Monthly Archive:: October 2012

"This week marked the real launch of the new Microsoft.com home page. And as someone who has been involved on and off with the project from the moment it was conceived, I thought I'd tell you the story, albeit extensively abridged, behind the new Microsoft.com. Grab a seat." I love the new Microsoft site. It looks very clean and focused.

"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.

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.

"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.

"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 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