An anonymous submitter sent in pointers to a couple of mailing list messages about the imminent release of gcc 3.0. The official word seems to be that 3.0 might be out as early as this weekend.

A couple of questions concerning Java have ended up in the bin over the past few weeks, and rather than handle them separately, I've decided to lump them together as they deal with Java's use as a learning language, as opposed it's traditional use as an application language, and in many cases, which looks to be replacing C/C++ in this role. Personally, I feel that teaching Java in college is fine, however I'm a little concerned in it's replacing C/C++ in that role. This, of course, begs the question is C/C++ any better. How about this: if you were going to structure a curriculum to teach Object Oriented concepts, would you teach it using Java, C/C++, or something else?

emcc writes: "Hey there, I'm the editor for IBM's Think Research web zine and just published an article Slashdot readers may find interesting. The article goes into a bit of the philosophy and science behind Cellular Architecture -- that's the memory architecture that enables massively parallel operation in the latest deep-computing machines like Blue Gene."

GFD writes: "EETimes has a story about software that dynamically translates the binary of a program targeted for one processor (say x86) to another (say MIPS). Like Transmeta they have incorporated optimization routines and claim that they have improved execution times between one RISC architecture and another by 25%. This may break the hammer lock that established architectures have on the market and open the door for a renaissance in computer architecture."

Matthew Branton asks: "I have recently started working on a database driven Japanese language web site, and frankly I am getting lost in a sea of complicated Unicode madness. I was toying with the idea of using Python 2.1, PostgreSQL and the mxODBC interface, has anyone else had experience with this particular setup? Are there more appropriate free solutions available, perhaps JSP/Servlet based?" Unicode received a a lot of coverage this week, on Slashdot, and maybe that's due to the increasing worldwide popularity of the net and the desire to read and work in the character sets for users of a given nationality rather than trying to have it all fit in Latin-1. Do Python, PostgreSQL or mxODBC have any issues with Unicode?

accountant asks: "A very close friend of mine is a qualified usability tester. She gained her Master's Degree last September and now has a good job with a mega corporation. Unfortunately, times being what they are that mega corporation is looking at a mega merger and mega job cuts. It's tough finding jobs in usability at the moment (a lot of companies haven't grasped the concept of usability, nor usability specialists, and a lot of dot coms have no cash to take on more staff). It's especially tough if you have less than one year of experience. Usability, especially on the desk top, is a major priority for Open Sourced environments like KDE and Gnome. Who's doing the testing in such Open Source environments? Are they doing sizeable studies, running focus groups and doing statistical analysis on user test results? Money is handy, of course, but there must be opportunities to feed a resume and help the Open Source community. Your thoughts and URLs please?"

Josh Berkus asks: "I am an expert Visual Basic programmer who is looking to adopt a different, cross-platform language with a Linux-compatible IDE. After some research, the main offerings are theKompany's BlackAdder, borland's Kylix, and ActiveState's Komodo. What are your opinions about the languages and IDEs offered in these products? Has anyone switched to one of these from VB, and what were your experiences?"

Brian asks: "It appears that Citrix Metaframe 1.8 does not support third party voice accessibility programs, like JAWS. Has anyone successfully implemented federal accessibility guidlines for software that is running through Citrix or other tools like pcAnywhere? I have been on several projects now where Citrix is being used to 'web enable' a client/server application, only now to realize we can't meet federal accessibility requirements this way. Any thoughts?"

An anonymous reader writes: "One important aspect of Free software is open collaboration and the pooling of efforts. There are several open source word processors available and they all need to import and export the ubiquitous MS Word format. To try and avoid duplicating efforts, developers from the Abiword, wvWare and Kword projects have been talking with regard to pooling their efforts in writing filters."

mvw inputs: "These days the large JavaOne conference is taking place. The commercial and proprietary vendors will be well represented there. In addition I would love to see a discussion here, on the state of Java affairs from the open source crowd. Java is a bit special, in that it does not only represent a programming language but establishes a kind of operating system as well ('Java the platform'). And indeed this world is not fully closed there is also open source software blossoming there, ranging from the GPL to the BSD sides of the free/open source community. The Jakarta Project initiative is going the BSD license way (actually they use ASL, but it is quite close), with prominent software like Tomcat or ant. Less mentioned in the Java press IMHO is the GNU Project which working on a GPLed Java implementation, with a long list of Java programs. They even have a couple of quines in Java here."

