Slashdot Mirror

Lucas123 writes "The impact from the monsoonal flooding in Thailand over the past three months is now being felt by users as computer system manufacturers are unable to meet supply needs. Lenovo told its corporate customers this week that is has run out of a number of drives including several types of 7200rpm and 5400rpm HDDs. 'Akin to the hysteria when banks defaulted in the 1930[s], PC orders across the industry are being placed for which HD supply does not exist,' a Lenovo rep wrote to his clients. IDC this week said the HDD shortages that have resulted from the flooding of four major Thailand industrial parks will likely be felt into 2013. Western Digital and Toshiba have been hit the hardest. PC shipments are also expected to fall short by 3.8 million units in the first quarter of 2012 due to component supply shortages. Meanwhile, there has been some indication of retail HDD price stabilization, but for some of the most popular hard drives prices continue to soar."

snydeq writes "Fatal Exception's Neil McAllister writes in favor of new programming languages, given the difficulty of upgrading existing, popular languages. 'Whenever a new programming language is announced, a certain segment of the developer population always rolls its eyes and groans that we have quite enough to choose from already,' McAllister writes. 'But once a language reaches a certain tipping point of popularity, overhauling it to include support for new features, paradigms, and patterns is easier said than done.' PHP 6, Perl 6, Python 3, ECMAScript 4 — 'the lesson from all of these examples is clear: Programming languages move slowly, and the more popular a language is, the slower it moves. It is far, far easier to create a new language from whole cloth than it is to convince the existing user base of a popular language to accept radical changes.'"

snydeq writes "Fatal Exception's Neil McAllister writes in favor of new programming languages, given the difficulty of upgrading existing, popular languages. 'Whenever a new programming language is announced, a certain segment of the developer population always rolls its eyes and groans that we have quite enough to choose from already,' McAllister writes. 'But once a language reaches a certain tipping point of popularity, overhauling it to include support for new features, paradigms, and patterns is easier said than done.' PHP 6, Perl 6, Python 3, ECMAScript 4 — 'the lesson from all of these examples is clear: Programming languages move slowly, and the more popular a language is, the slower it moves. It is far, far easier to create a new language from whole cloth than it is to convince the existing user base of a popular language to accept radical changes.'"

New submitter squideatingdough writes "On InfoWorld, Robert X. Cringely covers a recent case of a blogger accused of libel and defamation. The federal judge ruled that journalists warrant more protection from libel suits than bloggers, but it is obvious from the article that bloggers' rights can vary by state, depending on the 'shield laws' in force." Reader blindseer adds a link to this AP article on the case, and asks "If the government can define who is part of the press, and therefore gets First Amendment protections, then where does that place the freedom of the press?" The slippery slope is a steep one; even some relatively open societies require licensure for journalists (visiting ones included) with predictable results. (And the Labour Party would like to see a similar system in the UK.)

alphadogg writes "A Cornell University professor is calling the controversial Carrier IQ smartphone software revelations a privacy disaster. 'This is my worst nightmare,' says Stephen Wicker, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at Cornell. 'As a professor who studies electronic security, this is everything that I have been working against for the last 10 years. It is an utterly appalling invasion of privacy with immense potential for manipulation and privacy theft that requires immediate federal intervention.'" Read on for a grab-bag of other news about the ongoing story of Carrier IQ's spyware. Federal intervention is already on the menu; new submitter mitcheli writes "Following the video from Trevor Eckhart on Youtube after the filing of the Cease and Desist letter and subsequent reply by the EFF and apology letter (as reported on Slashdot), Senator Franken of the Subcommittee on Privacy Technology and the Law asks some rather pointed questions."

Franken has more reason, apparently, to look into this than might legislators in other countries; an anonymous reader submits news that Cambridge researchers have found the software to be confined to (or at least only confirmed in) American customers' phones. From their report: "We performed an analysis on our dataset of 5572 Android smartphones that volunteers from all over the world helped us create. From those 5572 devices, only 21 were found to be running the software, all of them in the US and Puerto Rico. The affected carriers we observed were AT&T, Boost Mobile and Sprint.
We found no evidence of the Carrier IQ software running on Android devices in any other country."

Another anonymous reader suggests that "Apart from anything else, the fundamental mistake that Carrier IQ made was attempting to silence a developer using a heavy-handed legal threat. Certainly this was the tipping point in terms of bring the whole incident to the public's attention."

