Gerard J. Pinzone queries: "My company is looking to implement C/C++ and Java coding standards. However, I can't seem to find a definitive list. I'm more familiar with Java and have suggested that we use 'Elements of Java Style' and Sun's documentation. BTW, beware of 'Netscape's Software Coding Standards Guide for Java.' It's woefully out-of-date! Any suggestions?"

augros writes: "Keith Packard, responsible for the X RENDER extension, is still working diligently on the X component that may one day make X a rival to other bleeding edge windowing systems (...ahem, *Quartz*). It's thanks to RENDER that 'xterm -fa arial' gives you a sleek anti-aliased terminal and k-jofol can offer you those funky-shaped skins. But how long will it be before X wields true-translucent windows? The cheap hacks (eterm) have lasted way too long. Read Packard's article; he goes over the details of what will need to be done. If you're interested in the current level of development check out Packard's screenshot. I tried his code myself and had to do tweak it a bit before the window even mapped. He claims it worked as true-transparency on his box, albeit painfully slow, however all I got was alpha-blended rectangles on an unrefreshing background." And watch this space for an XFree86-related interview, too :)

742Evergreen writes: "Another Christmas present for the developers: Python 2.2 has been released! A 'What's new' can be found here. Python 2.2 can be found here. Documentation is here."

chizor asks: "My programming team is considering making some sweeping changes to our code base (150+ perl CGIs, over a meg of code) in the interest of consistency and reducing redundancy. We're going to have to make some hard decisions about code style. What suggestions might readers have about tackling a large-scale retrofit?" Once the decision has been made for a sweeping rewrite of a project, what can you do to make sure things go smoothly and you don't run into any development snags...especially as things progress in the development cycle?

jeffy124 writes: "Lineo has added yet more rebuttal against Microsoft regarding the FUD MS put in a whitepaper comparing WinXP Embedded to Embedded Linux. Elsewhere, IT-Director.com did their own independent review of the whitepaper, with some facinating conclusions."

Irish writes: "Eclipse, IBMs open sourced development tool donation (which is now supported by an organization of a number of companies), just got a little stronger as the released their first plugin. The C and C++ IDE will focus on Linux development and deployment. On a similar note, developerWorks is offering a trial download for WebSphere Studio Application Developer for Linux which is a pluggable tool-development and integration platform that is very similar to Eclipse. I was wonding is Eclipse trying to block SUN?"

Puppet Master writes: "Just remembered that Perl was created on this day (12/18) in 1987 by Larry Wall..." Check out the Time Line and the discussion on use.perl.org and I'll take this chance as a reminder to donate to the Damian Conway/Dan Sugalski slavery fund.

Kellym writes "The desktop metaphor is under attack these days. Usability experts and computer scientists like Don Norman, David Gelernter and George Robertson have declared the metaphor "dead." The complexities blamed on the desktop metaphor are not the fault of the metaphor itself, but of its implementation in mainstream systems. The default hard disk icon is part of the desktop metaphor. And the icon is the cause of the complexity created by the desktop"

PenguinX writes: "It seems that the folks out at Ximian and HP have delivered on the promise to make Ximian Gnome (1.2) for HP-UX." Another nail in the CDE coffin ;)

RyanG asks: "So I'm looking to get a new laptop and have found myself very tempted by Apple's iBook for a variety of reasons like cost, performance, size, etc. Now I know Steve Jobs once touted the Mac/OSX as the (future) premier platform for Java development but I'm curious to know what people think of it in practice? I'm particularly interested in hearing from people who work with JSPs and Servlets."

en4ca asks: "We have recently started using Exchange 2000 on a W2k platform with Active Directory at work. Previously, we used a mailsystem that could be easily controlled by command-line paramaters (and hence by perl). What I wanted to ask was, has anyone used perl to automate boring, mundane tasks in Exchange like mass creating mailboxes? What did you use to do this? [code would be very much appreciated] I've tried using Win32::OLE, but havn't had much success"

solferino writes: "LinuxJournal has a good overview article about linuxBIOS and where it's currently at (hint : moving like a sleek penguin under arctic ice). Why linuxBIOS? To quote from the article "Currently two different interest groups are working on LinuxBIOS: one working on embedded systems and one building large-scale computer clusters. For these applications the legacy x86 firmware is suboptimal." Yes, this was a slashdot story in March this year but this article is relevant for updating the project status and for providing indepth information."

InnerPeace Volunteers asks: "We'd like to translate our free software into other languages besides English. Our total budget for this is 0. Any suggestions on how to get this done?" The hardest part of getting people to translate anything, sometimes, is finding the talent to do it. Once done, it should be fairly easy to break things down into pieces and assign them to each person. Documentation is easy to translate, but how might code be best (re-)designed to make translating the programs internal dialog less of a bear for those working on the project? Is I18N still the best route for a multi-lingual program, or are there better options?

ambrosius27 writes: "To quote from Jeff Waugh's announcement: "The API frozen Developer Platform Beta, 'Everyone's Excited and Confused', is ready for your porting pleasure!" You can find the full announcement on Gnotices. The GNOME developers have been hard at work. Feel free to download, create/port applications, and, most of all, send in nicely detailed bug reports!"

SlipJig writes "Apparently ECMA has approved standardization of both C# (Microsoft's new programming language) and the CLI (Common Language Infrastructure). While I'm sure this won't entice the die-hard anti-MS folks, I suppose it's a good thing. Here's the article on CNet."

m00nshyn3 asks: "If a person were to find a O(n) solution to an NP complete problem, it would obviously be a great advance in computer science, but what are the consequences of such a discovery? Would our most popular implementations of cryptography be useless overnight? It seems like there is a lot of immediate damage that could occur if such a solution were found. So if (when) the time comes, what is the responsible way for the solution to be made public?" If you had such an algorithm in hand, what could you do with it? It would be interesting to see how many problems we could map into the NP Complete model.

Kurt writes "Yet Another Society, through its newly formed Perl Foundation, is launching yet another fund drive to help support the Perl community. This year we will be supporting Damian Conway and Dan Sugalski. Damian will continue to work on a variety of Perl 5 modules and the design of Perl 6. Dan will continue his work on the implementation of Perl 6. More details are available at the Perl Foundation web site. Contributions are tax deductible, so donate today!" Many people will remember when we did this last year. I think it's been a roaring success. So go donate!

An anonymous submitter sent in: "A CERT Advisory describes a buffer overflow vulnerability in implementations of login derived from System V, which includes among Solaris 8 and earlier and AIX 4.3/5.1. "An exploit exists and may be circulating." Vendors are testing fixes." There's a Reuters story as well.

Andrew writes: "My host pair.com has an interview with Damian Conway in which he talks a lot about his upcoming modules, and what skills a Perl programmer needs. I'm personally waiting on Parse::FastDescent." Conway talks about some interesting modules he's working on, Perl 6, and on programming in general, too.

Jim Jones has written in with the first of a series that explores the history of Mr. Alan Turing, and his connection with digital computing.