1. Source code. Great movie, eh? But also, when a developer writes software, source code is the actual program as it is being typed into the computer, written in a programming language. Source code is usually kept secret and closely guarded by companies, although “open source” software bares its code to the world.

2. Regression. A programmer friend once mentioned that a bug was “regressed.” I had vivid images of animals regressing to primordial ooze. Software regression is a bug that makes things stop working correctly after an event that changes the operating environment, like a system update. Not to be confused with regression testing, which in the programming sense, generally means making sure updates to software don’t introduce new bugs to existing, working features, and that previously identified bugs have been fixed. So it actually has nothing to do with science fiction.

3. Deprecated. “Cheer up!” might be your first reaction to your friend who tells you a critical programming library he or she relies on has been deprecated. That actually isn’t a bad instinct, because when something is deprecated it means it’s no longer supported by the manufacturer and may disappear in the future. If your program relies on a feature Apple has deprecated, your program could “break” in new OS versions unless you update it to use newer programming libraries. Generally speaking, if something is deprecated, it means it’s still there, but is no longer supported.

4. Release Candidate. No this isn’t about politics. Many readers probably know that a “test” phase of a program is a Beta. At some point, though, a product moves past the Beta phase (and the even earlier Alpha phase) and becomes a Release Candidate, usually designated RC. It might also be referred to as a Final Candidate or FC by some. Marking a build an RC or FC is the developers’ way of saying “we think this is probably good enough to ship.” Apple often releases several Final Candidate builds, the last of which becomes the…

5. GM. No this isn’t the General Manager (my first thought!), but rather the Gold Master. The code is frozen, and the FC designated the final GM is what ships. There should be no code differences between the last FC and the GM. Having the GM installed is pretty much equivalent to having the product. It’s the master version which is turned into the product: shipped on disk, downloaded or sold via the Mac App Store. You might hear people say software has “gone gold”; this is what they’re talking about.

So to review, when someone says “After we regressed our app in the new Mac OS, we found out that a library we relied on had been deprecated, so we went back to the source code to recompile our program. Now we have a solid FC and hopefully we’ll go GM next week!” you’ll know exactly what you’re talking about.

What other programming terms have slipped you up in casual conversation, and what are some other definitions you think people might appreciate?

Related content from GigaOM Pro (subscription req’d):

• Why iMessage won’t kill SMS
• Mobile Q1: All Eyes on Tablets, T-Mobile and AT&T
• A Media Tablet Forecast, 2011 – 2015

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Originally posted at Windows 7 Insider

Originally posted at The Download Blog

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From the Devices and Printers window, you can see that double-clicking on a device …

Originally posted at The Download Blog

Take the MacBook Air, shrink the screen down an inch, slap in some netbook components, and load it up with Windows 7 Release Candidate and — drumroll, please — you’ve got the iiView A2 out of Singapore. Oh, and lower the price to $468. That’s kind of important there.

Will we ever see this machine in the US? Maybe. Probably not. But it’s got a nice look reminiscent of the MacBook Air, which is basically a really expensive netbook (I’m gonna get flamed for that one).

According to CNET, “the design is so similar that even the monitor-out and USB port are hidden within a flip on the side.” Other features include:

• Atom 1.6GHz processor
• 2GB RAM
• Intel 945 chipset
• 12.1-inch 1,280 x 800-pixel resolution
• 320GB HDD
• Two USB ports, mini-HDMI port, 2-in-1 headphone/mic jack
• 802.11b/g, 10/100 Ethernet
• Six-cell battery
• Windows 7 RC1 with Vista Home Premium license

iiView’s CEO says that the netbook will come with Windows 7 RC1 preinstalled for performance reasons. The Vista license will allow users to upgrade to the retail version of Windows 7 when it comes out this fall, though.

The iiView A2 is expected to go on sale in Singapore next week for $699 (Singapore dollars), which is roughly $467.78 in US dollars.

[CNET Asia via Wired]

Microsoft has pulled its Windows 7 discount pricing after apparently overwhelming demand lead to its online store crashing and has continued its EC hissy-fit confirming that their will be no Vista to 7 upgrade option. Microsoft claim that they sold more copies of Windows 7 in the first eight hours than it did in 17 weeks in 2006 with a simliar offer for Windows Vista. The blogosphere is already awash with rumours that actually, Microsoft were going to do it all along, to the fan the flames of hype around 7. Hype which hasn’t been seen for a Microsoft OS since Windows 98. And after pulling IE 8 from the Euro version of 7 following their EC anticompetitive fine, Microsoft have also said that there will be no Vista upgrade option in Europe. Although Windows 7 will be released in Europe for the price of an upgrade package in the rest of world. Microsoft’s Leila Martine said: “What we are saying is ‘we don’t care as a consumer if you had Windows Vista or not because we can’t tell that and we don’t want to penalise you for our decision to take IE8 out of the Wndows 7 E version and to not give an upgrade option.” You can still download the release candidate which will work until late next, and which I have partitioned onto my macbook HD. Aren’t I cool? I’m not cool. (Via PcAdvisor)

