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Education

Computer Games and Traditional CS Courses 173

Posted by Soulskill from the terrible-terrible-games dept.
drroman22 writes "Schools are working to put real-world relevance into computer science education by integrating video game development into traditional CS courses. Quoting: 'Many CS educators recognized and took advantage of younger generations' familiarity and interests for computer video games and integrate related contents into their introductory programming courses. Because these are the first courses students encounter, they build excitement and enthusiasm for our discipline. ... Much of this work reported resounding successes with drastically increased enrollments and student successes. Based on these results, it is well recognized that integrating computer gaming into CS1 and CS2 (CS1/2) courses, the first programming courses students encounter, is a promising strategy for recruiting and retaining potential students." While a focus on games may help stir interest, it seems as though game development studios are as yet unimpressed by most game-related college courses. To those who have taken such courses or considered hiring those who have: what has your experience been?
Programming

Platform Independent C++ OS Library? 310

Posted by timothy from the one-to-rule-them-all dept.
quench writes "Hello! I have been away from Windows and Linux application software for 5 years or so, doing mainly C-like embedded C++ programming. Now, I am about to start a project emulating embedded hardware on Windows. Been there, doing #ifdef WIN32 and #ifdef LINUX stuff, don't really want to go there any more. What I actually need is a platform independent lib covering Windows and Linux variants to handle sockets, IPC and threads abstractions. And a rock solid but simple embedded database to emulate flash memory. My reflex said, go for ACE and Berkeley-DB. Tell me, am I out of time? Am I missing something new and trendy, easier to use and better? Did time stand still?"
Software

Opera Dominates CNET Survey of "Underdog" Web Browsers 173

Posted by timothy from the html's-great-blessing-is-heterogeneity dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Whether you consider Opera an underdog browser or not, it came out on top in a feature on CNet this weekend. It was up against 'underdog Web browsers' Camino, K-Meleon, Shiira and Arora in a piece loosely aimed at determining whether these browsers are yet ready to steal significant numbers of users from Firefox, Safari, IE etc. Interesting most to me, however, is that it transpires that Shiira, the Mac browser from Japan, is one of the fastest browsers on the planet, beating the original Chrome v1.0, Firefox 3.5 and more in its benchmark tests."
Programming

New Languages Vs. Old For Parallel Programming 321

Posted by timothy from the nothing-new-will-ever-happen dept.
joabj writes "Getting the most from multicore processors is becoming an increasingly difficult task for programmers. DARPA has commissioned a number of new programming languages, notably X10 and Chapel, written especially for developing programs that can be run across multiple processors, though others see them as too much of a departure to ever gain widespread usage among coders."
Google

Google Considers Taking Beta Tag Off Gmail 180

Posted by CmdrTaco from the in-your-lifetime dept.
Barence writes "Google is considering removing the beta tag from Gmail — and other online services — a mere five years after it was first launched. Google has become somewhat synonymous with seemingly endless beta cycles. Many of the company's most famous services, including Gmail, Docs, and Calendar all still carry the beta tag. Google now admits the eternal beta cycles could be damaging consumer and business confidence in its online apps. 'It's a minor annoyance and something you'll see addressed in the not-too-distant future.'"
Medicine

Virus Tamed To Attack Cancer, Cancer Drugs To Treat Alcoholism 128

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the and-alcohol-to-treat-the-common-cold dept.
ScienceDaily is reporting that scientists at Oxford University seem to have adapted a virus so that it attacks cancer cells but does not hurt healthy cells. "Adenovirus is a DNA virus widely used in cancer therapy but which causes hepatic disease in mice. Professor Len Seymour and colleagues found that introducing sites into the virus genome that are recognized by microRNA 122 leads to hepatic degradation of important viral mRNA, thereby diminishing the virus' ability to adversely affect the liver, while maintaining its ability to replicate in and kill tumor cells." Relatedly, cancer drugs already approved for use may be cross-functional as a treatment for alcohol addiction. "Now, the researchers show that flies and mice treated with erlotinib also grow more sensitive to alcohol. What's more, rats given the cancer-fighting drug spontaneously consumed less alcohol when it was freely available to them. Their taste for another rewarding beverage -- sugar water -- was unaffected."

Comment Re:My solutions was to cheat (Score 1) 811

by asg1 (#28066859) Attached to: How To Help a Friend With an MMO Addiction?
I can attest from personal experience that nothing made me move on from a game faster than cheating. I always stumble across some means to cheat the game... and because of my poor will power I always try the cheat. Upon playing the game with various cheats enabled, the game quickly becomes boring and utterly pointless.

Comment Re:Sad day (Score 1) 240

by asg1 (#27881553) Attached to: R.I.P. MS-DEBUG 1981 - 2009

The Debug.exe was actually my first contact to programming and the first language I learned, was x86 assembler.

Pfffftttt x86 assembly is for n00bs.... MY first programming language was....

oh hell who am I kidding. I started with C++ and thought THAT was hard. Starting your programming career learning x86 assembly had to have been quite a feat.

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