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Submission + - Apple Fails to Deliver on Boot Camp Promise (apple.com)

Submitted by SkydiverFL
SkydiverFL writes: For those fans of Apple's Boot Camp package, it looks like you might be waiting on the next "end of year" to use Windows 7 on your shiny silver boxes. Back in October (2009, of course), Apple published a rather short, but rather affirmative, promise stating quite simply that, "Apple will support Microsoft Windows 7 (Home Premium, Professional, and Ultimate) with Boot Camp in Mac OS X Snow Leopard before the end of the year. This support will require a software update to Boot Camp." Needless to say that the support page has no updates regarding the new version. Maybe they're waiting for iSlate?
Windows

Submission + - Microsoft Backtracks, Extends XP For OEMs To 2011 (computerworld.com)

Submitted by
CWmike
CWmike writes: "Just hours after a noted research analyst criticized Microsoft's plans to limit sales of Windows XP PCs, the company said it would extend the aged operating system's lifespan in the post-Windows 7 world to as late as April 2011. On Tuesday, Michael Silver of Gartner blasted the company's decision, saying it would make it more difficult for companies to manage their PCs, and more expensive to upgrade them to Windows 7 down the road. Microsoft's new policy: 'Windows 7 Professional and Ultimate customers will have the option to downgrade to Windows XP Professional from PCs that ship within 18 months following the general availability of Windows 7 or until the release of a Windows 7 service pack, whichever is sooner, and if a service pack is developed,' a company spokeswoman said in an e-mail. 'This is good,' said Silver. '[But] still not great.' His concern is over the 'out' Microsoft gave itself. 'The new policy is 18 months or SP1 delivery, whichever is sooner,' he said. 'It means that if SP1 shows up in six or eight months, the date suddenly moves in.'"
Linux Business

Submission + - The Zen of Community (linux.com)

Submitted by
LinuxScribe
LinuxScribe writes: "How do you create a successful online community? According to John Mark Walker, you make one by not trying to create it. In essence, you take care of basic fundamental elements necessary for an online community's success, and the rest takes care of itself. Because, if you try too hard, you just might fail in your efforts."

Comment Gee, how about writing some more books? (Score 3, Insightful) 987

by 2TecTom (#27958987) Attached to: What Can I Do About Book Pirates?

First off, the best books are written because something needed saying, not because some writer needed a perpetual income. Secondly, if a writer writes about things that people feel a need to read, the writer will develop an 'audience', which, in a way, is a perpetual income. Third, and most important, if you don't put in any effort, would you really appreciate what you take out?

In my experience, there's no free ride. You always pay, one way or another.
Security

New Extended SSL Certs Make Online Debut 106

Posted by CowboyNeal from the bar-is-green-site-is-clean dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The first of the new 'extended validation' SSL certificates went live this week, signaling the latest effort by the browser makers and major Web sites to further verify the identity of SSL applicants and help consumers spot fraudulent Web sites, the Washington Post's Security Fix blog notes. The technology is pretty simple: Visit a login page for a site that uses one of these EV certs and the browser bar turns green; likewise, the browser's anti-phishing filters can turn the URL field red when the user is at a known phishing site. There is still quite a bit of debate over whether this whole scheme isn't just a new money-making racket for the SSL providers, and whether small mom-and-pop shops will be able to afford the pricey new certs."
Hardware Hacking

Submission + - Print Messages on your Beer

Submitted by
Migraineman
Migraineman writes: "I stumbled upon a clever hack by Sprite. He reverse engineered the pin functions on an HP inkjet cartridge, and built a simple driver board that converts the cartridge into a hand-held inkjet printer. The driver board is programmed with a fixed message. Moving the "print head" is your responsibility, but it leads to some interesting applications. Printing messages on a whiteboard was the original inspiration, but printing messages on the foam head of a Guinness is just inspired."
Programming

Submission + - IBM Cell Broadband Engine Software Development Kit

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The recently released version 2.0 contains additional libraries and improved compiler tools. This complete Cell BE development environment, includes Linux kernel for Cell BE blades, Linux support libraries, tool chains, system simulator, source code for libraries and samples, and a new, fully-integrated installation.
Businesses

Submission + - No Change in Costco's Amazing Tech Return Policy

Submitted by
Marcus Yam
Marcus Yam writes: "Costco is well known for its amazingly lenient, time-unlimited, bring-it-back-whenever-you-want return policy. This has lead to some abuse of the program with some customers bringing back TVs that are years old and still getting their original purchase price refunded. During late December, the Consumerist ran an exclusive story claiming that, starting January 1, 2007, Costco will be limiting returns to 30 days due to abuse of its generous policies. After ringing in the New Year, we contacted Costco to get the real scoop on the possibility of a stricter policy. We placed calls nationwide to Costco locations inquiring about any chance in policy. According to every customer service counter that we contacted, none said that there was any change in the store's return policies. For now, it appears that all fears of Costco changing its lenient return policy can be put to rest. http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=5306"
Programming

Submission + - Lisp and Ruby, sitting in a tree...

