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337061 submission

Submission + - The Latest Programming Holy War: Debuggers! 1

Submitted by

mykdavies

on Thursday October 18, 2007 @04:07PM

mykdavies writes: "It all started when Giles Bowkett posted on his blog that debuggers were a waste of time: "If you're used to a crutch, you think you need it", he said, and that once you've heard of Test Driven Development, you'll never use the debugger again.

A number of keen fans of debuggers leapt in to defend the role of the debugger in TDD, including James Robertson who explained (with video) how "living in the debugger" can lead to faster development. The level of outrage in the responses got too much for Giles, who had to delete a number of heated posts. Then Reddit picked up the story and fanned the flames.

So who's right here? Are debuggers a crutch for out-of-date coders, or the tool of choice for the best developers?"

337055 submission

Submission + - City to use energy-saving LEDs in street lights (msn.com)

Submitted by

cyberspittle

on Thursday October 18, 2007 @03:56PM

cyberspittle writes: ""Lighting consumes 22 percent of the electricity produced in the United States, according to the U.S. Department of Energy, and widespread use of LED technology could cut consumption in half.""

297685 submission

Submission + - Zero-day exploit in PDF with Adobe Reader (youtube.com)

Submitted by hankwang on Saturday September 22, 2007 @04:53AM

hankwang writes: Security researcher Petko Petkov, who is known for his recent discovery of a vulnerability with Quicktime in Firefox, claims to have discovered an exploit that allows arbitrary code execution when a maliciously crafted PDF document is opened in any version of Adobe Reader. Petkov did not disclose any technical details other than a video, but claims on his blog that Adobe has acknowledged the vulnerability. If this exploit goes wild, it could cause some serious problems, as PDFs are usually automatically opened from web browsers and widely used and trusted by corporate users. See also Petkov's original blog post [Coral cache].

290013 submission

Submission + - The Free Food Definition

Submitted by Dster76 on Sunday September 16, 2007 @02:42PM

Dster76 writes: A colleague of mine has painstakingly mapped Richard Stallman's definition of free software to a new definition for free food. Here is a taste (ouch!):

In this freedom, it is the diner's purpose that matters, not the cook's purpose; you as a diner are free to make a recipe for your purposes, and if you distribute it to someone else, she is then free to make it for her purposes, but you are not entitled to impose your purposes on her.
Should food be free, not as in beer, but as in free speech?

280805 submission

Submission + - China Plays Trump Card In Format Wars. HD-DVD Wins (fastsilicon.com)

Submitted by mrneutron2003 on Saturday September 08, 2007 @05:42AM

mrneutron2003 writes: A chinese national consortium (consisting of university engineers, government officials, and a chinese video standards group) alongside the DVD Forum (arbitor of the HD-DVD standard) have come to an agreement regarding the componentry to be used in China's forthcoming CH-DVD standard. Why is this an important development? Well, apart from esthetic differences such as encoding format (the chinese favor their own AVS codec), this means that a country with roughly 20% of the population of the earth is behind a standard that just so happens to be mechanically and optically favorable to HD-DVD. With chinese manufacturing capacity behind it, CH-DVD will obviously be a huge success in china. And with the chinese economy being what it is, prices for such a format have to be within the reach of it's citizenry. HD-DVD will be an obvious beneficiary of the economies of scale that will come into play here. It's still way too early to tell who will win the High Definition format war, with the two leading formats HD-DVD and BlueRay barely accounting for single digit percentages of worldwide video sales. Still, if history is to be our guide, one or the other of the formats will indeed "take off" once players cross the $200 and $100 price thresholds. With this new development, the liklihood that HD-DVD will get their first just jumped a few gazillion notches. http://www.fastsilicon.com/latest-news/china-plays -trump-card-in-format-wars.-hd-dvd-wins-by-def.htm l?Itemid=60

275015 feed

Feed The Register: BBC confirms Doctor Who series five (theregister.com)

From feed by registerfeed on Monday September 03, 2007 @12:32PM

Not until 2010, though, and David Tennant doubtful

The BBC has announced there will be a fifith series of Doctor Who, although it won't be until 2010 and David Tennant is doubtful to reprise his role as the Time Lord.

274929 submission

Submission + - Doctor Who goes on hiatus for a year (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by

BigBadBus

on Monday September 03, 2007 @10:51AM

BigBadBus writes: "Looks like Dr.Who fans will have to go without their hero in 2009 after the BBC revealed the Time Lord will take a gap year. Might be a good idea considering the unpopular choice of Catherine Tate as the new companion. However, to please die-hard Whovians, there will be three specials in 2009."

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