67431915
submission
snydeq writes:
Angry support queries citing problems with mystery iOS apps has led InfoWorld's Simon Phipps to discover the existence of several scamware apps in Apple's App Store. 'If you're a scammer looking to make a fast buck, it appears that [Apple's App Store] process can be defeated,' Phipps reports. 'The questions originated from a support link for a $2.99 app in Apple's iTunes Store,' which pointed angry customers to the Apache OpenOffice community, which doesn't even have an iOS app. The app in question, Quickoffice Pro, 'simply displays a gray screen with the word Tap. When you tap the screen, the app exits.' Further investigation has uncovered two other scam apps thus far. 'Maybe we could have expected this from the Microsoft Store, where developers seem to have been paid to show up and where scams were the norm until Microsoft finally applied controls. But we've been led to believe Apple's processes could never allow this to happen.'
67343165
submission
snydeq writes:
Esoteric puzzles, landmine questions, ‘cultural fit’ — Steven A. Lowe offers 13 tips to help folks navigate the IT interview process with confidence. 'If you’re an IT pro, chances the job interview is at — or very near — the top of your list of personal hells. Why not? Tech job interviews can be grueling experiences,' Lowe writes. 'To really ace the interview and minimize your anxiety going in, you must be prepared to an almost otherworldly extent, on many fronts at once. This means deep research on the position and company to decode what to expect during the interview process and to understand the company dynamics at as near the level of a current employee as you can.' What advice do you have to offer those who will be undergoing the job interview process in the months ahead?
67014801
submission
snydeq writes:
The programming world is fast proliferating with one-letter programming languages, many of which tackle specific problems in ways worthy of a cult following, writes InfoWorld's Peter Wayner in this somewhat tongue-and-check roundup of the more interesting entrants among this trend. 'A long time ago — long before Netflix, Hulu, and HBO battled for the living room — people went to the movie theaters for their weekly dose of video streaming. There were usually only two movies, and you couldn't choose the order. (The horror!) The double feature began with the big stars — the Javas and JavaScripts of the acting world — but then it got interesting. The second feature, the so-called B movie, was where the new ideas, odder actors, and weirder scripts found their home. Some proved rich enough with exactly the right kind of out-there thinking to garner significant cult followings — even break through to the mainstream. The programming languages with one-letter names are one such corner of the Internet. They're all a bit out there, with the possible exception of C. ... Each offers compelling ideas that could do the trick in solving a particular problem you need fixed.'
65416621
submission
snydeq writes:
Indie developers take heed: Heads-down coding is a one-way ticket back to the corporate grind, writes Steven A. Lowe, outlining the 14 most common mistakes that end up sinking independent developers' dreams of being their own bosses. 'Deciding to go it alone as an independent software developer is a liberating experience. The thrill of being your own boss cannot be denied — neither can the fact that being your own boss means building a business. It’s no longer simply about the code. Everything is your responsibility, from paperwork to partnerships, and with this increasing burden come greater pitfalls that can sink your business.'
65267829
submission
snydeq writes:
Membership in the Open Invention Network, a software community set up to protect Linux against patent aggressors, has grown dramatically in the past year just as the tide seems to be turning on patent trolls. 'Why all this interest in OIN? It offers little protection against nonpracticing entities — patent trolls who are organizationally small companies, even if the threat they pose is expensive and large. But it does offer protection against an equally insidious threat: big trolls,' writes Simon Phipps. 'The big corporations show up with their giant patent portfolios, threatening legal doom if royalties aren't paid. Attaching royalties to product or service delivery is a serious issue for companies, reducing margins long-term — especially in business models where the monetization is separated from the product. But OIN neutralizes that strategy for those building with open source, as the big corporations in the network both license their patent portfolios in and commit not to litigate against the open source software in the Linux System Definition. The bigger it gets, the better it protects.'
65218207
submission
snydeq writes:
PHP vs. Node, SQL vs. NoSQL, compiled vs. scripting, InfoWorld's Peter Wayner surveys the passionate debates and technical rifts that define programming today. 'With each new project we undertake, we're faced with the fundamental questions that underlie the differences in these technologies. Do we favor simplicity or correctness? Open source or corporate support? Brackets or whitespace? Like Yin and Yang, these questions define the great trade-offs enterprise developers face today.'
65115143
submission
snydeq writes:
Remember that incredibly stupid thing you did a decade or two ago? You wouldn't want to live it down every day. Neither should the Internet, writes Andrew C. Oliver, putting CGI squarely in the cross hairs, thanks to Shellshock. 'Frankly, this nasty bug in Bash should not be a big deal — and wouldn’t be if it weren’t for CGI, one of the most widespread, terrible ideas ever invented. ... If not for CGI, this bug would be a minor privilege escalation path for users with permissions to kick off shell scripts as root (or other more privileged users). It would not be an “oh, did someone break the Internet again?”-level threat. The issue is that CGI exposes the HTTP headers as environment variables, and since Bash may be kicking off your shell script, anyone on the Internet can do it.'
64788211
submission
snydeq writes:
Whether Microsoft will release a public Technical Preview of Windows 9 at its Sept. 30 press conference remains in doubt, but maybe that's all part of Microsoft's Windows 9 mind games, writes Windows-watcher Woody Leonhard. 'Of course everyone — I mean everyone — assumed Microsoft would use the highly publicized (and no doubt expensive) event to crow about the widely anticipated Windows Technical Preview. ... Now we're hearing that the Windows Technical Preview bits won't ship on Sept. 30, but instead will be available in early October,' Leonhard writes. But is this the latest in a long string of Microsoft Windows bungles or all just part of the plan? 'If the bits are released at the presentation, even if only to the Microsoft-chosen A-list, what are the chances at least one of the ISOs will make it out into the wild within seconds? Microsoft has certainly taken that possibility into account — and may well be preparing to seed the deluge itself.'
