bugbear writes "I just got permission from the author (Carl de Marcken of ITA Software) to publish this email, which describes the inner workings of Sabre, the flight search software that the airlines and travel agencies use. It is a case study in cheap Linux/Intel, NT/Intel and Hpux boxes replacing mainframes, and also the use of lisp and other languages in a server-based app. Update: 01/16 13:45 GMT by H :RawDigits writes "Common Lisp: Inside Sabre - correction. The Lisp engine is used by Orbitz, and not Sabre. Sabre still maintains mainframe systems for their booking. I should know, I am sitting in the Orbitz NOC right now ;)"

Hoff writes: "Here is an interesting interview with Beck and Cooper pitting extreme programming vs. interactive design. Personally, I'm all about extreme programming. It's a novel approach to help get the management work with, and for, the software engineers."

Wrinkled Shirt writes: "If you want to be able to work either as or with a systems analyst, you're going to have to speak the same language as everyone else in your team, and in the tech industry that language is increasingly becoming the UML. The Unified Modelling Language provides ways of modelling every sort of system that you can imagine, covering everything from the relationships of your different objects to the dynamics of the system in action to the way it'll look when you physically set it up." He's reviewed below the SAMS-published Teach Yourself UML in 24 Hours; read on below for his reactions to the book, both good and bad.

NinaBeth asks: "I'm interested in the history behind software patches for an academic paper I'm writing. In particularly, I'm wondering what motivates shrink-wrap software companies to release patches? Why send out 'broken software'? Is it purely financial? Has anyone done a cost-savings analysis of QC prior to release versus user-reported problems? Any stats on the average number of patches an application will require? Is any one particular company more patch-happy than others? I don't need much, just a reference or two would be helpful. Thanks for any suggestions!"

Don Negro writes: "Found this on Apple's Developer site. A solid overview of the OS X kernel - what bits are Mach, what bits are BSD - and a good level a detail. This is the first installment. As they say in the introduction 'Only you can prevent kernel panics.'"

Eric Gibson writes: "Thought everybody might want to know, today is the three-year anniversary of kernel traffic. The site for those of us that want to like to keep up with the goings-on of the kernel mailing list, but can't afford to read 1500+ emails a day. ;-) Congratulations to the maintainer who has kept this site alive, through trial and tribulation."

WAD-Dawg writes: "Linux security is a topic of much concern and investigation lately. Here are a few white papers that cover important Linux security topics. This white paper contains informtaion, code examples, and proven strategy on securing Linux Servers for Service Providers. And this article covers PKCS #11 openCryptoki, an API that is rapidly becoming the de facto, non-Windows-platform industry standard for interfacing between cryptographic hardware and user space applications. Both are very well written and provide important and timely information on Linux security."

DJFelix writes: "I'm probably the billionth person to submit this story, but T.J. Duchene has posted a horrifying review of Borland's license for Kylix and JBuilder 5. The license requires giving Borland the right to enter your property, search your systems and records for license compliance. The license also requires the waiving of a jury trial by all parties for all suits including class action suits. This type of gestapo licensing will not be accepted by even the most hardcore anti open-source companies. Send an e-mail to pr@borland.com to voice your concern."

King Of Chat asks: "We have a project underway which involves Suns, A/S400s, 390s and the jewel in the crown, a COM application on NT. Given all these different platforms, the powers that be have decided the MQSeries is to be the middleware. The problem is the NT server app which some executive decided was going to be a strategic purchase. The NT app is all COM components so the question is: how do we get MQSeries to talk to them?"

Charles Connell submitted this analysis on software estimation, a topic which keeps coming up because it affects so many many programmers. Read this post about J.P. Lewis's earlier piece as well, if you'd like more background information.

coonsta queries: "Being able to embed a Web browser is critical to the success of a platform (and the browser). High Stakes, No Prisoners argues this quite eloquently. Windows has an embeddable IE (and Mozilla to boot); Linux has Mozilla; wxWindows has wxHTML; etc. But what does Java have? I can forsake cross-platform support and embed IE, but that won't interact well with Swing; I can embed Mozilla, if Webclient is ever released in a usable form (and what about OS X?); I can use a JTextPane, and forget about nice-looking pages or script; I can Runtime.exec the browser and forget about being able to control it or interact with it; I can use CalPane and forget about JavaScript; or I can buy a component from Company X-dot-com, and subsequently price the software out of the market. Do any developers know if I can have my cake and eat it to? That is, does anybody know of a cheap, cross-platform Web browser component for Java with a reasonably modern feature set?"

