software - Page number 2

On August 1, Knight Capital Group, a financial services company, lost $440 million in less than an hour because of a software bug. As I understand it, this bug could have been avoided if more thorough testing was done before release but, as the Omaha World-Herald reports, the company "rushed to develop a computer program so it could take advantage of a new Wall Street venue for trading stocks...and failed to fully work out the kinks in its system."

In an op-ed piece in NYTimes.com, Ellen Ullman, a former software engineer and author, talks about how the SEC's call to companies like Knight to "fully test their computer systems before deploying coding changes" is an impossibility. Ellen writes: » Read more

In open source software communities, few events are as exciting as the release of a new operating system. Community members may wait for months—even years—as fresh versions of their favorite Linux distributions are collectively and meticulously prepared, debugged, and packaged for the world.

Next month, Todd Robinson will release a Linux-based desktop operating system in a single day. Thirty-one times in a row. » Read more

Last week the European Court of Justice (ECJ), the highest court in the European Union on matters of EU law, issued a judgment in the case of SAS Institute Inc. v. World Programming Ltd, C-406/10, which was referred to the court for a preliminary ruling by the UK's High Court of Justice for England and Wales, Chancery Division. » Read more

I can remember so clearly the exact day my mind became open sourced. It was a crisp and sunny November day in 1973. After class in middle school, I called up my best friend, Bruce Jordan, and asked, "Can I come over to play now?" Bruce replied, "Sure." I jumped on my red, one-speed Schwinn bicycle and biked like mad the two miles over to Bruce's house. I arrived happily breathless. » Read more

These days there is a software library for nearly every occasion. Many of them are well designed and well implemented. Unfortunately, almost none of them have documentation presented in a way that allows a new user to quickly understand the basics and put it to work effectively. » Read more

A second great year on opensource.com has proven even more that openness can improve just about anything. No matter what you're interested in, we've had a story for you. A few examples: » Read more

Where does open source come from? » Read more

The scientific method: it all starts with a simple, essential question. How can you "know" something?

How can we gather knowledge and have confidence in the correctness of such knowledge? The lucubration of many smart minds over the centuries came to refine the following: » Read more

Software tools for collaboration and project management are the best solutions when you aim to unite the team, tune up the work flow, exchange experiences, etc. With all the available collaboration software, either desktop- or web-based, proprietary or open source, one might consider that such tools are the pandemic panacea for teams of all kinds. But collaboration software has several other advantages.

What I noticed about collaboration systems » Read more

Google Health was doomed from the start.

It was based on a legal fallacy and a technical one. » Read more