An unnamed reader writes: "From an email from the webmaster of PHPBuilder.com, Tim Perdue: 'Hello - I'm writing to let you all know that I am no longer with PHPBuilder.com, as internet.com has slashed the budget and the site is no longer actively maintained.' For the rest of the story, check out the article here: NewbieNetwork.net It's a pretty sad day when one of the biggest PHP sites is no long being supported, and essentially bails out. You have to wonder what is going on at Internet.com that they can't support PHPBuilder? Thankfully, there are still several good PHP sites out there for information and support, including Zend."

zby queries: "I've been using the 'Perl Cookbook' extensively for 2 years already and have found the book to be really helpful. Recently I've been learning about Ruby and I really miss that kind of resource. That gave me the idea to build that kind of knowlege base as an free project. I believe it just fits ideally, and could be run on a Slash or Scoop based system without any modifications from the beginning." It sounds like a grand idea, however are there any other such resources on the web?

navindra writes: "While KDE and GNOME often grab the headlines, other projects are silently making progress. Dennis Leeuw tries to make sense of the situation in this interesting GNUstep article featured on LWN Daily."

AN AC sends in: "Those guys at O'ReillyNet are teaching sysadmins to be paranoid."

NutsAboutOS asks: "I need some help from folks here interested in boot loaders and operating systems. XINU is well designed, compact, very efficient and ideal for learning OS internals operating system that we used in our graduate school. However, currently XINU can only boot from the network using bootp and tftp. I would like to write some application on this OS in my free time, but i don't have a network at home to boot the system from. So I need to boot it from floppy. I request help in writing boot sector for this OS. I spent some time in writing one but it didn't work. This OS can be freely downloadable from ftp.cs.purdue.edu with anonymous user id from /pub/Xinu directory. I am very familiar with XINU code and can help in providing necessary information for writing a boot loader and a stripped out version of XINU OS code that does not have TCP/IP stack etc. Folks familiar with assembly programming and interested in giving programming help, please let me know or throw suggestions."

coffii writes "I have just spent the last two days learning perl thanks to devshed. They have a set of eight well-written tutorials here and an introduction to OOP in perl. Why not learn a new language today, its a bit more productive than trying to get fp on ./ ;). I think I'll be going back for a dose of python next week." Even if you're not planning to specialize, this series look like a good way to at least get an overview of a few different languages. Can anyone recommend other interesting online tutorials, especially ones for unusual languages that might never find shelf space at the local MegaBooks?

bhendrickson writes: "Berkeley law professor Lawrence Lessig delivered the most cogent speech I have heard defending the freedoms created by technology and threatened by expanding intellectual property laws. While Lessig's conclusions about napster, packet switching, and antitrust are far from revolutionary for Slashdot, his legal and historical perspective I found compelling. The Mp3 is available directly or as a stream both provided by technetcast ." Great thing to stream while you're at work.

Konstantin Klyagin points to this article on FreeOS.com on the current state of Klyagin's Motor IDE. While he says it "can easily be considered a status report," this is certainly more comprehensive and readable than the context-free bulleted lists which seem to accompany many software releases, and gives a good overview of Motor. Any users care to comment on Motor's useability compared to other IDEs?

Chris Coleman writes: "IPv6 is great in theory, but it won't do you much good if you can't get connected. Hubert Feyrer explains the basics of getting connected to IPv6 for BSD and Linux."

nobody69 asks: "During the spring I took a C++ class at the local junior college and, frankly, the textbook sucked. However, I remembered hearing Good Things about 'Practical C++ Programming' on /., so I picked it up and found it to be a great resource, especially since it was about half the price of the text. But I'm starting Java soon, so I was wondering if there was any Java equivalent - something with lots of short, to-the-point examples and good explanations. 'Practical C++ Programming' also had some exercises at the end of each chapter, whicch would be nice, but aren't necessary."