Comment Re:Seriously (Score 2, Funny) 117
Fake!
Brian Kernighan would have checked the return value of that printf.
Submission + - Interview with Bell Labs' legend, Brian Kernighan (computerworld.com.au)
Tri writes: Computerworld interviews Brian Kernighan, the K in K&R, the K in AWK and co-author of the Practice of Programming.
Submission + - Social networking for the dead (computerworld.com.au) 2
swandives writes: "It had to happen. A social media site for the deceased. From Beyond 2u lets people communicate with their loved ones from beyond the grave. When people join, they get a unique login code which must be put in a will. Once you're dead, the code is activated to send the stored messages, videos and photos to requested loved ones. You can even use templates for special events such as wedding anniversaries which are stored until the milestone event in case you pass away beforehand. The Tribute2u feature lets people create their own personal online tribute, on which grieving loved ones can comment, Facebook-style, after the member's death."
Submission + - Rich Hickey on Clojure: bringing lisp to the JVM (computerworld.com.au)
Tri writes: "Clojure is one of the those programming languages that lets you write lisp-style code and then run it on the JVM. Great for those times where you want a dynamic functional language in your projects. In this Interview Rich Hickey tells us all about his programming language.
Clojure was on slashdot last year as "one of 6 scripting language you wish the boss let you use"."
Clojure was on slashdot last year as "one of 6 scripting language you wish the boss let you use"."
Submission + - The A-Z of Programming Languages: Clojure (computerworld.com.au)
cole writes: Computerworld's series on the popular programming languages takes a look into the up and coming Clojure language. Creator Rich Hickey explains how he wanted a dynamic, functional language native on the JVM/CLR, and argues his cse for creating another Lisp dialect instead of extending an existing one. Hickey says Clojure is designed to support writing robust programs that are simple and fast and he wanted a solid concurrency story and great interoperability with existing Java libraries. The interview is accompanied by a handy tutorial.
Journal Journal: Slashdot Comments 2
This is going to be a short entry (even though that's probably bad form for my first). A friend of mine and I were talking about Slashdot and the number of comments. We've noticed that lately there seems to be more comments than there have been in a while, and those comments seem to come a lot more quickly than they have in the past. We could be wrong about it, but that's certainly the way both of us perceive it.
So here's the hypothesis: The unemployment rate is up, which gives nerds time
Submission + - America's Army 3 developer team canned
incognito84 writes: "The development team responsible for the developing of the freeware game, "America's Army 3" has been canned, days after the launch of the highly flawed game which was distributed mostly via Steam.
The anonymous America's Army 3 developers in touch with Kotaku unsurprisingly didn't sound too pleased with the current situation, venting that "a lot of good people [worked] insanely long hours on this game that was butchered by outside sources."
The game's launch was plagued by massive server authentication issues which are inhibiting most players from playing it two days after the game's official launch."
The anonymous America's Army 3 developers in touch with Kotaku unsurprisingly didn't sound too pleased with the current situation, venting that "a lot of good people [worked] insanely long hours on this game that was butchered by outside sources."
The game's launch was plagued by massive server authentication issues which are inhibiting most players from playing it two days after the game's official launch."
Submission + - Aussie scientists build a cluster to map the sky
Tri writes: "Scientists at the Siding Spring Observatory have built a new system that maps and records over 1 billion objects in the southern hemisphere sky. They collect 700 GB of data every night which they then crunch down using some perl scripts and make available to other scientists through a web interface backed on Postgresql. They've also got a system with over 12,000 cores which they use to process the data."
Copyright Decision In Australia Vindicates 3d-Party EPG Provider 66
angry tapir writes "In a landmark decision, the High Court of Australia has ruled that Electronic Program Guide (EPG) vendor IceTV has not violated the copyright of Channel 9 by reproducing programming information in its third-party EPG. This case has been running since May 2006, when the Nine Network alleged that IceTV's electronic program guide infringed the copyright of Channel 9's television schedule."
Submission + - Reinventing politics with Linux at Daily Kos
Tri writes: "Computerworld talks to Jeremy Bingham and Markos Moulitsas of DailyKos fame . Between late nights with K&R and hacking on lighttpd modules, Jeremy has kept the DailyKos servers going through some huge traffic spikes on election nights without anything catching on fire. He's also released his new modules under a FLOSS license."
Submission + - Why Facebook needs a government bailout (idg.com.au) 1
Hippo the Hippo writes: It's all doom and gloom on the economic front. The latest corporate giant to suffer the effects of the US recession is social-networking site Facebook. According to Valleywag Facebook has lost $13.7 imaginary dollars in value (based on how much Microsoft paid for a stake last year). PC World explains why the US government needs to step in and bail out Facebook before it's too late.
Submission + - Most Memorable Computer Ads of the 80s (slideshow) (computerworld.com.au)
Nigel_story writes: Very funny selection of computer ads from the eighties and early nineties; including microsoft dissing on apple, a gun holster for your cell phone, NEC's Brain computer, inside the Mac, Dr Who, the earliest commercial 'portable' computers, Dumb Terminals, and a cracker from 1985 about a PC trying to talk to a Mac — Deja Vu anyone??? A great trip back in time
Submission + - New way to build unhackable quantum encryptor (computerworld.com.au)
Bergkamp10 writes: Researchers at the Australian National University have built an unhackable, completely secret Quantum cryptographic system (QKD) out of common telecommunications electronics and optics, marking a dramatic decrease in the cost of quantum encryption devices. The researchers also claim their system is much more robust than the two main commercial companies developing Quantum encryption devices; MagiQ in the US, and idQuantique in Switzerland. Both of these companies use specialised single photon sources and detectors in their QKD's, which can cost upwards of US$100,000 and are extremely delicate. The ANU researchers have not only developed a completely unhackable quantum encryption device using off-the-shelf components that is much cheaper, but also much more durable than the current market offerings. Quantum cryptography works by using laser beams that are encoded in a way that makes interception physically impossible. The article includes a step by step guide from ANU physicist and Stanford Sloan Fellow Vikram Sharma, who details exactly how Quantum encryption works, as well as suggestions for its future implementation in areas such as personal banking.
Submission + - Doing IT for POTUS
Tri writes: Computerworld Australia has a story on Ben Wrigley. Normally an IT Manager at the Intercontinental, he got to liase with the Whitehouse Communications Agency during the recent APEC meeting in Sydney last September. From dealing with some PSTN gear that was so old the junior techs didn't know how to plug it to having to triple the network's capacity, he got to deal with it all. This was a user that wanted more reliability than the average joe. One major upside: no budget!
Submission + - Black screen of darkness to haunt Vista pirates (computerworld.com.au)
Sonny Bill William writes: As of this week, Microsoft have activated a function in Vista called 'Reduced Functionality'. This is a specific function in Vista which effectively disables non genuine copies of Windows. Therefore, anyone who has a pirated copy of Vista will experience: A black screen after 1 hour of browsing; No start menu or task bar; No desktop.
http://www.computerworld.com.au/index.php/id;1029262671