Dr. Spork writes "If you want to read a discussion about OSS licenses that is not a flame war, check out this week's Wine Weekly News. Among the highlights are Gavriel State's arguments for keeping WINE on a BSD-style license. His company has been criticized for not releasing some very cool D3D code. He claims one reason is because 'there are companies out there who will benefit significantly from commercial use of this code, and who can afford to sponsor a portion of the development cost. Until such a sponsorship happens, we cannot apply the WineHQ license to that code.' GNU purists might think it's in bad taste to use the code as a hostage, but in a world where many rich companies rely on OSS, perhaps this signals the emergence of a new business model. You might call it 'code brokering,' and interestingly, you can't do it with the GPL."

Michael writes: "The O'Reilly Open Source Convention has announced their call for participation for the upcoming OS Convention. They're especially seeking presentations that invoke open source's innovative, do-more-with-less origins and address the challenges of today's economic turbulence. The convention takes place at the Sheraton San Diego Hotel and Marina, San Diego, California, July 22-26, 2002."

WalterGR asks: "There are plenty of resources available for writing operating systems, e.g. Tanenbaum's Modern Operating Systems, the Dinosaur Book, and countless web sites. For those of us who aren't interested in low-level issues, and prefer focusing on human-computer interaction, what resources are available for designing windowing systems (a la X Window)? Issues like the object hierarchy, event management, modularity, redefining behavior at runtime (e.g. for skins) etc. Any suggestions?"

twms2h queries: "It is everybody's favorite task, the worst part of programming: writing the documentation. I have been charged with writing lots of documents, some smaller some larger, most of them documenting programs I wrote myself. In order to avoid the torture of fighting with Microsoft Word all the time (which crashes on me regularly) I am looking for an easy way to get printed and electronic (HTML/PDF) documents from as simple a source as possible. I have looked into several of the processing tools that are available on the net." Below is twms2h's take on a few of the documenting systems available. The preference is to keep things simple, editing ASCII files to produce high quality documentation. Are there other tools some of you know of that might prove to be better solutions?

Grendel Drago writes: "Donald E. Knuth has released "Pre-Fascicle 2b: Generating all permutations" from TAOCP Volume 4. It will be section 7.2.1.2 of the final work. Oh, and Volume 4 may now fill *four* subvolumes. Send in bugs, get checks for $2.56, tell the grandkids."

Anonymous Coward writes "Interesting article at angryCoder about java,c# and the entire .com "hype". Take a historical approach to the entire thing and brings up the following points: no business is truly altruistic, and one needs to learn from history or else."

ricst writes: "The New York Times has a story about how China is trying to leap ahead of India as the world's second-largest producer of software. Apparently the Chinese are trying to learn everything they can from the Indian software developers. It's not clear that if China becomes a strong competitor to India that 'jobs will be lost or simply not created' in the U.S. My guess is that the most creative software opportunities will remain in the US for some time, and the more routine development efforts will continue to be transfered overseas."

gaijin writes: "According to this article in the English version of the Japanese newspaper 'Daily Yomirui', Sony will use its experience developing the PS2 OS (hey, wasn't it Linux based?) and work with Toshiba and IBM at the hardware side to create a new OS that 'would allow personal computers and home appliances to exchange huge volumes of data, including the high-resolution graphics of a television screen, through a broadband connection.'"

bodin writes: "Now that new-year's parties are over things are getting boring again. For those who want to see and perhaps even try something more complex, Ingo Molnar is announcing this patch that is a pretty radical rewrite of the Linux scheduler. This is big stuff!"