A little while ago I was asked to make a small circuit based around a microcontroller and a Digital to Analog Converter that would output various sounds corresponding to different stimuli. These stimuli would be commands received by the microcontroller via UART, and the output sounds would simulate a switch, or a closed door, or other ambient sounds from a working environment

Apple announced this morning via a posting on the front page of its iPhone developer site that it has decided to discontinue the non-disclosure agreement preventing developers from discussing iPhone programming.

When you get successful, you may find that you move from someone else looking after your hosting, to running a complete rack (or racks) yourself. Standing with that shiny new rack towering over you, there seems so much space and flexibility, and anything not quite right now can be fixed later, right?

Wondering how threading thrives in the real-world? The enormous and highly threaded code base at SAS is an example of an application that benefits from the spelunking and debugging the Intel Thread Checker and Thread Profiler tools offer.

Reasoning why and why not to use multi threading. Pretty informative.

University of Rochester researchers have developed the first true 3-D processor and it runs today at 1.4 GHz. Previous attempts to build 3-D chips simply stacked identical processors on the top of one another. On the contrary, the new 3-D chip, dubbed the ‘Rochester Cube,’ was specifically designed to optimize all key processing functions vertically. And each layer could have a different function. For example, this kind of 3-D processor could have a layer dedicated to conversion of an MP3 file and another one to provide information about light to your digital camera.

In a session at its Google Developer day in London this morning, Google executives demonstrated a working Android mobile phone for "the first time in Europe."

Using better tools is good. In this post I want to take a look at a better workbench to use these tools, the machine itself. XP or Vista are not bad, far better than the Windows 98 days where failing to set a property would be enough to plunge Delphi and the complete machine into a blue screen. But there is still room enough for improvement.

Hardware for virtual reality and virtual worlds

Products like the Kindle from Amazon.com and Sony Reader are becoming more readily available, cheaper and more popular. I will never buy one and if you gave me one as a gift I would likely prop up a shorter table leg. If you want to know what I find so repellant about this technology, read this.

Hello, my name is Sam Ceccola, I have been involved with use of Java technologies in the industry and the government communities since 1998. For me this started with Bluestone software (later purchased by HP), then with BEA and now I have the privilege of joining Azul Systems (this is my first blog entry for them). At Azul we have been working with an increasing number of military customers, which in-and-of itself is a testament to what we see as growing use of Java within the defense community. One point to add to this discussion is in terms of overall infrastructure that is available – that’s where we see a significant gap between Ada and Java. A couple examples that highlight this are the availability of programmers over time, and the number of COTS solutions available to fine-tune Java applications. Over time we see the pool of well-trained developers shrinking for Ada, versus continued growth for Java. This is matched by the vendor and tool base situation – in 2003 Venture Development Corporation (VDC) estimated that the market would be flat for Ada at $49M/year, as opposed to Java’s growth from $1B/year in 2003 to over $1.5B in 2007.

My home office has just about everything needed for a productive development environment. Its stocked with the essentials (test server, quality monitor, good lighting), a few "nice-to-haves" (Wacom tablet, comfy chair) and a some fluf (sound system, Betamax and VCR). It has at least one item I would rather do without (phone). When Data Robotics announced the new Firewire800 Drobo, the time was right to fill a home office void: reliable versioning and backups.

Follow the illustrated step-by-step assembly of a liquid-cooled, 8-core development machine based on the Intel SkullTrail motherboard, blazing fast Intel QX9775 Core 2 Extreme processor, and Adaptec RAID controller with 3 10K Velociraptor hard drives. The assembly is preceded by the goals for the system, as well as cost-benefit analysis and justification for spending $5,000 - $6,000 on a development machine. Full parts list and pricing, and a brief photo tour of the home office where it all took place.

Software running -- with no process separation -- on a BAE Systems RAD6000 single board computer that's configured with one 33 MHz RISC CPU and 128 MB of RAM.

If you've got a few servers you are responsible for, check out these tips to keep yourself from accidentally causing problems. Good stuff!

Khronos Group has announced the release of the OpenGL 3.0 API specification and the GLSL 1.30 shading language specification.

Admittedly, the most sensible choice for developing web content is a desktop PC with one or a pair of large, high-resolution screens. But in some situations you might need a laptop, or alternatively, you might use a laptop as your primary computer and hook up an extra screen. In that case, you would probably go with a laptop with a decent dedicated graphics card. Regardless, it’s primarily the larger type of desktop replacement laptops that attract the developer’s attention. The list below is a few examples of some laptops that stand out in this department, be it for pure performance or good value for money.

Last year, x64 editions of Windows Vista were hard to come by and seen as mainly for early adopters. This year, with little warning, the tide seems to have shifted dramatically. I noticed the first hint three weeks ago, when I visited HP’s website to check the specs of the new TX2500z notebook and saw that a 64-bit upgrade was available for all models. When I looked at the flyers in last Sunday’s paper, I saw several PCs at Best Buy with 64-bit Vista Home Premium Edition installed, including notebooks from HP and Toshiba and quad-core desktops from Gateway and Dell; the former came with 4GB of RAM and a 19-inch LCD monitor for $750, while the latter had 6GB of RAM and a 19-inch monitor for $830.

An irreversible shift towards multicore x86 processors is underway. Building multicore processors delivers on the promise of Moore's Law, but it creates an enormous problem for developers. Multicore processors are parallel computers, and parallel computers are notoriously difficult to program.

Back in the old days, if you had a PC, there was only one card called "the sound card", which of course was the Sound Blaster 16. If you were playing any of the popular games back then, many of them only supported the SB16 for sound. Other companies who wanted to start releasing sound cards had to include Sound Blaster emulation if they wanted to get any kind of real sales. Sometimes this emulation was buggy, but you wouldn't know that until after you bought it. For this reason, people who wanted sound took no short cuts and only bought SB16s.

Windows® SteadyState™ 2.5 is now available on Windows XP and Windows Vista. Whether you manage computers in a school computer lab or an Internet café, a library, or even in your home, Windows SteadyState helps make it easy for you to keep your computers running the way you want them to, no matter who uses them. Windows SteadyState runs on genuine copies of Windows XP Professional, Windows XP Home Edition, Windows XP Tablet PC Edition, Windows Vista Business, Windows Vista Ultimate, Windows Vista Home Basic, Windows Vista Home Premium, and Windows Vista Starter. And, Windows SteadyState is offered free of charge to Windows Genuine Advantage customers!

The software trap is a programming feature used to capture an abnormal program running status. The general principle is to setup a trap for software, and redirect from the code out of control to a specified address, and get back to its normal running mode. The software traps can be placed between the user codes or after the jump instructions, or be placed in the unused space by a consecutive trap codes.

Intel has bad news for software developers. It's been hinted at already, but now the company has stated explicitly: it's not enough for software developers to be targeting dual, quad, or eight cores. No, the future holds tens, hundreds, or thousands of cores, and developers are going to have to bite the bullet and write programs that will scale to such systems.

The microcontroller is widely used in many devices, which works in environment. The microcontroller has to face the challenges from EMI, voltage stability, crystal failure and much other interference. If the interferences are strong enough to disturb the operation, the system design should be secure enough to deal with these matters, one good practice is to reset and go on with previous normal operation state .

Intel is telling software developers to start thinking about not just tens but thousands of processing cores.