The ‘Lost’ Steve Jobs speech from 1983

"Regarding the speech, it is amazing to hear Steve Jobs talk about some things that were not fully realized until only a handful of years ago. This talks shows us just how incredibly ahead of his time he was. I've listened to the entirety of the recording a few times now and have taken extensive notes, of which I will further elaborate on in future blog postings." This 1983 speech by Jobs is not as visionary as it seems. It's virtually identical to Alan Kay's mind-blowing Dynabook vision... From 1968. Kay even describes multitouch (p. 8) and Siri (p. 6). Not entirely coincidentally, Kay joined Apple in 1984. Look people, Steve Jobs was an incredibly talented individual that left a real imprint on the world - you don't need to make him larger than he was.

Samsung’s claims of juror misconduct revealed

"Samsung has now filed an unredacted version of its motion for judgment as a matter of law, a new trial, and/or remittitur. That's the one that was originally filed with a redacted section we figured out was about the foreman, Velvin Hogan. The judge ordered it filed unsealed, and so now we get to read all about it. It's pretty shocking to see the full story. I understand now why Samsung tried to seal it. They call Mr. Hogan untruthful in voir dire (and I gather in media interviews too), accuse him of 'implied bias' and of tainting the process by introducing extraneous 'evidence' of his own during jury deliberations, all of which calls, Samsung writes, for an evidentiary hearing and a new trial with an unbiased jury as the cure." It's a treasure trove of courtroom drama, this. Like this one: Hogan got sued by his former employer Seagate in 1993, causing him to go bankrupt. The lawyer in said case is now married to one of the partners of the law firm representing Samsung in this case. Samsung seems to implicitly - and sometimes explicitly - argue that Hogan had a score to settle in this case, because - get this - Samsung has been Seagate's largest shareholder since last year. Hogan failed to disclose the Seagate lawsuit during voire dire, which is a pretty serious matter. No matter whose side you're on, this is John Grisham-worthy.

Interview: Brian Kernighan

"Originally published in 1978 and updated in 1988, The C Programming Language is considered a 'must-read' classic by most programmers and is generally known simply as 'K&R'. To mark the publication of an ebook version of the 1988 second edition, we interviewed coauthor Brian Kernighan about the C programming language, the book, and future trends." And an Oxford comma to boot. The way it should be.

Microsoft working on its own Windows Phone 8 device

Microsoft has its own Windows Phone 8 phone in the works, according to WPcentral and BGR. "Details about what it looks like, hardware specifications, launch times, etc. have not been shared with us by the person(s) who have provided the information. The only thing we do know is when compared to current WP8 hardware it's something unique." Seems elementary. Not a big vote of confidence for Nokia though.

Jolla launches ‘mobile alliance based on MeeGo’

After a few months of relative silence and vagueness, we're finally getting something tangible from Jolla, the promising mobile phone company which came forth from former Nokia employees. It's ambitious - they're not just going to create a mobile operating system, not just a mobile phone, but an entire ecosystem, including cloud services and data centres. At its heart? The beautiful city of Hong Kong. The prime target market? China.

Compact disc turns 30

"On October 1 1982, Joel's sixth studio album, 52nd Street, was the first commercially released CD album... Which means CDs are 30-years-old today. It's worth noting here that 52nd Street wasn't a new album - it was launched initially in 1978, but it was selected for relaunch on the new digital audio disc, rolling out alongside the first CD player - the Sony CDP-101 - in Japan. But of course, the CD didn't spring up overnight - the road to launch started long before 1982." I'm still 100% CD when it comes to music. The act of physically holding a new album in your hands for the first time and gently placing the disk in the tray can't be matched by pressing a download button behind a computer.

TypeScript: Microsoft’s replacement for JavaScript

"Everyone seems to have a replacement for JavaScript - Google even has two. Now Microsoft has revealed that Anders Hejlsberg has been working on a replacement and it has released a preview of TypeScript. TypeScript is open source - Apache 2.0 license - and a superset of JavaScript. As you would expect from a Hejlsberg language it incorporates type checking, interfaces and lots of syntactic sugar."