Like apparently begets like; reader adeelarshad82 writes "Not surprisingly, the Carrier IQ controversy has resulted in some legal action. Class-action lawsuits have been filed in California and Missouri that accuse Carrier IQ, as well as Samsung and HTC, of violating federal wiretap laws. The California case was filed on behalf of four smartphone users with HTC and Samsung devices and accuses the companies of violating the Federal Wiretap Act, which prohibits the unauthorized interception or illegal use of electronic communications, and California's Unfair Business Practice Act."

Finally, GMGruman writes with the cautionary note that Carrier IQ and Facebook pose "the least of your privacy threats": "[S]o far these forms of monitoring anonymize the data, so an individual's actual privacy is not invaded. And while people fret over these potential invasions, a more pernicious privacy invasion is under way, one that monitors actual individuals and then uses that information to try to direct their behavior. For example, car insurers give monitoring boxes to customers to track their driving behavior and offer a discount if it is 'good.' Of course, the flip side is higher rates or no coverage if the black box decides you are "bad." And, as this blog post points out, this is just one of many such 'Big Brother corporation' efforts out there that give significant power to insurers and others who have a history of abusing personal information, such as for redlining and coverage denial."

alphadogg writes "A Cornell University professor is calling the controversial Carrier IQ smartphone software revelations a privacy disaster. 'This is my worst nightmare,' says Stephen Wicker, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at Cornell. 'As a professor who studies electronic security, this is everything that I have been working against for the last 10 years. It is an utterly appalling invasion of privacy with immense potential for manipulation and privacy theft that requires immediate federal intervention.'" Read on for a grab-bag of other news about the ongoing story of Carrier IQ's spyware. Federal intervention is already on the menu; new submitter mitcheli writes "Following the video from Trevor Eckhart on Youtube after the filing of the Cease and Desist letter and subsequent reply by the EFF and apology letter (as reported on Slashdot), Senator Franken of the Subcommittee on Privacy Technology and the Law asks some rather pointed questions."

Franken has more reason, apparently, to look into this than might legislators in other countries; an anonymous reader submits news that Cambridge researchers have found the software to be confined to (or at least only confirmed in) American customers' phones. From their report: "We performed an analysis on our dataset of 5572 Android smartphones that volunteers from all over the world helped us create. From those 5572 devices, only 21 were found to be running the software, all of them in the US and Puerto Rico. The affected carriers we observed were AT&T, Boost Mobile and Sprint.
We found no evidence of the Carrier IQ software running on Android devices in any other country."

Another anonymous reader suggests that "Apart from anything else, the fundamental mistake that Carrier IQ made was attempting to silence a developer using a heavy-handed legal threat. Certainly this was the tipping point in terms of bring the whole incident to the public's attention."

Like apparently begets like; reader adeelarshad82 writes "Not surprisingly, the Carrier IQ controversy has resulted in some legal action. Class-action lawsuits have been filed in California and Missouri that accuse Carrier IQ, as well as Samsung and HTC, of violating federal wiretap laws. The California case was filed on behalf of four smartphone users with HTC and Samsung devices and accuses the companies of violating the Federal Wiretap Act, which prohibits the unauthorized interception or illegal use of electronic communications, and California's Unfair Business Practice Act."

Finally, GMGruman writes with the cautionary note that Carrier IQ and Facebook pose "the least of your privacy threats": "[S]o far these forms of monitoring anonymize the data, so an individual's actual privacy is not invaded. And while people fret over these potential invasions, a more pernicious privacy invasion is under way, one that monitors actual individuals and then uses that information to try to direct their behavior. For example, car insurers give monitoring boxes to customers to track their driving behavior and offer a discount if it is 'good.' Of course, the flip side is higher rates or no coverage if the black box decides you are "bad." And, as this blog post points out, this is just one of many such 'Big Brother corporation' efforts out there that give significant power to insurers and others who have a history of abusing personal information, such as for redlining and coverage denial."

snydeq writes "InfoWorld's Andrew Glover provides an in-depth comparison of Engine Yard and Heroku, two cloud-based, platform-as-a-service offerings for Ruby development. 'To put it simply, Heroku will appeal more to developers and Engine Yard will appeal to operations folks. Consequently, when evaluating the two platforms, one's choice usually comes down to what's more important: Heroku's rapid deployment via a hands-off infrastructure, or Engine Yard's total control over all aspects of application deployment, provisioning, and monitoring.'"

