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Comment What's New in the Object Pascal Language .. (Score 1) 492

by lippydude (#48900925) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: Is Pascal Underrated?
"Power and simplicity, expressiveness and readability, great for learning and for professional development alike, these are some of the traits of today's Object Pascal."

"A tool for all trades, with compilers and development tools, embracing the mobile era, A language ready for the future, but with solid roots in the past.", (Marco Cantù, 2014) link

Comment The Bell Telephone: Patent Nonsense? (Score 5, Interesting) 51

by lippydude (#48900553) Attached to: A Call That Made History, 100 Years Ago Today
"On May 22, 1886 .. Zenas F. Wilber, a former Washington patent examiner, swore in an affidavit that he'd been bribed by an attorney for Alexander Graham Bell to award Bell the patent for the telephone over a rival inventor, Elisha Gray, who'd filed a patent document on the same day as Bell in 1876." ref

Bell's telephone sketch

Elisha Gray's sketch of a telephone

Submission + - Is Pascal an Underrated Programming Language? 6

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: In the recent Slashdot discussion on the D programming language, I was surprised to see criticisms of Pascal that were based on old information and outdated implementations. While I’m sure that, for example, Brian Kernighan’s criticisms of Pascal were valid in 1981, things have moved on since then. Current Object Pascal largely addresses Kernighan’s critique and also includes language features such as anonymous methods, reflection and attributes, class helpers, generics and more (see also Marco Cantu’s recent Object Pascal presentation). Cross-platform development is fairly straightforward with Pascal. Delphi targets Windows, OS X, iOS and Android. Free Pascal targets many operating systems and architectures and Lazarus provides a Delphi-like IDE for Free Pascal. So what do you think? Is Pascal underrated?

Submission + - Massive chip design savings to be realized (utwente.nl)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: IT researchers working at the University of Twente have developed a programming language making the massive costs associated with designing hardware more manageable. Chip manufacturers have been using the same chip design techniques for twenty years now. The current process calls for extensive testing after each design step — a massively expensive state of affairs. The newly developed, so-called functional programming language makes it possible to prove, in advance, that a design transformation is a hundred per cent error-free.

Submission + - Drop attempt to sneak snooper's charter into law, peers told (theguardian.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A former Conservative cabinet minister who chaired the parliamentary inquiry into the snooper’s charter has told four senior peers not to go ahead on Monday with their last-minute attempt to sneak it into law before the general election.

Lord Blencathra, a former Home Office minister, has written to the former Tory defence secretary Lord King, voicing strong concerns over his attempt to “insert the whole of the discredited draft communications data bill” into the counter-terror legislation being fast-tracked through the House of Lords.

King is attempting to revive the controversial legislation which was blocked by Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg three years ago, which would require every internet company to track and keep logs of users’ web history for 12 months for access by the police and security services.

Submission + - Seagate Co-Founder, Finis Conner, launches personal cyber security solution (indiegogo.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: This week, Finis Conner, the co-founder of Seagate Technology and founder of Conner Peripherals launched a new crowd funding campaign for a mobile cyber security solution called CyberGate . Whilst there are other smart card solutions in the market, what makes this one unique is the integration of so many technologies onto a single credit-card sized form factor and the fact that it's being marketed as an open platform. Independent developers will be able to market and sell their own applications that run within the card or interface with it from any device that supports BlueTooth or NFC wireless protocols.

Submission + - Bill Gates Needs an Online Education History Lesson

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: "We're not fond of Bill Gates," wrote Philip Greenspun in 1999, "but it still hurts to see Microsoft struggle with problems that IBM solved in the 1960s." And, after reading the 2015 Gates Annual Letter, one worries that BillG might be struggling with online education problems that PLATO and other computer assisted instruction systems solved in the '60s and '70s. One of the five breakthroughs Bill and Melinda foresee in the next 15 years is that Better Software Will Revolutionize Learning, but the accompanying narrative suggests that Bill still doesn't know much about TechEd history. "Think back 15 years," the Gates write, "to when online education was first gaining traction. It amounted to little more than pointing a camera at a university lecturer and hitting the 'record' button. Students couldn't take online quizzes or connect with each other. It wasn't interactive at all." Think again, Bill. Check out A 1980 Teenager's View on Social Media, Brian Dear's ode to his experience with PLATO. Or ask ex-Microsoft CTO Ray Ozzie to share his experiences with PLATO in the '70s, a decade that saw PLATO teaching reading to young children and computer science to college students like your then 18-year-old self. And while cheap microcomputers eventually killed the expensive PLATO CDC mainframe star, there are some lessons today's MOOCs could learn from studying their PLATO History, like providing easy-to-learn-and-use authoring software to allow courseware to be built by classroom instructors (pdf), not just Gates Foundation and Google-funded engineers. Keep on keepin' on Bill, but make sure your MOOC Research includes some history lessons!

