Forgot your password?

Close
typodupeerror
Programming

+ - Fiddle Salad Brings Modern Web Development Languages to the Browser->

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes "Web development has evolved from basic HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Now a plethora of new languages enable client-side web applications to be developed faster. Many of these, including CoffeeScript and SASS, come from the Rails community, where preprocessors first gained popularity. Editors and development environments have lagged behind in supporting and integrating these new languages. Fiddle Salad's live editor allows web developers to learn and experiment with these new languages in the browser. Besides HTML, CSS, and JavaScript with jQuery and prefix-free included, it also supports popular languages like CoffeeeScript, SASS with Compass, LESS, HAML, Jade, Stylus, and Python."
Link to Original Source
Government

+ - CA City Fails to Collect $17.6M in Parking Fines->

Submitted by
itwbennett
itwbennett writes "Long Beach, California has $17.6 million in outstanding parking fines. To blame: Old software that requires too much manual intervention, city auditor Laura Doud said in a report released last week. The ironically named AutoProcess system, which is also used by the city of Pasadena, 'isn't integrated with the California Department of Motor Vehicles, meaning that information about who owns a particular vehicle has to be manually loaded into AutoProcess,' according to Doud's report."
Link to Original Source
Programming

+ - 10 Hard Truths Developers Must Learn To Accept->

Submitted by
snydeq
snydeq writes "From scope creep to bitrot to users with minds all their own, programming offers an array of bitter pills to swallow, writes InfoWorld's Peter Wayner. 'Sure, we might wish our every effort had enduring impact, that the services our apps rely on would be rock-solid, that we would get the respect we deserve, if only from those who should know better. But the cold, harsh realities of programming get in the way. That doesn't mean the effort isn't worth it. But it does mean we have some hard truths to face. Here are 10 aspects of programming developers must learn to live with.'"
Link to Original Source

Comment: Re:Bandwidth-per-user! (Score 1) 146

by vellorean (#39471355) Attached to: Huawei Claims 30Gbps Wireless 'Beyond LTE'

They achieved that with "much greater bandwidth". The reason why bandwidth is restricted in current systems is because cell stations have to support thousands of users simultaneously providing 30 Gbps even with all sorts of multi-antenna systems with signal processing seems unlikely for unicast systems; it might be possible for downlink multicast, though.

There should be a full stop after "simultaneously".

Comment: Bandwidth-per-user! (Score 1) 146

by vellorean (#39471339) Attached to: Huawei Claims 30Gbps Wireless 'Beyond LTE'
They achieved that with "much greater bandwidth". The reason why bandwidth is restricted in current systems is because cell stations have to support thousands of users simultaneously providing 30 Gbps even with all sorts of multi-antenna systems with signal processing seems unlikely for unicast systems; it might be possible for downlink multicast, though.
Games

+ - Do games really need escort quests?-> 1

Submitted by kube00
kube00 writes "Escort quests, something that has become insanely popular in games for the last two generations of consoles. Goozernation has put together a list of games with escort quests, include, ICO, Dead Rising, Resident Evil 4, and Enslaved, The problem here is there is no standard for games, most of the time the NPC is a useless burden and makes the game almost unplayable. Should developers due away with the escort missions? Should there be some sort of standard?"
Link to Original Source
Earth

+ - SPAM: Search For Alien Life on 86 Planets Begins

Submitted by
liqs8143
liqs8143 writes "Astronomers from United States have begun searching for alien life on 86 possible earth like planets. A massive radio telescope that listens for signs of alien life is being used for this project. These 86 planets are short-listed from 1235 possible planets detected by NASA's Kepler telescope.

The mission is part of the Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI) project, launched in the mid 1980s.

A giant dish pointing towards each of the 86 planets will gather 24 hours of data, starting from this week. A total of 42 telescope dishes, known as Allen Telescope Array (ATA) cost 50 million dollar."
Link to Original Source
Perl

+ - Perl 5.14 Released->

Submitted by
chromatic
chromatic writes "Pumpking Jesse Vincent has just released Perl 5.14, the latest stable version of the venerable Perl 5 programming language. The list of changes in Perl 5.14 includes several enhancements, including performance tuning, Unicode improvements, and updates to the core libraries and documentation. Perl 5.16 is on track for a release next April."
Link to Original Source
NASA

+ - NASA: Moon's Scars Tell Its Tale

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes "It turns out the moon is similar to an aging prize fighter. Its weary face gives away its somewhat rough history. According to new research from NASA and California Institute of Technology, the moon's damages which lay all across its rough surface give scientists an idea of its four-and-a-half billion year history. The scientists say the moon's impact craters, dark plains left behind by volcanic eruptions give them an idea of how it was shaped."
Hardware