Apple forbids promoting other apps within your app

"Apple has changed its iOS developer guidelines, adding a clause (on September 12, a source tells me) that reads: 'Apps that display Apps other than your own for purchase or promotion in a manner similar to or confusing with the App Store will be rejected.' That's a change that could have wide-reaching effects, especially on promotion models that offer developers a paid top slot on app recommendation offerings like FreeAppADay, Daily App Dream and more." Weird clause. Doesn't really seem to address any issue I can think of.

Linux 3.6 released

Linux kernel 3.6 has been released. There are new features in Btrfs: subvolume quotas, quota groups and snapshot diffs (aka "send/receive"). It also includes support for suspending to disk and memory at the same time, a TCP "Fast Open" mode, a "TCP small queues" feature to fight bufferbloat; support for safe swapping over NFS/NBD, support for the PCIe D3cold power state; and VFIO, which allows safe access from guest drivers to bare-metal host devices. Many small features and new drivers and fixes are also available. Here's the full list of changes

How a rogue appeals court wrecked the patent system

"No institution is more responsible for the recent explosion of patent litigation in the software industry, the rise of patent trolls, and the proliferation of patent thickets than the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. The patent court's thirtieth birthday this week is a good time to ask whether it was a mistake to give the nation's most patent-friendly appeals court such broad authority over the patent system." Interesting.

Slackware 14.0 released

"Slackware 14.0 brings many updates and enhancements, among which you'll find two of the most advanced desktop environments available today: Xfce 4.10.0, a fast and lightweight but visually appealing and easy to use desktop environment, and KDE 4.8.5, a recent stable release of the 4.8.x series of the award-winning KDE desktop environment. Slackware uses the 3.2.29 kernel bringing you advanced performance features such as journaling filesystems, SCSI and ATA RAID volume support, SATA support, Software RAID, LVM (the Logical Volume Manager), and encrypted filesystems. Kernel support for X DRI (the Direct Rendering Interface) brings high-speed hardware accelerated 3D graphics to Linux."

The programmers before us were better

"When I started writing programs in the late 80s it was pretty primitive and required a lot of study and skill. I was a young kid doing this stuff, the adults at that time had it even worse and some of them did start in the punch card era. This was back when programmers really had to earn their keep, and us newer generations are losing appreciation for that. A generation or two ago they may have been been better coders than us. More importantly they were better craftsmen, and we need to think about that." I'm no programmer, but I do understand that the current crop of programmers could learn a whole lot from older generations. I'm not going to burn my fingers on if they were better programmers or not, but I do believe they have a far greater understanding of the actual workings of a computer. Does the average 'app developer' have any clue whatsoever about low-level code, let alone something like assembly?

GNOME 3.6 released

"Today, the GNOME Project celebrates the release of GNOME 3.6, the latest version of the popular free desktop, as well as the GNOME developer platform. GNOME 3.6 is the third major update of GNOME 3. It builds on the foundations that we have laid with the previous 3.x releases and offers a greatly enhanced experience. The exciting new features and improvements in this release include a new login experience, integrated input methods, a refresh of the message tray, support for more online accounts, improved accessibility, and many more."

Buying an iMac

I bought a brand new iMac on Tuesday. I'm pretty sure this will come as a surprise to some, so I figured I might as well offer some background information about this choice - maybe it'll help other people who are also pondering what to buy as their next computer.

Linus Torvalds goes off on Linux and Git

"I was in a coffee shop in Portland, Oregon and happened to spot Linus Torvalds sitting alone at a window table. I asked the creator of the Linux operating system and the Git source code control system if I could join him. Over the next fifteen minutes we talked about programming and programmers." Editor's Note: We've realized it's unclear whether this is a satirical interview or not. We don't know, so YMMV.