snydeq writes "InfoWorld's Andrew Glover provides an in-depth comparison of Engine Yard and Heroku, two cloud-based, platform-as-a-service offerings for Ruby development. 'To put it simply, Heroku will appeal more to developers and Engine Yard will appeal to operations folks. Consequently, when evaluating the two platforms, one's choice usually comes down to what's more important: Heroku's rapid deployment via a hands-off infrastructure, or Engine Yard's total control over all aspects of application deployment, provisioning, and monitoring.'"

snydeq writes "Fatal Exception's Neil McAllister discusses why code analysis and similar metrics provide little insight into what really makes an effective software development team, in the wake of a new scorecard system employed at IBM. 'Code metrics are fine if all you care about is raw code production. But what happens to all that code once it's written? Do you just ship it and move on? Hardly — in fact, many developers spend far more of their time maintaining code than adding to it. Do your metrics take into account time spent refactoring or documenting existing code? Is it even possible to devise metrics for these activities?' McAllister writes. 'Are developers who take time to train and mentor other teams about the latest code changes considered less productive than ones who stay heads-down at their desks and never reach out to their peers? How about teams that take time at the beginning of a project to coordinate with other teams for code reuse, versus those who charge ahead blindly? Can any automated tool measure these kinds of best practices?'"

snydeq writes "Fatal Exception's Neil McAllister discusses why code analysis and similar metrics provide little insight into what really makes an effective software development team, in the wake of a new scorecard system employed at IBM. 'Code metrics are fine if all you care about is raw code production. But what happens to all that code once it's written? Do you just ship it and move on? Hardly — in fact, many developers spend far more of their time maintaining code than adding to it. Do your metrics take into account time spent refactoring or documenting existing code? Is it even possible to devise metrics for these activities?' McAllister writes. 'Are developers who take time to train and mentor other teams about the latest code changes considered less productive than ones who stay heads-down at their desks and never reach out to their peers? How about teams that take time at the beginning of a project to coordinate with other teams for code reuse, versus those who charge ahead blindly? Can any automated tool measure these kinds of best practices?'"

snydeq writes "Fatal Exception's Neil McAllister discusses why code analysis and similar metrics provide little insight into what really makes an effective software development team, in the wake of a new scorecard system employed at IBM. 'Code metrics are fine if all you care about is raw code production. But what happens to all that code once it's written? Do you just ship it and move on? Hardly — in fact, many developers spend far more of their time maintaining code than adding to it. Do your metrics take into account time spent refactoring or documenting existing code? Is it even possible to devise metrics for these activities?' McAllister writes. 'Are developers who take time to train and mentor other teams about the latest code changes considered less productive than ones who stay heads-down at their desks and never reach out to their peers? How about teams that take time at the beginning of a project to coordinate with other teams for code reuse, versus those who charge ahead blindly? Can any automated tool measure these kinds of best practices?'"

An anonymous reader writes "In policy debates before Congress and the FCC, the big ISPs and wireless carriers (Verizon, AT&T, Comcast, Cox, Sprint) argued that net neutrality rules would give them less incentive to upgrade their networks. The reality is just the opposite, says Infoworld's Bill Snyder, citing a game-theoretic work done by two researchers at the U. of Florida's business school. If carriers can charge premium prices for expedited service, they have an incentive not to invest. Hmm, this reminds me of the agriculture business, where prices are sometimes propped up by paying farmers not to grow crops."

snydeq writes "InfoWorld's Peter Wayner takes a first look at Oracle NoSQL Database, the company's take on the distributed key-value data store for the enterprise. 'There are dozens of small ways in which the tool is more thorough and sophisticated than the simpler NoSQL projects. You get a number of different options for increasing the durability in the face of a node crash or trading that durability for speed,' Wayner writes. 'Oracle NoSQL might not offer the heady fun and "just build it" experimentation of many of the pure open source NoSQL projects, but that's not really its role. Oracle borrowed the best ideas from these groups and built something that will deliver good performance to the sweet spot of the enterprise market.'"

snydeq writes "InfoWorld's Peter Wayner takes a first look at Oracle NoSQL Database, the company's take on the distributed key-value data store for the enterprise. 'There are dozens of small ways in which the tool is more thorough and sophisticated than the simpler NoSQL projects. You get a number of different options for increasing the durability in the face of a node crash or trading that durability for speed,' Wayner writes. 'Oracle NoSQL might not offer the heady fun and "just build it" experimentation of many of the pure open source NoSQL projects, but that's not really its role. Oracle borrowed the best ideas from these groups and built something that will deliver good performance to the sweet spot of the enterprise market.'"

