sthiyaga writes "According to a ComputerWire article, Red Hat is in discussions with Sun about launching an open source version of the Java platform. 'There's always been an interest in an open source implementation of Java developed in a clean room that adheres to the Java standards,' Szulik told ComputerWire. 'We're in discussions with Sun. We'd like to do this with their support.'"

Scott Walters writes "Perl programmers and Java programmers have a lot to learn from each other. Perl 5 is providing more and more optional stricture, and Perl 6 is expected to provide stricture by default and other goodies as type safety. Perhaps better named "Stupid Perl Object Tricks", Perl Design Patterns proves that a little design, a little computer science, and some style are nothing to fear. This is dedicated to all of the newbies screaming, "The code is fine! Just tell me what the bug is!", and to all of the talented programmers who think Perl deserves a better reputation. Object::PerlDesignPatterns on CPAN is updated less often but has a fatter pipe."

An anonymous reader submits: "The Linux Router Project is no more. This single-floppy distro was a great tool for building a number of simple super-low-cost network devices. The maintainer has a lot of bitter words about its demise, and it is sad to see it go."

dex@ruunat writes "Damien Challet and Yann Le Du of the University of Oxford studied a model of software bug dynamics, which resulted in a paper on cond-mat this morning. In this paper they study the difference in evolution of number of bugs in open and closed source projects. They conclude: 'When the program is written from scratch, the first phase of development is characterized by a fast decline of the number of bugs, followed by a slow phase where most bugs have been fixed, hence, are hard to find'. Another, perhaps surprising conclusion is that debugging in open source projects is always faster than in closed source projects."

Embedded Geek writes "Embedded Systems magazine is running an interesting story about building an embedded system (specifically, a diagnostic tool for auto mechanics) using Linux. Despite the foreboding title and tagline ('If your embedded system doesn't need networking and storage, porting Linux to your hardware may not be worth the effort'), it offers a balanced look at how the engineer implemented his solution and observations on each step. Interestingly, his discussion is as much about embedded design philosophy versus Linux's philosophy, pointing out where each meets or diverges. A nice read."

cpfeifer writes "Tristan Louis has started a new group focusing on Usability in OSS products. Among the goals are: examining the state of he usability union in existing products, forming a set of standards and practices and PR for products that make usability strides. Also, check out the discussion on Metafilter."

Gentu writes "OSNews hosts an interview with Andy Tucker, Distinguished Engineer of the Solaris kernel. They talk about the internals of Solaris, the competition and how the OS compares to Linux/BSD/other-Unix and also about its future."

honestpuck writes "Many years ago I learnt my AppleScript skills from a book by a gentleman by the name of Danny Goodman and I was happy to find him tackling the subject of dynamic HTML in "Dynamic HTML: The Definitive Reference". Indeed this is the second edition and seems supremely up to date." Read on for the rest of honestpuck's review.

Programmers and others interested in the GNOME desktop environment gather annually for an event called GU4DEC, the GNOME Users and Developers European Conference. This year, there's extensive live coverage of GU4DEC (currently in progress, at Trinity College, Dublin) on the web, including a growing online photo album, audio recordings and video streams, and presentation materials. (The schedule is handy if you want to follow along.) I hope there's a similar sort of integrated documenation / dissemination from the upcoming KDE developers' conference at the Czech Republic's Nove Hrady.

KZigurs writes "The wonders of online publishing... If you are ready to take on a heroic task and read thru all 976 pages of Concepts, Techniques, and Models of Computer Programming (draft) (pdf file, 3MB, intro here) written by Peter Van Roy and Seif Haridi you won't regret it. Just finished reading it and I feel like I have read the Bible. And who knows? It has the potential, and since current de facto books about programming are aging with increasing speed it very well may become one. (Please read the intro to get more detailed outlook at topics covered)
Anyone before heard about Oz?"

Alizarin Erythrosin writes "Tom's Hardware Guide has an article about the new WinFS file system. The article talks first about some of the problems and advantages with FAT[16|32] and NTFS, then talks briefly about WinFS. Here is the summary: 'Microsoft is breaking new ground with Longhorn, successor to XP. The upcoming WinFS file system will be the first to be context-dependent, and promises to make long search times and wasted memory a thing of the past. Today, THG compares it to FAT and NTFS.' Personally, I still have reservations about using a relational database to keep track of files. Unless they can keep the overhead to a minimum, I can't see it being as efficient as a file system should be."

michae1m writes "Trolltech today announced that Qt/Mac will be released under the GPL (GNU General Public License) at Apple's World Wide Developer Conference (WWDC) 2003 in San Francisco on June 23rd (http://www.trolltech.com/newsroom/announcements/0 0000129.html). For some screenshots check out dot.kde.org/1055852609. This means many X11 Qt apps will be easily rebuilt for OS X without requiring X11, very cool."

ghopson asks: "Many years ago in the early nineties I became aware of a software definition language called Z, which was based on set theory. The idea was that a software system could be defined in 'Z', and then that system could be mathematically proven to be 100% correct (in other words, zero defects).What is the current state of play with 'zero defect' software development? I know Z still exists, that there is a software development method (the B-method) associated with it. Have techniques and advances such as MDA advanced zero-defect software development? Or would a set of robust unit tests suffice?"

theodp writes "A European Parliament committee Tuesday moved toward setting the first pan-European standard for software patents, but outlawed the U.S. practice of patenting business methods, such as Amazon's one-click Internet shopping. 'The European law sets the right benchmark rather than the looser U.S. system,' said the director of public policy for Europe at the Business Software Alliance, which represents 20 software companies including Microsoft and Apple. Amazon representatives in Brussels declined to comment on the new European legislation."

An anonymous reader writes "Here's a good article that shows you how to install and set up the kernel debugger (KDB) to trace Linux kernel execution and examine memory and data structures. The best part is, you don't need a separate machine for debugging."

DJSlakoR writes "Looks like the Nocturnal Network has a tutorial on how to get started coding your own operating system. A very interesting read!"

Pete Bevin writes "Artima has a fine interview with James Gosling, creator of Java, about his latest project. It's called Jackpot, and it treats the parse tree as the program. This makes refactoring much, much more intuitive. The article has some good insights into code visualization, technical writing, and making your programs more understandable."

HeavyJay writes "When I purchased QBASIC Programming for Dummies, I expected a clear, concise tutorial on how to construct programs in QBASIC. I'm new to the world of programming, and, having had luck with the Dummies series before, thought this the best place to start off. How very wrong I was." Read on for more; readers with recommendations for better (newer?) QBASIC books are encouraged to contribute.

An anonymous reader writes "Sun just opened two new Java sites, java.com and java.net. java.com seems to be some marketing fluff. java.net, however, seems to be aimed at open source java programmers and is run by O'Reilly. It's got wikis, blogs, and hosts a lot of projects, including the new java gaming projects. Worth a look."

Matt Hughes asks: "When does one programmer's preferences (Java over Microsoft-anything because they hate Microsoft, or Microsoft over open-source because open-source is evil) and the variety of choices start to erode productivity? As a J2EE developer for the past few years, I admit that I've become frustrated at the number of choices out there. Every one offers a different way of doing things but they don't all interoperate (JBuilder doesn't natively understand Struts) and none of them -- in my experience -- pulls all of the web technologies together very succinctly. Does Visual Studio .NET and the .NET framework pull this together better than the open-source projects out there, or is it just as complicated in your experience? Is .NET too immature to be trusted? What are your thoughts?" For those interested in the raw performance numbers, Slashdot did a performance comparison between the two technologies, in an earlier article.