Toys

Programming Puzzles 392

Posted by michael from the my-brane-hurts dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Spotted over at the Economist: 'Sliding-block puzzles look easy, but they can be tricky to solve. The best known is the 15 Puzzle, which became hugely popular in the late 1870s. This involves square tiles labelled with the numbers 1 to 15, which must be arranged in the correct order inside a four-by-four frame.' While we've all tried these puzzles, the inventor of Quzzle set out to design the easiest looking - yet most difficult puzzle around and turned to CS to find it. While the original article touches on it, at the puzzle's site you'll find Jim Lewis, the inventor, wrote a program in Haskell, a functional programming language to find the best design."
Software

Is Some Software Meant to be Secret? 504

Posted by michael from the secrets-and-lies dept.
Tim writes "Tim Bray and Microsoft's Joe Marini are doing a back-and forth on Open Source. Tim serves (open everything), Joe returns (secret-source is good business) and Tim volleys (the closed-source niche is shrinking)."
Programming

Lightweight Languages Workshop Webcast from MIT 50

Posted by michael from the lively-discussions dept.
Jonathan Edwards writes "The Lightweight Languages Workshop (LL4) will be webcast live from MIT tomorrow. Previous years have seen lively discussions between the proponents of languages like Perl, Python, and Scheme. Check out the program at the website."
Bug

Bugzilla on Windows? 111

Posted by Cliff from the a-painful-process dept.
slipandfall asks: "I just started work at a 100% Windows shop (no chance of changing this) and would love to implement Bugzilla for issue tracking but statements like this - 'Making Bugzilla work on Windows is still a painful processes.' in the OS-Specific installation notes don't make it seem reasonable. Since there is no chance of using Linux/UNIX here, can I get people's experiences using Bugzilla on Windows or experience with a tool (open source or not) on Windows with similar notification, discussion and issue tracking features?"
Databases

MySQL Database Design and Optimization 233

Posted by timothy from the stick-this-in-there dept.
norburym (Mary Norbury-Glaser) writes "As the title suggests, Beginning MySQL Database Design and Optimization is intended for the range of users between novice and professional. It may seem difficult for one book to suit such a wide readership without losing readers on either end of the spectrum, or perhaps without providing adequate coverage to any particular audience, Apress has done what many other publishers have failed to do by providing an excellent series of 'novice to professional' books. An example of their dedication to detail and perfection is the inclusion of top-notch technical reviewers (Mike Hillyer, in this case, often found haunting Experts Exchange as one of the top MySQL experts) who provide expertise to the series. Authors Jon Stephens and Chad Russell have extensive combined PHP and MySQL experience that shows in the content of this volume. Readers with some MySQL experience who desire a broader range of instruction will gain much from this book. Experienced users will find quite a lot of valuable information that will extend their existing knowledge base. Concepts in design are better learned from the beginning to avoid repeating poor programming mistakes, but it's never too late to learn good practices." Read on for the rest of Norbury-Glaser's review.
Handhelds

Cellphone Forensic Software Open Sourced 23

Posted by michael from the copying-jason-bourne dept.
Niek writes "The Netherlands Forensic Institute (part of the Dutch Ministry of Justice) has open sourced one of their high-profile software frameworks, TULP2G. With this BSD licensed framework, one can extract and decode all data from GSM SIM cards, e.g. called phone numbers and received SMS messages. This was previously only possible with commercial software. Dutch press release, Powerpoint presentation. Earlier this year, the Dutch government GPLed their online election software."
Programming

Freya Reaches 2.0 Beta Release 50

Posted by Zonk from the you-think-you-can-do-better?-prove-it dept.
mandrake*rpgdx writes "Freya, a game programming environment for the Lua programming language, reaches 2.0 beta this week. Freya allows you to program cross platform games in the programming language Lua. It sports speeds 2x-10x faster than PyGame, and contains a built in map engine, pixel perfect collision detection, support for many graphics and sound formats including Ogg Vorbis and different MOD formats. Right now the beta release is looking for people to test the Linux version."
Christmas Cheer

2004 Perl Advent Calendar Begins 12

Posted by timothy from the hum-the-charlie-brown-song dept.
JeffMagnus writes "In another sign of the rapid approach of Christmas, Mark Fowler has posted the first entry in his 2004 Perl Advent Calendar. Each day until December 25, Mark will post a review of some Perl module he finds useful. This marks the fifth year for this Perl Christmastime tradition."
KDE

