honestpuck writes "To say that understanding HTTP is crucial for web development might seem like saying water is wet, yet many people don't take the time to fully understand the protocol. This book could be a good help. HTTP Developer's Handbook from SAMS gives you a great deal of information about the protocol in a clearly understood fashion." Read on for the rest of honestpuck's review.

An anonymous reader says "O'Reilly Developer News is reporting details of the newest Google programming contest, Google Code Jam 2003. Prizes range from t-shirts to ten grand and you can use any programming language you want to solve the increasingly challenging problems." Update by J : ... as long as it's Java, C++, C# or VB.NET.

2br02b writes "Readers might recall the Simputer (Simple, Inexpensive, Multilingual Computer) whose story Slashdot has been following over the past few years, including its release in October 2002 and most recently the Scientific American article in November. Rediff.com has an informative overview on the status of what was introduced as a low-cost computer for the poor to be sold for under Rs 10000 ($200). Of the two companies that have been given licences, one has yet to put the product on the market while the other is only looking at bulk sales at prices from Rs 12000 to Rs 20000 ($400). Only between 1500 and 2000 Simputers are out on the market."

RobotWisdom writes "Ibiblio's historic archive for Linux, linked recently, offers lots of old distros, but the dates aren't obvious. I went through and dug out what dates I could for my timeline, but couldn't find any date for several." Robot Wisdom managed to collect an impressive list; read on below for the result.

goombah99 asks: "I've come to believe that the existence of GNU g77 (and f2c) is holding back Fortran development. You might think that a free-ware compiler would be good for promoting the language. But it's not because the GNU flavor does not implement the de-facto standard DEC extensions to the language that give it dynamic memory allocation, pointers, and data structures. Without these Fortran 77 is indeed barbaric, but with them it is quite pleasant to work with. The problem is everyone writing new code is now afraid to use these commands in because of the desire to have their applications compilable by the teeming masses who may not want to pay $500 to $1000 dollars for a professional Fortran compiler (all of which do implement the DEC extension). F95 is being held back by the same considerations. Do you agree? Does anyone have some library extensions or pre-compilers that provide these capabilities to g77?" Are the DEC extensions so widespread and common that language survival is dependent on their inclusion, as the submitter suggests, in "every professional compiler". Assuming there aren't comparable features already available in g77, are there plans on eventually implementing similar?

jscribner writes "IBM reached another key milestone in open source: Eclipse, a completely open source platform, now runs on the Jikes Research Virtual Machine (RVM) improving its teaching/research potential because it provides the community with a significant open source Java benchmark that runs on top of a flexible open testbed (Jikes RVM). The testbed runs on Linux and uses the GNU Classpath implementation of Java libraries (read: complete open source solution). Although Jikes RVM was developed by IBM researchers at the IBM TJ Watson Research Center, it was donated to the community in October 2001 and now has a steering committee and core team that include both IBMers and other university researchers."

snowtigger writes "The August 2003 GCC updater includes the new GCC 3.3 compiler in addition to other updates that will allow development of G5 optimized code with the December 2002 Mac OS X Developer Tools. This update is available to all ADC members from the Download Software area of the ADC web site (free registration required). It will be interesting to see what Steve Jobs will present in Paris tomorrow; is XCode ready?"

Anthony Boyd asks: "Last weekend, I built a web site that is a poor-man's version of Classmates. Except that it is custom-built just for my high-school, with no ads or fees. I got a fine response from the people that knew about it, and was busy reconnecting with lost friends... until [last week], when my school's alumni association called and gave me an earful of comments such as, 'that's a rogue site' and 'it may not be legal!' Turns out, they hoped to build something similar, as a platform to entice donations. So, I'm stuck. Before I do anything, I'd like to ask Slashdot: have the projects you built for 'just for fun' been overrun by outside interests? If so, what did you do, and what would you have done differently?"

dberger queries: "Java has helped garbage collection enter the mainstream programmer's life - but it's certainly not new or unique to java. There have been (and are) several ways to add garbage collection to C/C++ - the most active seeming to be Hans Boehm's free libgc. I'm curious if any of the Slashdot crowd has used this (or any other) C++ garbage collector in non-trivial commercial applications. If so - what were your experiences? If not, why not? (Before you ask, yes - I know that GC isn't the only difference between C++ and Java, but 'automagic memory management' is certainly part of Java's marketing luster)"

An anonymous reader queries: "Windows::Developer is offering a detailed, quantitative examination [free login required] of C#'s performance versus Java, C, C++ and D. 'Overall the results were surprising, although perhaps unexciting, in showing that C# (and to a less extent Java) is, to a good degree, on a par in efficiency terms with its older and (presumed to be) more efficient counterparts C and C++ at least as far as the basic language features compared in this analysis are concerned,' writes the author, Matthew Wilson. I'm only an amateur coder, and confess to not understanding most of the two-part article. I'd love to hear how true programmers view his results, which are too wide-ranging to summarize easily here. How about it Slashdot, as this special edition asks, 'Can C# keep up with compiled languages like C, C++, and D or byte-code based Java?'"

