Boiner - Slashdot User

Whatever Happened To Second Life? 209

Posted by Soulskill on Tuesday January 05 2010, @07:30AM
from the i-blame-ralph dept.

Barence writes "It's desolate, dirty, and sex is outcast to a separate island. In this article, PC Pro's Barry Collins returns to Second Life to find out what went wrong, and why it's raking in more cash than ever before. It's a follow-up to a feature written three years ago, in which Collins spent a week living inside Second Life to see what the huge fuss at the time was all about. The difference three years can make is eye-opening."

Why Is "Design by Contract" Not More Popular? 178

Posted by Cliff on Saturday March 10 2007, @02:45AM
from the puzzling-outcomes dept.

Coryoth writes "Design by Contract, writing pre- and post-conditions on functions, seemed like straightforward common sense to me. Such conditions, in the form of executable code, not only provide more exacting API documentation, but also provide a test harness. Having easy to write unit tests, that are automatically integrated into the inheritance hierarchy in OO languages, 'just made sense'. However, despite being available (to varying degrees of completeness) for many languages other than Eiffel, including Java, C++, Perl, Python, Ruby, Ada, and even Haskell and Ocaml, the concept has never gained significant traction, particularly in comparison to unit testing frameworks (which DbC complements nicely), and hype like 'Extreme Programming'. So why did Design by Contract fail to take off?"

Whatever Happened To The Electronics Hobbyist?

Submitted by plcurechax on Friday March 09 2007, @02:39PM

plcurechax writes "Louis Frenzel asks Whatever Happened To The Electronics Hobbyist? at Electronics Design, a magazine for EE designers. The article touches on kits, radio, Moore's Law, economics, education, and robotics."

Tour of the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center 98

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Friday March 09 2007, @01:02PM
from the straight-and-narrow dept.

Thomas Hawk writes "Last month Robert Scoble and I were able to do a video/photo shoot of the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) with SLAC Emeritus Bebo White. SLAC is both the longest and straightest building in the world and is the home of three Nobel Prizes in physics. There is also a video tour available; part one and part two."