News

A New Kind of Science Is Ten   Wednesday 16 May

Ten years ago a book appeared that promised to change the way we do science and put computing at the forefront of the search for a grand unified theory of everything.

Oracle v Google Judge Is A Programmer!   Wednesday 16 May

One month into the Oracle v Google trial, Judge William Alsup has revealed that he has, and still does, write code. Will this affect the outcome?

Cheaper SQL on Amazon EC2   Wednesday 16 May

If you’re running SQL Server on Amazon EC2, there are some new options that may well work out less expensive.

Deep Blue Turns 15   Tuesday 15 May

It is 15 years since IBM's chess playing supercomputer Deep Blue beat the reigning world chess champion Gary Kasparov at his own game.

Mathematical Art 2012   Tuesday 15 May

Math, computing and art have had a long history together and the American Mathematical Society has just posted a gallery of stunning images from this year's exhibition. If you click on one of the works. you can also send it as an e-card - modern times indeed.

Xamarin Designer for Android   Tuesday 15 May

A new layout designer lets Android developers create layouts for their apps from within Visual Studio and MonoDevelop. It is included in Mono for Android 4.2 and MonoDevelop 3.0 both of which have also been released.

Award Established for Computer Conservation   Monday 14 May

A new international award for computer conservation has been established in memory of Tony Sale, a pioneer of computer conservation who led the project to rebuild Colossus.

I Programmer's Alexa Toolbar   Monday 14 May

Alexa has a new toolbar creator and you can now download the I Programmer Alexa toolbar so that you can keep track of our new articles. However, not everyone likes toolbars.

Real eXtreme programming   Sunday 13 May

 You may think you know what eXtreme Programming is all about, but perhaps you didn't think quite extreme enough. We have a short amusing video that shows how to join the ranks of dangerous occupations.

Online Ad Spend   Sunday 13 May

For developers whose fortunes rely on those of the web, the good news is that the online advertising market is experiencing continuous, significant growth each year.

Goldbach Conjecture - Closer to Solved?   Sunday 13 May

The Goldbach conjecture is not the sort of thing that relates to practical applications, but they used to say the same thing about electricity.

MSDN Magazine May 2012 - HTML5, ASP.NET and Neural Nets   Saturday 12 May

The May issue of the MSDN Magazine is focused on HTML5, but only just. There is, however, something for everyone - even if you are interested in Microsoft specific technologies.

404, the story of a page not found   Saturday 12 May

If you thought the 404 page was just an error message in HTML form - think again. Renny Gleeson has an amusing story about an opportunity missed.

Icons added to NetAdvantage Ultimate 2012   Friday 11 May

The latest release of NetAdvantage Ultimate marks the inclusion of two Infragistics design toolsets into the product suite and has Windows 8 compatible, touch-friendly Metro UI styling.

LightGuide: Kinect Teaches Movement   Friday 11 May

The latest job for a Kinect is to teach you how to move. In principle, it could teach you how to play the cello, perform martial arts or dance. But my guess is that you still need talent.

dotPeek - A Free .NET Decompiler   Friday 11 May

JetBrains has released dotPeek 1.0 a free-of-charge .NET decompiler and assembly browser. 

Game-powered Machine Learning Finds the Music   Thursday 10 May

Machine learning is all the rage at the moment, but it is still just as difficult to find the data you need to perform the training. Game-powered machine learning is one way around the problem - in some situations at least.

Mozilla - Microsoft Is Blocking Browser Choice - Again!   Thursday 10 May

Not long ago, Microsoft got into a lot of trouble for bundling IE with Windows and not allowing other browsers a fair playing field. Now in Windows RT it has gone one step further in disallowing any other browsers. In fact it has more or less banned any other applications!

A Facebook App Center   Thursday 10 May

Facebook has just announced its very own App Center where you can sell your apps. Why has this taken so long?

Visual Studio 11 Goes Color - Slightly   Thursday 10 May

Microsoft appears to have listened to criticisms of  the "grey goop" appearance of the Visual Studio 11 Beta. The Release Candidate features more "visual energy", aka color.

Professional Programmer

The Oracle v Google Trial IProgrammer Reads the Patents   Friday 11 May

There are two important patents that are being asserted by Oracle in its lawsuit against Google's Android. What do these patents actually cover - it must be something really clever and deserving of patent protection...

Babbage's Bag

The Universe as a Computer   Wednesday 16 May

Is the Universe just a big computer?
We have been searching for the theory of the Universe, the Grand Unified Theory, for a long time but could the secret be that the Universe is just a computer…

Binary - Negative Numbers   Monday 14 May

Binary arithmetic is easy, so easy a computer can do it, but what about negative numbers? This is altogether more tricky.