Mozilla continues to move rapidly ahead with its Firefox OS mobile operating system, which is arriving on phones in many markets around the world. In fact, the OS is gaining enough traction that many observers see it as eventually being competitive with iOS and Android phones, but If Firefox OS is to be a resounding success, it’s going to need a very healthy ecosystem of apps to attract users.
That’s why the latest report from Juniper Research on what future app stores will be like should matter to the team at Mozilla. The report, Future App Stores: Discovery, Monetisation & Ecosystem Analysis 2013 – 2018, explores how the growing app ecosystem will be strengthened over the next five years.
John Barr asks what standard approach can the industry agree on to make next-generation HPC systems easier to program?
When the architecture of high-performance computing (HPC) systems changes, the tools and programming paradigms used to develop applications may also have to change. We have seen several such evolutions in recent decades, including the introduction of multiprocessors, the use of heterogeneous processors to accelerate applications, vector processors, and cluster computing.
These changes, while providing the potential for delivering higher performance at lower price points, give the HPC industry a big headache. That headache is brought on by the need for application portability, which in turn leverages standard development tools that support a range of platforms. Without software standards supporting emerging platforms, independent software vendors (ISVs) are slow to target these new systems, and without a broad base of software the industry pauses while the software catches up.
LXLE is a respin of Lubuntu aiming at a fast and capable desktop for aging computers. Version 12.04.3 has just been unleashed: “LXLE Paradigm goes final with 12.04.3 update. ‘Paradigm’ is a tentative attempt to create four different desktop paradigms for users to choose from once they start….
