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Programming

Twitter On Scala 324

Posted by kdawson from the going-off-the-rails dept.
machaut writes "Twitter, one of the highest profile Ruby on Rails-backed websites on the Internet, has in the past year started replacing some of their Ruby infrastructure with an emerging language called Scala, developed by Martin Odersky at Switzerland's École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne. Although they still prefer Ruby on Rails for user-facing web applications, Twitter's developers have started replacing Ruby daemon servers with Scala alternatives, and plan eventually to serve API requests, which comprise the majority of their traffic, with Scala instead of Ruby. This week several articles have appeared that discuss this shift at Twitter. A technical interview with three Twitter developers was published on Artima. One of those developers, Alex Payne, Twitter's API lead, gave a talk on this subject at the Web 2.0 Expo this week, which was covered by Technology Review and The Register."
Linux

Slackware 12.2 Released 351

Posted by CmdrTaco from the hiya-patrick dept.
pilsner.urquell submitted a quote from the announcement saying "Well folks, it's that time to announce a new stable Slackware release again. So, without further ado, announcing Slackware version 12.2! Since we've moved to supporting the 2.6 kernel series exclusively (and fine-tuned the system to get the most out of it), we feel that Slackware 12.2 has many improvements over our last release (Slackware 12.1) and is a must-have upgrade for any Slackware user."
Biotech

The Unforgettable Amnesiac 120

Posted by kdawson from the every-20-seconds-a-new-day dept.
jamie found an account in the NYTimes of the life and death of one of the most important figures in modern neuroscience, Henry Gustav Molaison — a man who could not form memories. Molaison became an amnesiac after a brain operation in 1953. Known worldwide as H.M., Molaison was studied intensively for 55 years. Dr. Brenda Milner, a psychologist from Montreal, was the first researcher to visit Molaison. In 1962 she authored a landmark study demonstrating that a part of Molaison's memory was fully intact. "The implications were enormous. Scientists saw that there were at least two systems in the brain for creating new memories. One, known as declarative memory, records names, faces and new experiences and stores them until they are consciously retrieved. ... Another system, commonly known as motor learning, is subconscious and depends on other brain systems. This explains why people can jump on a bike after years away from one and take the thing for a ride, or why they can pick up a guitar that they have not played in years and still remember how to strum it. Soon 'everyone wanted an amnesic to study,' Dr. Milner said..."

Comment Having the site available is not "support". (Score 1) 272

by sinserve (#25747361) Attached to: How Long Should an Open Source Project Support Users?

I'm a FOSS developer myself but I would never be rude enough to take an entire site off line for "maintenance", specially for important stuff like NDiswrapper. This is unacceptable. You make the new site and propagate the changes when you're done; shouldn't take more than ten minutes tops. People will take ugly-website over unavailable software any day.
Software

(Useful) Stupid Vim Tricks? 702

Posted by timothy from the make-it-roll-over dept.
haroldag writes "I thoroughly enjoyed the recent post about Unix tricks, so I ask Slashdot vim users, what's out there? :Sex, :b#, marks, ctags. Any tricks worth sharing?"
United States

Discuss the US Presidential Election 1912

Posted by CmdrTaco from the end-of-the-road dept.
We made it. It's election day. Tomorrow we'll know. So for today's election discussion story, I'm throwing it wide open: let's discuss the election itself. Who are your picks and why. And also what about your actual experience voting today? Did Diebold eat your vote or did everything go off without flaw?
Software

Wayland, a New X Server For Linux 487

Posted by kdawson from the at-least-it's-not-called-Y dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Phoronix has a new article out on Wayland: A New X Server For Linux. One of Red Hat's engineers has started writing a new X11 server around today's needs and to eliminate the cruft that has been in this critical piece of free software for more than a decade. This new server is called Wayland and it is designed with newer hardware features like kernel mode-setting and a kernel memory manager for graphics. Wayland is also dramatically simpler to target for in development. A compositing manager is embedded into the Wayland server and ensures 'every frame is perfect' according to the project's leader."
Image

Programming .NET 3.5 Screenshot-sm 224

Posted by samzenpus
lamaditx writes "The world of the .NET framework is taken to the next level by the release of .NET 3.5. The intended audience of this book are experienced .NET programmers. There are no sections that tell you details about C#, SQL servers or anything like that. I don't recommend this book if you never worked on a .NET project and don't know how to set up a SQL database. You should be aware that the code is written in C#. You might use one of the software code converters if you prefer Visual Basic instead. I think the code is still readable even if you do not know C#. I appreciate the fact that the authors decided to use one language only because it keeps the book smaller. The authors assume you are using Visual Studio 2008. You don't necessarily need to update to 2008 if you are working with an older edition because you can use the free Express Edition to get started." Keep reading for the rest of Adrian's review.
Microsoft

Windows Azure Offers Developers Iron-Clad Lock-in 227

Posted by Soulskill from the keep-looking-for-that-silver-lining dept.
snydeq writes "Microsoft's move to the cloud is certain to create a whole new kind of developer partner, Fatal Exception's Neil McAllister writes. But as much as Microsoft ISVs will likely go along with the shift to Windows Azure to keep revenue streams going, the kind of lock-in they will experience will be worlds away from what they face today. Rather than being able to ignore the new version of a key framework, developers will have no other option than to update their code to suit Microsoft's latest platform. That kind of lock-in will leave customers in the lurch, subject to their vendors' bottom lines, as ISVs that can't afford to rework code to keep up with Microsoft's latest platform will begin dropping services, and customers will have little choice but to accept the new terms of service their vendors send along."

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