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Comment Learn both! (Score 2) 211

by johnthuss (#48483055) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: Objective C Vs. Swift For a New iOS Developer?
You can't realistically do iOS development without knowing Objective-C; its just no feasible since all Apples frameworks are written in it, all the open source libraries use it, and all of the stackflow answers are for it. And fortunately, it is not a bad language. Swift is a much better language, at least potentially. It is still a bit rough to use. But it is sure to replace Objective-C over the next few years, so you would be a fool to ignore it. To address the larger question - you should get some formal computer science instruction if you ever expect to land a job. You have to have something on your résumé.

Submission + - Apple WWDC sells out in 2 minutes, 1st ticket shows up on eBay 45 minutes later (networkworld.com)

Submitted by alphadogg
alphadogg writes: The Apple Worldwide Developers Conference sold out in just two minutes today, blowing away last year's record of two hours. Tickets went on sale today at 10 a.m. PDT, as was announced yesterday, when Apple said its event would be held June 10-14 at Moscone West in San Francisco. Apple WWDC runs neck-and-neck with the annual Google I/O event in the race for hottest tech show. The Google event, slated for May 15-17 at Moscone Center, sold out in 45 minutes this year. While transferring tickets for WWDC is generally not allowed, an ambitious eBay seller is attempting to get $10K for the $1,600 ticket.
Businesses

Submission + - There is no Tablet Market, Only a iPad Market 1

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens writes
Hugh Pickens writes writes: "James Kendrick writes that after Apple introduced the iPad, companies shifted gears to go after this undiscovered new tablet market but in spite of the number of players in tablets, no company has discovered the magic bullet to knock the iPad off the top of the tablet heap. "What's happening to the 7-inch tablet market is what happened to the PC market several times. Big name desktop PC OEMs, realizing that consumers didn't care about megahertz and megabytes — yes, that long ago — turned to a price war in order to keep sales buoyant," writes Adrian Kingsley-Hughes. "Price becomes the differentiating factor, and this in turns competition into a race to the bottom." Historically, when a race to the bottom is dictated by the market, it's more a sign of a lack of a market in general. If enough buyers aren't willing to pay enough for a product to make producers a profit, the market is just not sufficient. Price is a metric that most people know and understand because it's nowhere as ethereal or complicated as CPU power or screen resolution. Given a $199 tablet next to another for $299, the $100 difference in the price tag will catch the eye before anything else. But if price is such an important metric, why is the iPad — with its premium price tag — so popular? Simple, it was the first tablet to go mass market, and cumulative sales of around 85 million gives the iPad credibility in the eye on potential buyers. "So the problem with the Kindle Fire — and the Nexus 7 — is the same problem that's plagued the PC industry. Deep and extreme price cuts give the makers no wriggle room to innovate", writes Kingsley-Hughes. "By driving prices down to this level so rapidly, both Amazon and Google have irrevocably harmed the tablet market by creating unrealistic price expectations.""
Censorship

Submission + - Internet responds to shockingly racist article, gets the author fired (mediaite.com)

Submitted by
concealment
concealment writes: "The remarkably long list of how to teach children to stay safe by avoiding black people goes on for two pages and Derbyshire contends is a true lifesaver. There is no irony or clarification that, perhaps, this is a joke, no matter how much you may want to find a disclaimer after you’re done reading.

The backlash has been so wide as to be as close to universal as a disjointed media can put together.Maureen O’Connor at Gawker fears she fell into some sort of time warp: “It’s baffling—how can such an ill-conceived work of unadultered racism exist in an ostensibly modern magazine? So racist it would make more sense at a Klan rally than in a publication funded by an eccentric cocaine-addicted socialite?” At Forbes, Josh Barro argues that, without firing Derbyshire, it is near impossible to take serious any of the National Review‘s commentary on race (he cites in particular an article by Rich Lowry), since they apparently think someone like Derbyshire is worth publishing"
Education

Submission + - Study Analyzes Recent Grad's Unemployment by Major

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens writes
Hugh Pickens writes writes: "Michelle Singletary writes that a new report from the Georgetown Center on Education and the Workforce called “Hard Times: College Majors, Unemployment and Earnings: Not All College Degrees Are Created Equal” analyzes unemployment by major and shows that not enough students — and their families who are also taking on student loans — are asking what their college major is worth in the workforce. "Too many students aren’t sure what job they could get after four, five or even six years of studying a certain major and racking up education loans," writes Singletary. "Many aren’t getting on-the-job training while they are in school or during their semester or summer breaks. As a result, questions about employment opportunities or what type of job they have the skills to attain are met with blank stares or the typical, “'I don’t know.'" The reports found that the unemployment rate for recent graduates is highest in architecture (13.9 percent) because of the collapse of the construction and home-building industry and not surprisingly, unemployment rates are generally higher in non-technical majors (PDF), such as the arts (11.1 percent), humanities and liberal arts (9.4 percent), social science (8.9 percent) and law and public policy (8.1 percent). "I wouldn’t want to discourage people from pursuing a career they love, even if the pay isn’t very high. However, that choice should be made with the understanding of which job opportunities might be available and weighing what you can expect to earn annually against the cost of taking on debt to finance your education.""
Transportation

