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Programming

Taking the Pain Out of Debugging With Live Programming 254

Posted by samzenpus from the we'll-do-it-live dept.
angry tapir writes "'Everyone knows that debugging is twice as hard as writing a program in the first place,' Brian Kernighan once wrote (adding: 'So if you're as clever as you can be when you write it, how will you ever debug it?') However, Sean McDirmid, a researcher at Microsoft, has been working to remove some of the pain from debugging. McDirmid, based at Microsoft Research Asia, has been studying ways of implementing usable live programming environments: a solution that is less intrusive than classical debuggers. The idea is to essentially provide a programming environment in which editing of code and the execution of code occur simultaneously — and in the same interface as code editing — with tools to track the state of variables in a more or less live manner."
Programming

What Developers Can Learn From Anonymous 120

Posted by samzenpus from the pay-attention dept.
snydeq writes "Regardless of where you stand on Anonymous' tactics, politics, or whatever, I think the group has something to teach developers and development organizations,' writes Andrew Oliver. 'As leader of an open source project, I can revoke committer access for anyone who misbehaves, but membership in Anonymous is a free-for-all. Sure, doing something in Anonymous' name that even a minority of "members" dislike would probably be a tactical mistake, but Anonymous has no trademark protection under the law; the organization simply has an overall vision and flavor. Its members carry out acts based on that mission. And it has enjoyed a great deal of success — in part due to the lack of central control. Compare this to the level of control in many corporate development organizations. Some of that control is necessary, but often it's taken to gratuitous lengths. If you hire great developers, set general goals for the various parts of the project, and collect metrics, you probably don't need to exercise a lot of control to meet your requirements."
Programming

Ruby, Clojure, Ceylon: Same Goal, Different Results 138

Posted by timothy from the ways-of-seeing dept.
snydeq writes "Charles Nutter, Rich Hickey, and Gavin King each discovered that 'simplicity' doesn't mean the same thing as they developed Ruby, Clojure, and Ceylon, respectively. 'Languages that are created with similar goals in mind may yield highly disparate final results, depending on how their communities understand those goals,' writes Andrew Oliver. 'At first, it surprised me that each language's creator directly or indirectly identified simplicity as his goal, as well as how differently the three creators and their languages' communities define what simplicity is. For Ruby, it is about a language that feels natural and gets out of your way to do what you want. For Clojure, it is about keeping the language itself simple. For Ceylon, it is a compromise between enabling the language to help, in King's words, "communicating algorithms to humans" and providing proper tooling support: the same general goal, three very different results.'"

Comment RTFA to put this in perspective (Score 4, Informative) 562

by SwansonMarpalum (#38525456) Attached to: Verizon Adds $2 Charge For Paying Your Bill Online
The fee does not apply to either ACH or AutoPay transactions. This leaves credit card payment as the only mechanism which does incur the fee. Verizon can't come out and say that the fee is because you're using a credit card, because the terms between credit card processors (e.g. MasterCard, VISA) and merchants (in this case, Verizon) specifically forbid altering the price if a credit card is used. When you pay a merchant with a credit card, the merchant only gets 97-99% of the price you pay with the card. 1-3% goes to the credit card company. Verizon can accept payment in any of three ways, but one of them costs Verizon more than the other two ways, and they consequently charge a fee. It's not exactly in-line with their costs, but considering what a monthly phone bill for a smart phone costs, it's not grossly far off, either.
Facebook

Facebook Says That Google+ Has No Users 360

Posted by CmdrTaco from the pew-pew-no-you-are-dumb dept.
dkd903 noticed another amusing shot in the battle between G+ and Facebook. CNN is running a story where Facebook's director of game partnership Sean Ryan basically says Google+ has no users. The article is mostly about casual gaming on social platforms, which I am really sick of individually blocking.
Google

Google Donates Windowbuilder, Codepro To Eclipse 150

Posted by timothy from the spreading-it-around dept.
h00manist writes "Google is donating Windowbuilder Pro and Codepro Profiler to the Eclipse project. 'Google acquired the software when it bought Instantiations, relaunching the Java graphical user interface building tool Windowbuilder Pro shortly after. Now the outfit has decided to donate both Windowbuilder Pro and the code analysis tool Codepro to the open source Eclipse project. Although Google has announced its intention to donate the software, it needs go through a rigorous filtering process to ensure that no intellectual property rights will be breached. Once those formalities are dealt with, it is likely that both Windowbuilder Pro and Codepro will tip up in the Indigo release of Eclipse sometime in June 2011.'"
Hardware Hacking

