Futurepower(R) queries: "It has been 2 1/2 years since the previous Ask Slashdot about GUI Toolkits. There were many helpful comments then, such as this one. Since then, Slashdot has discussed wxWindows vs. MFC and considered the book, Creating Applications with Mozilla. The best comparison table is apparently still the GUI Toolkit, Framework Page. Which is the best cross-platform GUI toolkit that provides native look and feel? Which is the best overall? What IDEs and other tools do you use? What are the problems?" Slashdot also had a match-up between GTK+ and Qt, but some of you might have missed that one. How have recent changes in this ballpark changed your feelings on the issue?

Len Sassaman writes "CodeCon 2.0 is the premier event in 2003 for the P2P, Cypherpunk, and network/security application developer community. It is a workshop for developers of real-world applications with working code and active development projects. CodeCon registration is $95; a $15 discount is available for attendees who register online prior to February 15th. CodeCon 2.0 will be held February 22-24, noon-6pm, at Club NV (525 Howard Street) in San Francisco." Here's the site for more codecon info. Read on below for a list of scheduled presentations.

RenHoek writes "Security expert Stefan Esser from E-matters discovered a bug in CVS version 1.11.4 and lower, that can give malignant users remote root access. The exploit was confirmed on BSD, but other OS's like Linux, Solaris and Windows are vulnerable too. A security advisory can be found here and there is also a patch available. CVS version 1.11.5 which is fixed can be downloaded as well."

serps writes "Australian IT reports that Linus Torvalds will be attending Linux.conf.au later this week. Also attending are 'an impressive list of international open source legends, such as kernel guru Alan Cox, PHP developer Rasmus Lerdorf, and Slashdot's Jeff "Hemos" Bates, Australians Paul "Rusty" Russell and SAMBA pioneer Andrew Tridgell will also be speaking.' And yes, tickets are already sold out."

jjwahl queries: "I've recently been handed a funded web development project, and in an industry where almost any paid work is good work this is a welcome opportunity. This database intensive site basically has the look and feel developed but none of the plumbing. I have been given the job to create the database and write the code to make the site work - all at a reasonably good rate and with a time and materials payment structure (i.e. this is not a fixed cost project). Sounds like good news, right? Not necessarily." The company wants the work done in a timeframe that prevents a well thought out design and pretty much eliminates a decent testing phase. How would you handle working on such a project?

octavian755 asks: "Seems that a 16-year-old Irish student has created an Internet browser called XWEB, which is the fastest browser known to date. This browser is said to be capable of boosting surfing speeds on a dial-up connection by 100 to 500 percent. What I would like to know is something like this even possible?" Update: 01/20 07:30 GMT by C : As folks have pointed out, this story is a duplicate. Also, a minor title gaffe corrected. Sorry about that.

Zanthor writes "Online Gaming - Comments and News has an interesting interview with Scott Miller and Larry Dunlap (Imperial Wars) about their up-and-coming game. While the concept has been around since the old Play By Mail games, their web-based client and world-class art pose the question: Can a small start up group compete with the big name publishers for the Multi-Player money?" EA employs how many people?

AShocka writes "The W3C has just released Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) 1.1 and Mobile Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) 1.1 as W3C Recommendations. W3C Fellow Dean Jackson has an article, on O'Reilly Network titled SVG On the Rise, in reply to Jacek Artymiak's article SWF Is Not Flash (and Other Vectored Thoughts). Also check out Dean's SVG answer to Powerpoint presentations at Visualising the Semantic Web in SVG."

clarionhaze writes "Many have tried, and failed, at getting a robot to sustain it's own balance. However; Steve Hassenplug accomplished it with with a small robot he made out of legos and a program in C that runs on BrickOS, an OS made for Legos! You can check out his site or read the article over at TechTV." Update: 01/18 15:52 GMT by T : Unanimous Cow writes "David Anderson of the Dallas Personal Robotics Group has an excellent web page with images and movies of his two-wheel balancing robot. This one uses a single-axis inertial measurement sensor and is very robust on uneven surfaces and off-road."

