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Operating Systems

Submission + - VMWare Record/Replay Demo (podtech.net)

Submitted by
pg--az
pg--az writes: "ScobleShow has a video of a Windows-Notepad-scribble being replayed by "last night's build" of VMWare Workstation 6, the impressive thing being of course that the record/replay is of the entire operating system."
Programming

Submission + - Secure Programming: the Seven Pernicious Kingdoms (earthweb.com)

Submitted by
jammag
jammag writes: "This chapter-length excerpt from a new book, Secure Programming With Static Analysis talks about what the authors call "The Seven Pernicious Kingdoms" (the term comes from biology). The "kingdoms" are both generic and context-specific defects in programming, ranging from API abuse to Encapsulation. The authors' thesis is summed up by a quote from Henry Petroski: "Success is foreseeing failure.""
Google

Submission + - Google Overhauls Google Docs (blogspot.com)

Submitted by AccioBrain
AccioBrain writes: The Stormin Mormon reviews the new update to Google Documents and Spreadsheets. He writes,

I do not believe that Google will ever replace MS Word. It's clearly not their goal... But for a lot of the work that is currently being done using MS Word or Excel (or even OpenOffie Writer or Calc) Google Docs and Spreadsheets is not merely a free replacement, but an actual improvement.
Announcements

Submission + - XBMC recruiting developers for Linux port

Submitted by
Gamester17
Gamester17 writes: "Help wanted: As you may or may not have heard, a few developers on Team-XBMC have begun the porting of XBMC to Linux and OpenGL using the SDL toolkit. The goal is for this to become a full port of XBMC containing all the features and functions available in the Xbox version of XBMC. This is a huge task which is the reason The XBMC Project is making this public request, seeking C/C++ programmers to volunteer in assisting Team-XBMC with this Linux porting development project. Developers who would like to volunteer should read the Linux porting development project article in the official XBMC WIKI for more detailed information.

Those unfamiliar with XBMC can get a good overview of what it offers by reading the XBMC article on wikipedia.org"
Databases

8 Reasons Not To Use MySQL (And 5 To Adopt It) 288

Posted by Zonk from the for-every-product-turn-turn-turn dept.
Esther Schindler writes "Database decisions are never easy, even — or maybe especially — when one choice is extremely popular. To highlight the advantages and disadvantages of the open-source MySQL DBMS, CIO.com asked two open-source experts to enumerate the reasons to choose MySQL and to pick something else. Tina Gasperson takes the 5 reasons to use MySQL side, and Brent Toderash discusses 8 reasons not to. Note that this isn't an 'open source vs proprietary databases' comparison; it's about MySQL's suitability in enterprise situations."
Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft efforts to reach young developers

Submitted by
rchawdry
rchawdry writes: "Aside from the absolutely ridiculuous marketing collateral, Microsoft at least has some efforts to reach out to young programmers. As a parent, I can see the educational value of these efforts as they can teach young minds to solve problems with computers, however, the fact that Microsoft tools are a necessary part of this seems an awful lot like indoctrination at an early age. Are there similiar efforts in the open source world?"
Microsoft

Submission + - MSI, Group Policy and Firefox in the enterprise

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: An interesting discussion (http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=543 405) over at MozillaZine illustrates one of the problems of getting your software accepted in the larger enterprise world.

The larger the Windows network, the more likely some fancy software distribution system is used. Often this is Microsoft's MSI+GPO combo. Mozilla has a hard time finding developers to make a MSI and Group Policy-managed version for the coming Firefox 3. Even when it is generally acknowledged that the lack of MSI/GPO in Firefox is a major hurdle for its acceptance in the enterprise.

Has the same system that made life easier for large-site admins actually made it harder for smaller software companies to enter the enterprise market?
Windows

Submission + - Adobe Photoshop Flaw used by exploit code

Submitted by
famousstamps.org
famousstamps.org writes: "Critical flaw for Adobe Photoshop Creative Suite 3/2 discovered and exploited, security researcher explains: The security flaw affects Adobe Photoshop Creative Suite 3, as well as CS2, according to a security advisory issued by Secunia on Wednesday. The vulnerability concerns the way Adobe Photoshop handles the processing of malicious bitmap files, such as .bmp, .dib and .rle. A malicious attacker could exploit the flaw to launch a buffer overflow attack. That buffer overflow would then allow the intruder to take over a user's system. "
Programming

Submission + - Alternative Lazy JavaScript Inheritance

Submitted by
Alexey Luchkovsky
Alexey Luchkovsky writes: "Lazy Inheritance is an approach intended to simplify writing OOP and provides support of prototype-based classes hierarhies, automatic resolving and optimizing classes dependencies.
One of the most powerful features offered by object oriented programming (OOP) is inheritance (or ability to create subclasses of particular class). On the one hand, JavaScript does not involve full-fledged support of classes such as one offered by C++ or Java.On the other hand, it supports constructors which are able to create objects with the use of executing code which allocates storage for the objects and initializes these objects (or part of them) by assigning initial values to their properties. There are several possible ways to implement inheritance in JavaScript which are widely known and used. All of them have their own advantages and disadvantages.

