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Programming

An Interview With C++ Creator Bjarne Stroustrup 509

Posted by CmdrTaco from the add-an-extra-plus dept.
DevTool writes "Bjarne Stroustrup talks about the imminent C++0x standard and the forthcoming features it brings, the difficulties of standardizing programming languages in general, the calculated risks that the standards committee can afford to take with new features, and even his own New Year's resolutions."
Role Playing (Games)

Why BioWare's Star Wars MMO May Already Be Too Late 328

Posted by Soulskill from the i-find-your-lack-of-faith-disturbing dept.
Since the announcement of Star Wars: The Old Republic, many gamers have been hopeful that its high budget, respected development team and rich universe will be enough to provide a real challenge to the WoW juggernaut. An opinion piece at 1Up makes the case that BioWare's opportunity to do so may have already passed. Quoting: "While EA and BioWare Austin have the horsepower needed to at least draw even with World of Warcraft though, what we've seen so far has been worryingly conventional — even generic — given the millions being poured into development. Take the opening areas around Tython, which Mike Nelson describes in his most recent preview as being 'rudimentary,' owing to their somewhat generic, grind-driven quest design. Running around killing a set number of 'Flesh Raiders' in a relatively quiet village doesn't seem particularly epic, but that's the route BioWare Austin seems to be taking with the opening areas for the Jedi — what will surely be the most popular classes when The Old Republic is released. ... the real concern, though, is not so much in the quest design as in BioWare Austin's apparent willingness to play follow the leader. Whenever something becomes a big hit — be it a movie, game or book — there's always a mad scramble to replicate the formula; in World of Warcraft's case, that mad scramble has been going for six years now. "
Science

Why Published Research Findings Are Often False 453

Posted by samzenpus from the race-to-publish dept.
Hugh Pickens writes "Jonah Lehrer has an interesting article in the New Yorker reporting that all sorts of well-established, multiply confirmed findings in science have started to look increasingly uncertain as they cannot be replicated. This phenomenon doesn't yet have an official name, but it's occurring across a wide range of fields, from psychology to ecology and in the field of medicine, the phenomenon seems extremely widespread, affecting not only anti-psychotics but also therapies ranging from cardiac stents to Vitamin E and antidepressants. 'One of my mentors told me that my real mistake was trying to replicate my work,' says researcher Jonathon Schooler. 'He told me doing that was just setting myself up for disappointment.' For many scientists, the effect is especially troubling because of what it exposes about the scientific process. 'If replication is what separates the rigor of science from the squishiness of pseudoscience, where do we put all these rigorously validated findings that can no longer be proved?' writes Lehrer. 'Which results should we believe?' Francis Bacon, the early-modern philosopher and pioneer of the scientific method, once declared that experiments were essential, because they allowed us to 'put nature to the question' but it now appears that nature often gives us different answers. According to John Ioannidis, author of Why Most Published Research Findings Are False, the main problem is that too many researchers engage in what he calls 'significance chasing,' or finding ways to interpret the data so that it passes the statistical test of significance—the ninety-five-per-cent boundary invented by Ronald Fisher. 'The scientists are so eager to pass this magical test that they start playing around with the numbers, trying to find anything that seems worthy,'"
Microsoft

Silverlight 5 — Back From the Dead? 213

Posted by timothy from the undying-support dept.
Barence writes "When Microsoft executive Bob Muglia recently revealed that Microsoft saw HTML5 as the future for universal in-browser development while Silverlight was being repositioned as a native application development platform for Windows Phone 7 devices, most pundits saw this as an admission of defeat. Now Microsoft has released a beta of Silverlight 5, PC Pro's Tom Arah asks if Microsoft has managed to bring Silverlight back from the dead. With a flurry of Android and Linux-based tablets, smartphones, set-top boxes and other devices set to arrive on the market, Arah argues that Silverlight's time will come. 'Crucially, they will also want to integrate their desktop (Windows) and their main applications (Office and other WPF-based applications). Thanks to its work on HTML5, WPF and especially Silverlight, Microsoft and its army of desktop developers will be well set to deliver,' he argues."
Microsoft

