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AMD

Journal Journal: Intel, AMD "Windows only" chips are about software patents 3

Journal by symbolset

Both Intel and AMD came out last week with chips that are focused on "Windows 8 first" and don't even pretend to be openly documented or available to all. That both would so suddenly reverse course on being open was a surprise. There are good reasons why Microsoft needs advanced access to integrate their software with innovative new processor technologies, and why AMD and Intel might be persuaded to cooperate. Together they are defending the "Wintel PC" ecosystem against the world's largest

Submission + - Record Arctic Sea Ice Melt Reaches Nadir (nsidc.org)

Submitted by Titus Andronicus
Titus Andronicus writes: According to a preliminary announcement from the National Snow and Ice Data Center at the University of Colorado at Boulder, the unprecedented (in the satellite era) Arctic sea ice melt season has ended. The melting has surpassed, by a wide margin, the then–freakishly huge 2007 Arctic sea ice melt.
Programming

Submission + - Why Non-Coders Shouldn't Write Code (itworld.com) 1

Submitted by
jfruh
jfruh writes: "Software firm FreeCause made a bit of a splash with a policy that requires all its employees — including marketers, finance, etc. — to write JavaScript code. And not just "code to learn basics of what JavaScript can do," but "write code that will be used in production." Phil Johnson, a tech writer and editor who himself once coded for a living, thinks this is nuts, a recipie for miserable workers and substandard code. What do you think?"
Programming

Submission + - Not All Bad Code is Spaghetti Code 2

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens writes
Hugh Pickens writes writes: "Judah Johns writes that many programmers interchangeably use the term “spaghetti code”, with “bad code” and while all spaghetti code is bad code, not all bad code is spaghetti code. Spaghetti code is an especially virulent but specific kind of bad code related to the dreaded (and mostly archaic) goto statement, a simple and powerful control flow mechanism that makes it difficult to reason about code, because if control can bounce about a program, one cannot make guarantees about what state a program is in when it executes a specific piece of code. On the other hand people usually use “bad code” to mean “ugly code”, but if it’s possible to determine why a piece of code is bad and ugly, and to figure out a plausible fix, it’s already better than most spaghetti code. "Spaghetti code is incomprehensible and often unfixable but if you know why you hate a piece of code, it’s already above spaghetti code in quality, since the latter is just featureless gibberish." What causes spaghetti code? Goto statements were the leading cause of spaghetti code at one time, but goto has fallen so far out of favor that it’s a non-concern. "Now the culprit is something else entirely: the modern bastardization of object-oriented programming," writes Johns adding that inheritance is an especially bad culprit, and so is premature abstraction: using a parameterized generic with only one use case in mind, or adding unnecessary parameters. "I recognize that this claim – that OOP as practiced is spaghetti code – is not a viewpoint without controversy. Nor was it without controversy, at one time, that goto was considered harmful.""
Software

Submission + - Anti-Virus Company Sophos Update Fiasco (sophos.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Yesterday afternoon anti-virus company Sophos Inc. released a normal anti-virus definition update that managed to detect parts of there own software as malicious code and disable / deleted sections of there Endpoint security suite including it's ability to auto-update and thus repair itself. For many hours on the 19th Sophos technical call centers were so busy customers were unable to even get thru to wait on hold for assistance. Today thousands of enterprise customers remain crippled and unable to update there security software.
Space

Submission + - SpaceShip Two, XCOR Lynx Prepare for Powered Flights

Submitted by
RocketAcademy
RocketAcademy writes: "Virgin Galactic's SpaceShip Two is in the final stages of preparation for powered flight.

The suborbital spacecraft, built by Scaled Composites, has successfully completed airspeed, angle-of-attack, center-of-gravity, and structural tests during unpowered glide flights. It is now on track for powered glide flights by the end of this year.

Meanwhile, in the hangar next door, XCOR Aerospace continues to work on the Lynx spacecraft, expected to begin powered flight tests early next year. Some exclusive photos provide a sneak peak at things to come."