Submitted by
sdelmont
sdelmont writes: "The developers of Rubinius, an experimental Ruby interpreter inspired by SmallTalk, have been discussing the possibility of adding a Lisp dialect to their VM. Pat Eyler collected some ideas and opinions from the people involved and it makes for some interesting reading. For many, Ruby already is an acceptable Lisp, and the language itself started as a perlification of Lisp (even Matz says so) so it is perhaps fitting and might help explain why the whole idea feels right. Now, if someone added support for VB and gave it the respect it deserves, the world would be a better place."
Handhelds

Submission + - iPhone is available for preordering in Germany

Submitted by Audrius
Audrius writes: Apparently, iPhone is already available for preordering in German Amazon branch. Pay attention to the price — it's 999EUR (!!!) which converts to 1,290 USD. Are people that crazy to be willing to pay that much for a phone which is not being manufactured yet?

See the page on Amazon.de:
http://www.amazon.de/o/ASIN/B0002W4P0C/ref=s9_asin _image_3/028-8202726-9873316
Encryption

Submission + - Decryption Keys for HD-DVD found, confirmed

Submitted by kad77
kad77 writes: It appears 'muslix64' was the real deal, despite skepticism. Through a riddle posted here: http://pastebin.com/853659 members on the doom9 forum identified the Title key for the HD-DVD release 'Serenity'. Volume Unique Keys and Title keys for other discs followed within hours, confirming that software HD-DVD players, like any common program, store important run-time data in memory. Round One has been won for the Fair Use crowd, how will the industry respond? Links to decryption utility and sleuthing info in original doom9 forum thread: http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=119871
Java

Submission + - Java Generics and Collections

Submitted by
andrew cooke
andrew cooke writes: "Java Generics and Collections

Java 6 was recently released, but many programmers are still exploring the features introduced in Java 5 — probably the most significant changes in the language's twelve year history. Amongst those changes (enumerations, auto-boxing, foreach, varargs) generics was the most far-reaching, introducing generic programming in a simpler, safer way than C++ templates and, unlike generics in C#, maintaining backwards (and forwards) compatibility with existing Java code.

Given the history of Generic Java, Naftalin and Wadler's Java Generics and Collections has a distinguished pedigree. In this review I'll argue that this is a new classic. Background to Generics

If you're a Java programmer you've probably heard of generics, an extension to the type system that was introduced in Java 5. They give you, as a programmer, a way to write code even when you don't know exactly what classes will be used.

The obvious example is collections — the author of a List class has no idea what type of objects will be stored when the code is used.

Before generics, if you wanted to write code that handled unknown classes you had to use make use of inheritance: write the code as if it would get Objects, and then let the caller cast the result as necessary. Since casts happen at runtime any mistakes may cause a runtime error (a ClassCastException).

Generics fix this. They let you write code in which the classes are named (parameters) and the compiler can then check that the use of these class parameters is consistent in your program. So if you have a List of Foo instances you write List<Foo> and the compiler knows that when you read that list you will receive a Foo, not an Object. History

I'll get to the book in a moment, but first a little history. If you know any type theory — particularly as used in functional languages like ML and Haskell — then you'll recognise my quick description above as parametric polymorphism. You'll also know that it is incredibly useful, and wonder how Java programmers could ever have managed without it.

Which explains why Philip Wadler, one of the people responsible for Haskell, was part of a team that wrote GJ (Generic Java), one of the experimental Java mutations (others included PolyJ and Pizza) that, back in the day (late 90s) helped explore how parametric polymorphism could be added to Java, and which formed the basis for the generics introduced in Java 5.

So if you want to understand generics, Wadler is your man. Which, in turn, explains why I jumped at the chance to review O'Reilly's Java Generics and Collections, by Maurice Naftalin and Philip Wadler. The Book

This is a moderately slim book (just under 300 pages). It looks like any other O'Reilly work — the animal is an Alligator this time. It's well organised, easy to read, and has a decent index.

There's an odd discrepancy, though: Wadler is the generics Guru; this is going to be `the generics reference'; generics are sexy (in relative terms — we're talking Java here) and collections are not; the title has "Java Generics" in great big letters with "and Collections" in little tiny ones down in a corner. Yet very nearly half this book is dedicated to collections.

