An anonymous reader writes "I hadn't looked at it for a while, but it seems that the best compiler of the DOS ages has finally reached a pre-release version. openwatcom.com has finally released some source code. Now it'll be interesting to see how the Watcom compiler fares when compared to gcc/g++ on linux platforms. Hopefully both projects will also be able to benefit from one another."

wka writes "The year 2003 marks the 25th anniversary of publisher O'Reilly and Associates. O'Reilly has a site to mark the event. Readers can learn about the origin of the first animal covers in the time line, and read an anniversary message from Tim O'Reilly, stating his 'audacious' goal '[t]o change the world by capturing and transmitting the knowledge of innovators.'"

Ninnux asks: "I wanted to find out from the community which was the better mathametics modeling package: Mathematica or Matlab. The cancer center I research and program for is considering purchasing a license set. I'll be working with Bayesian machine learning and other bioinformatic approaches for hormone pathway modeling. I know Matlab has various toolboxes that would be rather useful, but I'd like to hear what people think." While I'm sure direct comparisons will be made, I think focusing on the specific niche will help Ninnux the most; so, how well does each piece of software handle Bayesian functions and other bioinformatic computations?

Andre Mermegas writes "Check out this article by everybody's favorite object mentor Martin Fowler on database design. Be sure to take a peek at his wonderful books as well."

Ursus Maximus writes "Scripting Language City is for folks who want to learn more about the future of this increasingly important subset of the programming universe. Scripting languages are not just for odd jobs anymore ;-))). Special attention is paid to four languages in Python City, Ruby City, Perl City, and JavaScript Expert Systems which includes a Scripting Language Chooser Program as well as a Basketball Expert Ssystem and a Football Expert System that are certainly something different from the usual same old mouse-over scripts usually found on JavaScript sites. There is also a web spider program that scrapes the web daily and provides updated lists of new web articles on scripting languages, with seperates outputs for each of the featured languages. as added bonuses, there is a page of essays and resources on open source and the free software movement called Farnham's Freehold and a page called The Linux Chronicles that follows the experiences of a Linux newbie with wit and humor. Not a slick professional web site, Scripting Language City is a work of love by a paramour of everything connected with scripting languages, open source, and the programming of free software."

Kai writes "PCWorld.com recently posted an article on how Lindows CEO Michael Robertson is funding the 'Linux on XBox Hacking Challenge'. He was previously annonymous donor who donated $200,000 to the project. His donation will be split in to two prizes, one to who completes part A of the challenge, and the other to the who completes part B. Part A, running Linux on the XBox, has already been completed, but Part B, running Linux on XBox with no hardware modifications has yet to be completed. Part A of the challenge can be downloaded from Sourceforge." Without a bios change, it seems like part B might be a bit tricky. T. adds: Tricky, but not hopeless. Eric C. writes "The Neo Project recently updated its client so users can use free processor cycles to try and crack the private key that Microsoft uses to sign Xbox software."

Whatsmynickname passes along this query: "I wasn't aware of the JXTA protocol for P2P, but I've recently been tasked to look into it. Has anyone done any serious work with JXTA yet? Is this protocol going anywhere yet? Yeah, I've searched Slashdot, but past articles, did not leave me with a warm-and-fuzzy feeling that big things are happening with JXTA. Looking at the C version of JXTA, nothing much has gone on there, judging by the last time source code has been updated. When you consider it only supports a http transport, the C version looks like it needs work. The java side has a demo program that I've played around with and looked at via a network sniffer. So far, I've had some reservations about using XML as it's message framework, and the model used for peer discovery (a peer sends a discovery msg with some or all other peers replying). Comments?" For those of you who have tried JXTA and were let down, what drove you away. For those of you still using JXTA, what keeps you using it as opposed to other P2P frameworks?

The Viking writes "I was curious about which programming languages are hot with employers, so I did an informal search of several job search engines. The results are interesting (to me, at least). Are these numbers relevant? We can certainly debate whether or not the online job search engines are representative of the actual employment landscape."

An anonymous reader writes "LinuxDevices.com has published the proceedings from the Fourth Real-Time Linux Workshop. 26 of the papers are now available as PDF downloads, on topics which include robotics, chemical process control, digital PID controller, medical imaging, real-time graphical programming, device driver architecture, shielded processors, quality-of-service, real-time FIFOs, and more. Check 'em out!"

An anonymous reader writes "This article points to some pretty funny comments and code in the Linux kernel. From colorful metaphors, to burning printers, to happy meals... A recursive search through the entire code base reveals some interesting language. Is all code like this?"

