Smart Pointers and Exception Handling in C++

General Development 11 Comments
Andrei Alexandrescu discusses smart pointers, from their simplest aspects to their most complex ones and from the most obvious errors in implementing them to the subtlest ones -- some of which also happen to be the most gruesome. Also, learn how to throw an exception, how to associate handlers, or catch clauses, with a set of program statements using a try block, and how exceptions are handled by catch clauses, exception specifications, and design considerations for programs that use exceptions.
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Get Set for Another ‘Office Suite’ Shakeout

Office 35 Comments
"Mirror, mirror on the wall/ Who's the prettiest suite of them all?" Suddenly it seems, the fierce contests to find the most popular computer `Office suite' ? a combo-pack of softwares to perform common tasks like word processing, spread sheeting, presentation and e-mailing ? are to be replayed all over again, a decade after the first shakeout. Read the article at The Hindu. In other office news, Gobe now sells GobeProductive for a low price, while it seems that the new AppleWorks 6.2.7 is available for purchasing. Update: Native Abiword port for Mac OS X abandoned.
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Is AMD Being Coy with its Clockspeeds?

AMD 27 Comments
With Opteron now officially set to debut at 1.6 and 1.8 GHz clockspeeds (and no 2 GHz model as initially hoped) discussions have resurfaced as to how well AMD is able to scale the Hammer architecture. 1.8 GHz, after all, is nothing new for the AthlonXP? AMD reached this speed nine months ago with the nuclear-furnace original-model 2200+ and shot nimbly past that speed once AMD revised their .13 micron process and cut their heat dissipation." Read the article at The Inquirer. Athlon64 benchmarks here.
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NeXT Still Stands Out in its Mac Incarnation

macOS 36 Comments
During the past few weeks, I've installed a batch of new programs on my Macintosh computer running the OS X operating system. In this case, however, 'new' is a relative term. All share a legacy from NeXT -- the technology Apple Computer acquired in 1997 as the foundation of what became OS X. NeXT, founded about a decade earlier by Steve Jobs, was so advanced for its time that the world is still catching up in some ways." Read the article at SiliconValley.com.
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SkyOS 3.9.7 Released

SkyOS 31 Comments
After six months of bug-fixing and development of new features, SkyOS 3.9.7 is now available to download. There is a new installer, automatic device mounting, VMWare 3/4 support, a media player, SkyKruzer the web browser and more. The OS can be installed on the hard drive or can be used with the ISO "live" CD (29 MB).
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C# is just Java? Only a Little Worse

  Submitted by Deniz Kaan Çopur General Development 85 Comments
"C# and Java are both nice languages. They reach similar goals through similar means, although C# adds some syntactical touches to Java, such as the foreach keyword and a more pleasant extends/implements construct. Unfortunately, the improvements are outweighed by the instances of regression. In this article, I'll compare the languages, while trying to avoid dipping to the JVM and CLR level." Read the article at Builder.com. Update: A similar comparison article, about security.
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Unofficial USB 2.0 Drivers for MDD Power Macs

Apple 47 Comments
It seems that the SMP 1.25 & 1.42 GHz Apple PowerMacs came by default with a NEC USB 2.0 controller and no one knew about it. A Korean site broke the news that while these Macs are currently sold as "USB 1.1", in reality they are USB 2.0-capable, missing only the drivers needed to function as such. Some users claim that these drivers work fine with that NEC chipset, as USB 2.0. Caution: Installation on other Mac models could render the system inoperable.
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