Eugenia Loli Archive

The first benchmark of Mustang (JDK1.6) versus Tiger (JDK1.5) shows that Java users are up for an agreeable surprise. According to this JavaLobby discussion the virtual machine raw speed has improved significantly (40-100%). Although, the core library implementation (e.g. collections) could also benefit from some rework/optimizations.

During Hewlett-Packard's Business Critical Systems conference in Macau this week, executives described a recent offer by Sun Microsystems' boss Scott McNealy to merge Solaris with HP-UX as "almost laughable".

Tim Altman just wanted to file a bug report for Outlook (feature request actually) but all he got was a lot of hop-around from Microsoft's tech support, and got charged $35 for expressing interest in the product.

"Newer software does try to be sexier by doing flashy things such as the talking paperclip. This causes a tendency for the software to bloat to the point of saturation, i.e. until it performs at barely acceptable speeds. But application programming seems to get worse with faster processors. Even with more memory, faster disks and multiple CPUs, your average web application runs slower. Is it possible that the faster hardware has made us worse programmers?"

Microsoft will bring some of the graphics destined for Windows Vista to the Macintosh, phones and older versions of Windows next year through a user interface toolkit. Company executives at the Mix '06 Web developer conference on Monday provided anticipated dates for delivery of Windows Presentation Foundation Everywhere, or WPF/E, a user interface design software for operating systems other than Windows Vista.

In Mac OS X, the root account is disabled by default. The first user account created is added to the admin group and that user can use the sudo command to execute other commands as root. The conventional wisdom is that sudo is the most secure way to run root commands, but a closer look reveals a picture that is not so clear.

The authors of "Beginning PHP and PostgreSQL 8: From Novice to Professional" explain how, when and why PostgreSQL tops commercial database systems, as well as its suitability for enterprises and why end users have more control with this open source DMBS.

FOX v1.6.0 has been released with the biggest major new feature being Unicode support but also with a raft of new system code such as extra threading and I/O APIs. This should be viewed as an interim release as unicode keyboard input is as yet unfinished.

There's a software product coming that has the potential to demote spyware from a security priority to an afterthought: Windows Vista. Spyware has become a serious security problem for users of Microsoft's operating system over the past years, giving rise to a host of third-party tools to fight the insidious software. But perhaps the best defensive program has yet to ship, some analysts believe.

In a bid to simplify its product lines and get an edge on competitors, Cray plans a multi-year strategy to unify four different supercomputing technologies into a single, versatile machine. The company plans to announce the concept Monday with its multi-year, three-phase "adaptive supercomputing" plan, said Jan Silverman, senior vice president of corporate strategy.

All the data stored in a Python program is built around the concept of an object. Objects include fundamental data types such as numbers, strings, lists, and dictionaries. It's also possible to create user-defined objects in the form of classes or extension types. This chapter describes the Python object model and provides an overview of the built-in data types.

This chapter begins with a historical perspective of the Mac OS X graphics system and the evolution of technology behind Quartz 2D. It also explores crucial aspects of the graphics technology that is shaping the graphics architecture of the Macintosh.

Jeff Langr's poker application has come a long way in the last few installments of this series. In this segment, he adds the first set of code for handling some of those specialized poker terms you've might recognize from TV: the flop, the turn, the river, and the blinds.

Have you heard the pitch for the tool that gives a 600% productivity improvement, or the new programming language that will solve all of your problems? Matt Heusser explains that confidence games abound in software development—and suggests what to do about them.