Leif_Bloomquist writes “Videos of the presentations from the recent World of Commodore, held December 1st 2012 in Toronto, have been published on YouTube. The presentations range from new product announcements to remakes of classic Commodore games for iPhone, from animation and music performances to coding tutorials and discussions for retro platforms. The revived World of Commodore is held annually on the first weekend of December by the Toronto PET Users Group.”
December 18, 2012 – The Ada Resource Association
(ARA) and Ada-Europe today announced the approval and publication of
the latest version of the Ada programming language by the Geneva-based
International Organization for Standardization (ISO). The language
revision, known as Ada 2012, was under the auspices of ISO/IEC
JTC1/SC22/WG9 and was conducted by the Ada Rapporteur Group (ARG)
subunit of WG9, with sponsorship in part from the ARA and Ada-Europe.
The formal approval of the standard was issued on November 20 by
ISO/IEC JTC 1, and the standard was published on December 15.
I am glad to say that the major area of improvement is the ability to specify contacts, something I was urging the Ada community to do back in 2002. The new features include the ability to specify preconditions and postconditions for subprograms,
and invariants for private types. Another important area that received attention in this iteration was multi-core programming.
So if you are serious about mission critical software, head on to the web site and see what you have been missing.
An anonymous reader writes with news that, as predicted, the iPad only newspaper The Daily failed. From the article: “The goal of The Daily was to provide a modern spin on the news cycle by delivering world news draped in a multimedia experience. In other words, The Daily devoted a lot of resources towards adding photos, video, and touch controls to news stories that would otherwise be static. … It was announced today that The Daily will be closing up shop on December 15 after failing to rake in the dough.”
sfcrazy writes “Ouya has stuck to its deadlines. The team has posted an update on the official blog that the units will start shipping on the scheduled date of December 28th. These units are for those developers who backed the project on Kickstarter. There is some surprise for developers with this console. ‘What we didn’t tell you was that the advance dev consoles you ordered are pretty special – you’ll know what I mean when you open yours. They’re rare drops. :P,’ says the official post.”
An anonymous reader writes “Yesterday there was a rumor doing the rounds that Nintendo was set to release a brand new version of the Wii console called the Wii Mini. The new machine would be significantly smaller than the current Wii, is expected to ship with a Wii Remote Plus, Nunchuk, and Sensor Bar, and hopefully carries a much lower (sub-$100) price. Well, it looks as though this wasn’t just a rumor. Best Buy Canada has it listed with an image on its front page and a December 7 release date.”Also at PC Mag.
An anonymous reader writes “When Pete London posted a resume on LinkedIn in December 2009, the JavaScript specialist stumbled into a trap of sorts. Shortly after creating a profile he received a message from a recruiter at Google. Just days later, another from Mozilla. Facebook reached out the next month and over the course of the next two years, nearly every big name in tech – attempt to lure him to a new employer. He received 530 messages in all, or one every 40 hours … the only problem? Pete London didn’t exist.”
An anonymous reader writes “When Pete London posted a resume on LinkedIn in December 2009, the JavaScript specialist stumbled into a trap of sorts. Shortly after creating a profile he received a message from a recruiter at Google. Just days later, another from Mozilla. Facebook reached out the next month and over the course of the next two years, nearly every big name in tech – attempt to lure him to a new employer. He received 530 messages in all, or one every 40 hours … the only problem? Pete London didn’t exist.”
Hugh Pickens writes “PC World reports that Windows XP lost more than 11 percent of its share from September to December 2011, to post a December average of 46.5 percent, a new low for the aged OS as users have gotten Microsoft’s message that the operating system should be retired. Figures indicate that Windows 7 will become the most widely used version in April, several months earlier than previous estimates. Two months ago, as Microsoft quietly celebrated the 10th anniversary of XP’s retail launch, the company touted the motto ‘Standing still is falling behind’ to promote Windows 7 and demote XP. In July, Microsoft told customers it was ‘time to move on’ from XP, reminding everyone that the OS would exit all support in April 2014. Before that, the Internet Explorer team had dismissed XP as the ‘lowest common denominator’ when they explained why it wouldn’t run IE9. The deadline for ditching Windows XP is in April 2014, when Microsoft stops patching the operating system. ‘Enterprises don’t want to run an OS when there’s no security fixes,’ says Michael Silver, an analyst with Gartner Research rejecting the idea that Microsoft would extend the end-of-life date for Windows XP to please the 10% who have no plans to leave the OS. ‘The longer they let them run XP, the more enterprises will slow down their migration.’”
According to data shared by Experian Hitwise US, Google+ received around 50 million visits in December. That’s a jump of nearly 20 million from the month before and its biggest month of traffic since its launch at the end of June.
Google’s social network launched a holiday barrage of commercials featuring the Muppets and pro basketball stars using Google+ video Hangouts. CNET called the commercials “desperate,” but according to Hitwise’s numbers, the effort paid off.
Hitwise’s data are significantly lower than the comScore numbers TechCrunch reported last month. Those stats reported nearly 67 million unique visitors in November, which would be more visitors than Hitwise’s reported number of visits. That would be impossible. But as TechCrunch’s Eric Eldon pointed out, third-party numbers are never 100% accurate. What both comScore and Hitwise agree on is that Google+ traffic is rising slowly but steadily.
In its Q3 earnings call, Google reported 40 million registered Google+ users. Today’s Hitwise numbers are more consistent with that level of activity.
According to data 
Hitwise’s data are significantly lower than the