So in the next section I'll justify the `reference' comment above, and in the one after I'll take a look at the collections half of the book and ask to what extent it's padding. Part I — Generics

This is a great, practical read. It starts simply, introducing a range of new features in Java 5, and then builds rapidly.

If you are completely new to generics, you'll want to read slowly. Everything is here, and it's very clear and friendly, but there are not the chapters of simple, repeated examples you might find in a fatter book. Within just 30 pages you meet pretty much all of generics, including wildcards and constraints.

If that makes your head spin, don't worry. Read on. The next hundred or so pages don't introduce any new syntax, but instead discuss a wide range of related issues. The chapters on Comparisons and Bounds and Declarations contain more examples that will help clarify what generics do. And the following chapters on Evolution, Reification, and Reflection will explain exactly why.

So the first seven chapters introduce generics and then justify the implementation — any programmer that takes the time to understand this will have a very solid base in generics.

There are even some interesting ideas on how Java could have evolved differently — section 6.9 Arrays as a Deprecated Type presents a strong case for removing arrays from the language. It's a tribute to the clarity and depth of this book that the reader is able to follow detailed arguments about language design. Fascinating stuff.

The next two chapters, however, were my favourites. Effective Generics and Design Patterns give sensible, practical advice on using generics in your work, including the best explanation of <X extends Foo<X>> I've seen yet (so if you don't know what I am talking about here, read the book).

(A practical word of advice — if at all possible, use Java 6 with generics. Java 5 has a sneaky bug). Part II — Collections

This part of the book was more along O'Reilly's `Nutshell' lines: the different chapters explore different collection types in detail. I must admit that at first I skipped this — it looked like API docs re-hashed to extend the size of the book.

But then I felt bad, because I was supposed to be reviewing this book (full disclosure: if you review a book for Slashdot you get to keep it). And you know what? It turned out to be pretty interesting. I've programmed in Java for (too many) years, and I guess I've not been quite as dedicated to tracking how the library has changed as I should have been — I learnt a lot.

Again, a wide range of readers are welcome. This is more than a summary of the Javadocs, ranging from thumbnail sketches of trees and hashtables to a discussion of containers intended for multi-threaded programming.

The way I see it now, this part is a bonus: the first half, on generics, makes this book one of the standards; the second half is an extra treat I'm glad I stumbled across (I guess if you're some kind of weird collection-fetishist maybe it's even worth buying the book for). Conclusions

I've used generics since the first beta release of Java 5 and had experience with parametric polymorphism in functional languages before that (in other words, I can tell my co- from my contra-variance). So I guess I'm heading towards the more expert end of the spectrum and I was worried I'd find the book boring. It wasn't. After claiming to be expert I don't want to spoil things with evidence that I'm actually stupid, but reading this book cleared up a few `misunderstandings' I'd had. I wish I had read it earlier.

If you're new to generics, and you don't mind thinking, I recommend this book. If you're a Java programmer who's a bit confused by <? super Foo> then this is the book for you.

The only people who shouldn't read this are people new to Java. You need to go elsewhere first. This is not a book for complete beginners.

A great book in the classic — practical, concise and intelligent — O'Reilly mould."
Encryption

Submission + - EsatBT Awards - Security code breaker

Submitted by
tman
tman writes: "The details of the project are as yet a little sketchy, but the winner of the EsatBT 2007 Young Scientist Award, a 16 year old young man called Abdusalam Abubakar
"... based his initial work on partially successful attacks on the world's most widely-used encryption system, RSA, mounted by two mathematicians. He decided to take the best aspects of both and generalise a new approach, which he believes has the potential to tackle at least some less complex coding systems."


Slightly more details here

It would be interesting to learn more of the details of this anyone any more information?"
Music

Submission + - Famous music-producer steals from demoscene musici

Submitted by
gloom
gloom writes: "In 2000 the finnish demoscene musician Janne Suni (also known as Tempest) won the Oldskool Music Competition at the Assembly demoparty with his four channel Amiga .MOD entitled "Acid Jazzed Evening". A Commodore 64 musician called 'grg' remade the song on the C64 (using the infamous SID soundchip) which is what was stolen. The producers name is Timbaland, one of the hottest names in american music these days, and the track in question is called 'Do it' and is featured on the Nelly Furtado-album 'Loose'.

Getting nowhere with Geffen, the demoscene has now risen to he aid of Tempest, first by creating a stirr at SomethingAwful (files downloadable from the forum), and later at the news-site Digg.com as well as on YouTube, with a video demonstrating the blatant rippoff.

Being an online-posting musician myself — what rights do I have if this should ever happen to me, and what can be done to raise awareness about such things?"

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