Microsoft Builds JavaScript Malware Detection Tool 88

Posted by timothy from the canary-for-the-coalmine dept.
Trailrunner7 writes "As browser-based exploits and specifically JavaScript malware have shouldered their way to the top of the list of threats, browser vendors have been scrambling to find effective defenses to protect users. Few have been forthcoming, but Microsoft Research has developed a new tool called Zozzle that can be deployed in the browser and can detect JavaScript-based malware on the fly at a very high effectiveness rate. Zozzle is designed to perform static analysis of JavaScript code on a given site and quickly determine whether the code is malicious and includes an exploit. In order to be effective, the tool must be trained to recognize the elements that are common to malicious JavaScript, and the researchers behind it stress that it works best on de-obfuscated code."
Censorship

Apple Bans Android Magazine App From App Store 574

Posted by CmdrTaco from the every-day-a-little-more-evil dept.
recoiledsnake writes "Apple dialed its battle with Android up a notch today by banning an Android magazine app from its App Store, leaving no way for users to install the app on iPads, iPhones and iPod Touches without jailbreaking. The reason for rejection, as given by an Apple rep, was: 'You know... your magazine...It's just about Android.... we can't have that in our App Store.' The bi-monthly publication — the Android counterpart to an iPhone magazine Dixon began putting out earlier this year — launched Nov. 11. 'It's funny really because I don't think we would sell many magazines on Android through Apple App Store,' Dixon told Media Watch. 'But the question is where this is going.' This comes on the heels of Jobs lashing out at Android, calling it fragmented, and its patent attacks on Android."

Comment Re:we have the same policy at work (Score 1) 446

by mognuts4 (#34350174) Attached to: When Your Company Remote-Wipes Your Personal Phone
Also too, think of this: I've been using computers for about 20 years now. The norm, for 15 or so years, for the process of syncing is to put data onto something else. So, for a 15 year old typical sync process, my phone should have copied its music onto iTunes. So why would I *ever* expect the brilliant process of when syncing with software, for it to *wipe* the data. See the problem here? Put this in even simpler terms. Since when did the term "copy" ever mean "delete"? Or if you're a UNIX guy, when did "cp xyz abc" mean "rm -rf xyz"?

Comment Re:we have the same policy at work (Score 1) 446

by mognuts4 (#34349672) Attached to: When Your Company Remote-Wipes Your Personal Phone

I did have backups for my data. And I had backups of my music: *on my phone.*

Any other normal device would just keep them on the phone, the only place I listen to my music. Even if I did manage/listen to it on my computer, any other normal device would let me simply drag my music and copy it on to my computer. Easy, simple, no headaches: 2 steps--done.

Thank god I saw this coming and had all my music purchased in non-drm mp3s or ripped myself. I knew I'd get reamed one day. I only lost a small amount of music. My apps will probably get screwed though. Haven't attempted to restore them yet.

Comment Re:we have the same policy at work (Score 1) 446

by mognuts4 (#34330454) Attached to: When Your Company Remote-Wipes Your Personal Phone

This is the iPhone. Backups don't work as I found out recently. I had to reformat my computer without backing up. Install a fresh copy of iTunes. Connect the iPhone with all my music and apps and data on it.

Gone. Fuck apple.

Sorry, didn't mean to take it out on you. Just letting you know that with any other phone, that good piece of advice rings true. But we're talking about the magical, superior, Apple way:

Where when you sync your phone with the desktop software, it WIPES YOUR GODDAMN DATA OFF YOUR PHONE.
Music

Do You Really Need a Discrete Sound Card? 520

Posted by Soulskill from the either-that-or-you-don't dept.
crookedvulture writes "Integrated audio has become a common freebie on motherboards, causing many to question whether there's any need to have a sound card. Tech Report took a closer look at the issue by testing the latest integrated Realtek codec against a couple of sound cards: Asus' $30 Xonar DG and its considerably more expensive $280 Xense cousin. Everything from gaming performance to signal quality is explored, and it's the blind listening tests that prove most revealing. The integrated solution is obviously flawed, and in a bit of a surprise, the cheaper Xonar is the one most preferred. Discrete sound cards certainly have their benefits, and you don't need to spend a lot to get something that sounds a lot better than the average motherboard."
The Internet

