Thom Holwerda Archive

A US computer scientist and a Microsoft researcher have devised a program that drastically reduces application crashes and can prevent some types attack by altering the way applications use memory. The program, called DieHard, officially launched over the holidays, following development that was funded by large grants from Microsoft, Intel and the US' National Science Foundation.

"D is a systems programming language. Its focus is on combining the power and high performance of C and C++ with the programmer productivity of modern languages like Ruby and Python. Special attention is given to the needs of quality assurance, documentation, management, portability and reliability. D is statically typed, and compiles direct to native code. It's multiparadigm: supporting imperative, object oriented, and template metaprogramming styles. It's a member of the C syntax family, and its look and feel is very close to C++'s. See this comparison of D with C, C++, C#, and Java."

Hell was already frozen anyway, but apparantly, the SkyOS team is trying to bring hell's temperature to absolute zero, since they are saying 2007 might see a release of SkyOS 5. "After what seems about 30 years worth of work (I'm sure even more to Robert), SkyOS will finally be released to the public. Lots of details are still being worked out on this one (as well as the obvious issues still present in the system), but we're really shooting to make it happen."

"Here's a little thought experiment to take into the New Year. Not as difficult as Schrodinger's Cat, but thought provoking nevertheless. Imagine that you woke up tomorrow to a world without Microsoft. Not a world where Microsoft never existed, but one where it hit some hidden critical corporate mass and imploded, or it was discovered that the Windows source code was actually the DNA sequence for red cabbage, and all the directors disappeared to a hidden undersea stronghold. Whatever really... Microsoft existed and now it doesn't."

Just in time for the new year, the PC-BSD team is pleased to announce the immediate availability of PC-BSD version 1.3 for public download. You may download this release and view the change log. The team is also launching a web design contest for the new web site of 2007.

Apple Computer gave Chief Executive Steve Jobs 7.5 million stock options in 2001 without the required authorization of the company's board, the Financial Times reported on Thursday. Records purporting to show that a full board meeting had taken place to approve the remuneration, as required by Apple's procedures, were later falsified, the Financial Times reported, citing people familiar with the matter. The report comes after Apple shares fell as much as 6 percent on Wednesday on a report in legal trade publication The Recorder that federal prosecutors were looking at 'apparently falsified' stock option documents in their probe of Apple's previous grants. Update: Apple released new information about its allocation of stock options on Friday, defending CEO Steve Jobs following speculation that a key document had been forged.