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Cloud

Chef Hits 1 Million Downloads, Adds New Features->

Submitted by 1sockchuck
1sockchuck writes "The open source infrastructure management tool Chef has now been downloaded more than 1 million times, the project announced today.Opscode will release a number of new features for Chef today at its first #ChefCon user conference, including plugins to provide easier installation on a broad selection of major public clouds."
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Programming

Interview With Ward Cunningham->

Submitted by
CowboyRobot
CowboyRobot writes "Ward Cunningham developed the first wiki, wrote the Fit test framework, is the co-inventor of CRC cards, and is now promoting the concept of technical debt. He recently won the Dr. Dobb's Excellence in Programming Award and was interviewed by that publication. "The creator of the Wiki dishes on the Wiki, Wikipedia's policies, OO design, technical debt, CoffeeScript and Perl, how to survive as a veteran programmer, and doing the simplest thing that could possibly work."

Cunningham is given the chance to explain his philosophy of coding. "I like the picture and I like the look of the code. It's only 40 lines, but every line carried some careful thought. There was a learning curve there that surprised me because the programs looked short. The most rewarding work I've done this year is digging through that code and understanding what it does and understanding what it didn't do, and how to approach the problem.""
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Government

Private companies on UK government deals 'should be subject to FoI'->

Submitted by Qedward
Qedward writes "A report from the Public Accounts Committee suggested the scope of the Freedom of Information Act (FoI) should be extended to cover private firms and IT companies that work on government contracts.

All follows on from deputy PM Nick Clegg's vow to allow citizens to "hold big institutions and powerful individuals to account — and not only the government".

Of course they should, but what they'll find out will probably only make the UK public more despairing."
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ISS

Star City and the Baikonur Cosmodrome->

Submitted by zyborg
zyborg writes "44 photographs of the Baikonour Cosmodrome used by the ISS program. Photographs range from training, launch vehicle transport and assembly, launch, touchdown, pictures from space, etc. From the article "Earlier today, a Soyuz-FG rocket lifted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, carrying an International Space Station (ISS) crew into orbit. Baikonur, Russia's primary space launch facility since the 1950s, is the largest in the world, and supports multiple launches of both manned and unmanned rockets every year. With the U.S. manned space program currently on hold, Baikonur is now the sole launching point for trips to the ISS. Gathered here is a look at the facility, some of the cosmonaut training programs in Star City outside of Moscow, and a few recent launches and landings — plus a bonus: 3 spectacular long-exposure images of Earth from the ISS"."
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AMD

CPU competition heating up in 2012?->

Submitted by
jd
jd writes "2012 promises to be a fun year for hardware geeks, with three new "Aptiv-class" MIPS64 cores being circulated in soft form, a quad-core ARM A15, a Samsung ARM A9 variant, a seriously beefed-up 8-core Intel Itanium and AMD's mobile processors. There's a mix here of chips actually out, ready to be put on silicon, and in last stages of development. Obviously these are for different users (mobile CPUs don't generally fight for marketshare with Itanium dragsters) but it is still fascinating to see the differences in approach and the different visions of what is important in a modern CPU.

Combine this with the news reported earlier on the DDR4, and this promises to be a fun year with many new machines likely to appear that are radically different from the last generation.

Which leaves just one question — which Linux architecture will be fully updated first?"
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Technology

Wendy: The slick partyscape designed to clean New York's air->

Submitted by cylonlover
cylonlover writes "This summer, Wendy will be tidying up the neighborhood in Queens, New York. The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) will be attempting to clean the air in style at its PS1 satellite location with an outdoor architectural project that's designed to provide shade, shelter and water while also plucking pollutants out of the sky. Wendy's spiky arms aren't just a dramatic piece of eye candy — the fabric skin is treated with titanium dioxide nanoparticles that neutralize airborne pollutants. HWKN, the architectural firm behind the project, says this summer Wendy will clean the air to the equivalent of removing 260 cars from the road."
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Digital

Photographers, you're being replaced by software->

Submitted by Mrs. Grundy
Mrs. Grundy writes "CGI software, even open-source software like Blender, continues to improve in quality, speed and easy-of-use. Photographer Mark Meyer wonders how long it will be before large segments of the photography industry are replaced by software and become the latest casualty to fall to outsourcing. Some imagery once the domain of photographers has already moved to CGI. Is any segment of the photography market safe? Will we soon accept digital renderings in places where we used to expect photographs?"
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Comment: Re:Laugh (Score 1) 399

by Unknown Lamer (#39950785) Attached to: Dell Designing Developer Oriented Laptop

I think you're underestimating how pleasant it is to kick back on a deck chair and churn out some code for a few hours. I have one of those old core2 whatever low voltage laptops with a 13" screen (eh, every 15" had the same resolution... and I made the mistake of buying a 17" monstrosity before), and it really is nice not being tethered to a desk (for 6+ hours of heavy use even).

Of course, in small screen editing mode I'll have a full screen Emacs frame (~270x96 characters isn't too shabby and can house 3 or 4 windows comfortably) with a tiny font and spread things out onto more desktops so it's only a bit less convenient.

But then I have a 24" monitor, clickety keyboard, and trackball sitting on my desk.

When I was crossing the border into Canada, they asked if I had any firearms with me. I said, "Well, what do you need?" -- Steven Wright