The days of the April Fools’ web joke are over, or should be. It’s gotten too old, to institutionalized, and it’s so widespread these days that serious news can slip through the cracks because everyone assumes it’s a joke. If people want to pull hoaxes, pick a random day in the middle of the summer and do it then; you’ll get much more bang for the buck because no one will be expecting it. I used to like a good fake article as much as the rest, back in the days when they would be buried somewhere in the pages of a magazine’s April edition, but now it’s just lame. Be assured, all the items in this edition of Developer Week in Review are 100% prank-free and were supervised by the American Humane Association.
Gentlemen, start your lawyers!
Like a large radioactive reptile, the lawsuit between Oracle and Google over the improper use of Java has been sleeping quietly in a courtroom in San Jose. But now, the slumbering monster is about to awake, potentially leaving a trail of broken companies scattered from California to Asia. After all attempts to broker a settlement between Larry’s House of Java and the People’s Autonomous Car and Search Engine Company failed, the judge involved has ordered the two parties to start sharpening their long-knives, in an unusually candid opinion.
It’s hard to overestimate the potential impact that a ruling against Google could have on the smartphone industry. If Google was required to remove Java from Android phones, Android would essentially become useless because the entire stack that Android apps use is built on top of Java. More likely, Google would be required to shell out a significant license fee to Oracle, which added to the ones it already pays to Microsoft and (potentially) Apple, could make Android phones less and less profitable to the handset makers who actually end up paying the fees. Of course, given the glacial pace at which these proceedings move, Android may have already moved on by the time any such judgement actually comes down …
Linux has a friend in … Redmond?
In the past few weeks, we’ve made several references to Microsoft’s increasing support of the open source model, and this week brought even more evidence of the sea change out of Washington state. For a technology that Steve Ballmer once described as akin to cancer, Linux is certainly getting a lot of love from Microsoft these days. The software behemoth is now in the top 20 corporate contributors to the Linux Kernel, committing more than 1% of all new lines of code last year.
It is worth bearing in mind that most of that code is in support of Microsoft technologies, such as Hyper-V, but even still, it’s clear that Microsoft doesn’t treat Linux like an ill-behaved street urchin anymore.
The art of game cheats
I’m not much (if anything) of a game programmer; I’ve always gravitated more to the web side of the force. But I certainly play my share of games. I’m currently racing my 17 year old to level 80 on “Call of Duty MW3” on the Wii (I’m [MLP]TwilightSparkle if you want to ally with a mediocre player who likes Akimbo FMG9 a bit too much for his own good …). If you play enough multiplayer, you’ll eventually come to recognize the players who have an almost psychic knowledge of where everyone is. They’re the ones who always seem to come around the corner already sighted in on you. You know, the cheaters …
Now, one game developer has stepped forward to explain some of the hacks that cheats use to become Chuck Norris clones and how they are implemented. Even if you are never going to get within 1,000 yards of a z-buffer, it’s worth reading to see just how easily games can be tweaked to give unethical players an unbeatable edge.
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