Shipud writes "The sixth Bioinformatics Open Source Conference will take place this June in Detroit, MI. Open source licensed software has proven to be the most popular and useful for bioinformatics research. This includes the EMBOSS suite for sequence analysis, the Biopython; Bioperl, and Biojava collaborativelty constructed toolboxes; the ubiquitous RasMol and PyMol molecular visualization tools, and more, much more. Here is one opinion as to why open source and collaborative development have been such a raging success even at big pharma, despite the apparent IP hurdles."

benj_e asks: "I'm thinking about doing some adjunct teaching at a couple of local community colleges, and have the opportunity to choose the textbook for an online JavaScript class. In the training classes I've given in the corporate world, I didn't have the need to select a text - there were no textbooks for the software I was teaching students to use aside from the manual. I'm pretty sure I want something with WebCT or Blackboard content, but other than that I'm, well, clueless. So, for all you educators out there - how do you go about selecting a textbook? What goes into your decision making process?"

AFFS writes "A new free software grants fund is available to projects in the UK from money raised by the UK Free Software Network UKFSN.org, the free software ISP set up by Jason Clifford in 2003, and donations to UK's Association for Free Software AFFS. The grants are open to any free software project or related campaign, by both individuals and groups."

An anonymous reader writes "The Lead Developer of the Minimo (Mini Mozilla) project, Doug Turner, has ported Minimo over to the Windows CE platform. He discusses this new version of the lightweight edition of Mozilla in a newsgroup posting." From the post: "Currently, I am building against the Pocket PC 2003 SDK. We may want to adjust this at some point, but I thought it would be acceptable place to start. The binary is 3.8MB compressed not including security. To run the build I have, you need about 5mb of memory to display www.google.com."

Noksagt writes "Various outlets report that the OSI may cut down the increasing number of Open Source licenses. Right now there are about 50 approved licenses; incompatible licenses confuse and impede developers and end users alike. The OSDL has been pushing hard for this at LinuxWorld. Sam Greenblatt, a member of the OSDL board, said 'Eventually there should be three licenses: The GPL, a commercial version of the GPL, and, of course, there will be the BSD because you can't rid of it.'"

PsychoKodiac wonders: "I am querying the Slashdot community for help concerning ASP pages. I am currently looking for a solution to create and serve ASP content off of my own computer for the time being. I have been referred to mono_mod and SharpDevelop but I am having a difficult time finding guides or references for using these two Open Source products together. I am attracted to them due to the lack of funds needed to use them. I am hoping some one may be able to refer me to guides or perhaps an alternative to these two products if sufficient guides are not present due to the fact that mono_mod and SharpDevelop are still in development."

charliedickinson writes "Web Design on a Shoestring offers the premise that modest budgets for Web development can pay off in focused, uncluttered, appealing Web sites. Author Carrie Bickner, who took on Web development with a professional background as a librarian (she is now Assistant Director for Digital Information and System Design at The New York Public Library), eschews the nuts-and-bolts mechanics of Web page crafting for a comprehensive overview of 'project management, usability, design, copywriting, hosting, and post-launch maintenance.'" Read on for the rest of Dickinson's review.

Dave Zatz writes "Tivo, struggling to keep customers and inch towards profitability as execs step down, has continued to shift focus from pure PVR functionality towards digital convergence. Tivo's recently released Home Media Engine SDK extends Tivo's capabilities as developers churn early Java apps out, including the eBay-developed BuyItNow and the independent Airport Express AirTunes remote control. The recently released Tivo To Go allows PC users to transfer shows to their computers for viewing, editing, and burning shows. Mac users aren't entirely forgotten - a hidden feature in the OSX Tivo Desktop 1.9 provides AAC music playback through the television."

dvanatta writes "Is Zend taking PHP in the wrong direction? Ian Felton asks 'Why is PHP become more like Java, when the PHP developer community seems to want anything but that to happen? What is Zend thinking?'" From the article: "Data from a Zend survey completed in June 2003 (when PHP5 was still in major development) showed that the characteristics of the PHP community didn't necessarily match up with what was developed in PHP5. For example, with the ability to list three primary programming languages, only 18% of respondents named Java."

