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Comment Re:Bizarre choice (Score 1) 345

by murr (#34360976) Attached to: Sony Adopts Objective-C and GNUstep Frameworks

Cocoa crucially depends on reflection features of the underlying language (obtaining classes, calling methods and manipulating data members by name). Lisp would obviously qualify for this (for sufficiently large values of "Lisp"), but standard Ada and Eiffel would be completely unsuited to the task, and I doubt OCaml would be suited.

I could see Ruby become an increasingly serious contender, though. Right now, the primary problem is that debugging is messier than in an Objective-C app, but otherwise, it's an excellent match.

Comment Re:Does anyone care? (Score 1) 220

by murr (#33079222) Attached to: Perl 6, Early, With Rakudo Star

The problem is that programming in Perl quite often is not a happy experience for the programmer. Too much magic. Too much line noise.

From the Perl 6 examples I've seen so far, the Perl 6 solution to this seems to be—more magic, and more line noise.
Image

Oil Leak Could Be Stopped With a Nuke Screenshot-sm 799

Posted by samzenpus from the lesser-of-two-disasters dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico could be stopped with an underground nuclear blast, a Russian newspaper reports. Komsomoloskaya Pravda, the best-selling Russian daily, reports that in Soviet times such leaks were plugged with controlled nuclear blasts underground. The idea is simple, KP writes: 'The underground explosion moves the rock, presses on it, and, in essence, squeezes the well's channel.' It's so simple, in fact, that the Soviet Union used this method five times to deal with petrocalamities, and it only didn't work once."
Networking

Nmap 5.20 Released 36

Posted by Soulskill from the more-and-better dept.
ruphus13 writes "Nmap has a new release out, and it's a major one. It includes a GUI front-end called Zenmap, and, according to the post, 'Network admins will no doubt be excited to learn that Nmap is now ready to identify Snow Leopard systems, Android Linux smartphones, and Chumbies, among other OSes that Nmap can now identify. This release also brings an additional 31 Nmap Scripting Engine scripts, bringing the total collection up to 80 pre-written scripts for Nmap. The scripts include X11 access checks to see if X.org on a system allows remote access, a script to retrieve and print an SSL certificate, and a script designed to see whether a host is serving malware. Nmap also comes with netcat and Ndiff. Source code and binaries are available from the Nmap site, including RPMs for x86 and x86_64 systems, and binaries for Windows and Mac OS X. '"
Government

Submission + - When your backhoe cuts "Black" (Top Secret (washingtonpost.com)

Submitted by
bernieS
bernieS writes: "The Washington Post describes what happens when a construction backhoe accidentally cuts buried fiber so secret that it doesn't appear on public maps--and what happens when the Men in Black SUV's appear out of nowhere. Apparently, the numerous secret fiber and utility lines used by government intelligence agencies are being dug up with increasing frequency with all the increased construction projects in the DC area. It's amazing how quickly they get repaired!"
Power

Ultra-Dense Deuterium Produced 355

Posted by kdawson from the big-if dept.
Omomyid was among several readers writing in about the production of microscopic amounts of ultra-dense deuterium by scientists at the University of Gothenberg, in Sweden. A cubic centimeter of the stuff would weigh 287 lbs. (130 kg). UDD is 100,000 times more dense than water, and a million times more dense than deuterium ice, which is a common fuel in laser-ignited fusion projects. The researchers say that, if (big if) the material can be produced in large quantities, it would vastly improve the chances of starting a fusion reaction, as the atoms are much closer together. Such a D-D fusion reaction would be cleaner than one involving highly radioactive tritium. Many outlets have picked up the same press release that Science Daily printed pretty much verbatim (as is their wont); there doesn't seem to be much else about this on the Web. Here's the home page of one of the researchers. The press release gives no hint as to how the UDD was produced. Reader wisebabo asks: "I can easily imagine a material being compressed by some heavy duty diamond anvil to reach this density, the question is: what happens when you let the pressure off? Will it expand (explosively one would presume) back to its original volume?"
Google

Google Chrome, the Google Browser 807

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the fun-unfounded-rumor dept.
Philipp Lenssen writes "Google announced their very own browser project called Google Chrome — an announcement in the form of a comic book drawn by Scott McCloud, no less. Google says Google Chrome will be open source, include a new JavaScript virtual machine, include the Google Gears add-on by default, and put the tabs above the address bar (not below), among other things. I've also uploaded Google's comic book with all the details (details given from Google's perspective, anyway... let's see how this holds up). While Google provided the URL www.google.com/chrome there's nothing up there yet."
Security

Submission + - The Future Has A Kill Switch (wired.com)

Submitted by
palegray.net
palegray.net writes: "Bruce Schneier brings us his perspective on a future filled with kill switches, from OnStar-equipped automobiles and city buses that can be remotely disabled by police to Microsoft's patent-pending ideas regarding so-called Digital Manners Policies. In Bruce's view, these capabilities aren't exactly high points of our potential future. From the article:

Once we go down this path — giving one device authority over other devices — the security problems start piling up. Who has the authority to limit functionality of my devices, and how do they get that authority? What prevents them from abusing that power? Do I get the ability to override their limitations? In what circumstances, and how? Can they override my override?

At what point does centralizing and/or delegating operational authority over so much of our lives become a dangerous practice of its own?"

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