An anonymous reader writes "Century Software has announced the release of source code for its PIXIL product line under the GNU Public License (GPL). PIXIL combines a graphical windowing environment, widget set, operating environment, and numerous applications into a tightly integrated collection built on the open standards of embedded Linux, according to Century. PIXIL is meant for use in PDAs, WebPads, set-top boxes, cellular phones, smart handhelds and thin clients. It is based on Microwindows, a screentop window manager, FLNX-based widget set, and a set of applications including PIM Suite, ViewML browser, MP3 player, MPEG viewer, Macromedia flash player, Doom, games, system and network configuration applications and more. PIXIL now has a website at www.pixil.org."

shelleymonster writes "Infoworld points out that, after two years of coding, Borland has released its latest C++ development toolkit. Borland C++BuilderX is a multiplatform IDE for Windows, Linux, and Solaris that provides a brand-new visual development environment. Press release here." According to the Infoworld piece, "While newer languages, such as Java and Microsoft's C#, garner more attention than C++, research firm IDC projected that C and C++ professionals will remain the largest group of developers through 2005."

maedls.at writes "Here is a short description of the Vulnerability:Passwords of MySQL users are stored in the "User" table, part of the "mysql" database, specifically in the "Password" field. In MySQL 4.0.x and 3.23.x, these passwords are hashed and stored as a 16 characters long hexadecimal value, specifically in the "Password" field. Unfortunately, a function involved in password checking misses correct bounds checking. By filling a "Password" field a value wider than 16 characters, a buffer overflow will occur. For details and proof of concept see: http://lists.netsys.com/pipermail/full-disclosure/ 2003-September/009819.html"

Anonymous Coward writes "DevMaster.net has an article by Samuel Ranta-Eskola which offers a detailed explanation of Binary Space Partitioning (BSP) theory for real-time engines, along with various implementation details, complexity anaylsis, optimzations, and rendering. "

viega writes "Matt Messier and I have just launched a secure programming web site. While this site does support our new book The Secure Programming Cookbook for C and C++ , it also serves as a thorough resource for developers. It has numerous links to articles and other topical resources, new recipes that demonstrate secure programming techniques a large glossary and the obligatory web log. We accept outside submissions, and will reward the best recipe submission each month-- O'Reilly will publish it on the O'Reilly Network web site and will give the author a free book. There's already a decent amount of new content, including recipes on avoiding malloc()/new-related integer overflows, watching out for security problems in API differences and issues when truncating data. There's also an RSS feed for the web log."

The Stunted Leech asks: "I am trying to develop an LDAP interface to an existing customer database and would like to implement a simple LDAP listener that could be queried from e-mail clients. Before everyone suggests importing the data to OpenLDAP or developing a back-end for it, let me just say that it isn't very feasible: I'm the only person assigned to the project, and my company doesn't have the time or hardware resources to maintain an LDAP server. So I'm looking for very simple implementations of LDAP servers, preferably in a scripting language like Perl or Python (we use Perl for CGIs and wxPython for GUI front-ends). I've come across a couple of Java-based ones, but they seemed overly complex - all I need to do is retrieve a contact's e-mail or phone number from our database. Pointers to any sort of simple LDAP servers are welcome, even if they do little more than return the same result to all queries."

5p1urge asks: "I really love the Mono and DotGNU projects. As someone who's worked in Java for for over 5 years, I welcome C# and it's buddies to the OpenSource world. However, here's question: as far as I can tell, only the C# spec and System.* assemblies were submitted to ECMA and therefore made officially public. What happens when MS decides that, Linux -is- going to steal valuable income-generating business, and therefore it should use it's newly acquired patents to sue? I'd appreciate comments from IT lawyers / solicitors and individuals with experience in this area, as well as from the wider community. I'm asking this question because I want to code in mono / DotGnu but I'm cautious because I wonder if MS can take it away from us?"

An anonymous reader writes "The previously reported ICFP Contest has been over for quite some time. The results were announced on August 26, 2003 at the conference in Uppsala, Sweden, yet the contest organizers have yet to publish results. Despite the forgetfulness of the organizers, it is known that this year C++ did well, taking first and second, but not judge's prize. Interestingly, a one-man team consisting of an undergraduate student took first place, followed by a team of highly ranked 'red' TopCoders, with the maintainers of Gwydion Dylan taking judge's prize."

chromatic writes "ONLamp has just published an interview with Andrew "Bunnie" Huang, author of Hacking the Xbox. Bunnie discusses the effect of the DMCA on his work and the state of Xbox hacking as he sees it."

LogError writes "Sombria ("shadowy" in Portuguese) is a honeypot system set up in Tokyo, Japan, that is intended for network surveillance and research and not for production purposes. This paper provides some statistics and an overview of the most prominent attacks from May through July 2003."