snydeq writes "Active Directory object catalogs, quad-core processors, Debian default configurations, Star Trek TNG guest appearances — find out how much you know where it really counts by taking InfoWorld's 2011 Geek IQ Test."

snydeq writes "Active Directory object catalogs, quad-core processors, Debian default configurations, Star Trek TNG guest appearances — find out how much you know where it really counts by taking InfoWorld's 2011 Geek IQ Test."

snydeq writes "Fatal Exception's Neil McAllister sees Adobe's shift toward HTML5 as a boon for developers only if the company secures its place in the Web developer tools market — but initial signs suggest that this won't be the case. 'The opportunity for Adobe now lies in filling the gaps in today's IDEs, code editors, and graphics software with new tools that can help designers and developers more easily take advantage of the multimedia capabilities of HTML5,' McAllister writes. 'Unfortunately, however, it sounds like Adobe is going to drop the ball. In this week's meeting with financial analysts, the company said its emphasis is not on building great tools but on subscription pricing, Web-based content creation software, and — most important of all — growing its digital marketing, advertising, and analytics businesses. That's right: Adobe wants to be Google. It's too bad because Web developers could really use an Adobe right now.'"

snydeq writes "Fatal Exception's Neil McAllister sees Adobe's shift toward HTML5 as a boon for developers only if the company secures its place in the Web developer tools market — but initial signs suggest that this won't be the case. 'The opportunity for Adobe now lies in filling the gaps in today's IDEs, code editors, and graphics software with new tools that can help designers and developers more easily take advantage of the multimedia capabilities of HTML5,' McAllister writes. 'Unfortunately, however, it sounds like Adobe is going to drop the ball. In this week's meeting with financial analysts, the company said its emphasis is not on building great tools but on subscription pricing, Web-based content creation software, and — most important of all — growing its digital marketing, advertising, and analytics businesses. That's right: Adobe wants to be Google. It's too bad because Web developers could really use an Adobe right now.'"

snydeq writes "Fatal Exception's Neil McAllister sees Adobe's shift toward HTML5 as a boon for developers only if the company secures its place in the Web developer tools market — but initial signs suggest that this won't be the case. 'The opportunity for Adobe now lies in filling the gaps in today's IDEs, code editors, and graphics software with new tools that can help designers and developers more easily take advantage of the multimedia capabilities of HTML5,' McAllister writes. 'Unfortunately, however, it sounds like Adobe is going to drop the ball. In this week's meeting with financial analysts, the company said its emphasis is not on building great tools but on subscription pricing, Web-based content creation software, and — most important of all — growing its digital marketing, advertising, and analytics businesses. That's right: Adobe wants to be Google. It's too bad because Web developers could really use an Adobe right now.'"

snydeq writes "Deep End's Paul Venezia wonders why more folks aren't using FreeBSD on the desktop. 'There used to be a saying — at least I've said it many times — that my workstations run Linux, my servers run FreeBSD. Sure, it's quicker to build a Linux box, do a "yum install x y z" and toss it out into the wild as a fully functional server, but the extra time required to really get a FreeBSD box tuned will come back in spades through performance and stability metrics. You'll get more out of the hardware, be that virtual or physical, than you will on a generic Linux binary installation.'"

snydeq writes "Deep End's Paul Venezia wonders why more folks aren't using FreeBSD on the desktop. 'There used to be a saying — at least I've said it many times — that my workstations run Linux, my servers run FreeBSD. Sure, it's quicker to build a Linux box, do a "yum install x y z" and toss it out into the wild as a fully functional server, but the extra time required to really get a FreeBSD box tuned will come back in spades through performance and stability metrics. You'll get more out of the hardware, be that virtual or physical, than you will on a generic Linux binary installation.'"

snydeq writes "Fatal Exception's Neil McAllister discusses the use of quizzes and brain-teasers in evaluating potential software development hires, a practice that seems to be on the rise. 'The company best known for this is Google. Past applicants tell tales of a head-spinning battery of coding problems, riddles, and brain teasers, many of which seem only tangential to the task of software development. Other large companies have similar practices — Facebook and Microsoft being two examples,' McAllister writes. 'You'll need to assess an applicant's skill in one way or another, but it's also possible to take the whole interview-testing concept too far. Here are a few thoughts to keep in mind when crafting your test questions, to avoid slamming the door on candidates unnecessarily.'"

