Embedded Geek asks: "As computers are embedded in more and more products these days, I was wondering if any developers out there had any good war stories to share. Whether it's scary (software problems at a Czech nuclear power plant) or simply amusing (personal experience - once caught a bug in the software for an airliner I was writing code for where flushing two toilets at the same time would reset the cabin lighting computer), post your stories of embedded software causing bizarre or unexpected problems here. Shameless plug: The best ongoing source for this subject matter I have ever seen is the ACM Forum On Risks To The Public In Computers And Related Systems, found on the USENET as comp.risks." As our technology progresses, the need for better debugging of our complex systems becomes more and more aparent. These stories are illustrations of this fact. How would you improve the current techniques?

LineGrunt writes "Don Knuth, author of "The Art of Computer Programming" will be having a "Stump the Professor" session at Xerox PARC, Thursday November 8th at 6:30 PST. From the website: 'Stump the Professor! Don't miss this opportunity to ask Don Knuth anything and everything you ever wanted to know about computer programming. He will spontaneously answer all questions posed by the audience.' Advanced reservations are required." So if you have a chance to see one of the world's most respected computer scientists in person, sign up here for a spot.

A anonymous Coward writes: "The free development kit for the Nuon (enhanced CPU found in DVD players such as the Samsung N501 and others) has been released at http://dev.nuon.tv. Let's see those MAME and DOOM ports get going! Props to VM Labs for actually coming through on their promise to make Nuon a truly open gaming platform. Maybe other game console companies will take a hint from this if it helps the Nuon as much as I think it will."

Steve MacLaughlin wrote this review of Web ReDesign: Workflow that Works , a book which transcends its title to address much more than workflow, and more generally than just on the Web. Steve promises that your copy will soon be tattered and marked -- and that's a good thing.

XRayX writes: "Today the new version 8.0 of the famous German HTML, CSS, CGI Tutorial SelfHTML was released. German speaking can download it here. New in this Version is the section for XML-Programming. I don't know what's up with all the non Germans, but SelfHTML is the Guide to Web-Design/Programming and included in the most Linux Distros (Version 7)." This is a really well-put-together guide, perhaps the most complete html tutorial I've seen online. The language barrier probably keeps it from being useful to most people -- translation engines like babelfish aren't all that good at rendering intelligible directions. Translating this to English would be a killer project, but the result would be hugely popular.

Dare Obasanjo writes: "XML has become a pervasive part of significant segments of software development in a relatively short time. From file formats to network protocols to programming langauges, the influence of XML has been felt. I have written an overview of XML schemas, XML querying languages, XML-Enabled databases and native XML databases. Below is a shortened version of the article." Obasanjo's original OODBMS article has been updated to reflect more of the disadvantages between picking an OODBMS over an RDBMS.

Bryce Harrington writes "The GNU Bayonne project and the Open Source Development Lab... announced the availability of large-scale development and testing for GNU Bayonne through OSDL.

The facilities will be used to extend GNU Bayonne's digital telephony capabilities to support large-scale commercial enterprises and carrier-class telco applications. OSDL will initially provide four dedicated high-end servers equipped with a variety of digital telephony hardware.

Initial development at this facility will not only focus on extending GNU Bayonne to support large API applications, but also to test and demonstrate the project's clustering and distributed network call model. The Bayonne software will extend the use of Linux in high-end commercial voice telephony and provide GNU Bayonne services for the next-generation IP based telephony network."

Rebelos writes: "REBOL is a powerful software technology (ever thought that you could write a full blown GUI Instant Messenger in only 7 KB of source code?) optimized specifically for Internet usage. Rebol Tech, the company behind REBOL, consists of only 10 people and they claim they can compete and go against .NET and Microsoft's dubious plans. Their platform has been ported to 44 operating systems so far! Take a look as to what Carl Sassenrath, ex-AmigaOS/Commodore engineer and founder of Rebol, says at OSNews about the Rebol platform, its deployment, other programming languagees, Microsoft etc." The buzzwords are pretty thick in here, and the ideas are interesting, if a little vague. If the interview makes you curious, check out the previous stories touching on Rebol as well.

digitalmonkey2k1 writes: "I am currently planning on running an Apache web server and a small ftp on my pc. There are so many file systems that Linux can support now that I'm not certain what ones should be used for certain features. If anyone knows of a comparison list between them, somthing to give a pro/con method of deciding the best sort of configuration It would be greatly appreciated."

