Interfacing Between Programming Languages Important

Computer programming languages’ interoperability has seemingly always been an elusive proposition. The concept of providing interfaces between languages is more important than ever, notes David Chisnall of the University of Cambridge. “With software becoming ever more complex and hardware less homogeneous, the likelihood of a single language being the correct tool for an entire program is lower than ever.” Applications using high-level languages typically call code written in lower-level languages, for example. Making such interfaces is challenging, but increasingly important. “The industry has spent the past 30 years building CPUs optimized for running languages such as C, because people who needed fast code used C. … Maybe the time has come to start exploring better built-in support for common operations in other languages.” The paper was published online by ACM Queue. (SlashDot)(ACM Queue)
 

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Important Challenges Face New FCC Head

When US Federal Communications Commission chair Julius Genachowski leaves his post “in the coming weeks,” there will likely be a heap of expectations facing his successor. President Barack Obama has yet to name a replacement and no firm date for Genachowski’s last day at the agency has been released, but Capitol Hill and industry pundits are rife with opinions as to what direction the agency head should go. For example, Phil Weiser, dean of the University of Colorado law school and a former senior presidential adviser, claims this could be a time to redefine the FCC’s role, which could include improving its enforcement capabilities and allow it to be more responsive to emerging issues through self-regulation. He told the Washington Post that one of the main priorities will be “freeing up wireless spectrum not only for consumers but also for machine-to-machine communications.” He added, “A core challenge for the FCC and the government is to create more access to spectrum, which will enable more entrepreneurs, companies, and individuals to use it in interesting ways. In addition to freeing up licensed spectrum, the government could also make available additional unlicensed spectrum.” The leading candidates for the FCC post are reportedly Tom Wheeler, a venture capitalist who has led wireless and the cable trade groups; and Jessica Rosenworcel, an FCC commissioner backed by US Senate Commerce Committee Chair Jay Rockefeller and 37 other senators. (The Washington Post)(Reuters)

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