Submission + - TSA Makes $440K Annually in Loose Change

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens writes
Hugh Pickens writes writes: "NBC reports that airport travelers left behind $409,085.56 in loose change at security checkpoints in 2010 providing an additional source of funding for the Transportation Security Administration. “TSA puts (the leftover money) in a jar at security checkpoint, at the end of each shift they take it, count it, put it in an envelope and send it to the finance office," says TSA spokesperson Nico Melendez. "“It is amazing. All that change, it all adds up." Melendez adds that the money goes into the general operating budget for TSA that is typically used for technology, light bulbs or just overall general expenses. Rep. Jeff Miller (R-Fla.) has introduced legislation that would direct the TSA to transfer unclaimed money recovered at airport security checkpoints to the United Service Organizations (USO), a private nonprofit that operates centers for the military at 41 U.S. airports. “The congressman feels giving it to the USO to help with onsite airport service for active members of the military would be a good use for it," says Miller spokesperson Dan McFaul. The recovered change is not to be confused with the theft that occurs when TSA agents augment their salary by helping themselves to the contents of passengers’ luggage as it passes through security checkpoints. For example in 2009, a half dozen TSA agents at Miami International Airport were charged with grand theft after boosting an iPod, bottles of perfume, cameras, a GPS system, a Coach purse, and a Hewlett Packard Mini Notebook from passengers’ luggage as travelers at just this one airport reported as many as 1,500 items stolen, the majority of which were never recovered."
Google

Submission + - US Government Requests for Google User Data Jumps (latimes.com)

Submitted by mrquagmire
mrquagmire writes: The U.S. government wants your information. It's flooding Google with requests for personal information about users for criminal investigations, according to a so-called transparency report the Internet search giant released Tuesday. The number of such requests jumped 29% in six months, Google reported.

U.S. government agencies sent Google 5,950 criminal investigation requests during the first half of 2011 compared with 4,601 requests during the last six months of 2010. Google complied in part or completely with 93% of those requests which can include court orders and subpoenas.
Open Source

Submission + - Growl goes closed source (growl.info)

Submitted by para_droid
para_droid writes: Version 1.3 of the popular open source notification system for Mac OS X, Growl has surprised its users by going closed-source and only available for purchase on the Mac App Store. Any users who provide links to bugfixes and source for the previous version 1.2 are being banned from the discussion group, and their messages deleted. Could it be time for the community to create an OpenGrowl fork?
Idle

Submission + - Draft Horses Used to Lay Fiber-Optic Cable (vtdigger.org)

Submitted by
mysqlrocks
mysqlrocks writes: "In Vermont, FairPoint Communications has enlisted draft horses to help lay fiber-optic cable in remote locations. Vermont Gov. Peter Shumlin has pledged to bring bring broadband to every last mile by 2013, including many remote areas that have been neglected in the past. Private companies have been unwilling to invest in the expensive infrastructure needed to reach these areas. However, Vermont's congressional delegation helped to secure $410 million in federal money earmarked for broadband development and Vermont has partnered with private companies, like FairPoint, to bring high-speed Internet access to all Vermonters.

From the article:

The difficulty of getting cable to "every last mile," is where Fred, the cable-carrying draft horse, comes in.

"Hopefully it pays off," says Hastings.

"We could maybe get a four-wheeler in here," he continues, gesturing to the cleared swath of boggy, fern-studded terrain that he's working in today. But definitely not a truck, and Fred's impact is nearly invisible. Residents rarely complain about a draft horse tromping through their yards.

"

Comment Re:Java killer? (Score 1) 623

by johnthuss (#35807818) Attached to: Red Hat Uncloaks 'Java Killer': the Ceylon Project

When this project was started two years ago, it was probably a good idea. But now Scala has matured and has huge momentum.

Scala meets the need for a Java replacement and also provides compelling use-cases for switching, namely better concurrency support. Ceylon seems to abhor complexity while Scala welcomes it. But Scala's complexity is not essential; you can ignore it if you don't need it and use it if you do.

I think Ceylon's simplicity will prevent it from meeting the expectations of a lot of developers. Not to mention the other things it will be missing for a long time (even after they have a compiler and SDK) like IDE support and a wealth of libraries.

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