Wild, wide Wednesday’s IT Blogwatch: in which Intel makes it easier to program for quad-core CPUs. Not to mention the annual list of least influential Americans…

Jon Stokes has the scoop:

Intel announced today that they’re open-sourcing their cross-platform Thread Building Blocks 2.0 (TBB) template library. While the company contributes code to open-source project like the Linux kernel and drivers, the opening of TBB marks the first time that Intel has taken a commercial tool and open-sourced it, making it Intel’s largest open-source commitment to date.

The aim of TBB … is to make it easier for coders in C++ to express task-level parallelism. TBB works by abstracting parallelism above the level that most programmers are currently used to, especially those coders who use POSIX or Windows threads. Coders can use the TBB template library in conjunction with the platform’s native threads, and the different pieces of the project (task scheduler, mutex locks, atomic operations, containers, etc.) can be used independently of one another.

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It’s Tuesday’s IT Blogwatch: in which the state of Massachusetts thinks it likes Office 2007 after all. Not to mention why not to mess with two yuppies in a BMW…

Eric Lai has the scoop:

Massachusetts today released draft specifications that would allow state workers to continue using Microsoft’s Office Open XML (OOXML) format. The latest proposal comes about two years after state IT officials kicked off a raging political battle by unveiling  specifications that would have required state workers to use applications that support only "open" technologies like the OpenDocument format (ODF).
…
According to pages 18-22 of the proposed Massachusetts Enterprise Technical Reference Model 4.0, OOXML, along with ODF, plain text and HTML formats, meets the IT division’s criteria for an open document format. Other formats that are not considered open but could be used by Massachusetts state employees include Adobe Corp.’s Portable Document Format and Rich Text Format.
…
Microsoft has played hardball by lobbying hard in Massachusetts and other states, and to the federal government. On the other side, ODF supporter IBM has also lobbied governments.

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Zing! It’s IT Blogwatch, in which Sun’s blogging CEO tut-tuts Microsoft for its latest open-source threats. Not to mention a drag-racing competition based on power saws and lots of beer …

Jonathan Schwartz, Sun’s blogging CEO, looks at Microsoft’s latest bull-in-the-china-shop routine, relates how open-sourcing Solaris and participating in other free software projects has revived Sun, and then hands out some free advice to the Redmond executive corps:

You would be wise to listen to the customers you’re threatening to sue — they can leave you, especially if you give them motivation. Remember, they wouldn’t be motivated unless your products were somehow missing the mark.

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Zing! It’s IT Blogwatch, in which Sun’s blogging CEO tut-tuts Microsoft for its latest open-source threats. Not to mention a drag-racing competition based on power saws and lots of beer …

Jonathan Schwartz, Sun’s blogging CEO, looks at Microsoft’s latest bull-in-the-china-shop routine, relates how open-sourcing Solaris and participating in other free software projects has revived Sun, and then hands out some free advice to the Redmond executive corps:

You would be wise to listen to the customers you’re threatening to sue — they can leave you, especially if you give them motivation. Remember, they wouldn’t be motivated unless your products were somehow missing the mark.

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