snydeq writes "Fatal Exception's Neil McAllister discusses the use of quizzes and brain-teasers in evaluating potential software development hires, a practice that seems to be on the rise. 'The company best known for this is Google. Past applicants tell tales of a head-spinning battery of coding problems, riddles, and brain teasers, many of which seem only tangential to the task of software development. Other large companies have similar practices — Facebook and Microsoft being two examples,' McAllister writes. 'You'll need to assess an applicant's skill in one way or another, but it's also possible to take the whole interview-testing concept too far. Here are a few thoughts to keep in mind when crafting your test questions, to avoid slamming the door on candidates unnecessarily.'"

snydeq writes "Advice Line's Bob Lewis discusses the difficulties IT faces in embracing the kinds of consumer technologies business users are demanding they support. 'Let's assume the consumerization of IT is the big trend many think it is. But using consumer tech in a business environment is a very different matter from being satisfied with consumer tech in a business environment. One of IT's legitimate gripes is that we're often asked to turn consumer-grade technology into business-grade technology with a wave of our magic wands. On top of the intrinsic technical challenges, there's this: IT doesn't have anything that even resembles a methodology for performing the business analysis we need to figure out what it means to put consumer tech to productive day-to-day use.'"

snydeq writes "Advice Line's Bob Lewis discusses the difficulties IT faces in embracing the kinds of consumer technologies business users are demanding they support. 'Let's assume the consumerization of IT is the big trend many think it is. But using consumer tech in a business environment is a very different matter from being satisfied with consumer tech in a business environment. One of IT's legitimate gripes is that we're often asked to turn consumer-grade technology into business-grade technology with a wave of our magic wands. On top of the intrinsic technical challenges, there's this: IT doesn't have anything that even resembles a methodology for performing the business analysis we need to figure out what it means to put consumer tech to productive day-to-day use.'"

sammcj writes with news that HP is developing servers based on 32-bit ARM processors from Calxeda. Their current model is only a test setup, but they plan to roll out a finalized design by the middle of next year. "HP's server design packs 288 Calxeda chips into a 4U rack-mount server, or 2,800 in a full rack, with a shared power, cooling, and management infrastructure. By eliminating much of the cabling and switching devices used in traditional servers and using the low-power ARM processors, HP says it can reduce both power and space requirements dramatically. The Redstone platform uses a 4U (7-inch) rack-mount server chassis. Inside, HP has put 72 small server boards, each with four Calxeda processors, 4GB of RAM and 4MB of L2 cache. Each processor, based on the ARM Cortex-A9 design, runs at 1.4GHz and has its own 80 gigabit cross-bar switch built into the chip"

snydeq writes "Anonymous supporters have backed off threats to expose Zeta drug gang collaborators, an operation launched in early October as a retaliation for an alleged kidnapping of an Anonymous follower by the Mexico-based drug gang. Members of Anonymous had posted a video claiming the group could identify journalists, police officers, and taxi drivers who collaborate with the Zeta crime syndicate. Zeta has not shied away from targeting its online critics. In September the crime group hung two people from an overpass warning bloggers and 'online snitches' to beware. The decapitated body of another social-media reporter was found later with a similar warning. Worried about the impact on both misidentified people and Anonymous followers, other supporters of the Anonymous movement worked to dismantle the operation over the weekend. In effect, the group canceled the attack, according to online news site Milenio."

snydeq writes "Anonymous supporters have backed off threats to expose Zeta drug gang collaborators, an operation launched in early October as a retaliation for an alleged kidnapping of an Anonymous follower by the Mexico-based drug gang. Members of Anonymous had posted a video claiming the group could identify journalists, police officers, and taxi drivers who collaborate with the Zeta crime syndicate. Zeta has not shied away from targeting its online critics. In September the crime group hung two people from an overpass warning bloggers and 'online snitches' to beware. The decapitated body of another social-media reporter was found later with a similar warning. Worried about the impact on both misidentified people and Anonymous followers, other supporters of the Anonymous movement worked to dismantle the operation over the weekend. In effect, the group canceled the attack, according to online news site Milenio."