Odaeus writes "Happening now (1630 GMT) is the US FIRST Robotics Competition kick-off programme. Every year teams across the US, Canada, and other countries such as the UK (where my team started last year) composed of high school/college students and adult mentors have six weeks to design and build a robot that will compete in a friendly competition. One of the founders is everyone's favourite inventer of a over-hyped toy, Dean Kamen [Dekaresearch.com]. This is not Robot Wars."

Yoda2 writes "A new snapshot of the Cryptix Java Cryptography Extensions (JCE) API was released on the Cryptix.org site yesterday. You can download the file here. Among other things, this finally allows for PGP encryption/decryption of files from the Java JDK 1.4 when used in conjunction with Cryptix OpenPGP."

Manuel Arriaga writes "After two years of hard work (and many scrapped versions), I have just released a (ugly, but working!) preview version of newdocms, a completely new document management system. newdocms isn't a file browser: it is a layer between the hierarchical file system (HFS) and the user, which provides a radically new way to store and retrieve documents. No longer will you browse complex directory trees or directly interact with the HFS; instead, you define any number of document attributes when saving a document and then query a database of those attributes when trying to retrieve it later on. For the first time you have a true alternative to the hierarchical file system at the OS level. Through the modification of the KDE shared libraries, newdocms currently works with all KDE apps! (I am looking for volunteers to add support for GNOME and OpenOffice.org!) This is a testament to the power of free software: this sort of innovation could never happen if it weren't for the free software nature of the underlying systems."

marvin826 writes " Larry Rosen has a nice article in the current issue of the Linux Journal about the legal interpretation of derivative works. Seems there are two camps in the world in terms of using open-source libraries, such as GPL licensed libraries, in proprietary software. Read this article and see which camp you are in! Having people working full-time on proprietary software, using open-source libraries, can only help the open-source software get better? "

ChaoticCoyote writes " You've covered some of my past forays into benchmarking, so I thought Slashdot might be interested in Linux Number Crunching: Benchmarking Compilers and Languages for ia32. I wrote the article while trying to decide between competing technologies. No one benchmark (or set of benchmarks) provides an absolute answer -- but information helps make reasonable decisions. Among the topics covered: C++, Java, Fortran 95, gcc, gcj, Intel compilers, SMP, double-precision math, and hyperthreading."

Anonymous Coward writes "A senior systems administrator at a big ISP in Australia offers a no-nonsense view about his line of work, the pros and the cons, ths ups and the downs."

Simon P. Chappell writes "I started learning how to use the Struts framework in late in 2001, after I became fed-up with hacking web applications together with the digital equivalent of "Duct-tape Engineering". At that time there were no books available for the budding Struts developer, "Read The Fine Manual" was not an option ... you read the website, you read the code or you asked questions on the mailing list. This situation finally changed this fall with the release of a flurry of titles dedicated to Struts. I present here my thoughts on one of the latest: "Struts Kick Start". The rest of Simon's review follows.

whirlycott writes "I just published a paper called The Spam Problem: Moving Beyond RBLs on my site. I comprehensively describe RBLs and list eight specific problems with them. I also get into ideas that next generation antispam system creators should read. I hope that this will be useful to anybody who is attending the Spam Conference at MIT on Jan 17th."

phyxeld writes "RubyCocoa 0.4.0 is out. From the sf.net page: 'RubyCocoa is a Mac OS X framework that allows Cocoa programming in the Object-Oriented Scripting Language Ruby. RubyCocoa allows writing a Cocoa application in Ruby. It allows creating and using a Cocoa object in a Ruby script. In Cocoa application, mixture of program written by both Ruby and Objective-C is possible.' It's always nice to see more GPL software in the Mac OS X world."

Anonymous Coward writes "The XG Flash (EZ Flash) is yet another addition to the growing Gameboy Advance development scene. With the XG Flash (EZ Flash) being one of the smallest versions of other popular GBA development systems. The XG Flash is a different version of the EZ Flash for the GBA as they are both 100% compatible with both the software and the hardware. By this we mean that you can use an XG Flash "linker" with an EZ Flash card and vice-versa. The biggest feature of the XG Flash is that it is probably the smallers flash and linker combination on the market today. The XG Flash Flash Card is the same size as an original GBA Cart and it is also hyped by the manufacturer as the smallest and fastest in the world. One of the better features of the XG Flash is that it can be upgraded simply by the software and therefore it appears to never be out-dated. Another good choice for developers both homebrew and professional. Read the rest over at Console Hardware News"