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Multimedia
Webinar: Control a World of Computers From Your Linux PC
March 20, 2008
In this webinar, Carla Schroder, columnist, blogger, and author of the Linux Cookbook and Linux Networking Cookbook, covers the finer points of secure remote graphical administration from your Linux PC, showing how to run graphical applications, your...
Blog
Why open source developers can be more productive, and other tales from a Google open house
May 14 2008
Google likes hiring programmers who contribute to open source projects because they're more self-motivated. On open source projects, volunteers may be assigned tasks, but often they recognize a need and propose to fill it. This and many other interesting topics came up at the party celebrating the opening of Google's larger Cambridge, Massachusetts office. read moreConsider the economics in network neutrality
April 22 2008
Four days ago, the FCC held a widely publicized hearing at Stanford about bandwidth regulation on the Internet. In my summary analysis and background explanation of an earlier hearing at Harvard, I referred to the highly unpopular Brett Glass, whose experience running a rural wireless ISP radiates a different perspective from all other commentators. Glass got to speak at… read moreApril 15 2008
A conference attendance that tops 2000 suggests that a technology involves a certain number of subtle angles. MySQL became a hit because installing it and manipulating tables were so simple--and yet when you get serious, the simple things start growing hair. The attendees I've talked to at this conference have their hands greasy every… read moreCan a program lie to you the way a story or essay can?
April 06 2008
I just finished an unusual conference called Codework at the University of West Virginia, where computer science experts and writers batted around the similarities among their disciplines and the differences between writing code and writing fiction. Ruby inventor Yukihiro Matsumoto gave us a chapter for Beautiful Code in which he compares programming to essay-writing, with many positive… read moreAn evening with Ted Nelson: visionary prerequisites for a vision
April 04 2008
Readers have plenty of ways to learn about Nelson's famous Xanadu and his more recent project Zigzag, one of the best ways being to hear him speak as we did in a full hall last night. To me, the fundamental and most breath-taking aspect of Xanadu is not the linking and sharing of information, but its… read morePersonal responsibility for Internet safety: What O'Reilly is doing
April 01 2008
O'Reilly is soon to release its first graphic novel, Hackerteen\, a book teaching young people basic Internet technology and a deeper understanding of where and why Internet use can be risky. If people start out indifferent about security, or unconfident that they can do something about it, fear can actually decrease protective actions. Moreover, education can fall on… read moreBeautiful Code wins JOLT award
March 19 2008
Beautiful Code won Dr. Dobbs Journal's JOLT award as the best general book of the year in computing at SD West earlier this month. JOLT awards are some of the most prestigious in the field of software engineering. Details in our publicist's blog. read moreCompanies crunch public stats for services to developers and administrators
March 18 2008
Companies are constantly opening new veins of ore as they attempt to mine the Internet for useful information. A service from SourceLabs recalls efforts by Splunk and Black Duck Software. Services such as these should lead to change in the tools used by developers and users to submit bug reports. The more data users provide, and the more that… read moreMarch 08 2008
If observation is the first stage of scientific discovery, watching what people are doing in a field will tell you what the academics and theorists will write about in a few years. By this reasoning, SD West and SD Best Practices are important bellwethers for programming theory, even though there's little theoretical about… read moreiPhone toolkits: complementary development and O'Reilly coverage
March 07 2008
The Apple SDK bears a considerable resemblance to the open source SDK, but naturally has some differences. It's quite possible Apple will undo some of the changes and bring their toolkit closer to the open one. Regardless of which SDK you plan on using, you will find Jonathan Zdziarski 's iPhone Open Application Development valuable, in… read moreAndroid Code Day: gateway to a new kind of application
February 23 2008
Google's new operating system, Android, is not just a comprehensive runtime for mobile applications. Nor is it just a rapid application development platform for such applications. In addition to these things, I see Android as a redefinition of what interactive applications... read moreOne Laptop Per Child: one trainer prepares
February 20 2008
Three hundred thousand XO units will arrive in Peru by August. As a volunteer on the OLPC support team, Sebastian Silva wants to make sure the children, teachers, and technical trainers are ready. Most important are technical support and sources of ideas for children and teachers. Sebastian would like the children and teachers… read moreFebruary 17 2008
Code inspections make sense. If you find a flaw during a program run and debug it, you've fixed just one bug. Only a code inspection can fix the potentially hundreds of other similar bugs. Miska Hiltunen is trying to make inspections more agreeable by rigidly limiting what you have to look for, and assuring developers… read moreModel Checking creators win Turing Award
February 11 2008
The Association for Computing Machinery has given it\s highly prestigious A.M. Turing Award to the researchers credited for inventing Model Checking: Edmund M. Clarke, E. Allen Emerson, and Joseph Sifakis. read moreBruce Perens on the second decade of open source
February 08 2008
Perens celebrates the ten-year anniversary of the publication of the Open Source Definition. In addition to summarizing its increasing acceptance, he cites continued challenges, focusing on patent issues. read more
