Apple iPhone 5 ships October, claims rumor machine
With classic clumsiness and style I dropped my iPhone this morning and smashed its display. This means I'm so in the market for a new Apple [AAPL] smartphone: good news then that iPhone 5 production has begun and it looks likely we'll be getting hold of the new metal-back device starting next month (October).
October action
Multiple rumors this weekend seem to support an October release for the faster, slimmer, lighter Apple iPhone. German carrier Deutsche Telecom is even offering iPhone pre-orders to its customers on a voucher system, though won't say when the device will ship, or if it will ship. Read more...
Moth in the machine: Debugging the origins of ‘bug’
It's an oft-repeated tale that the grand dame of military computing, computer scientist and U.S. Navy Rear Admiral Grace Hopper, coined the terms bug and debug after an incident involving Harvard University's Mark II calculator.
The story goes like this:
On September 9, 1945, a Harvard technical team looked at Panel F and found something unusual between points in Relay 70. It was a moth, which they promptly removed and taped in the log book. Grace Hopper added the caption "First actual case of bug being found," and that's the first time anyone used the word bug to describe a computer glitch. Naturally, the term debugging followed.
Yes, it's an oft-repeated tale, but it's got more bugs in it than Relay 70 probably ever had. Read more...
No pain, some gain: Ubuntu Oneiric Ocelot examined
Ubuntu 11.10, just released as its first beta differs only slightly in its looks from its 11.04 predecessor – a fact that will be welcome news to penguins still reeling from that earlier version's grand re-boot.
That earlier release shed GNOME 2.x, ignored GNOME 3.0 and set its brand-new Unity interface as the default.
Unfortunately, while the Unity desktop has potential, the initial release was rough enough around the edges that I suggested at the time waiting for a few more releases before embracing it.
While the first beta of 11.10, called Oneiric Ocelot, is also a little rough at the edges and features some curious design decisions, the version of Unity here is more stable and it is faster than the version that shipped with 11.04. In other words, Unity is making progress, albeit slower than many would like.
Dash changes: expanded capabilities with windows-style resizing
One of the areas that has seen a considerable makeover in the last six months is Unity's Dash. First and foremost, the Dash button has been moved from the top panel to the Unity launcher and its capabilities have been extended. Read more...
HP plucks webOS team out of departing PC division
HP evidently sees a brighter future for its webOS platform after moving the team into the Office of Strategy and Technology (OS&T) as it figures out what to do with the software.
The other half of the business HP acquired from Palm – the hardware element – will continue to reside in its Personal Systems Group that will likely be spun out once the globocorp has considered all the options on the table.
In an internal memo from HP execs that was leaked to precentral.net, PSG chief Todd Bradley said it made sense to rehouse the webOS software engineering, developer relations and product marketing under the wing of OS&T enterprise veep Shane Robison. Read more...
San Francisco police help search for lost iPhone
San Francisco police officers helped Apple Inc. investigators look for a missing iPhone prototype that was left in a city restaurant in July, the police chief said, the second time in two years the company has lost an unreleased smartphone.
Police Chief Greg Suhr told the San Francisco Chronicle ( http://bit.ly/oOfTi1) that four plainclothes officers accompanied two Apple investigators who searched a San Francisco home for the iPhone prototype.
Apple employees who contacted the department asking for help finding a lost item conducted the house search after asking the resident's permission, and the officers did not enter the home, according to police.
Apple tracked the smartphone to the home using GPS technology, but the gadget wasn't found there, said Lt. Troy Dangerfield. Read more...
Crimson Steam Pirates tops iPad Games of the Week
Crimson Steam Pirates is made by Bungie, and it’s a ton of fun. That’s all you need to know about this week’s top iPad game. It’s ship vs. ship on the high seas, and you’ll need to carefully steer your hardy, steampunk-enhanced craft from point to point, objective to objective, and battle to battle to win the day. DrawRace 2 HD brings fresh, finger-frenzied racing to your tablet, while MEGASTUNT Mayhem Pro puts “bullet time” tricky fun into monster truck rallies. Finally, Asteroid 2012 adds a first-person space shooter perspective on this beloved retro classic. It all adding up to an explosion of fun to kick off September.
