jg21 writes "Although he admits to having been frustrated by the slow adoption of the J2ME platform, software developer Eric Giguere believes that we're 'turning the corner.' He remembers Sun demonstrating Java running on Palm OS 'way back in 1999 when so many hoped the wireless Java revolution was just around the corner. Five years on, with notable successes such as the J2ME-enabled BlackBerry wireless handheld, that has already made a billionaire of RIM founder Mike Lazaridis, Giguere claims that, with most of the new handsets being produced supporting either JTWI or else its key component - version 2 of the Mobile Information Device Profile (MIDP) - developers finally now have a more consistent and capable platform to use for application development. Anyone wandering round this week's CES may be inclined to agree."

Hisham Al-Shurafa writes "The 6th Canadian Undergraduate Technology Conference (CUTC 2005) is all about linking university students with top notch tech leaders and expanding education beyond the confines of the classroom. Held in downtown Toronto on Jan 20-22, this con will have seminars, workshops, interviews, and more on everything tech-related, from biotech to quantum computing. Speaker lineup looks amazing and includes Alan Ganek (VP Autonomic Computing, IBM), Joel Spolsky (joelonsoftware.com), and Allan Vermeulen (VP Web Services, Amazon). This student run event has won the favour of many universities across Canada, offering to cover as much as 100% of registration, travel and hotel costs for their students to attend this 3-day event."

IO ERROR pastes "'PHP has earned the title "Programming Language of the Year 2004" with a positive delta of more than 3 percent within 1 year. The launch of PHP version 5 is generally regarded as a further step to maturity. It is expected that PHP will be capable to maintain its top 4 position for a long time,' according to the TIOBE Programming Community Index. 'The index is updated once a month. The ratings are based on the world-wide availability of skilled engineers, courses and third party vendors.'"

ravenII writes "The FreeBSD foundation has announced the news of Sun terminating the SCSL OEM-like license given to FreeBSD foundation. The foundation's attempts to contact Sun to renegotiate the license have gone unanswered. Javalobby.org also carries the news." It would seem that Sun has terminated all SCSL licenses across the board in preparation for the release of Java 5, and while the renegotiation process may be a bit bumpy, it's likely that Java will continue to be ported to FreeBSD.

Bryan Saunders writes "

I am Bryan Saunders, and together with John Stamey and Matthew Cameron, we have developed an Extension to PHP to enable you to do Aspect-Oriented Programming with PHP. AOPHP 1.0 currently supports basic Before, After, and Around advice. Future versions will have more advanced support for these three types of advice. The Extension was developed using Java 1.5 and runs on Apache Web Servers. There are two parts to the implementation of AOPHP. The first involves using the Apache module ModRewrite, "the Swiss Army Knife of URL manipulation." The second is the aophpexec.aophp script which calls the AOPHP parser, written in Java 1.5. Aspects are written with a .aophp extension. These aspects are woven into incoming .php files by the Java AOPHP parser, contained in aophp.jar. For more information on AOPHP, visit http://www.aophp.net/ and For information on Aspect-Oriented Programming, visit http://www.aosd.net/ and http://www.aspectorientedprogramming.org/."

An anonymous reader writes "Joel on Software explains what college students should do with their lives. Interesting to note is how he justifies such trivialties as GPA scores and well-roundedness, the very things comments here tend to think are overrated. In short, learn to write English, learn to write C, and don't worry about India!"

Torsten writes "We all know it: it is no good idea to run Windows with Adminstrator privileges all the time. But when you use a normal user account, many programs will not work properly. I have recently recognised that even open source software has difficulties with the Windows rights model. Openoffice will continue to ask for registration until an Administrator stops it. Firefox will not install new search plugins for normal users and will not even tell why. FlightGear starts the configuration screen, but only an Administrator can fly. Have the OpenSource developers problems adapting the windows right model? Or does nobody bother being Administrator?"

An anonymous reader writes "This series on embedded development shows you how to migrate a project prototype from x86 to PowerPC. This initial installment explains the realities and rationale of the project: it introduces the robotic submarines that were the start of the project (and where they came from), and describes the Linux/GCC development environment and the bare-bones Kuro Box PowerPC development board."

aarbear writes "Airbear Software has just released an API to Google Desktop, a free tool from Google to search your own computer. In short, the API allows access to Google Desktop through the command line. Results are outputted to a file formatted with either XML, CSV, or custom formatting. The API is implemented through Airbear Software's popular Google Desktop add-on, gdSuite, so the API also adds advanced search options to Google Desktop. Google Desktop Search allows you to instantly find emails (from Outlook and Outlook Express), chats (in AOL and AOL Instant Message [AIM]), and web pages you've viewed in Internet Explorer. In addition, you can find any file by filename and can search inside Microsoft Word, Excel, and Powerpoint files. However, before gdSuite and this API, users could only search from their web browsers."

