Dr. Dobb's Journal October 2003
In an effort to promote open standards for processor interfaces used in the mobile computing industry, ARM, Nokia, STMicroelectronics, and Texas Instruments have launched the Mobile Industry Processor Interface (MIPI) Alliance. An outgrowth of the OMAPI standard (created by ST and TI), the MIPI Alliance is intended to complement existing standards bodies such as the Open Mobile Alliance and 3GPP, which focus on services and air interfaces, respectively. The MIPI Alliance, on the other hand, focuses on microprocessors, peripherals, and software interfaces. MIPI working groups will include specifications in areas such as camera and display interface, software abstraction, communications interface, and system control. For more information, see http://www.mipi.org/.
The French government has banned civil servants from using the borrowed English word "e-mail," settling on the Quebec use of "courriel" (short for "courrier electronique") as the preferred term. However, the Ministry of Culture has declined to adopt the French Canadian terms for "spam" and "chat," instead continuing to look for Gallic alternatives to these words.
"The language in Quebec is slightly more familiar than ours," explained Florence Desmouliere of the Ministry of Culture in a Reuters interview. "It's different, more colorful. We like it a lot, but we don't quite have the same criteria...We've not found a satisfactory alternative for spam, nor for chat. Perhaps one day we'll adopt the Quebec view."
In Quebec, the common term for spam is "pourriel," which blends "courriel" with the word for garbage, "poubelle." The word for chat, "clavardage," is a similar hybrid, mixing "clavier" (keyboard) and "bavardage" (chattering).
SGI and the OpenGL Architecture Review Board (ARB) have announced updates to the OpenGL spec that includes a new OpenGL Shading Language that supports graphics cards from any vendor on any platform. OpenGL API 1.5 lets you write shader applications in real time and with more realistic graphical rendering. At the same time, SGI and Sun announced a joint project to define Java bindings for the OpenGL API, giving OpenGL graphics capabilities to Java programmers and opening cross-platform opportunities for OpenGL programmers.
Washington resident Steve Wiebe scored 947,200 points in Donkey Kong, setting a new world record for the game. He performed the feat on an upright arcade machine in his garage, and captured the entire game on video camera. Wiebe is not new to the Donkey Kong world. Last year, he set a record by breaking one million points on Donkey Kong, Jr.—and he says he'll keep trying to do the same for Donkey Kong. Game analysts at http://www.twingalaxies.com/ believe it is theoretically possible to score a million points at Donkey Kong, despite the fact that the game effectively ends at level 22, where the screen starts with a timer so low that it is impossible to complete the level. Wiebe's new Donkey Kong record replaces a high score of 879,200 points achieved last year; before that, Billy Mitchel's record of 874,300 points had stood for 20 years.
Robert V.D. Campbell, who worked on the Mark I and Mark II computers at Harvard University in the 1940s, recently died at the age of 86. Campbell served in the Navy from 1944-46, during which time he was also directed to continue his work with Howard Aiken and IBM at the Harvard Computation Laboratory. He was one of the first two coders of the Mark I computer; the third was Grace Hopper. After his discharge from the Navy, Campbell remained at Harvard to work on the Mark II, where he suggested that the machine incorporate floating-point representation. In 1947, Campbell was one of eight cofounders of the Association for Computing Machinery, and went on to serve as the ACM's first treasurer.
JBoss (http://www.jboss.org/) has decided to move towards J2EE certification for its application server software after all. Supposedly, this will not require any substantial changes to the software, but is being done to broaden its appeal to large organizations, many of which require compatibility to the J2EE specification. Applications written to the spec ostensibly will run on J2EE-compliant application servers, including those from IBM and Oracle. Certification, which is conducted by Sun for a fee, simply means that JBoss will have the Sun seal of approval and can use the Sun logo.