Introducing KDevelop TechNotes 11

Posted by timothy from the from-the-field dept.
adymo writes "Yesterday I have started a series of KDevelop IDE related articles. I called them "KDevelop TechNotes" and I plan to publish all useful information about the IDE - tips and tricks, use cases, tutorials, etc. Everyone is welcome to share KDevelop knowledge by writing their own issues of technotes. I will be pleased to publish them on the project website www.kdevelop.org.
The first issue should be a matter of no little interest to all free software developers. Read on to learn more about KDevelop Assistant - an advanced API documentation viewer." A second issue is out, too, demonstrating a quick (two-minute) GUI app built with Qt.
Programming

Developing Applications With Objective Caml 243

Posted by timothy from the watering-hole dept.
Fahrenheit 450 (William D. Neumann) writes "Developing Applications With Objective Caml was originally published in French by O'Reilly, and later translated into English by a group of volunteers (note that the reviewer was a volunteer proofreader during the translation effort), and graciously made available online as HTML or PDF at the Caml website. For those not familiar with Objective Caml (or OCaml, as it is commonly called), it is a strongly, statically typed (but don't be thinking about Pascal-style typing), eagerly evaluated language with a functional core that also offers many imperative programming features. OCaml also has full support for object-oriented programming that fits in completely with OCaml's strong type system. On top of that, OCaml code can be interpreted for simple scripting, compiled to bytecode for portability, or compiled to native code for speed and resource utilization that rival even that of Intel's C++ compiler. Intrigued?" If so, read on for the rest of Neumann's review.
Programming

Open Source Geeks Considered Modern Heroes 361

Posted by michael from the i-need-a-hero dept.
loconet writes "The BBC reports that a report by Demos says that the all-consuming passions of geeks and nerds may actually be beneficial for society. The UK think tank's report published today, underlines the importance of 'Pro-Ams' -- amateurs who pursue a hobby or pastime, in many cases an all-consuming passion, to a professional standard. The report says Pro-Am astronomers have made 'significant contributions' to the knowledge of the universe, while Pro-Am computer programmers are providing the only serious challenge to Microsoft's dominance of personal computing."
Programming

Python 2.4 Final Released 359

Posted by CmdrTaco from the watch-out-for-the-teeth dept.
Eventh writes "The final release of Python 2.4 was just released. Python 2.4 is the result of almost 18 month's worth of work on top of Python 2.3. New features are, but not limited to, function decorators, generator expressions, a number of new module and more. Check out Andrew Kuchling's What's New In Python for a detailed view of some of the new features of Python 2.4. "

Top Ten Persistent Design Flaws 1067

Posted by Hemos from the good-ideas-to-consider dept.
jlouderb writes "Bruce Tognazzini former human interface evangalist at Apple, and currently a principal at web design firm Neilsen Norman Group has begun cataloging the top ten design computing flaws that we just live with with, but shouldn't have to. Only seven are found at his article, and (not surprisingly) three are Mac related. My favorite: the mysteriously dimmed menu options. Why are those darned things grey anyway?"
Privacy

3D Biometric Facial Recognition Comes To UK 157

Posted by timothy from the are-you-ready-for-your-closeup? dept.
Roland Piquepaille writes "In the UK, where the recent Queen's speech about national identity cards generated lots of -- mostly negative -- coverage, another potentially invasive technology is being tested with very few criticism. For example, several police departments are now testing a 3D biometric facial recognition software from Aurora, a company based near Northampton. The use of facial recognition 'is rapidly becoming the third forensic science alongside fingerprints and DNA,' according to a police officer who talked to BBC News for 'How your face could open doors.'" (More below.)
Graphics

Open Source Graphic Card Project Seeks Experts 370

Posted by timothy from the will-more-cooks-help dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Could this dream of many open source developers and users finally happen? A 100% open sourced graphic card with 3D support? Proper 3D card support for OpenBSD, NetBSD and other minority operating systems? A company named Tech Source will try to make it happen. You can download the preliminary specs for the card here (pdf). The project, though a commercial one, wants to become a true community project and encourages experts and everyone who have good ideas to add to the development process to join the mailing list. You can also sign a petition and tell how much you would be willing to pay for the final product."

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