Unqualified code-monkey Garote submits his annotated version of Neal Stephenson's In The Beginning Was The Command Line, updated to discuss UI design theory and fill in some of the gaps from the last five years. (And yes, he has been granted permission from Neal to do this.) There's plenty more to cover of course: Will the command-line last only as long as the keyboard? How will desktop search technology change our workflow? What about the 3D interface? Scroll to any random paragraph in the essay and you'll find something worth expounding on. What's ahead for the next five years?

A few months ago, the GPL IDE Gambas reached 1.0 release candidate phase, and now reader drfreak writes "Gambas has now hit 1.0 and looks promising as GNU/Linux's answer to Visual Basic. Now, if it ran in Windows too, it would truly crush VB for database applications. Check it out at gambas.sourceforge.net." A 1.0.1 release came out on January 3rd to fix a few bugs.

gManZboy writes "Everyone knows that some software development projects succeed and other fail -- the question has always been 'why'? I'm sure we all have our favorite (likely anecdotal) explanations. Well, these guys decided to actually go out there and do a formal survey, and they've got some real data on why projects actually fail (as reported by development project managers -- care to guess where 'changing requirements' ranks?). They've developed a diagnostic formula people can use to gauge the likeliness that the project they're working on right now is (or isn't) going to fail."

jg21 writes "Writing an article about "A Java Server That Never Goes Down" is pure hubris, but a German developer who says he's been "eating, sleeping, and drinking Java" for 8 years doesn't seem to care and his article brings to light the aspects of VM we rarely think of as he introduces "user isolation" and tells about some interesting work SAP in Germany is doing in that area, merging the Java and the ABAP worlds."

christophe.vg asks: "We are currently investigating the feasibility of a new (open source) project and part of this study involves a scope definition of how people/developers currently actually use UML. So there it is: How do you use UML? Do you use it to have nice class diagrams to pin up to the wall so you/it just looks great or do you first model out every little detail into class and sequence diagrams before generating or writing even one line of code? Now for a moment, let's dream the UML dream. Do you think that in the future one could maybe even envisage software development where UML could simply replace all existing coding languages? One could argue that coding languages are merely formatting tools to implement the actual logic, which can be portrayed 'in a Unified way' using UML schemas. What are your ideas regarding the real merits of UML, currently and in the not so distant future?"

sebFlyte writes "Interesting Santy worm story -- there's now an anti-Santy worm proliferating, which spreads the same way as a normal worm, but rather than killing machines or taking control of them, it gives them security updates..." We mentioned the Santy worm about ten days ago.

fsterman writes "We've been working on compiling the audio and video from The Fifth HOPE, and we're pleased to announce that all of the audio from the conference (some 78 hour-long files covering 69 panels) is now available."

Nigel Cross wrote in with an interesting story from the world of software fraud. Cross writes "I found a copycat site fraudulently selling my own software and kept a record of the steps it took to bring him down."

RJabelman asks: "I'm trying to write a Mozilla extension, but I can't find a decent resource to learn from. Tutorials abound for packaging up an extension, and the web's littered with Javascript snippets to pretty up a web page, but there seems to be very little authoritative information for doing serious work with Javascript, XUL and Mozilla (and more specifically, manipulating XML). I can find my one true resource for every other language or API I've learned: but not this. Can anyone point me to theirs?"

gooofy writes "After two years of intense testing and continuous improvement, the xine development team proudly presents the final xine-lib 1.0 release. Compared with the latest release candidate, there are not many changes. However, a security issue regarding the AIFF demuxer (CAN-2004-1300) is fixed, as well as some issues that might have appeared with the way the Xv plugin has been linked in 1-rc8. Therefore, upgrading to 1.0 is strongly recommended. Thanks to the whole xine team for making this happen!"

summetj writes "BurningWell.org is a repository for public domain ("free-for-any-use") images. If you need a high resolution digital image for any use, Browse the Images. If you have produced any high-resolution images that you are willing to place in the public domain, please Read the Donors FAQ."