snydeq writes "Fatal Exception's Neil McAllister sees Microsoft's Project Roslyn potentially reinventing how we view compilers and compiled languages. 'Roslyn is a complete reengineering of Microsoft's .NET compiler toolchain in a new way, such that each phase of the code compilation process is exposed as a service that can be consumed by other applications,' McAllister writes. 'The most obvious advantage of this kind of "deconstructed" compiler is that it allows the entire compile-execute process to be invoked from within .NET applications. With the Roslyn technology, C# may still be a compiled language, but it effectively gains all the flexibility and expressiveness that dynamic languages such as Python and Ruby have to offer.'"

snydeq writes "Fatal Exception's Neil McAllister sees Microsoft's Project Roslyn potentially reinventing how we view compilers and compiled languages. 'Roslyn is a complete reengineering of Microsoft's .NET compiler toolchain in a new way, such that each phase of the code compilation process is exposed as a service that can be consumed by other applications,' McAllister writes. 'The most obvious advantage of this kind of "deconstructed" compiler is that it allows the entire compile-execute process to be invoked from within .NET applications. With the Roslyn technology, C# may still be a compiled language, but it effectively gains all the flexibility and expressiveness that dynamic languages such as Python and Ruby have to offer.'"

snydeq writes "InfoWorld's Desmond Fuller provides an in-depth comparison of five entry-level NAS storage servers, including cabinets from Iomega, Netgear, QNAP, Synology, and Thecus. 'With so many use cases and potential buyers, the vendors too often try to be everything to everyone. The result is a class of products that suffers from an identity crisis — so-called business storage solutions that are overloaded with consumer features and missing the ease and simplicity that business users require,' Fuller writes. 'Filled with 10TB or 12TB of raw storage, my test systems ranged in price from $1,699 to $3,799. Despite that gap, they all had a great deal in common, from core storage services to performance. However, I found the richest sets of business features — straightforward setup, easy remote access, plentiful backup options — at the higher end of the scale.'"

snydeq writes "InfoWorld's Desmond Fuller provides an in-depth comparison of five entry-level NAS storage servers, including cabinets from Iomega, Netgear, QNAP, Synology, and Thecus. 'With so many use cases and potential buyers, the vendors too often try to be everything to everyone. The result is a class of products that suffers from an identity crisis — so-called business storage solutions that are overloaded with consumer features and missing the ease and simplicity that business users require,' Fuller writes. 'Filled with 10TB or 12TB of raw storage, my test systems ranged in price from $1,699 to $3,799. Despite that gap, they all had a great deal in common, from core storage services to performance. However, I found the richest sets of business features — straightforward setup, easy remote access, plentiful backup options — at the higher end of the scale.'"

snydeq writes "Flooding near Bangkok has taken about 25 percent of the world's hard disk manufacturing capacity offline, InfoWorld reports. 'Disk manufacturing sites in Thailand — notably including the largest Western Digital plant — were shut down due to floods around Bangkok last week and are expected to remain shut for at least several more days. The end to flooding is not in sight, and Western Digital now says it could take five to eight months to bring its plants back online.' Toshiba's Thailand plants have also been affected, as have key disk component suppliers, including Nidec and Hutchinson Technologies."

snydeq writes "Flooding near Bangkok has taken about 25 percent of the world's hard disk manufacturing capacity offline, InfoWorld reports. 'Disk manufacturing sites in Thailand — notably including the largest Western Digital plant — were shut down due to floods around Bangkok last week and are expected to remain shut for at least several more days. The end to flooding is not in sight, and Western Digital now says it could take five to eight months to bring its plants back online.' Toshiba's Thailand plants have also been affected, as have key disk component suppliers, including Nidec and Hutchinson Technologies."

snydeq writes "Fatal Exception's Neil McAllister suggests that the real news out of this year's JavaOne is Oracle's ambitious plan to revitalize Java on the desktop, the Web, and mobile devices. 'It's been tempting to assume that Oracle, with its strong enterprise focus, would ignore the client in favor of data center technologies such as Java EE. This week, we learned that's not the case. In fact, the real news from this year's JavaOne conference in San Francisco may not be Oracle's plans for Java 8 and 9, but the revelation that Oracle is gearing up for a new, sustained push behind Java for the desktop, the Web, and mobile devices. If it can succeed in its ambitious plans, the age of client-side Java could be just beginning.'"