developerWorks writes "The first step in improving Linux performance is quantifying it, but how exactly do you quantify performance for Linux or for comparable systems? In this article, members of the IBM Linux Technology Center share their expertise as they describe how they ran several benchmark tests on the Linux 2.4 and 2.5 kernels late last year. The benchmarks provide coverage for a diverse set of workloads, including Web serving, database, and file serving. In addition, we show the various components of the kernel (disk I/O subsystem, for example) that are stressed by each benchmark."

conaone writes "From the "disconcerting" file, Baseline has a weird story about how the increase in use of embedded operating systems is causing strange things to happen to consumer products. Their example is the use of Windows CE in the BMW 745i, which apparently occasionally goes nuts. The best is the list of video clips showing off the possessed car."

Anonymous Coward writes "A couple of months ago, at the Lightweight Languages Workshop 2002, Matthew Flat made a premise in his talk: Operating systems and programming languages are the same thing (at least 'mathematically speaking'). I find this interesting and has a lot of truth in it. Both OS and PL are platforms on which other programs run. Both are virtualizing machines. Both make it easier for people to write applications (by providing API, abstractions, frameworks, etc.)"

farrellj writes "Cnet has an excellent article by Whitfield Diffie, who has probably has forgotten more about crypto than 99.9% of us will ever know, explains why secrecy does not equal security. The article also addresses the whole "open source vs proprietary software" security issue. A definite *must read* for anyone concerned about security...and that should be everyone!"

Ben Olmstead writes with the review below of Henry S. Warren's Hacker's Delight, which is not about tricking folks into providing sensitive information, but rather about how to cleverly manipulate computers into doing more work on their part with less work on yours. Read on for his brief review.

TRS-80 writes "Hurry up! Linux.Conf.Au registrations close tomorrow. While you can register on the day, you're likely to miss out on a t-shirt and bag. Some of the speakers at the conference will be: Slashdot's Jeff 'Hemos' Bates, Alan Cox and Telsa Gwynne, Debian Project Leader Bdale Garbee, Syslinux author H. Peter Anvin, PHP's Rasmus Lerdorf and of course 'Rusty' Russell. Don't forget the educationaLinux, Debian, IPv6 and Linux Gaming mini-conferences before the main conference."

Sebastian Bergmann writes "The Call for Papers for the International PHP Conference 2003 Spring Edition has started. The conference will be held on May 8th and 9th in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Like its sister event, the International PHP Conference 2003 Fall Edition, the conference will gather both the PHP Development Team and PHP enthusiasts from all over the world for two days of discussion, sessions and workshops."

popoutman writes "Mel Gorman has announced the availability of a guide to the 2.4 kernel VM including a walkthrough of the VM code. Anyone interested in obtaining a solid understanding of the Linux 2.4 VM will certainly want to take a look at this documentation. Mel says that the effort is at least several weeks from being finished, but that he's releasing it now with the hopes of getting feedback to be sure he's on the right track. He also notes that the 2.5 VM is still too much of a moving target for him to document it just yet." See also a Kerneltrap story.

benjiboo writes "From the back page: 'Are you looking for a concise book packed with insight and wisdom not found elsewhere? Do you want to gain a deeper understanding of the Java programming language? Do you want to write code that is clear, correct and reusable?' I did, so I bought the book and decided to use it for my first review :)" Read on for bejiboo's review of Effective Java.

staaktdenarbeid asks: "Over my software-writing career, I noticed that development efficiency closely follows the 80/20-rule. That is, 80% of the progress is made during 20% of the time. The rest of the time, er ...well you are waiting for the next big idea. No matter how well planned a project is, it turns out that true progress is only made at very few points over the entire project lifetime. I would like to ask other Slashdot developers for their experiences, and if they know (and apply) project planning techniques that create a smoother development path."

Sean Cope asks: "I've used a computer for a number of years, now. I've never been interested in programming, but after seeing the link to the demo DVD, my interest is in full bloom. If you were interested in creating a demo, where would you start? What books would you buy? Keep in mind, I've only used a computer for communication, and games up until this point."