Crimson: Steam Pirates (Free)
Bungie has been making quality games for years. Their first entry into the iOS universe lives up to every expectation, and then some. Crimson: Steam Pirates delivers some of the best graphics, gameplay and immersive storytelling of 2011, and it’s a ton of fun to boot. Ringing up for nary a penny, this app delivers eight full, free levels, which end with a gentle plea for $1.99 to grab the next saga, which you’ll want to do immediately. Along the way you’ll earn new ships, upgrades, and more, while facing a plethora of bases, submarines, flying zeppelins, and of course, ships of all kinds. Be careful to examine how far and wide your ship can deliver its ordinance before you commit to each new move. You’ll want to anticipate the moves of you foes and keep your firing solution trained on the right parts of the game field to maximize your attacks. My favorite? Boarding enemy ships results in you leaving crew behind to pilot the captured foe, joining your attack forces going forward. With its “pass-and-play” multiplayer, this title steams full speed ahead to the top of my list of favorite turn-based strategy games of the year. Read more...
Wikileaks: ICE / IFPI Infiltrate Pirate Topsites
A diplomatic cable leaked by Wikileaks reveals that entertainment industry groups and law enforcement combined their efforts to infiltrate Warez Scene topsites. One of the strategies they discuss during a 2009 meeting is to have an informant leak music before the official release date, to gain trust of the site’s operator and gain access to the highly secured Scene servers.
If anything, the diplomatic cables that were released by Wikileaks reveal that entertainment industry groups such as the MPAA, RIAA and IFPI are pitching their agendas at the highest political levels.
These private groups train law enforcement officers around the world and are used to gather evidence, as if they were law enforcement branches.
A good example of the above is cable from October 2009, written by Kathleen Stephens, U.S. ambassador in South Korea. In the cable Stephens writes about a meeting between South Korean law enforcement officials, lobby groups IFPI and the MPAA, and a representative from the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) unit. Read more...
10 must-read books for developers
Blog site Stackoverflow posed an interesting question: "If you could go back in time and tell yourself to read a specific book at the beginning of your career as a developer, which book would it be?"
The accumulated wisdom of Stackoverflow readers posted over the past three years reads like a who's-who of the programming book industry, but several missing books caught my eye.
Here's the Stackoverflow list:
1. "Code Complete" by Steve McConnell (2004). Tackles every facet of programming, with tons of examples.
2. "The Pragmatic Programmer" by Andrew Hunt and David Thomas (1999). Concentrates on nitty-gritty real-world approaches to solving problems through code. Read more...
Are costly SSDs worth the money? Enterprise users say absolutely
With 5,000 employees and 280 branch offices, Associated Bank is a prime example of a medium-sized business with big data demands.
After acquiring another bank in 2006, its storage area network (SAN) grew form 17TB to 300TB in less than a year. Since then, due to more applications coming online and federal regulations requiring more data retention, the SAN has grown to 900TB, or 52 times its original size.
Dan Marbes, a systems engineer at the Greenbay, Wisc.-based bank, decided to try solid-state drives (SSD) to increase the performance on I/O-hungry applications, while reducing his spindle footprint. Read more...
Microsoft: Stolen SSL certs can’t be used to install malware via Windows Update
Microsoft said Sunday that a digital certificate stolen from a Dutch company could not be used to force-feed customers malware through its Windows Update service.
The company's assertion came after a massive theft of more than 500 SSL (secure socket layer) certificates, including several that could be used to impersonate Microsoft's update services, was revealed by Dutch authorities and several other affected developers.
"Attackers are not able to leverage a fraudulent Windows Update certificate to install malware via the Windows Update servers," said Jonathan Ness, an engineer with the Microsoft Security Response Center (MSRC), in a Sunday blog post. "The Windows Update client will only install binary payloads signed by the actual Microsoft root certificate, which is issued and secured by Microsoft." Read more...