FredThompson asks: "I'm looking for information about using those cheap universal replacement IR remote controls with PCs. You know, the kind you get to work with a VCR. The unit I bought says it works with other things like VCRs, CD players, etc. I'd like to use it to control a Book PC which is part of my entertainment center. I'm running WIndows 2000 Pro and would like to make a front end for MP3,VCD,AVI, etc. It also occurred to me these remotes might be usable as gamepads which could be really cool because they work at a farther range than most game pads. That might mean moving the LED but it's still an idea. Do any of you have suggestions of where I can find information about making this work?" For Linux users, you may want to check out the LIRC Project. Is there equivalent software for Windows?

Roland Olsson writes "A relatively easy way to construct "intelligent" systems that improve themselves practically ad infinitum is described at http://www-ia.hiof.no/~rolando/SIG/ Maybe Steven Spielberg's AI film is closer to reality than the general public knows *smile*?"

Tom writes: "This is part six of the Advanced filesystem implementor's guide. I've been following an outstanding series of articles about implementing the advanced filesystems that are available with Linux 2.4. The author really knows his stuff and has done a great job with explaining Reiserfs, XFS, GFS, and the other file systems that are available." The series gets into greater depth as it goes on; you may want to start with Part One and work on from there.

Gerv writes: "Do you run Mozilla? Is there something about Mozilla that bugs you? Do you have an itch you want to scratch? From Saturday October 27th to Sunday November 4th, mozilla.org will be running a "Bug Week". Experienced Mozilla hackers will be available to help anyone who wants to get involved with the Mozilla code. Engineers from companies using Mozilla or Mozilla technologies, interested onlookers, and those who are involved with the project, but have never hacked on the code, are all welcome to come along and get their feet wet."

An Anonymous Coward writes "IBM is working on a generic GUI wrapper to allow Python developers to write cross-platform GUIs. The anygui project will expose a common set of functions to the programmer and choose which backend gui toolkit to use for the given platform: TK, WIN32, GTK, Bethon, etc. Currently the software is in an alpha stage. The article also has some example code." Update: 10/27 23:53 GMT by T : Magnus Lie Hetland wrote to point out that though this article is hosted at IBM, "Anygui has nothing to do with IBM. It is, in fact, an independent Open Source project currently hosted at SourceForge."

brad-d queries: "My company is seriously considering enforcing a SOE on all employee computers, including developers. The level of lock-down would likely include baring the Windows registry from changes (and in effect stopping the installation of new software). The goals of this SOE are to prevent users from installing unlicensed software, plus some support issues. What are others experiences with situations like this? Can a developer really work in a lock-down environment? What compromises could be made between developers and IT services? And no, Linux would be likely banned." It depends on how "locked-down" said environment is, and what the developer would be will be working on, however if the Registry is locked with no mechanism provided for the Developer to add in whatever keys are necessary, how much real developing can one do?

Mike Potter writes: "According to an article at Mozillazine.org, Mozilla.org will be releasing an open source calendar. "Thanks to an extremely generous offer of code from OEone Corporation, the new calendar project will have a significant codebase to start from. OEone make Penzilla, an operating environment for internet devices based on Linux and Mozilla. ... For more information on, and a technical description of Penzilla Calendar, see OEone's website." I think we'll be seeing a lot more applications built with Mozilla, now that its stable." Mundane as it may sound, with tabs in place (and behaving more sanely), a good calendar is probably my most-wished-for Mozilla feature. The screenshots certainly bode well for this one.

xpccx writes in with a bit from NewsBytes, "NASA turned 43 this month and marked the occasion by releasing more than 200 of its scientific and engineering applications for public use. The modular Fortran programs can be modified, compiled and run on most Linux platforms." The software can be found at OpenChannelSoftware.com. At long last I am ready to prepare my own space mission. I wonder if a whiskey barrel is gonna be air tight after I launch it/me into space with a trebuchet. (It's this sort of unconventional thinking that should get me my job at NASA. Or at least get me put to sleep).

anotherworld writes: "GCC 3.0.2 is out. That's good news for me, since I am having trouble compiling the 2.4.13 kernel with 3.0.1 (internal error) AND 2.96 (under investigation)... so I can try a new one :) But where is that good old 2.95.x? I just can't find it at the moment! Really, well done guys!" The site says this is mostly a bugfix release, but if you need those particular bugfixes, please use one of the mirrors. And remember, they do take appreciation is cold, hard cash, too :)

Albert writes: "This article is the best guide I've seen for moving your Solaris applications over to Linux. It provides guidelines, suggestions, and resources to help deal with porting your application from Sun Solaris to Linux. You also get access to an online tool that shows how the specific APIs used by your Solaris application map to Linux. This is a great resource."

Mark Cappel writes: "LinuxWorld columnist Nick Petreley has a few choice words for for the open source community in 'Open source programmers stink at error handling'. Do you think commercial software handles errors better?"