+ - The Rules of Thumb for Tech Purchasing 1

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens writes
Hugh Pickens writes writes "Sam Grobart writes in the NYT that buying gadgets can sometimes be like buying a car; it requires sorting through options because the reality is that most of us are usually dealing with a finite amount of money to spend, and that means making trade-offs. Grobart puts forward his set of rules for getting the most for your tech dollar when buying computers, cameras, cellphones, data plans, and service contracts. For example, Rule No. 1 — Pay for PC Memory, not speed. "When buying and configuring a new computer, companies often give the option of upgrading the processor and adding more memory, or RAM. If it is an either/or proposition, go for the RAM," writes Grobart. "Processors are usually fast enough for most people; it is the RAM that can be the bottleneck." Other rules include "Pay for the messaging, not the minutes," "Pay for the components, not the cables," "Pay for the sensor size, not the megapixels," and "Pay for the TV size, not the refresh rate." Kevin Kelly expands on Grobart's rules of thumb with "Pay for the glass, not the shutters," Pay for reliability, not mileage," and "Pay for comfort, not for weight." Any others?"
PlayStation (Games)

+ - Amazon Servers Used in Sony Playstation Hack ->

Submitted by
the simurgh
the simurgh writes "Amazon servers may have been used to carry out the massive Playstation hack that compromised the personal information of more than 100 million Playstation Network users. According to a report from Bloomberg, sources close to the ongoing investigation say the attack was mounted from Amazon Web Service's cloud computing platform."
Link to Original Source
Books

+ - Book review: Linux Shell Scripting Cookbook

Submitted by vellorean
vellorean writes "I have been reading Linux Shell Scripting Cookbook by Sarath Lakshman, published by Packt, for a while. While most people I know learn shell scripts themselves, I was looking to refresh my concepts a little as well as have a reference lying around on the table for fast access. Here is my review of the book.

First of all, let me remark by saying that shell scripting is something learned more on a need basis than as a tool to solve the main problem. People would seldom write shell scripts as standalone programs (exceptions exist). However, what makes shell scripting invaluable to know is the fact that knowing some tricks can save several minutes, or hours, of work by automating and simplifying certain tasks, generally (but not restricted to) file management and data processing. Linux Shell Scripting Cookbook does go quite far in pursuing this goal, and is appropriate for both beginners who are looking to gain dexterity in shell scripting, as well as intermediate users who wish to polish their skills. The book also can double up as a quick reference, though I would argue that the "Advanced Bash Scripting Guide" would suit that more.

At the outset, the author clarifies that the focus will be on Bash. This, people may or may not like, but the fact that bash has become ubiquitous in terms of the available shells on Unix-like systems today, starting out with bash is not a bad thing to do. Besides, learning other shell scripting languages while knowing bash isn't too hard, since the paradigm remains the same.

Let's go through the books from the aspects I found most relevant.

Organization

The book is organized into chapters based more on utility than scripting concepts themselves, although the language aspects are brought onto the reader gradually. For instance, the examples in the first chapter focus more on the basic data elements (variables, arrays, functions etc.) as well as operators (for numbers, files etc.), and all the examples demonstrate simple usage of these concepts, and he further chapters build upon these in a gradual manner.

At the same time, if he reader has some familiarity with shell scripting and needs to only refresh or learn a certain concept, he/she needs to just read the relevant chapter. It is not too difficult to grasp the examples of the later chapters, provided some basic shell knowledge is assumed.

Content and Presentation

A positive trait in the presentation of this book is that it is all based on practical everyday examples which, with minor adaptation, can be used by many for their own daily tasks. For instance, there are several examples which describe searching for and processing files, which, I'd imagine, many users would want to do on a regular basis. Thus, providing realistic examples allows the book to double its utility. The language and approach used is simple and conversational, and the presentation is very clear, with each idea being described as a problem statement followed by a "How to do it" section with the actual code, and ending with a discussion of the nitty-gritties of the code. It is easy to go for a quick scan for those in a hurry, while those who with to read in more detail will not be disappointed either.

The book also covers a wide array of applications. For instance, there are examples on automating fetching web pages and processing them, demonstrations of parsing and simplifying and even some queries around databases wrapped around in shell. It also spans to utilities and tasks connected to statistics, backups, compression, version control and many more.

Breadth and Depth

The book goes into a fair amount of detail in terms of describing the shell scripting concept under consideration. The examples used go into a fair amount of detail in order to describe to the user all the aspects involved in the method or command being used. The concepts described are fairly complete, and would be sufficient for the reader to use immediately or with just a little bit of fine tuning. In terms of breadth, the book covers most of the features of shell scripting while also describing the various facilities the shell provides access to in a Unix-like environment. Thus, the book does not disappoint in this front either.

In summary...

In summary, probably the only thing I'd have liked to see more of is some emphasis on how to write more efficient shell scripts. Granted, most of the shell scripts described in the book are very simple and succinct, but a some words on how loops can be made better, or how to spot situations where pipes are not needed to solve a problem etc. might have been a nice addition. Some explanation of differences with dash, tcsh, zsh etc. might also have been nice, since a lot of users have different default shells. But all this isn't going to prevent me from giving this book a high rating, since it delivers quite well on the promises it makes at the beginning.

This is definitely a good book to have near your desk, and kudos to the author for having taken the effort to put it together. I would highly recommend it to the beginner and occasional shell user for a thorough read, and to an intermediate to have on his/her desk for borrowing the cool scripting ideas and applications the author has written in this book."

Today is the first day of the rest of your life.

Close