JetLib News

Freshly Exhumed writes “Research In Motion, maker of BlackBerry smartphones, said on Friday it will buy QNX Software Systems, makers of Real-Time Operating Systems, for an undisclosed amount as it moves to boost integration of its devices with in-vehicle audio systems. QNX Neutrino is a Unix-like RTOS, and their Momentics development suite is for embedded applications for a wide variety of industries. While RIM has offered somewhat limited support of open source projects on its BlackBerry platform, the future of QNX’s Foundry27 development project, which uses the Apache 2.0 license, has not yet been mentioned.”

Source: BlackBerry Maker To Buy QNX For RTOS & Dev. Suite

AmberShah writes “The job post is your potential programmer’s first impression of your company, so make it count with these offputting features. There are plenty of articles about recruiting great developers, but what if you are only interested in the crappy ones?” I think much of the industry is already following these guidelines.

Source: How To Find Bad Programmers

badpazzword writes “Microsoft employee Garrett Serack announces he has received the green light to work full time on CoApp, an .msi-based package management system aiming to bring a wholly native toolchain for OSS development and deployment. This will hopefully bring more open source software on Windows, which will conversely bring OSS more users, testers and developers. Serack is following the comments at Ars Technica, so he might also follow them here. The launchpad project is already up.”

Source: Microsoft’s CoApp To Help OSS Development, Deployment

Low Ranked Craig writes “Apple had an event today to show off the next major update to the iPhone OS. iPhone OS 4.0 should arrive this summer (presumably with a new iPhone) for iPhone and iPod Touch, and in the fall for the iPad. According to Apple the update has more than 1,500 new APIs and 100 new features including the sorely missed multitasking. Other highlights include unified inbox, improved security, support for multiple Exchange accounts, application folders, iBooks, and iAd, an advertising framework for developers to put ads in their applications. The official word from Steve on Flash and Java remains a simple ‘No.’”

Source: iPhone OS 4.0 Brings Multitasking, Ad Framework For Apps

derrida writes “After more than 4 years C is back at position number 1 in the TIOBE index. The scores for C have been pretty constant through the years, varying between the 15% and 20% market share for almost 10 years. So the main reason for C’s number 1 position is not C’s uprise, but the decline of its competitor Java. Java has a long-term downward trend. It is losing ground to other languages running on the JVM. An example of such a language is JavaFX script that is now approaching the top 20.”

Source: C Programming Language Back At Number 1

Dotnaught writes “A paper (PDF) to be presented later this month at the IEEE International Parallel and Distributed Processing Symposium in Atlanta describes a new approach to memory management that allows software applications to run up to 20% faster on multicore processors. Yan Solihin, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at NCSU and co-author of the paper, says that using the technique is just a matter of linking to a library in a program that makes heavy use of memory allocation. The technique could be especially valuable for programs that are difficult to parallelize, such as word processors and Web browsers.” Informationweek has a few more details from an interview with Solihin.

Source: Memory Management Technique Speeds Apps By 20%

dp619 writes “Concepts outlined in Microsoft’s internal ‘Midori’ OS documents are materializing in .NET, according to an SD Times report. Midori is a new operating system project that is designed for distributed concurrency. Microsoft has assigned some of its all-star programmers to the project, while recruiting others. It is also working on other projects to replace Windows that make the OS act more like a hypervisor.”

Source: “Midori” Concepts Materialize In .NET

itwbennett writes “Stanford Law School has released a wiki called WhatApp?, where users can rate all manner of web apps, browsers, mobile platforms, mobile apps, and social network apps on their security, privacy, and openness. Currently, the wiki ‘lists some 200+ apps, but most of them have not been reviewed yet. So they need a lot of help,’ writes blogger Dan Tynan. ‘To review an app you select it from the list, then fill out a 9-question form rating its privacy, security, and openness, ranging from 5 (very private, secure, and open) to 1 (a steaming pile of vulnerabilities and violations).’”

Source: Naming and Shaming Toxic Web Apps

A day after the release of Apple’s tablet computer, a hacker claims to have gained root access to the iPad. “A well-known hacker of the iPhone, who previously defeated Apple’s restrictions on developers, has claimed in a video to have hacked the iPad. Just a day after release, the hacker, who goes by ‘MuscleNerd’ online, said that he has gained root access to the iPad…”

Source: iPad Jailbroken

andylim writes in with news of a reasonably impressive demonstration of the multi-platform capabilities of Adobe AIR. “Christian Cantrell, a technical product manager at Adobe, has created an app for multiple platforms including OS X, Windows 7, Ubuntu, Android, iPhone OS, and iPad OS. What’s amazing is that all the platforms use the same code base. ‘The application is called iReverse, and it’s a fully functional Reversi game (complete with a pretty decent AI). Although iReverse is fun to play, the most amazing thing about the project is the fact that it runs in all these different environments completely unchanged. In other words, the exact same code base is used to build versions for five different environments. There’s no other platform in the world that can boast this level of flexibility — not even close.’” Cantrell says he will open-source the code for iReverse and document how he pulled this off.

Source: Multi-Platform App Created Using Single Code Base