jpkunst writes "Chris Shiflett at oreillynet.com summarizes (with lots of links) a discussion about scalability, brought about by Friendster's move from Java to PHP. Chris argues that PHP scales well, because it fits into the Web's fundamental architecture. 'I think PHP scales well because Apache scales well because the Web scales well. PHP doesn't try to reinvent the wheel; it simply tries to fit into the existing paradigm, and this is the beauty of it.' (The article is also available on Chris' own website.)"

prostoalex writes "The weblog entry 'Show me the money' is an interesting tale of Microsoft Money from a developer who now manages software development in the Tablet PC group at Microsoft. Having worked before with Money, which was assigned a task of beating Quicken, Philip describes the disasters that happen when marketing and advertising people rule the software development: 'Money's success or failure was judged using the same metrics as MSN's websites. Metrics like minutes viewed per month. Like ad revenue. Like click-through. Stickiness. I am not making this up.'"

jg21 writes "Java is 'incredibly heavily used' in the Linux community, according to Sun's James Gosling, one of Java's co-creators. Gosling was debating Stanford's Lawrence Lessig, Apache co-founder Brian Behlendorf, IBM's Rod Smith, and others at JavaOne this week about the possible merits of open-sourcing Java vs the market's demand for continuing compatibility. But Behlendorf seemed not to agree. So who was right, how many Slashdotters are also Java users? Is "incredibly heavily used" an overstatement by Gosling, who after all helped create the language and therefore might be biased?"

underpar writes "This zdnet article covering Microsoft's Tech Ed conference quotes one of the speakers, Mark Russinovich, as saying that Linux is becoming more and more like Windows. He cites many examples of where Linux 'copies' Windows and other operating systems. He says the only current difference is 'how windowing is handled.'"

DLWormwood writes "Secunia has recently issued yet another advisory about web browser vulnerabilities, this time concerning the use of frames in web pages. Originally discovered to be in Internet Explorer, the security experts apparently worked overtime just to make sure the same "flaw" is found in just about every other browser out there. Doesn't this notice simply complain about a specified design feature of frames? (Note their official "advice": "Do not visit or follow links from untrusted websites.")"

tcopeland writes "An article on NewsForge highlights some changes in the upcoming PostgreSQL release (v7.5) that are funded by Fujitsu. PostgreSQL core team member Josh Berkus says that "Tablespaces, Nested Transactions, and Java support" are being underwritten by Fujitsu; this has also been mentioned on the postgresql-hackers list. He also says that 7.5 will be "...the most significant new release of the software since version 7.0 almost four years ago". Good times for PostgreSQL users!" And ggoebel writes "Jeff Dike posted a notice to the UML [User-mode Linux] developers mailing list: 'The first bit of news is that as of last Monday, I am working for Intel. They generously offered a full-time position, off-site, with my time mostly spent on UML. This basically means that UML is no longer a part-time, after-hours thing for me, so we should start seeing more work happening on it, especially compared to the last month or two.'"

An anonymous reader writes "Automating software testing allows you to run the same tests over a period of time, ensuring that you are really comparing apples to apples and oranges to oranges. In this article, Linux Test Project team members share their methodology and rationale, as well as the scripts and tools they use to stress-test the Linux kernel."

An anonymous reader writes "WindowsForDevices reports on the keynote talk at Microsoft's Windows Embedded DevCon (developer conference) taking place this week in San Diego. The story includes some interesting comments and highlights from the talk. Don't miss the cool bit about the ARM7-based 'SPOT' development platform that runs a tiny version of the .NET Compact Framework -- Microsoft is demoing a robot that's run by SPOT. There's also a pointer to an online video demo of a project to create a digital picture frame using Win CE."

Espectr0 writes "eWeek is reporting that last week, Sun Microsystems Inc. licensed a pair of the underlying technologies of the Java Desktop System under the open-source LGPL (GNU Lesser General Public License). The two projects, JDNC (JDesktop Network Components) and JDIC (JDesktop Integration Components), are essentially to Java application developers what Microsoft's ActiveX and COM were to Windows developers--an architecture for creating easily configured application components and for integrating with the functionality of the local operating system and other applications."

theblackdeer writes "Just poking around the go-mono.com Mono website; it's now the multi-colored mono-project.com. Even better, it updated before my eyes to include the 1.0 release. Screenshots are (slightly) updated, too. Mono 1.0 includes the Mono Develop IDE (based on SharpDevelop, I believe). Download now and start your GTK# engines!" Alliante adds "You can download the Release Notes and the Packages on their website."

mksolutions writes "As reported on heise online and mozilla.org 'Apple, Macromedia, Opera and Sun Microsystems join in push to modernize plugins and create a richer web experience.' They are to develop a common, cross-platform plug-in interface which will be used in Mozilla products as well as Opera and Safari and will be released under an open source license."