snydeq writes "Fatal Exception's Neil McAllister suggests that the real news out of this year's JavaOne is Oracle's ambitious plan to revitalize Java on the desktop, the Web, and mobile devices. 'It's been tempting to assume that Oracle, with its strong enterprise focus, would ignore the client in favor of data center technologies such as Java EE. This week, we learned that's not the case. In fact, the real news from this year's JavaOne conference in San Francisco may not be Oracle's plans for Java 8 and 9, but the revelation that Oracle is gearing up for a new, sustained push behind Java for the desktop, the Web, and mobile devices. If it can succeed in its ambitious plans, the age of client-side Java could be just beginning.'"

snydeq writes "Fatal Exception's Neil McAllister suggests that the real news out of this year's JavaOne is Oracle's ambitious plan to revitalize Java on the desktop, the Web, and mobile devices. 'It's been tempting to assume that Oracle, with its strong enterprise focus, would ignore the client in favor of data center technologies such as Java EE. This week, we learned that's not the case. In fact, the real news from this year's JavaOne conference in San Francisco may not be Oracle's plans for Java 8 and 9, but the revelation that Oracle is gearing up for a new, sustained push behind Java for the desktop, the Web, and mobile devices. If it can succeed in its ambitious plans, the age of client-side Java could be just beginning.'"

snydeq writes "Dan Tynan takes us on a tour of the nine circles of IT hell, a place 'not unlike the underworld described by Dante in his Divine Comedy.' 'But here, in the data centers, conference rooms, and cubicles, the IT version of this inferno is no allegory. It is a very real test of every IT pro's sanity and soul,' Tynan writes. From IT limbo, to tech lust, to stakeholder gluttony, to tech-pro treachery, the IT inferno is not buried deep within the earth, it's just down the hall. 'Thankfully, as in Dante's poetic universe, there are ways to escape the nine circles of IT hell. But IT pros beware: You may have to face your own devils to do it. Shall we descend?'"

snydeq writes "Dan Tynan takes us on a tour of the nine circles of IT hell, a place 'not unlike the underworld described by Dante in his Divine Comedy.' 'But here, in the data centers, conference rooms, and cubicles, the IT version of this inferno is no allegory. It is a very real test of every IT pro's sanity and soul,' Tynan writes. From IT limbo, to tech lust, to stakeholder gluttony, to tech-pro treachery, the IT inferno is not buried deep within the earth, it's just down the hall. 'Thankfully, as in Dante's poetic universe, there are ways to escape the nine circles of IT hell. But IT pros beware: You may have to face your own devils to do it. Shall we descend?'"

snydeq writes "Despite early successes on the Web, the latter years of Flash have been a tale of missed opportunities, writes Fatal Exception's Neil McAllister. 'The bigger picture — which I've touched on before — is that major platform vendors are increasingly encouraging developers to create rich applications not to be delivered via the browser, but as native, platform-based apps. That's long been the case on iOS and other smartphone platforms, and now it's starting to be the norm on Windows. Each step of the way, Adobe is getting left behind,' McAllister writes. 'Perhaps Adobe's biggest problem, however, is that it's something of a relic as developer-oriented vendors go. How many people have access to the Flash runtime is almost a moot point, because Adobe doesn't make any money from the runtime directly; it gives it away for free. Adobe makes its money from selling developer tools. Given the rich supply of free, open source developer tools available today, vendors like that are few and far between. Remember Borland? Or Watcom?'"

snydeq writes "Despite early successes on the Web, the latter years of Flash have been a tale of missed opportunities, writes Fatal Exception's Neil McAllister. 'The bigger picture — which I've touched on before — is that major platform vendors are increasingly encouraging developers to create rich applications not to be delivered via the browser, but as native, platform-based apps. That's long been the case on iOS and other smartphone platforms, and now it's starting to be the norm on Windows. Each step of the way, Adobe is getting left behind,' McAllister writes. 'Perhaps Adobe's biggest problem, however, is that it's something of a relic as developer-oriented vendors go. How many people have access to the Flash runtime is almost a moot point, because Adobe doesn't make any money from the runtime directly; it gives it away for free. Adobe makes its money from selling developer tools. Given the rich supply of free, open source developer tools available today, vendors like that are few and far between. Remember Borland? Or Watcom?'"