Submission + - Fake Engine Noise is the Auto Industry's Dirty Little Secret 1

Submitted by HughPickens.com
HughPickens.com writes: Stomp on the gas in a new Ford Mustang or F-150 and you’ll hear a meaty, throaty rumble — the same style of roar that Americans have associated with auto power and performance for decades. Now Drew Harwell reports at the Washington Post that the auto industry’s dirty little secret is that the engine growl in some of America’s best-selling cars and trucks is actually a finely tuned bit of lip-syncing, boosted through special pipes or digitally faked altogether. "Fake engine noise has become one of the auto industry’s dirty little secrets, with automakers from BMW to Volkswagen turning to a sound-boosting bag of tricks," writes Harwell. "Without them, today’s more fuel-efficient engines would sound far quieter and, automakers worry, seemingly less powerful, potentially pushing buyers away." For example Ford sound engineers and developers worked on an “Active Noise Control” system on the 2015 Mustang EcoBoost that amplifies the engine’s purr through the car speakers. Afterward, the automaker surveyed members of Mustang fan clubs on which processed “sound concepts” they most enjoyed.

Among purists, the trickery has inspired an identity crisis and cut to the heart of American auto legend. The “aural experience” of a car, they argue, is an intangible that’s just as priceless as what’s revving under the hood. “For a car guy, it’s literally music to hear that thing rumble,” says Mike Rhynard, “It’s a mind-trick. It’s something it’s not. And no one wants to be deceived.” Other drivers ask if it really matters if the sound is fake? A driver who didn’t know the difference might enjoy the thrum and thunder of it nonetheless. Is taking the best part of an eight-cylinder rev and cloaking a better engine with it really, for carmakers, so wrong? "It may be a necessary evil in the eyes of Ford," says Andrew Hard, "but it’s sad to think that an iconic muscle car like the Mustang, a car famous for its bellowing, guttural soundtrack, has to fake its engine noise in 2015. Welcome to the future."

Submission + - Secret to Desktop Linux Adoption .. (datamation.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Local efforts, not Social Media

Promoting Linux distributions online is only half the battle. Desktop friendly distributions need to be promoted locally and in person. This means we need boots on the ground providing demonstrations, setup assistance and yes, some hands on help when it's needed.

Comment AR-Rift: Stereo camera rig and augmented reality (Score 2) 171

by lippydude (#48872957) Attached to: Hands On With Microsoft's Holographic Goggles
AR-Rift: Stereo camera rig and augmented reality showcase

What is Presence in Immersive Augmented Reality?

"In a previous post I presented the AR-Rift, a low-cost immersive video see-through AR head-mounted display based on the Oculus Rift DK1 and consumer cameras. Technology affording similar experiences will begin to emerge at a consumer level in the coming years."

Comment Microsoft innovates Apples Notification Center .. (Score 1) 570

by lippydude (#48870495) Attached to: Microsoft Reveals Windows 10 Will Be a Free Upgrade
"Belfiore also showed a new notification center for Windows, which puts a user's notifications in an Action Center menu that can appear along the right side, similar to how notifications work in Apple OS X"

Yosemite's revamped Notification Center

Windows 10 Build 9860 - Notification Center, Animations, PC

Submission + - Bacteria discovered that both eats and excretes pure electrons

Submitted by Presto Vivace
Presto Vivace writes: Biologists discover electric bacteria that eat pure electrons rather than sugar, redefining the tenacity of life

Some intrepid biologists at the University of Southern California (USC) have discovered bacteria that survives on nothing but electricity — rather than food, they eat and excrete pure electrons. These bacteria yet again prove the almost miraculous tenacity of life — but, from a technology standpoint, they might also prove to be useful in enabling the creation of self-powered nanoscale devices that clean up pollution. Some of these bacteria also have the curious ability to form into ‘biocables,’ microbial nanowires that are centimeters long and conduct electricity as well as copper wires — a capability that might one day be tapped to build long, self-assembling subsurface networks for human use.

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