Interested in a 3D desktop? zoso submitted news about about a project called Metisse, writing "There is working and freely available alternative to the (soon to be released under GPL) Sun Looking Glass 3D desktop ( Slashdot story here) If you have spare CPU/GPU cycles just go download and compile the first publicly available version of this X Desktop. Everything looks nice (screenshots here), has OpenGL support, transparency and all other whistles...."

An anonymous reader submits "The Consumer Electronics Linux Forum (CELF) celebrated its one-year anniversary today by releasing its first Specification and Reference Implementation. The Specification is a 67-page document aimed at guiding system developers interested in creating or extending individual technologies in Linux for use in consumer electronic (CE) devices. The Reference Implementation is a fully patched source tree supporting nine target boards. CELF is an industry consortium founded by Sony and Matsushita, and chartered with steering the development of a version of Linux for use in embedded CE products."

Ur@eus writes "The GNOME European Users and Developers conference is currently underway in Kristansand, Norway. The whole conference is available live online as an Ogg Theora stream (the videos of the talks are also archived). This is very exciting as it is a proof of concept that it is possible to do high quality streaming using a fully free format today. The stream is done using the Fluendo streaming server software which will be released under the GPL in a few months. You find information on how to view the streams at the GUADEC streaming website."

cuppm writes "ReactOS has just released version 0.2.3 of their free WinNT/2k clone! 'New LiveCD image, improved and more stable kernel and win32k kernel graphics subsystem, lots of networking foundation work, improved setup and better bundled explorer, command shell and drivers. Also included is newly ported user DLL code from WINE.' Download it here. It works pretty well in VMware and is progressing quickly."

An anonymous reader writes "At the TechEd Europe keynote today, Microsoft launched Visual Studio 2005 Beta 1. With it, they also released a set of five 'Express Editions' of Visual Studio. These currently free applications offer a student and hobbyist-oriented version of Visual Studio, and are available in C#, C++, VB, Web Developer, and SQL flavors. Each download weighs in at right around 50MB and features tools, documentation, and starter kits. There's been multiple posts and more information on this announcement over at MSDN Blogs, too." Update: 06/29 13:57 GMT by S : A clarification from the Express FAQ: Although the Beta Express products are currently free to download: "We have not announced pricing and licensing and will not do so until next calendar year."

Kardamon writes "In an article on DBAzine, Fabian Pascal writes that SQL is not a good representation of the relational model, and is afraid the situation will get worse with XML and XQUERY. An overview of some of the reactions on the positions Pascal and also C.J. Date take on this issue is given in this article over at SearchDatabase.com by Sara Cushman."

CowboyRobot writes "ACM Queue has an article that blames security flaws on poor programming, rather than any inherent problems with particular languages. From the article: 'Remember Ada? ... we tried getting everyone to switch to a 'sandboxed' environment with Java in the late 1990s... Java worked so well, Microsoft responded with ActiveX, which bypasses security entirely by making it easy to blame the user for authorizing bad code to execute.'"

elleomea writes "According to The Register, Sun is releasing Project Looking Glass, their new GNU/Linux based 3D window managing system, under the GPL during their JavaOne conference (beginning today)." The screenshots of Looking Glass make it out to be very pretty. I'm not sure if I have the spare CPU cycles to power such an environment, but it's sure nice to drool over.

An anonymous reader writes "In an effort to help device makers differentiate their products and compete more vigorously with Linux, Microsoft is eliminating major restrictions on the use of its "shared source" license for the Windows CE operating system. The change, which accompanies the impending full release of Windows CE 5.0, will counter competition from Linux and is likely to expand Microsoft's slice of the roughly $1B embedded OS market pie. Specifically, the new version of the Win CE Shared Source license will, for the first time, enable developers anywhere in the world to include modified Windows CE code within commercial products without having to sublicense the modifications back to Microsoft. Interestingly, the revised Shared Source terms are reminiscent of the BSD open source license, which permits the development of proprietary derivatives that need not be shared with the community, in contrast to the GPL, which obligates developers to make their modifications available to the public."