PM4RK5 writes: "For those of you interested, the News & Observer had an interview with Andrew Hunt about Ruby, in response to a book he and David Thomas authored. The book, "The Pragmatic Programmer" was written for the old-fashioned programmers who seek to learn how to use newer technologies, and use them better. It has an example of code differences between Java and Ruby, on how to print 'Ho Ho Ho.' Contains information and thoughts on its current applications, how its growing, and the types of things that it is suited for."

Zocalo sent us a story running at FSF Europe talking about SourceForge's Drifting. Talks about the fact that they are releasing a closed-source version of the code commercially and various copyright related things. Obviously VA owns both SF and Slashdot so I'm skewed, but my personal opinion is that VA is doing what they need to do to make a buck while still providing the SourceForge.net website to the Open Source community. And I think their decision to sell a closed-source proprietary version of the code would be hypocritical, except that they aren't a 100% open-source company any more. And *that* is the part that makes me the most sad.

Bram Stolk writes: "Intel recently released its new C++ compiler for linux. I've been testing it on my TM5600 Crusoe. Ironically, it turns out that Transmeta's arch nemesis, Intel, provides the tools to really unlock Crusoe's full potential on linux." It doesn't support all of gcc's extensions, so Intel's compiler can't compile the Linux kernel yet, but choice is nice.

Bryce writes: "OSDL is going to be giving another enterprise linux award this winter. It will be given at the upcoming LinuxWorld / New York. You may recall that in August at LinuxWorld/San Francisco, OSDL awarded $25,000 to Heinz Mauelshagen in honor of his work on the Logical Volume Manager. So, if you know a project or person who you feel has made a significant technical achievement for enterprise Linux, please take a few moments and nominate them for this award."

A few weeks ago, you asked Kent M. Pitman about Lisp, Scheme, standards, and other things -- He's answered your questions below, at length. At such length, in fact, that only the first eleven of his answers are shown below -- expect more shortly! Thanks, Kent.

BigOTeeToe asks: "I am interested in learning how to write audio codecs for Windows and/or Linux systems. I have already signed up to the Vorbis developers mailing list, but would like to know if any Slashdotters know of some online resources for codec beginners."

Billy the Mountain asks: "In the startup company I'm in, we just got a new president and she asked us about ways of increasing developer productivity. We develop Java applications, servlets and JSP. I don't use an IDE. I use an enhanced text editor, EditPlus, because I like its color coding of keywords. I guess what I'm asking is what Java IDEs do you use and what features do you like best?" If you were to build a Java IDE from the ground up, what features would you include?

benb from Beonex writes: "mozilla.org agreed upon a policy how to handle reports about severe security vulnerabilities. It is about to be implemented. In the future, you will find information about most security bugs at the known vulnerabilities page; there will also be an announce mailing list. In case you are interested, you can read my own review (and the security module owner's response) of the policy."

stylewagon writes: "ZDNet are reporting that Linus Torvalds and Alan Cox have finally agreed on which Virtual Memory manager to include in future kernel releases. Both have agreed to use the newer VM, written by Andrea Arcangeli, from kernel version 2.4.10 onwards. Read more in the article."

CptnKirk writes: "Many people liked Visual J++ as an IDE. The settlement with Sun, following it's Java suit, pretty much stopped this development. Apparently Microsoft is back at it again, with another attempt to bring Java development back to the Windows platform. J# (Jay Sharp), will be part of Visual Studio .Net, and provides "an implementation of the Sun Java spec". It however has IMHO some very severe limitations. It's not actually Java(TM) compliant, doesn't product bytecode, or read Java raw bytecode, or run in a VM. It also doesn't support Java runtime features past 1.1.4. The InfoWorld article is here. As a Java developer, to me creating a product that is supposed to be some sort of Java tool that doesn't support any of Java's useful features or even latest language spec, doesn't cut mustard. I liked VJ++, it was a solid IDE and if it supported JDK 1.4 I'd be all for it. I wish Microsoft would just produce a good IDE, and not screw with the language."

Joe User writes: "Harri Porten is one of the most active KDE developers, working on mostly on Konqueror, while he is also a TrollTech employee, the QT creators. Harri talks to OSNews in an interview about KDE, QT 3, licensing and more."

J.P.Lewis writes " Is programming like manufacturing, or like physics? We sometimes hear of enormous software projects that are canceled after running years behind schedule. On the other hand, there are software engineering methodologies (inspired by similar methodologies in manufacturing) that claim (or hint at) objective estimation of project complexity and development schedules. With objective schedule estimates, projects should never run late. Are these failed software projects not using proper software engineering, or is there a deeper problem?" Read on for one man's well-argued answer, which casts doubt on most software-delivery predictions, and hits on a few of the famous latecomers.

Jeremy Andrews writes: "This week KernelTrap interviews John Levon, the author of OProfile and a contributer to KernelNewbies. He offers much insight into both of these projects, as well as reflecting on Linux in general. OProfile is a statistical x86 profiling system for the 2.4 Linux kernel, useful in understanding what percentage of the CPU is being utilized by different processes, including those in kernel space and those in user space. KernelNewbies is an excellent resource for people looking to understand the Linux kernel, comprised of a web page, an IRC channel, and a mailing list."

Jacek writes "Looks like GSL 1.0 is finally out! Look here. I've been using it in my research for the las few years and I really liked it! Thanks to all developers for the great job! Jacek"

GByte Me asks: "I'm working on an XML document standard for a customer, working in mortgage origination and insurance (I'm aware of LIXI). We want to define some standard transactions, and respective schemas. There isn't a mature standard at the moment (or is there?). I really don't want to re-invent the wheel and I note that organizations like OAGIS, OASIS and others are setting some excellent standards. I'd like to ask any slashdot readers if they have experience working with these XML standards bodies. There seem to be a number of places to start looking for more information, and I'd certainly be interested in hearing of other readers experiences in this area. Before I start I really want to make sure I have a good overview of what prior art there may be. More generically how do you wade through and evaluate the various schemas that are already in the public domain?"

Christoph Zrenner asks: "I'm a UK medical student with a serious research interest in "how to interface neurons with computers". We do a major project in our third year and I'm interfacing an eel spinal cord (8 analog inputs, 12 analog outputs) to simulate the eel's movements on a computer. The processing needs to happen in real-time (1ms delay) so that the cord can get feedback from the computer. Having spent two days foraging through the Internet I still haven't come up with a decent solution - does anyone have any experience with this kind of thing? I was hoping to use the Matlab/Linux combination but only found an (expensive!) Realtime Windows Target Toolkit for Matlab!"

bleechack writes: "Looks like Perl.com is fully ready for the release of Lord of the Rings with this week's "Lighter Side of CPAN"."

Joe writes: " Software Programmers are coming to listen to their nemesis, the crackers. There is a conference taking place in March that will feature actual software and how it is cracked. This is in effort help programmers understand how they are being comprimised. The conference will also feature security related topics. Think your software can stand up to "the crackers"? Submit it to the site. http://bincon.binnews.com or email the coordinator at d9@binnews.com. The cost is very reasonable.. I will be there!""

Hector73 writes: "Cringely predicts that C# will blow away Java in the upcoming years. He raises some good points, but fails to differentiate between client-side Java vs server-side Java. I believe the bells have tolled for SWING, but server-side Java is holding strong."

horos1 writes: "Hey all, I just ran across an article over at O'Reilly - Perl 6: Not Just For Damians which covers a lot of the negative commentary posted by slashdot on perl6 'featureitis'. Very interesting read, and IMO makes a hell of a lot of sense."