Submission + - Google Chrome To Get 'Do Not Track' (informationweek.com)

Submitted by puddingebola
puddingebola writes: From the article, "Google Chrome soon will support Do Not Track (DNT), a Web browser privacy setting that lets users tell online advertising companies whether they want to receive tracking cookies used to target online ads. Support for DNT has been implemented in Chromium version 23.0.1266.0, as of build 156627. Google Chrome, which incorporates the open-source Chromium code, has yet to add DNT to its developer channel, however."

Submission + - New Official Worlds Hottest Temperature (foxnews.com) 5

Submitted by tomhath
tomhath writes: After an in-depth investigation by a team of meteorologists working for the World Meteorological Organization, the official hottest temperature ever recorded (134 F or 56.7 C) has been declared to have occurred in Death Valley...in 1913. The previous record (136.4 F or 58 C) that was recorded in Libya in 1922 was found to be erroneous.
Science

Submission + - Half of Polar Ice Cap is Missing (wunderground.com)

Submitted by Titus Andronicus
Titus Andronicus writes: Angela Fritz and Jeff Masters of Weather Underground analyze this year's record ongoing Arctic ice melt. Arctic sea ice extent, area, and volume are all at record lows for the post-1979 satellite era. The ice is expected to continue melting for perhaps another couple of weeks.

Extreme sea ice melting might help cause greater numbers of more powerful Arctic storms, help to accelerate the melting of the Greenland ice sheet, and help to accelerate global warming itself, due to the increased absorption of solar energy into the ocean.
Software

Submission + - Nokia sells Qt to Digia (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by gbjbaanb
gbjbaanb writes: Finnish software company Digia announced today that it is acquiring the Qt software business from Nokia. Digia plans to pick up where Nokia left off, continuing Qt development but renewing the toolkit’s focus on cross-platform support.

Submission + - Digia to acquire Qt from Nokia (digia.com)

Submitted by sandels
sandels writes: Helsinki, Finland and Santa Clara, US — August 9th 2012, Digia, the software powerhouse listed on the NASDAQ OMX Helsinki exchange (DIG1V), today announced that it has signed an agreement to acquire Qt software technologies and Qt business from Nokia. Following the acquisition Digia becomes responsible for all the Qt activities formerly carried out by Nokia. These include product development, as well as the commercial and open source licensing and service business. Following the acquisition, Digia plans to quickly enable Qt on Android, iOS and Windows 8 platforms.
Android

Submission + - QT going to add support for Android, IOS, Windows Phone (digia.com) 1

Submitted by
pharazon
pharazon writes: "Nokia has sold the complete Qt cross-platform development toolset to Finnish software company Digia. Following the acquisition, Digia plans to quickly enable Qt on Android, iOS and Windows 8 platforms. gia encourages all current ecosystem members to continue working on improving Qt with full confidence in Digia’s continued investment to make Qt the leading cross-platform development framework. Digia will work with ecosystem members to secure a successful release of Qt5 and is committed to continuing the Qt Project in order to maintain Qt’s availability under both open source and commercial licenses."
Linux Business

Submission + - Digia to acquire Qt from Nokia 1

Submitted by
MrvFD
MrvFD writes: "Ever since the most recent layoffs were announced by Nokia last month and the end of Qt related programs at Nokia was rumored, the fate of Qt has been in the air despite it nowadays having a working open governance model. Fear no longer, Qt brand, since Digia has now announced acquiring of Qt organization from Nokia. While relatively unknown company to the masses, it has already been selling the non-free (non-LGPL) licenses of Qt for 1.5 years. Hopefully this'll mean a bright future for Qt in co-operation with other Qt wielding companies like Google, RIM, Canonical, Intel, Skyp... Microsoft, Jolla and the thousands of Qt open source and commercial license users. Digia now plans to quickly enable Qt on Android, iOS and Windows 8 platforms, where work has already been underway for some time."

Submission + - Digia to acquire Qt from Nokia (digia.com)

Submitted by
jppiiroinen
jppiiroinen writes: ""Digia, the software powerhouse listed on the NASDAQ OMX Helsinki exchange (DIG1V), today announced that it has signed an agreement to acquire Qt software technologies and Qt business from Nokia. Following the acquisition Digia becomes responsible for all the Qt activities formerly carried out by Nokia. These include product development, as well as the commercial and open source licensing and service business. Following the acquisition, Digia plans to quickly enable Qt on Android, iOS and Windows 8 platforms.""

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