gManZboy writes "Four computer scientists have done a formal analysis of five Open Source software projects to determine how being "Open Source" contributes to or inhibits source code maintainability. While they admit further research is needed, they conclude that open source is no magic bullet on this particular issue, and argue that Open Source software development should strive for even greater code maintainability." From the article: "The disadvantages of OSS development include absence of complete documentation or technical support. Moreover, there is strong evidence that projects with clear and widely accepted specifications, such as operating systems and system applications, are well suited for the OSS development model. However, it is still questionable whether systems like ERP could be developed successfully as OSS projects. "

GreyArtist asks: "I took a course in C++ a year ago in which the instructor claimed that global (file-scope or inter-file-scope) variables were antiquated and not to be used under any circumstances. I immediately thought of a counter argument that involved the method I use for saving game data. The games (and many of the other programs) I write use not only global variables, but consecutive global variables declared in their own separate module. To save the game (or user settings) to file, I simply save a single large segment of data that contains all the necessary information. How do other coders do it? Would they create a 'MyObject.savemyself()' method for every object in their game? Do they save all the game code along with the data? Either way, it seems like a horrid case of code (or data) bloat. What do you die-hard object-oriented fanatics have to say about this, and what method they would you use for saving games?"

FOSDEM writes "The Free and Open Source Software Developers' European Meeting folks, aka FOSDEM, have just released the second part of their speakers' interviews. These interviews are dedicated to their development tools track, with Andreas Zeller for ddd, Benoit Minisini for Gambas and Alexander Dymo & Harald Fernengel for kdevelop. Previous interviews were already discussed on Slashdot here"

NavySpy writes "Today is Delphi's Tenth Birthday! The launch of Delphi 1.0 occurred on February 14th, 1995 at the Software Development '95 conference at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. Numerous links are commemorating the event, including a recorded interview with Zach Urlocker and Gary Whizin, members of the original management team. Zack's original Product Definintion document is here. An attendee at the original event reminisces about the launch."

An anonymous reader writes "Embedded software powerhouse Wind River's metamorphosis into an embedded Linux vendor appears to be complete. The company will announce today that it is shipping a pre-release version of its first embedded Linux distribution, and that it has already delivered 1,000 "developer seats" for the Carrier Grade Linux 2.0 compliant software."

Matthew Revell writes "Miguel de Icaza defends Mono and talks about its future relationship with the Gnome desktop, in the latest LugRadio. The leader of the open source implementation of .NET says no one is forced to use Mono but he hopes it will make life easier for open source developers. "

Ubisoft and the Canadian government are coordinating to create a game development university on the scenic Ubisoft campus, reports Gamespot. Marking continued cooperation between Ubisoft and the Quebecois government, the new 'university' would be in direct competition with EA's similar program set in California. From the article: "Ubisoft Campus students will receive degrees accredited by Québec's Ministry of Education. For undergraduates, each study program will be 45 weeks long, divided into three 15-week terms. The school will also offer master's programs in computer science and software engineering, with added courses in digital imaging and electronics."

An anonymous reader writes "This series of articles helps you migrate your Win32 C/C++ applications to Linux on POWER. Win32 C/C++ Apps to Linux Part-1 of this series covers the Win32 APIs mapping to Linux on POWER regarding the initialization and termination, process, thread, and shared memory services. Win32 C/C++ Apps to Linux Part-2 illustrates how to map Win32 to Linux with respect to mutex application program interfaces (APIs)."

Ant writes "CNET News.com's Paul Festa thinks the final stage of software development, beta versions, are taking on a life of their own, as companies tinker endlessly with their products in public according to a recent article. Google is one of the companies that keep using "beta" term for years for its products."

sebFlyte writes "The multi-core debate continues. HP and Intel have laid into Oracle and (to a lesser extent) BEA over their their treatment of multi-core processers. Oracle's argument that 'a core is a CPU and therefore you should pay us all your money' isn't a popular one, it would seem. What does Oracle's stubbornness imply for the industry as a whole, with multicore chips coming to the fore so strongly?"

Donna writes "This article discusses detailed similarities and differences involved in booting Linux on an x86-based platform (typically a PC-compatible SBC) and a custom embedded platform based around PowerPC, ARM, and others. It discusses suggested hardware and software designs and highlights the tradeoffs of each. It also describes important design pitfalls and best practices."