The Internet

Common XML Locale Specification Released 5

Posted by timothy from the avoiding-the-tower-of-babel dept.
Leslie Proctor writes "The Free Standards Group Open Internationalization Initiative, OpenI18N (formerly known as Li18nux) announced the release of the XML specification of the common XML locale data." Here is the announcement.
Programming

Open Source More Expensive In the Long Run? 736

Posted by Cliff from the looking-over-the-total-lifetime-of-the-code dept.
Jack William Bell asks: "Could the PHBs possibly be right on this one? A recent evaluation I performed of competing commercial and Open Source products yielded the surprising result that the Open Source products were more expensive (in terms of lifetime costs) over a long term than many of the commercial offerings! Why? Basically this mostly revolves around higher support costs for Open Source products where no commercial support is available (unlike, say, Linux where you can purchase support from Red Hat, etc). This particular case might also be a result of one special set of requirements and environment and a similar evaluation for a different set of requirements and environment might yield a different outcome. But, nonetheless I found the experience instructive and I would like to ask two questions of the Slashdot readership: Firstly, is Open Source usually more expensive when all lifetime costs are factored in? And, secondly, is anyone in the business of providing commercial support and training for the entire universe of Open Source, perhaps contracting on a product-by-product basis? I guess a corollary to that question is, if not then why not? There might be a viable business model here!"
PHP

New PHP Magazine Launched 39

Posted by timothy from the birds-of-a-feather dept.
Marco Tabini writes "The website for php|architect was launched today. php|architect is a monthly magazine distributed through secure PDF technology dedicated exclusively to the world of PHP programming. php|a features articles that tackle "advanced" PHP topics, such as SNMP management and performance improvement techniques. Our goal is to bring a complete reference point to a PHP community that is growing in ranks and ability, dealing with subjects that go beyond the traditional tutorials that have been available until now. What's more, because it's published in PDF, it's available worldwide at a very reasonable cost (or, at least, we think so!)"
Programming

SQL Fundamentals 233

Posted by timothy from the grabbing-data dept.
Slashdot's own Robo takes a look at SQL Fundamentals, writing "This beginner book takes a traditional look at the ever-popular Structured Query Language. Never bothered to learn SQL? Here's your chance. SQL Fundamentals, by John Patrick, takes a 834-page beginners look at the application of SQL to Access and Oracle. Read more for SQL Fundamentals' strengths, weaknesses and everything in-between."
Microsoft

MS Releases .NET Source, Sort Of 87

Posted by timothy from the tgz-file dept.
cam_macleod writes "A friend at Microsoft (he's a nice guy, really!) pointed me to their release of the Common Language Infrastructure (CLI) source, which builds successfully on Windows, FreeBSD, and MacOS X 10.2 -- he says Linux too, but their website strangely doesn't mention it!"
Programming

Competitive Cross-Platform Development? 411

Posted by Cliff from the keeping-up-without-losing-compatibility dept.
Avalonia asks: "I work for a software company in the oil and gas exploration industry with a software development team of seven. Our software and development environment is cross-platform on Solaris, Irix, Linux and Windows. Most of our customers are on Solaris and Irix 64-bit systems, but Linux and Windows are increasingly important. Our environment is based around an elaborate command-line system of Makefiles controlling four different compilers (gcc 3.1, Sun Forte, Irix MIPSpro and Visual C++ 7). Needless to say, maintaining this system and producing modern multi-threaded C++ that will go through the four build systems is time-consuming in the extreme. A large proportion of our time is spent finding C++ code that just works rather than being creative and competitive with new functionality. What tools and strategies can we use to increase our productivity and regain our competitive advantage, without going for Windows only?"
Programming

Design Patterns 314

Posted by timothy from the tabs-slots-and-things-far-more-complex dept.
BShive writes "Design Patterns is considered a classic for anyone in software development. The beginning third of the book is a solid introduction to patterns, while the last two thirds of the book is devoted to the patterns themselves. Many of the professionals out there probably already own a well-used copy of this book, but there are others who are wondering what all the fuss is about. The frequency of hearing about this text in discussions piqued my interest enough to buy it for myself. If you are interested in design patterns and are looking to use them, then this should be one of the books on your shelf." Read on for more.
Security

