12 Aug 2008
The 'Anti-Java' Professor and the Jobless Programmers

He's right on, too. We have to teach new interns at work about the intricacies of memory allocation in C and C++ - they just don't understand why you have to reserve memory and then clean it up yourself, when the system they've been learning in school just does it all for you. My fear is that Java will be abandoned to be replaced by .Net - which is worse.

Actually, this top computer science professor isn’t exactly ‘anti-Java’ – but he deplores its effect on CS studies. And he sees dark clouds ahead if something doesn’t change.

(link) [Internet News]

06:48 /Technology | 2 comments | permanent link

Apple Sells 60 Million IPhone Apps, Jobs Confirms Kill Switch

Interesting: people applauded when M$ put the kill bits in ActiveX controls, and now they're slamming Jobs and Apple for doing the same thing with the iPhone. Why could that be?

Perhaps it's because they knew M$ had to do it for security reasons, while the motives of Steve & Co. are more suspect and related to total control. And as much as I'm an Apple fan, I have to admit that this line of reasoning is probably correct - and it makes me all the more leery of ever getting an iPhone.

Steve Jobs tell the Wall Street Journal that there were 60 million downloads from the iPhone app store in the first month for a total of $30 million. Jobs also confirmed the remote kill switch. "Hopefully we never have to pull that lever, but we would be irresponsible not to have a lever like that to pull."

(link) [Wired: Top Stories]

06:47 /Technology | 0 comments | permanent link

Aug. 12, 1981: IBM Unveils 5150 PC

The original PC - ah, the memories! Even if we poor folks could only afford an Apple, Atari or Commodore 64, we still knew that this was the machine of the decade.

IBM introduces the 5150 personal computer. It will sweep away the competition and effectively have the field to itself, for a while.

(link) [Wired: Top Stories]

06:42 /Technology | 0 comments | permanent link