facetiousprogrammer writes "I have been working for several years at the same company. As part of the 2007 goal, my team is required to get the Brainbench J2EE certification. We have a good knowledge of the Java programming language itself but very little exposure to J2EE. Other teams in the company are using J2EE daily — hence the push for certification. What would be the best approach to be successful in getting the J2EE certification knowing that we won't work or get formal training on J2EE? Is it a desperate cause?"

jeremy_white writes "I'm happy to announce that we've shipped version 6.0 of CrossOver, for both the Mac and Linux. We have a full changelog available; highlights are are Outlook 2003 and support for games, notably World of Warcraft and Steam based games. I can attest that World of Warcrac...er craft is the most well tested application we have ever supported. It's exciting to watch the Wine project progress — it's a great and growing community of developers (which is a good thing, as we're now all too busy grinding Honor in Alterac Valley to keep up our pace of contributions :-/)."

An anonymous reader wonders: "We have been hearing promising predictions like 'This year will be the year of Linux on the desktop' for the last decade. However, the Linux of today seems to be as far away as ever from realizing the expectations of mass adoption we once had for it, without significant growth in home usage since the late 90s. Clearly, if Linux is unable to reproduce a third of Firefox's end user uptake over a much longer time-frame, there are deficiencies with the direction the GNU/Linux/X/Gnome/KDE system has taken. Of course, almost all free software and desktop efforts and development remain unquestioningly oriented around Linux. Other free-desktop operating system projects which take different and innovative approaches like ReactOS, AROS, Mona and Syllable remain comparatively starved of developers and interest. An often cited reason for using a non-Microsoft OS is to avoid a monoculture, but free-desktop efforts have created a total monoculture around developing and promoting Linux, despite a decade of failure in supplanting Microsoft's proprietorial OSes with it. Why are free-desktop developers neglecting to consider an alternative to the penguin?"

An anonymous reader writes "My friend Jake just bought a PS3, and he wanted to install Linux on it. Since he didn't know much about Linux, it was my responsibility to help him with it. His requirements — Install a distribution which is easy to maintain and run. He wanted to make the full use of his Linux install, so he needed a distro which wouldn't hold him back with frustrating problems. The only solution was using a distro which had a better package management system, and did its work without bothering you, the end user. Having used Gentoo extensively, I knew that this would be the solution to my problems. What follows is full install instructions, plus personal opinions, on why Gentoo is better than Fedora Core or YDL on the PS3"

paxmaniac writes "iRobot has announced Create: a new fully programmable mobile robot based on the Roomba robotic vacuum cleaner. People have been hacking the Roomba since the day it came out. Well, hacking just got a whole lot easier. A command module for the Create provides a programmable 8-bit Atmel micro controller, four DB-9 ports for your own sensors, and a number of sample programs that can be compiled and uploaded to the command module via USB. Botmag has more details and some cool applications. This looks like the perfect robotics platform for hobbyists, schools, and universities alike."

An anonymous reader writes "The Washington Post is reporting that Microsoft received help from the National Security Agency in protecting the Vista operating system from worms and viruses. The Agency aimed to help as many people as they could, and chose to assist Vista with good reason: the OS still has a 90 percent lock on the PC market, with some 600 million Vista users expected by 2010. From the article: 'The Redmond, Wash., software maker declined to be specific about the contributions the NSA made to secure the Windows operating system ... Microsoft said this is not the first time it has sought help from the NSA. For about four years, Microsoft has tapped the spy agency for security expertise in reviewing its operating systems, including the Windows XP consumer version and the Windows Server 2003 for corporate customers.'"

Vitamin_Boy writes "Sling has a new product out, the 'SlingCatcher.' It sends video from the PC to the TV and does it for $200. Oh, and it works with iTunes. Will this undercut Apple's iTV? The Ars Technica article thinks it might: 'The SlingCatcher... is media-agnostic. It doesn't care what codec videos are encoded with, nor whether or not they have been purchased from an approved online store. It is designed to take video output and stream it, which means that you could use the SlingCatcher with video purchased from other online services, such as the iTunes Store or CinemaNow. In this way, the SlingCatcher may turn out to be a one-size-fits-all solution in a field populated with specialty products.'"

360 gamers have Lost Planet to look forward to this week, but PS3 and Wii owners have things to smile about as well. Today's virtual console game releases feature the Hudson classic title Dungeon Explorer, as well as the shmup Gradius and the sidescrolling shooter Soldier Blade. PS3 owners will get six great downloadable titles sometime 'in early 2007', courtesy of Midway and Sony Online Entertainment. "The six games announced in the deal are Mortal Kombat II, Gauntlet II, Joust, Rampage World Tour, Rampart, and Championship Sprint. Sony Online said those titles were chosen specifically for their multiplayer components, as the company is adding online play for all six." Update: 01/08 22:32 GMT by Z : Oops. Missed Ms. Pac-Man on XBLA this week.

Scott Walters writes "Many of the recipes in SQL Hacks will improve the SQL you write day to day, and many will give you the confidence to attempt much more involved tasks with SQL. Other recipes will rarely if ever be needed, but make for a entertaining and education reading in a similar way that "worse case survival scenario" books do — SQL is pitted against the most difficult analysis tasks just as survival scenario books pit humans against pavement and lions. SQL Hacks fits well in the Hacks series, which raises the bar on advanced books by offering large, eclectic sets of tricks for problems that an unambitious person (a non-hacker) wouldn't ever push technology hard enough to run into. Put another way, the questions answered in a good Hacks book are ones that would get a "good question" comment rather than a an "RTFM!" response. It does a good job continuing where O'Reilly's SQL Cookbook left off, which is always difficult with two books written at slightly different times by different authors. Still, it's harder to review a Hacks book than a Learning book as, with hacks, the sky is the limit, and the reader will always find herself wishing for more. To this end, I hope O'Reilly continues to publish newer editions of their various Hacks books, drawing in more and more content in each edition, and identifying recipes that might better serve in the Cookbook counterpart." Read the rest of Scott's review.

Drakewolf writes to tell us that despite the many failed attempts to bridge the gap between the PC and home entertainment systems, AMD has released several new products at CES under their LIVE! brand. The centerpiece was the AMD LIVE! Home Cinema, an all-in-one device that combines a set-top cable box, stereo receiver, DVD player, digital video recorder, and a PC.

bvc writes "Marucs Ranum notes that 'It's really hard to tell the difference between a program that works and one that just appears to work.' He explains that he just recently found a buffer overflow in Firewall Toolkit (FWTK), code that he wrote back in 1994. How do you go about making sure your code is secure? Especially if you have to write in a language like C or C++?"

yavori writes "Internet Explorer 7 has kicked in at last on all MS Windows OS running PCs because of the fact M$ decided to force it's users to migrate through update. In fact this has started a IE7 Web Developers Nightmare. The article actually explains that most of the small company B2C sites may just fall from grace because of IE7 incompatibility. One of the coolest thing IE7 is unable to do is actually processing form data when clicked on an INPUT field of TYPE IMG... which is pretty uncool for those using entire payment processes with such INPUT fields."

Zrop writes "AppleInsider is reporting that Apple has been working on OS-level integration of an geographical mapping technology as an integral part of Leopard, its next-generation OS. The technology is rumoured to employ GPS functionality. Will GPS chips make Apple iPod phones and MacBooks location aware? Users would be able to post information at a location, hanging in the air, ready to be browsed by people passing by. Imagine getting highly relevant messages, without even pressing a button, simply because you are in the vicinity and your preferences match the content of the post."