Jay Beale On Overcoming Linux Security Holes 30

Posted by timothy from the hey-where-is-jay-now dept.
alpinista writes "Sorry, Redmond; according to Jay Beale, it's not yet time to throw away all those pesky insecure Linux boxes. Newsforge interviewed Jay and got some pretty straight talk from a guy that knows more that his share about OS security. In a nutshell: 'Beale's take on how you can make your system more secure, on the Linux vs. Windows security debate, and on the Digital Millennium Copyright Act's impact on security testing.'"
Toys

Lego Robotics Newsletter 11

Posted by timothy from the make-things-move dept.
Maverick TimeSurfer writes "Four months ago, in July, a few fellow LEGO Maniacs and I got fed up with the fact that LEGO doesn't have a magazine specifically for MindStorms. So, we got together and set up The Lego MindStorms Monthly Newsletter. Now that we've published four issues and are working on the fifth, it looks like we'll survive for a while. Though the name leads you to believe that the newsletter is strictly for LEGO robotics, we'll publish just about anything original that's related to robotics, and we gladly accept submissions from the public."
Handhelds

NVeeMESS For Games On Zaurus, iPaq 16

Posted by timothy from the but-think-of-the-batteries dept.
LordDavon writes "If you are lucky enough to own a Sharp Zaurus or a Compaq iPaq running QPE/OPIE, then nvmax.com has a nice present for you. We have released version 0.011 of NVeeMESS. This is a port of MESS, the Multi Emulator Super System for Linux based portable devices. This is also the first port of MESS to run in the Zaurus native environment. This is a very early alpha, but I have tested GameBoy, NES, C64, Genesis and a few others."
Patents

Potential IP (Patent, not Protocol) Troubles for SOAP 1.2 13

Posted by timothy from the thunk-it-first dept.
sckienle writes "Infoworld has an article on possible patent problems ahead for the SOAP 1.2 recommendation. Apparently two companies are claiming they may have patents that cover parts of the specification. But, they have yet to specify the relevant patent numbers or even how they feel there would be infringement. Here is The Register's spin on this."
KDE

KDE Developer Sirtaj Singh Kang Interviewed 255

Posted by timothy from the level-headed dept.
highwaytohell writes "Sirtaj Singh Kang is a KDE developer and an official spokesman for KDE in Australia. In this interview conducted by the Sydney Morning Herald he talks about how the KDE project manages to maintain its hierarchy, where he sees KDE in the future, Linux portability issues and the relationship between Trolltech and KDE developers. The article gives a good insight into how maintainers and developers work to maintain one of the more popular window managers for Linux. Certainly worth a read."
News

MySQL-XML Released 33

Posted by chrisd from the xtremely-modest-language dept.
Brandon Niemczyk writes "MySQL-XML version 1.12 was finally released (GPL) publicly. MySQL-XML is a set of classes to streamline XML to MySQL and MySQL to XML. It comes with an automatic PHP class generator so the developer can quickly create classes to customize utilizing databases and keeping the flexibility of XML. MySQL-XML homepage is http://www.capableweb.com and it can be downloaded at http://sourceforge.net/projects/phpsqlxml/"
Unix

Ghost for Unix 285

Posted by michael from the sysadmin-toolkit dept.
junyoung writes "Hubert Feyrer released the latest version of g4u ("ghost for unix"), a NetBSD-based bootfloppy/CD-ROM image that allows one to easily clone PC harddisks by using FTP. Since it reads the disk bit by bit, it can create an image of any operating system and any file system. Besides, it's free (under BSD style license)."
Programming

Realtime OS Jaluna 87

Posted by michael from the all-together-now dept.
rkgmd writes "Jaluna-1, a software component suite based on the respected chorus realtime os is now available in opensource (MPL-derived license) form. Jaluna, the company behind this, is a spin-off from sun to promote and develop chorus, and consists of many developers from the original chorus team before it was acquired by Sun. Chorus developed one of the earliest successful microkernel-based rtos's (could even run parallel, distributed unix in realtime on inkos transputers in 1992). Lots of good research papers here, and a link to the original newsgroup announcement."
Programming

ActiveState releases Komodo for GNU/Linux 38

Posted by timothy from the neither-beer-nor-lunch-nor-speech dept.
TorinEdge writes "ActiveState has finally released (as in out of Beta) their Komodo IDE for the GNU/Linux platform! Komodo is an integrated dev environment for open source languages. It provides colour-coded editing (and "code-folding" for collapsing sections of code), debugging etc... It's optimized for Perl, Python, PHP, Tcl, and XSLT. Includes the RxToolkit for testing/checking your regular expressions; a godsend. Get it while it's hot!"

Slashdot Top Deals