snydeq writes "Despite early successes on the Web, the latter years of Flash have been a tale of missed opportunities, writes Fatal Exception's Neil McAllister. 'The bigger picture — which I've touched on before — is that major platform vendors are increasingly encouraging developers to create rich applications not to be delivered via the browser, but as native, platform-based apps. That's long been the case on iOS and other smartphone platforms, and now it's starting to be the norm on Windows. Each step of the way, Adobe is getting left behind,' McAllister writes. 'Perhaps Adobe's biggest problem, however, is that it's something of a relic as developer-oriented vendors go. How many people have access to the Flash runtime is almost a moot point, because Adobe doesn't make any money from the runtime directly; it gives it away for free. Adobe makes its money from selling developer tools. Given the rich supply of free, open source developer tools available today, vendors like that are few and far between. Remember Borland? Or Watcom?'"

snydeq writes "InfoWorld's Serdar Yegulalp offers an in-depth look at DD-WRT, open source router firmware that can 'breath new life — and advanced features — into your old wired or wireless router.' Quality-of-service controls, iptables-based firewall, IPv6 support, DNS controls, Kai Daemon for allowing game console network tunneling, and a host of features for using your router as a public-access hotspot are among the many possibilities for hacking your router with DD-WRT."

snydeq writes "InfoWorld's Serdar Yegulalp offers an in-depth look at DD-WRT, open source router firmware that can 'breath new life — and advanced features — into your old wired or wireless router.' Quality-of-service controls, iptables-based firewall, IPv6 support, DNS controls, Kai Daemon for allowing game console network tunneling, and a host of features for using your router as a public-access hotspot are among the many possibilities for hacking your router with DD-WRT."

snydeq writes "Recent announcements from Google and Intel appear to have JavaScript headed toward a crossroads, as Google seeks to replace the lingua franca of the client-side Web with Dart and Intel looks to extend it with River Trail. What seems clear, however, is that as 'developers continue to ask more and more of JavaScript, its limitations are thrown into sharp relief,' raising the question, 'Will the Web development community continue to work to make JavaScript a first-class development platform, despite its failings? Or will it take the "nuclear option" and abandon it for greener pastures? The answer seems to be a little of both.'"

snydeq writes "Recent announcements from Google and Intel appear to have JavaScript headed toward a crossroads, as Google seeks to replace the lingua franca of the client-side Web with Dart and Intel looks to extend it with River Trail. What seems clear, however, is that as 'developers continue to ask more and more of JavaScript, its limitations are thrown into sharp relief,' raising the question, 'Will the Web development community continue to work to make JavaScript a first-class development platform, despite its failings? Or will it take the "nuclear option" and abandon it for greener pastures? The answer seems to be a little of both.'"

snydeq writes "With its distributed SSL Observatory, the Electronic Frontier Foundation hopes to detect compromised certificate authorities and warn users about attacks, InfoWorld reports. 'The EEF, along with developers at the Tor Project and consulting firm iSec Partners, has updated its existing HTTPS Everywhere program with the ability to anonymously report every certificate encountered. The group will analyze the data so that it can detect any rogue certificates — and by extension, compromised authorities — its users encounter, says Peter Eckersley, technology projects director for the EFF.'"

snydeq writes "With its distributed SSL Observatory, the Electronic Frontier Foundation hopes to detect compromised certificate authorities and warn users about attacks, InfoWorld reports. 'The EEF, along with developers at the Tor Project and consulting firm iSec Partners, has updated its existing HTTPS Everywhere program with the ability to anonymously report every certificate encountered. The group will analyze the data so that it can detect any rogue certificates — and by extension, compromised authorities — its users encounter, says Peter Eckersley, technology projects director for the EFF.'"

snydeq writes "InfoWorld's J. Peter Bruzzese provides a list of 15 open source tools for enhancing your Windows server-side experience. 'You might imagine that the best place to go for improving your Microsoft server-side experience is to the mothership itself. In many cases, you would be right. But the truth is there are a meaningful number of open source tools that go above and beyond what Microsoft has to offer in support of Windows Server, Exchange, SQL, and SharePoint. Many of these alternatives provide — for free — more powerful capabilities than what you'd get with third-party retail products.'"

snydeq writes "InfoWorld's J. Peter Bruzzese provides a list of 15 open source tools for enhancing your Windows server-side experience. 'You might imagine that the best place to go for improving your Microsoft server-side experience is to the mothership itself. In many cases, you would be right. But the truth is there are a meaningful number of open source tools that go above and beyond what Microsoft has to offer in support of Windows Server, Exchange, SQL, and SharePoint. Many of these alternatives provide — for free — more powerful capabilities than what you'd get with third-party retail products.'"