How To Build an Open Source House? 274

Posted by timothy from the mind-the-gap dept.
An anonymous reader writes "I'm starting a project that I hope that the engineers, makers and general DIYers in the Slashdot crowd can help out with. The full story's on the website, but the short version is as follows: my aim is to make a cheap, recycled, sustainable building, to document the process fully and to release anything that would help others to do the same. I intend to use an old train carriage as the shell, but the ideas should extend to shipping containers, aeroplane fuselages or anything similar. I know I'm not the first to do this, but I can't see anyone else who's provided a detailed step-by-step account of the build, complete with plans and the rest. Before I start, though, I'm trying to draw on as much collective experience as possible, and to head off mistakes before they happen. My question to Slashdot is simple: what do you think I need to know before I begin?"
Communications

Judge Finds NSA Wiretapping Program Illegal 136

Posted by samzenpus from the time-to-get-a-warrant dept.
Hugh Pickens writes "The NY Times reports that a federal judge has ruled that the NSA's warrantless surveillance program was illegal, rejecting the Obama administration's effort to keep one of Bush's most disputed counterterrorism policies shrouded in secrecy. Judge Vaughn R. Walker ruled that the government had violated a 1978 federal statute requiring court approval for domestic surveillance when it intercepted phone calls of Al Haramain, a now-defunct Islamic charity in Oregon, and of two lawyers who were representing it in 2004. Declaring that the plaintiffs had been 'subjected to unlawful surveillance,' the judge said that the government was liable to pay them damages."
Programming

On the Humble Default 339

Posted by kdawson from the ne-pas-décider-c'est-décider dept.
Hugh Pickens sends along Kevin Kelly's paean to the default. "One of the greatest unappreciated inventions of modern life is the default. 'Default' is a technical concept first used in computer science in the 1960s to indicate a preset standard. ... Today the notion of a default has spread beyond computer science to the culture at large. It seems such a small thing, but the idea of the default is fundamental... It's hard to remember a time when defaults were not part of life. But defaults only arose as computing spread; they are an attribute of complex technological systems. There were no defaults in the industrial age. ... The hallmark of flexible technological systems is the ease by which they can be rewired, modified, reprogrammed, adapted, and changed to suit new uses and new users. Many (not all) of their assumptions can be altered. The upside to endless flexibility and multiple defaults lies in the genuine choice that an individual now has, if one wants it. ... Choices materialize when summoned. But these abundant choices never appeared in fixed designs. ... In properly designed default system, I always have my full freedoms, yet my choices are presented to me in a way that encourages taking those choices in time — in an incremental and educated manner. Defaults are a tool that tame expanding choice."
Databases

Web Analytics Databases Get Even Larger 62

Posted by CmdrTaco from the who-watches-the-oh-never-mind dept.
CurtMonash writes "Web analytics databases are getting even larger. eBay now has a 6 1/2 petabyte warehouse running on Greenplum — user data — to go with its more established 2 1/2 petabyte Teradata system. Between the two databases, the metrics are enormous — 17 trillion rows, 150 billion new rows per day, millions of queries per day, and so on. Meanwhile, Facebook has 2 1/2 petabytes managed by Hadoop, not running on a conventional DBMS at all, Yahoo has over a petabyte (on a homegrown system), and Fox/MySpace has two different multi-hundred terabyte systems (Greenplum and Aster Data nCluster). eBay and Fox are the two Greenplum customers I wrote in about last August, when they both seemed to be headed to the petabyte range in a hurry. These are basically all web log/clickstream databases, except that network event data is even more voluminous than the pure clickstream stuff."
Google

Google Says Complete Privacy Does Not Exist 543

Posted by samzenpus from the open-books dept.
schliz writes "In a submission to court, Google is arguing that in the modern world there can be no expectation of privacy. Google is being sued by a Pennsylvania couple after their home appeared on Google's Street View pages. The couple's house is on a private road clearly marked as private property." Here is our previous story about Google Street View privacy issues.
The Internet

ICANN Board Approves Wide Expansion of TLDs 490

Posted by timothy from the dibs-on-dot-tim dept.
penciling_in writes "The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has approved the relaxation of the rules for the introduction of new Top-Level Domains — a move that could drastically change the Internet. 'We are opening up a new world and I think this cannot be underestimated,' said Roberto Gaetano, an ICANN board member. The future outcome of this decision was discussed on Slashdot a few days ago. It also seems, based on this post on CircleID from last month, that ICANN was already in preparation mode of mass TLD introductions. The new decision will allow companies to register their brands as generic top-level domain names (TLDs). For instance, Microsoft could apply to have a TLD such as '.msn', Apple apply for '.mac', and Google for '.goog'... The decision was taken unanimously on Thursday, June 26, 2008 at the 32nd ICANN Meeting in Paris."
Transportation

Efficiency? Think Racing Cars, Not Hybrids 1320

Posted by timothy from the more-fun-that-way-too dept.
Gordonjcp writes "A renowned racing car designer has said that car manufacturers should be looking at making cars lighter to improve efficiency, rather than adding complex drive trains. In this article on the BBC News website, Professor Gordon Murray explains that a weight saving of 10% in a normal car would make more difference than switching to a hybrid engine and motor combination. Could this be the next nail in the SUV's coffin?"

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