Free Republic

Despite urging from competitors and open source advocates, Sun Microsystems Inc. of Santa Clara, Calif., will not open the source to its Java programming language anytime soon, said Sun CEO Scott McNealy during a news conference at the 2004 FOSE conference. “We’re trying to understand what problem does it solve that is not already solved,” McNealy said. Last month Eric Raymond, noted open source programmer and president of the Open Source Initiative advocacy group, posted an open letter to McNealy calling for Sun to make Java open source. “Sun’s insistence on continuing tight control of the Java code has damaged...

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Feb. 26 - Bill Gates went on a campaign tour last week, trying to reinvigorate his base, as they say in politics. The number of students majoring in computer science is falling, even at the elite universities. So Mr. Gates went stumping at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Carnegie Mellon, Cornell, M.I.T. and Harvard, telling students that they could still make a good living in America, even as the nation's industry is sending some jobs, like software programming, abroad. "Will this create more competition? It will," he told students at M.I.T. on Thursday. "It means the U.S....

Simonyi's notion of pushing programming upstream is a PowerPoint-like design tool that allows stakeholders to describe an application in their own terms and then hand it off to the programmers to write a "generator" to produce the machine-readable code. His company will develop tools, taking advantage of recent innovations in aspect-oriented development, design patterns, model-integrated computing and other programming methods. In our interview, Simonyi explains some of the concepts behind intentional software development and how it will pave the way for more adaptable, reliable programs.

Scientists hail new 'map of life' By Dr David Whitehouse BBC News Online science editor A fruit fly and its protein interaction map Biologists have produced a detailed map of protein interactions in a complex organism - the fruit fly. Proteins, which are made by genes, are the building blocks of tissues as well as the basis for molecular interactions that enable an organism to live. The protein interaction map will allow a new insight into a highly complex metabolic system, similar in many ways to the human one. The research is to be published in a future issue of...

Hi everyone. Ok this may sound bizarre, but I need to find C++ training, and as fast as possible. I am 'between' jobs right now, and have a great new job lined up, BUT I need to learn C++. Now, this is not a huge stretch, as I have been programming in Java, Visual Basic and various web scripting languages for years. I simply need an intensive C++ course that will cover syntax and how the language implements various programming structures. Now, here is the thing... I am willing to pay a small finders fee to anyone who can find...

Okay, My daughters math teacher is on maternity leave and in the interim has been replaced with a retired economics professor. Great, we need economics in American high schools, unfortunately this guy has gone way beyond getting the kids to calculate price elasticity or the production possibility boundary. He has assigned them to write a stand alone program for their Texas Instruments Ti-83 calculators to calculate equilibrium price. The Ti-83 uses some bizarre proprietary semi-BASIC interpreter language, and after spending all night trying to figure out this damn thing and I am at my wits end. Does anyone have any...

/*snip*/ A decade ago, Wipro was an anonymous conglomerate selling cooking oil and personal computers, mostly in India. Today, it is a $903 million-a-year global company, and most of its business comes from information-technology services. Since 1997, Wipro's revenue has grown by an average of 26% a year while profits have grown by 69%. Its 15,000 technologists write software, integrate back-office solutions, design semiconductors, debug applications, take orders, and field help calls for some of the biggest companies in the world. They are as good at doing all of that as anyone in the world. Perhaps better. And they are...

PASSED UNANIMOUS! War teach-ins set for Oakland schools By Alex Katz, STAFF WRITER • Article Last Updated: Monday, January 13, 2003 - 3:47:12 AM MST The Oakland School Board Unanimously (with one abstention) passed a resolution to plan teach-ins throughout the School District on the war on Iraq Here is the FRONT PAGE! Oakland Tribune article and below is the School Board Resolution, cosponsored by Board Member Dan Siegel and Oakland Education Association president Sheila Quintana. War teach-ins set for Oakland schools Officials want both sides presented but still need hawkish speakers By Alex Katz, STAFF WRITER OAKLAND -- City...

McCain May Team With Feingold To Limit Radio Station Ownership Consolidation Wed Jan 08 2002 09:51:31 ET Sen. Russell D. Feingold said Tuesday he plans to reintroduce legislation that would limit the consolidation of radio station ownership and to punish radio conglomerates that stifle competition. The bill died last year, but in the 108th Congress Feingold may have a powerful, if familiar, partner -- John McCain, R-Ariz, who has again become chairman of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee. McCain spokeswoman Pia Pialorsi said McCain 'is interested in the topic and has talked to Feingold about it. He's definitely...

An Interview With Andy Hertzfeld (9/20/2000) Andy Hertzfeld was a member of the original Apple Macintosh team back in 1981, at which time he designed and implemented much of the original Macintosh system software. In that light, it's not surprising that he's still on the cusp of GUI development today as cofounder of Eazel. Eazel's first project, Nautilus, is one of the first open source development projects to aim for commercial success; its innovative file and system management model is poised to open up the world of Linux to a much wider audience. At this year's LinuxWorld Conference in San...

YOKOHAMA, Japan (AP) -- It's a machine so fast it performs more computations per second than there are stars in our galaxy. It's so large it's housed in a building the size of an aircraft hangar. Running 35.6 trillion calculations per second, the Earth Simulator is the fastest supercomputer in the world, almost five times faster than the next best one and as fast as the top 5 U.S. supercomputers combined. For the Japanese scientists using the $350 million computer, it means climate research, with its complex simulations and diverse mix of variables, is more accurate than ever before. For...

........... Survival in an Insecure World To defeat cyberterrorists, computer systems must be designed to work around sabotage. David A. Fisher's new programming language will help do just that Image: STEVE MELLON DAVID A. FISHER: PROGRAMMING PIONEER Ten years ago, hiked the entire Appalachian Trail in 180 days. First job: programming multiprocessor mainframes in 1965 at Burroughs. "We'll never see another plane hijacked and crashed into a building, because passengers now will sacrifice themselves if necessary to thwart it. That's an example of an emergent algorithm that contributes to survivability." As one of the primary lines of defense against...