Mazzaroth queries: "Over the last few years, system architects saw many middleware and language eras. RPC, CORBA, .Net, EJB/J2EE (with WebLogic, WebSphere, and the zillion of other apps servers), XML/SOAP, Java, C++, C#, to name a few. More recently, an effort has been initiated to isolate application's architecture from the middleware particularities: Model-Driven Architecture (MDA). The idea is pretty good. This will eventually allow me to model the application, deploy it on .NET, then change my mind and go for WebLogic instead for instance. Even if the number of software engineering tools supporting MDA is quite limited for now, I would like to get feedback from people using an MDA approach to develop their application. What are the drawbacks, difficulties and limitations of MDA? What would be required in UML to better support MDA? What percentage of code can actually be generated? Can you share your experience?"

An anonymous reader submits: "On the heels of several other releases, the W3C has released XForms as a Candidate Recommendation. Coverage here and here. XForms is the way-better version of HTML forms -- it's XML-based and includes built-in client-side validation and calculations, without scripting. It is expected to replace old-fashioned HTML forms in XHTML 2.0. It's also being viewed by many as the standards-based alternative to Microsoft's XDocs. Now's your chance to try it out and submit your comments, before the official Recommendation comes out in a few months."

David Kennedy writes with the following review of Pete McBreen's new Addison-Wesley title, Questioning Extreme Programming. It's one of the few books which casts a questioning look at the buzzwords and concepts of Extreme Programming; read on to see how well XP fares under McBreen's examination.

jilles writes "Peercast, a p2p streaming program, has had some attention on slashdot recently. Now the source code has been released under GPL. Please find the announcement + source code here."

MJ writes "Is OpenGL 2.0 All That? Hopefully you will be able to answer that yourself after reading this article from XtremePcCentral. They have cool looking leap frog graphics with lots of arrows and a quote from John Carmack, what else could you ask for? Robert Richmond does a great job of delving into this subject. Carmack says, 'The implementation went very smoothly, but I did run into the limits of their current prototype compiler before the full feature set could be implemented. I like it a lot. I am really looking forward to doing research work with this programming model after the compiler matures a bit. While the shading languages are the most critical aspects, and can be broken out as extensions to current OpenGL, there are a lot of other subtle-but-important things that are addressed in the full OpenGL 2.0 proposal.'"

An Anonymous Coward asks: "The new (Series2) TiVos have been substantially hardened from prior versions, but, it looks like it might be easier to get foreign program schedules into the TiVo than ever before. The newest units support APG, Advanced Program Guide (tm). This is a program guide being sent via the satellite broadcasts to DirectTV receivers. I'm trying to determine if this is a standard (by a different name) and the precise interactions necessary to submit this data to the TiVo. Basically, I want to emulate a satellite receiver sufficiently enough to submit new programming guide data to the TiVo. What I need to do this are sample data streams from a DirecTV satellite receiver to a TiVo, or similar device. Once this is done and working it will be possible to supply any Series 2 TiVo with program guide data for any region in the world (if such a schedule can be obtained). Note that this should not require breaking TiVo's subscription model."

eecue writes "The world's most popular DNS package is once again vulnerable. Even the advisory says it's only a matter of time before worms are written.... just like a couple years ago. I guess this is why i run tinydns."

Smoking writes "It seems that Oracle just released libraries to allow low cost Linux clustering solutions using firewire... Aside from the coolness factor (imagine a beowulf cluster of DV cameras...) it's quite new for Oracle to release GPL software. They also seem to include really useful tools for NIC failover, Wizard building framework and integration of the cluster into Gnome (via a gnomevfs plugin)."

icanoop asks: "I'm working on a project to help improve open source development using mature software process concepts. What process issues do open source developers think are most important and/or can be improved? If you are interested in seeing what is being considered read the problem statement at the project site. It's not final so feel free to suggest changes."

An anonymous submitter writes: "This looks kind of interesting for those who want to run a feather weight Linux on really old hardware."

TobiasSodergren writes "People at W3C seem to have had a busy Friday, according to their website. They have released no less than 4 working drafts (Web Ontology Language (OWL) Guide, the QA Working group - Introduction, Process and Operational Guidelines, Specification Guidelines) and 2 proposed recommendations: XML-Signature XPath Filter 2.0 and HTML DOM 2. Does the this mean that one can expect browsers to behave in a predictable manner when playing around with HTML documents? Hope is the last thing to leave optimistic people, right?"

chromatic writes "Jerry Cooperstein has just written an excellent article explaining the competing threading implementations in the upcoming 2.6 kernel for the O'Reilly Network."

Oink.NET writes "A new tarball of Microsoft's Shared Source Common Language Infrastructure (CLI) is available for download. It builds and runs on Windows XP, FreeBSD, and Mac OS X 10.2. New in this release is Mac OS X support and class reference documentation. More details are available."

Kathryn writes "An article by David Wheleer on O'Reilly's MacDev Center, Build Your Own Apache Server with mod_perl, covers issues to consider as you begin working with Apple's Apache install -- key information for any serious mod_perl-based Web development work on Mac OS X."

An anonymous reader writes "A good article over at mpt on why good interfaces go crufty." A nice read before or after a visit to the Interface Hall of Shame.

gregger writes "This Infoworld article indicates that the GNU/Hurd is still waiting to stampede. Evidently they have to switch from the GNU Mach implementation they're using now to OSKit's Mach which will help them support faster serial I/O and larger hard discs. Currently GNU/Hurd will only support somewhere between 1 to 2 GB partitions."

Magpie writes "Recently Blake Ross, a developer of the Phoenix web browser, has made a post on the Mozillazine forums looking for a new name for the project. Apparently the people over at Phoenix Technologies decided that the name interferes with their trademark since they make an 'internet access device .'" Maybe they could start with this list.

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.

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!"

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!)"