Facebook Inbox Throws Blow At Google... No Flinch? 207

Posted by CmdrTaco from the there-can-be-only-two dept.
CWmike writes "Facebook's new messaging system may not be a Gmail killer, but it's definitely another blow in the growing battle between two Internet bigwigs. Facebook took the wraps off what it's calling a modern messaging system on Monday. The new system is designed to handle the convergence of different kinds of messages — Facebook messages, IMs, SMS and e-mail — and bring them together under a single social umbrella. The system also allows users to have a facebook.com email address, though it will work with other e-mail systems like Gmail and Yahoo. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is adamant that it's not intended to replace e-mail, but industry analysts say the new system will almost certainly draw some users away from Yahoo mail and Google's Gmail. Meanwhile, Google CEO Eric Schmidt told Computerworld that he's not worried at all about Facebook's new 'Social Inbox.' 'More competition is always good because it makes the market larger,' Schmidt said, charging that journalists were hyping the rivalry: 'As a group, you all are focused on the competition rather than the market getting larger. It brings more people in. We are all served by having everybody in the world get online.'"
Software

CDE — Making Linux Portability Easy 385

Posted by timothy from the namespace-collision dept.
ihaque writes "A Stanford researcher, Philip Guo, has developed a tool called CDE to automatically package up a Linux program and all its dependencies (including system-level libraries, fonts, etc!) so that it can be run out of the box on another Linux machine without a lot of complicated work setting up libraries and program versions or dealing with dependency version hell. He's got binaries, source code, and a screencast up. Looks to be really useful for large cluster/cloud deployments as well as program sharing. Says Guo, 'CDE is a tool that automatically packages up the Code, Data, and Environment involved in running any Linux command so that it can execute identically on another computer without any installation or configuration. The only requirement is that the other computer have the same hardware architecture (e.g., x86) and major kernel version (e.g., 2.6.X) as yours. CDE allows you to easily run programs without the dependency hell that inevitably occurs when attempting to install software or libraries. You can use CDE to allow your colleagues to reproduce and build upon your computational experiments, to quickly deploy prototype software to a compute cluster, and to submit executable bug reports.'"
Java

The Coming War Over the Future of Java 583

Posted by Soulskill from the can't-we-all-just-get-along dept.
snydeq writes "Fatal Exception's Neil McAllister writes about what could be the end of the Java Community Process as we know it. With the Apache Software Foundation declaring war on Oracle over Java, the next likely step would be a vote of no confidence in the JCP, which, if the ASF can convince enough members to follow suit, 'could effectively unravel the Java community as a whole,' McAllister writes, with educators, academics, and researchers having little incentive to remain loyal to an Oracle-controlled platform. 'Independent developers could face the toughest decisions of all. Even if the JCP dissolves, many developers will be left with few alternatives,' with .Net offering little advantage, and Perl, Python, and Ruby unable to match Java's performance. The dark horse? Google Go — a language Google might just fast-track in light of its patent suit with Oracle over Android." Reader Revorm adds related news that Oracle and Apple have announced the OpenJDK project for OS X.
Firefox

Firefox 4 Regains Speed Mojo With No. 2 Placing 98

Posted by timothy from the greased-lizard-not-so-terrible dept.
CWmike writes "With the release of Firefox 4 Beta 7 this week, Mozilla has returned to near the top spot in browser performance rankings. According to SunSpider JavaScript benchmark suite tests run by Computerworld, the new browser is about three times faster than the current production version of Firefox in rendering JavaScript, and lags behind only Opera among the top five browser makers. Mozilla launched Firefox 4 Beta 7, a preview that includes all the features slated to make it into the final, polished version next year, on Wednesday. Beta 7 was the first to include Mozilla's new JavaScript JIT (Just In Time) compiler, dubbed 'JagerMonkey,' which shot the browser's performance into the No. 2 slot behind the alpha of Opera 11."

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