64747279
submission
snydeq writes:
Deep End's Paul Venezia follows up his call for splitting Linux distros in two by arguing that the new shape of the Linux server is thin, light, and fine-tuned to a single purpose. 'Those of us who build and maintain large-scale Linux infrastructures would be happy to see a highly specific, highly stable mainstream distro that had no desktop package or dependency support whatsoever, so was not beholden to architectural changes made due to desktop package requirements. When you're rolling out a few hundred Linux VMs locally, in the cloud, or both, you won't manually log into them, much less need any type of graphical support. Frankly, you could lose the framebuffer too; it wouldn't matter unless you were running certain tests,' Venezia writes. 'It's only a matter of time before a Linux distribution that caters solely to these considerations becomes mainstream and is offered alongside more traditional distributions'
64599595
submission
snydeq writes:
The wheels of justice spin slowly, but they seem finally to be running software patents out of town, writes Simon Phipps in his analysis of how Alice Corp. v CLS Bank is becoming a landmark decision for patent cases in the U.S. 'In case after case, the Court of Appeals is using Alice to resolve patent appeals. In each case so far, the Court of Appeals has found the software patents in question to be invalid. ... As PatentlyO points out, the Alice effect is even reaching to lower courts, saving the Court of Appeals from having to strike down patent findings on appeal.' Although the patent industry broadly speaking sees the Alice verdict as a death knell for patents, some expect Alice to turn software patents into 'draftsmen's art because as you and I have seen over the years, every time there's a court ruling it just means that you have to word the patent claims differently.'
64530883
submission
snydeq writes:
Two weeks before the its official unveiling, Woody Leonhard provides a roundup of what to expect and the open questions around Windows 9, given Build 9834 leaks and confirmations springing up all over the Web. The desktop's Start Menu, Metro apps running in resizable windows on the desktop, virtual desktops, Notification Center, and Storage Sense, are among the presumed features in store for Windows 9. Chief among the open questions are the fates of Internet Explorer, Cortana, and the Metro Start Screen. Changes to Windows 9 will provide an inkling of where Nadella will lead Microsoft in the years ahead. What's your litmus test on Windows 9?
64494867
submission
snydeq writes:
Faster innovation, better security, new markets — the case for opening Swift might be more compelling than Apple will admit, writes Peter Wayner. 'In recent years, creators of programming languages have gone out of their way to get their code running on as many different computers as possible. This has meant open-sourcing their tools and doing everything they could to evangelize their work. Apple has never followed the same path as everyone else. The best course may be to open up Swift to everyone, but that doesn't mean Apple will. Nor should we assume that giving us something for free is in Apple's or (gasp) our best interests. The question of open-sourcing a language like Swift is trickier than it looks. Here are seven reasons why Apple should open-source Swift, followed by seven reasons why it ain't gonna happen.'
64289223
submission
snydeq writes:
Desktop workloads and server workloads have different needs, and it's high time Linux consider a split to more adequately address them, writes Deep End's Paul Venezia. 'You can take a Linux installation of nearly any distribution and turn it into a server, then back into a workstation by installing and uninstalling various packages. The OS core remains the same, and the stability and performance will be roughly the same, assuming you tune they system along the way. Those two workloads are very different, however, and as computing power continues to increase, the workloads are diverging even more. Maybe it's time Linux is split in two. I suggested this possibility last week when discussing systemd (or that FreeBSD could see higher server adoption), but it's more than systemd coming into play here. It's from the bootloader all the way up. The more we see Linux distributions trying to offer chimera-like operating systems that can be a server or a desktop at a whim, the more we tend to see the dilution of both. You can run stock Debian Jessie on your laptop or on a 64-way server. Does it not make sense to concentrate all efforts on one or the other?'
64182541
submission
snydeq writes:
The IT job hiring bump earlier this year wasn't sustained in July and August, when numbers slumped considerably, InfoWorld reports. 'So much for the light at the end of the IT jobs tunnel. According to job data released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, as analyzed by Janco Associates, the IT professional job market has all but lost the head of steam it built up earlier this year. A mere 3,400 IT jobs were added in August, down from 4,600 added for July and way down from the 13,800 added in April of this year. Overall, IT hiring in 2014 got off to a weak start, then surged, only to stumble again.' Anybody out there finding the IT job market discouraging of late and care to share their experiences?
64095339
submission
snydeq writes:
Ultimately, the schism over systemd could lead to a separation of desktop and server distros, or Linux server admins moving to FreeBSD, writes Deep End's Paul Venezia. 'Although there are those who think the systemd debate has been decided in favor of systemd, the exceedingly loud protests on message boards, forums, and the posts I wrote over the past two weeks would indicate otherwise. I've seen many declarations of victory for systemd, now that Red Hat has forced it into the enterprise with the release of RHEL 7. I don't think it's that easy. ... Go ahead, kids, spackle over all of that unsightly runlevel stuff. Paint over init and cron, pam and login. Put all of that into PID1 along with dbus. Make it all pretty and whisper sweet nothings about how it's all taken care of and you won't have to read a manual or learn any silly command-line stuff. Tune your distribution for desktop workloads. Go reinvent Windows.'
