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Programming

Submission + - ColdFusion creator claims tag languages best (computerworld.com.au)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: ColdFusion co-creator Jeremy Allaire has told Computerworld in one of its A-Z programming language interviews the tag-based approach is the best for web app development. He also says: "I think we waited too long to embrace Java as a run-time platform for the ColdFusion environment. We had acquired JRun, and had planned to migrate to a J2EE-based architecture, but we delayed and it took longer than we had thought. I think that could have helped grow the momentum for ColdFusion during a critical time in the marketplace."

http://www.computerworld.com.au/article/325172/an_interview_coldfusion_co-creator_jeremy_allaire#comment-10144
Programming

Submission + - Allaire: ColdFusion is easiest web app language (computerworld.com.au)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Computerworld is running one of its A-Z Programming Interviews, this time with ColdFusion's Jeremy Allaire.
In the article Allaire says ColdFusion was/is the easiest to learn language for web apps:

"We believed that a new breed of developer was emerging around the Web, and that they were first users of HTML, and that it was critical to have a language that fit within the architecture and syntax of the Web, which was tag-based. This had the inherent advantage of being human readable and human writable, with a more declarative style and syntax. This allowed CF to be the easiest to learn programming language for web applications. It's been really rewarding to see the ascendance of XML as a framework for languages and meta-data, it is really validation in the core idea of tag-based languages."

http://www.computerworld.com.au/article/325172/an_interview_coldfusion_co-creator_jeremy_allaire
Programming

Submission + - 10 Problems with C++, and their possible solutions (locklessinc.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The C++0x standard is nearing completion. However, the changes within it are obviously constrained by backwards compatibility. If backwards compatibility could be ignored, what are 10 things that could be changed in C++ to improve performance, readability, and orthogonality of the language?
Movies

Submission + - Tron Legacy exposed (kingofgng.com) 1

Submitted by
KingofGnG
KingofGnG writes: "As already occurred during the past year, Disney has chosen the San Diego Comic-Con International to present its new sci-fi project. The sequel to Tron, the classic movie from 1982 dealing with videogames, virtual reality and 3D graphics when none of these three things was widely popular, has got an official title and synopsis now while the major has released (and this time without silly censorship) the very first trailer from the movie together with some concept art and the teaser poster."
Software

Submission + - Are header files documentation?

Submitted by
rich_salz
rich_salz writes: "I must start with a disclaimer: this are my personal musings, and have nothing to do with my employer.

Can header files be considered documentation, or are they only source code? What about Linux kernel headers? Does reading them "taint" you?Can anyone point to anything definitive?

What about #include and GPL vs LPGL? Suppose I include which includes , and both of those are LGPL. But that latter includes which is GPL. How do we reconcile the conflict?"
Social Networks

Submission + - xBook response to social hacking on Facebook

Submitted by Keanu
Keanu writes: Another controversy has emerged on Facebook with third party advertisers using users' photos for generating customized advertisements. Facebook has refuted this as "rumors" in their recent blog posting and claimed that "the advertisements that started these rumors were not from Facebook but placed within applications by third parties." This has created a huge buzz among the concerned Facebook users with thousands sharing their opinions on the blog. It can be also be observed that the understanding of Facebook users regarding the security mechanisms behind Facebook — or how their private data is handled — is limited. While Facebook might not be responsible for passing the photos directly to the advertisers, there is an inherent weakness in the Facebook design that allows third-party applications to leak users' data to outside parties (such as advertisers). These applications are only bound with an agreement with Facebook and Facebook has no way to police that the agreement is being followed. Since Facebook allows anyone to develop an application for its platform, this has lead to a frequent violation of the agreement by the third-party applications.

In a recently published work at USENIX Security conference, researchers at GerogiaTech and Google (with contributions from IBM Research) have proposed the design of xBook, a novel framework for building privacy-preserving social networking platforms in view of these third-party applications. They use information flow techniques to control what untrusted applications can do with the information they receive, thereby preventing any data leaks to outside parties such as the advertisers in the aforementioned case. They have also developed a prototype implementation of their system. The paper is available here. Here is the abstract from the paper:

"Social networking websites have recently evolved from being service providers to platforms for running third party applications. Users have typically trusted the social networking sites with personal data, and assume that their privacy preferences are correctly enforced. However, they are now being asked to trust each third-party application they use in a similar manner. This has left the users' private information vulnerable to accidental or malicious leaks by these applications. In this work, we present a novel framework for building privacy-preserving social networking applications that retains the functionality offered by the current social networks. We use information flow models to control what untrusted applications can do with the information they receive. We show the viability of our design by means of a platform prototype. The usability of the platform is further evaluated by developing sample applications using the platform APIs. We also discuss both security and non-security challenges in designing and implementing such a framework."
Hardware Hacking

Submission + - Free tools for Hardware Development ?

Submitted by
JucaBlues
JucaBlues writes: "I am a newbie on reconfigurable hardware development. But I have a strong software development background. I want to use 100% free software tools (with source code and an OSI-approved software license). Which FPGA development board would you suggest me to buy? If that is impossible nowadays, which development environment would be closer to this scenario? I'd like to know which pieces of hardware development tools are still missing in the free software world."

Professional Plone Development 98

Posted by samzenpus from the read-all-about-it dept.
Michael J. Ross writes "Among the hundreds of content management systems (CMSs) available for building Web sites, Plone may not be the most popular; but for the majority of experienced Python developers, it is without equal. This is partly due to Plone being one of the few major CMSs written in Python, and partly due to its powerful extensibility. Customizing and extending Plone, however, are not for the faint of heart. Fortunately, help is at hand, in Professional Plone Development, a book written by seasoned Plone developer Martin Aspeli." Read below for the rest Of Michael's review.

Comment Re:Argh. (Score 1) 106

by itsari (#16718155) Attached to: PHP 5.2.0 Released

Python.

It has deep-rooted support for meta-programming and introspection. Namespaces are simple and straight forward. The re-occurring interfaces in Python shave down development time and encorage uniformity.

Using Python is actually a pleasure. Mind, it does have its flaws: Performance (which is about on par with PHP), populatity (not deployed as much as PHP), and some OOP querks (but still better than PHP's).

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