Lazy Inheritance design pattern
"Lazy inheritance" is a design pattern used in JavaScript computer programming. It designates a postponed linking of an object with it's prototype (class) until it is needed. If used properly, such approach may increase efficiency, simplicity and flexibility of OOP based code written using JavaScript. Unlike of "classical" approach, it supports a "Lazy" way of inheritance implementation, since reference to parent class is invoked only at the moment of object instance creation. Basically, it's possible to say that instances of objects in such approach are created in "mixed" mode – on first invocation, an appropriate factory is used to modify object constructor prototype which is later used for subsequent object instances creation. Moreover, since "Lazy inheritance" is called only once at the moment of first object instance creation, it becomes possible to combine process of class prototype creation with resolving necessary dependencies of that class. In other words, the process of prototype construction also allows loading scripts (if ones were not loaded before) which particular class depends on.

Such approach to inheritance support has the following benefits:
  • "Lazy inheritance" has the same benefits as classical JavaScript prototype features;
  • It is not necessary to maintain proper order of script files declaration;
  • In most cases, HTML page is loaded faster since there are no objects created during page initialization and since some scripts could be loaded only at the moment in which they are actually necessary (they are necessary if the caller code during it's execution really creates instances of corresponding classes);
  • Dependencies are declared in more explicit way and class depends only on concrete scripts; Moreover, it's not necessary to artificially group particular scripts into "modules" and define dependencies between such "modules";
  • If lazy mode of scripts loading is used, only necessary scripts (which are actually required for application functionality) will be loaded. If, for example, some HTML page may operate in different modes, like "read-write" and "read-only", for every mode required scripts will be loaded and this will be performed automatically without manual script loading optimization.

Useful links
"
Announcements

Submission + - Adobe to Open Source Flex

Submitted by syphax
syphax writes: This was a surprise, for me at least: From Adobe Labs: "Adobe is announcing plans to open source Flex under the Mozilla Public License (MPL). This includes not only the source to the ActionScript components from the Flex SDK, which have been available in source code form with the SDK since Flex 2 was released, but also includes the Java source code for the ActionScript and MXML compilers, the ActionScript debugger and the core ActionScript libraries from the SDK. The Flex SDK includes all of the components needed to create Flex applications that run in any browser — on Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux and on now on the desktop using "Apollo". ... "The source code for the Flex SDK will be available under the Mozilla Public License (MPL). The MPL will allow full and free access to the source code, allowing developers to download, extend, and contribute to the source code for the Flex compiler and framework classes. The Flex SDK will also be available under a commercial Adobe license. Offering a choice of licenses serves the needs of enterprise Flex customers and partners."
Programming

Submission + - 3rd edition of TopDev: the Open Coding Contest

Submitted by
Chrystel COASSIN
Chrystel COASSIN writes: "The third edition of the programming contest TopDev 2007 will take place on March 24th-25th 2007.
This contest is original by its independance from any languages. The winners will not be the fastest programmer, but the ones who will propose the greatest technical solution with the most complete documentation.("it's not a speed contest, upon an arithmetical problem").

Anyone can contest TopDev (students or professionals, alone or in pair,...). More than one thousand participants are expected for this world-wide contest. The previous edition gathered 750 concurrents from 65 countries.
A realistic and detailed business case is to be realized using any language (Java, PHP, C#, ASP.Net, Python) within only 60 hours, from home.

This contest is managed by a programmers association, independent from any programming software editors, in relation with the French Minister for Education and Research. A jury of professors of Universities (from U.S., Canada, France, Belgium, ...) decides on the winner.

For more information and Subscription : http://www.topdevone.com/"
GNU is Not Unix

Submission + - Stallman to step down as Emacs maintainer

Submitted by
davids-world.com
davids-world.com writes: "Richard Stallman is planning to step down as head maintainer of the GNU Emacs project. In an e-mail to fellow Emacs developers, he today asked for candidates to succeed him. RMS wrote the first extensible Emacs text editor in 1975 at MIT's AI Lab. Seen by many as the founder and chief advocate of the free software movement, Stallman has also been actively involved in Emacs' development. GNU Emacs 22, due soon, will be the first major release of the editor since 2001."
Programming

When a CGI Script is the Most Elegant Solution 256

Posted by CmdrTaco from the the-answers-is-always dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Writing local Web applications can be quick, easy, and efficient for solving specific Intranet problems. Learn why a Web browser is sometimes a better interface than a GUI application and why experienced Web developers find themselves struggling to learn a GUI toolkit, and descover that a simple CGI script would serve their needs perfectly well, if not better."

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