underway. Among the highlights are the announcement that the code for MySQL 5.0 is now complete. Axmark and Widenius suggest that squashing bugs is the key behind the success of MySQL. Michael Tiemann from Red Hat and the OSI delivered a keynote on "Defining Open Source". He suggests that Microsoft's "shared source license" has been a complete failure at the design level."

bonch writes "Sun has posted the new desktop features of the next Java, codename Mustang. Improvements to Swing look and feel, OpenGL 2D renderer performance, AWT features such as the ability to add a tray/panel icon, and improved deployment capabilities."

sebFlyte writes "In a recent speech at the ACCU conference in Oxford, software design guru James Coplein said that unless consumers start demanding more and putting up with less crap from software firms, the quality of proprietary software would keep spiralling down. He was full of praise for open source though, saying 'The complementary, independent, selfless acts of thousands of individuals can address system problems -- there are thousands of people making the system stronger.'"