I’d like to sit here all smug saying we told you so after Acer let the cat out of the bag about a month ago but, as it stands, Windows 7 will actually be available one day earlier than we said. Can you ever forgive us? Microsoft has promised that most retailers and manufactures will run an upgrade scheme for those who recently purchased Vista machines – we already know that Dell is a likely candidate – but it looks like only those with Vista Starter, Home Premium, Professional, Enterprise and Ultimate will be included with no joy for those who opted for Basic. That’ll teach you to skate cheap. Both the Windows 7 beta and release candidate have been well received and you’d think that the this full version will sit far better with the public than Vista ever has, despite being more or less identical. I’d still rather run XP after using the 7 beta for a while now but then perhaps I’m just a stick in the mud. It’s very sticky and muddy down here. Probably best you do your own thing. (via Windows Blog)

If the Release Candidate is any indication (and it should be), then Windows 7 will be a nice upgrade for any Windows user. The new OS, however, is a huge step up for netbook users. Vista is notoriously poorly suited to netbooks; a buggy resource hog that subjects its users to incessant dialog boxes and requires far too many clicks to perform basic tasks, it’s kind of a nightmare to use on a 9-inch laptop with a 1.5-inch trackpad.

Windows XP has been given a boost by netbooks, as its system requirements—more-or-less decided in 2001—are more in line with the specs hardware like the Eee PC and Mini 9. But let’s face it: XP is nearly a decade old. Its user experience is trumped by free alternatives like Ubuntu Netbook Remix and Linpus, and it’s not at all optimized for solid-state drives—especially cheap ones. This means that on low-end, SSD-based netbooks, it borders on unusable.

Hence, Windows 7. It’s noticeably faster than Vista on low-spec machines, properly optimized for netbook hardware, and, most importantly, free (for now). Thing is, installation isn’t quite as easy as it is on a regular PC—in fact, it can be a pain in the ass: netbooks don’t have DVD drives, which means you’ve either got to get your hands on an external drive or boot from a USB stick for a clean install. Furthermore, smaller SSDs, like the 8GB units in popular versions of the Dell Mini 9 and Acer Aspire One, make a default installation impossible, or at least impractically tight. Luckily, there are simple methods to deal with both of these problems. Let’s get started.

What You’ll Need

• A netbook (Minimum 1GB of RAM, 8GB storage space)

• A 4GB or larger USB drive

• A Windows 7 RC Image (details below)

• A Windows XP/Vista PC or a Mac to prepare the flash drive

• For low-end netbooks, lots (and lots) of time

Getting Windows 7

Downloading Windows 7 is a piece of cake. Just navigate to this page and download the 32-bit version. You’ll need to get a free Windows Live ID if you don’t already have one, but this takes about two minutes.

Microsoft will then give you your very own Windows 7 License key, valid until June 1st of next year. (Although after March 1st, it’ll drive you to the edge of sanity by shutting off every two hours. But that’s a different story, and March is a long way off). Microsoft will then offer up your ISO through a nifty little download manager applet, complete with a “resume” function. There are ways to sidestep this, but don’t: you’d be surprised how hard it is to keep a single HTTP connection alive for long enough to download a 2.36GB file.

Preparing Your Flash Drive

This is the annoying part, but it’s not necessarily that difficult. Here are some guides, by OS (some linked for length):
• Windows XP
• Windows Vista
• Mac OS X (courtesy of Ubuntu, funnily enough):

1. Open a Terminal (under Utilities)

2. Run diskutil list and determine the device node assigned to your flash media (e.g. /dev/disk2)

3. Run diskutil unmountDisk /dev/diskN (replace N with the disk number from the last command; in the previous example, N would be 2)

4. Execute sudo dd if=/path/to/downloaded.iso of=/dev/diskN bs=1m (replace /path/to/downloaded.iso with the path where the image file is located; for example, ./windows7.iso)

5. Run diskutil eject /dev/diskN and remove your flash media when the command completes (this can take a few hours on slower drives)

As some commenters have pointed out, you can also make a flash drive bootable with utilities like LiveUSB Helper. Once you’ve done this, you can mount your Windows 7 ISO with a utility like DaemonTools Lite (For Windows) or MountMe (for Mac), and just copy over all the files to your newly-bootable drive.

Starting Your Install

Ok! Now you’ve got a bootable flash drive, and you’re ready to start installing. It should go without saying, but once you start this process, you’ll lose all existing data on your netbook, so you should back up any important files before going through with anything from here forward.

Insert your USB drive and reboot your netbook. As soon as your BIOS screen flashes, you should see instructions for a) changing your netbook’s boot order or b) entering its BIOS setup. In the first situation, simply assign the USB drive as the first boot device. In the second, navigate through your BIOS settings until you find a “Default Boot Order” page, and do the same thing there.

From there, you should see the first Windows 7 installation screens. Anyone with a 16GB or larger storage device in their netbook can just follow the instructions until the installation completes, and skip the next step.

—

If your SSD is smaller than 16GB, or if you just want to save some space, do what they say, but only until the first reboot. After the Windows 7 installer has restarted your computer, you’ll need to modify the boot order again. Do not allow installation to continue! Manually change the boot order to prioritize the USB drive again, just as you did at the beginning of the installation.

Compression!

Once the Windows 7 installer has copied most of its system files to your drive, you’re going to tighten them up with Windows’ trusty old “Compact” command. Here’s what you do, as described by Electronic Pulp:

Choose “Repair” at the Windows 7 Setup screen, go to “Command Prompt” and enter the following code:

d: (or whatever drive letter is assigned to your SSD)
cd \windows\system32
compact.exe d:\*.* /c /s /i

And wait. And wait and wait and wait. This can take anywhere from eight hours to two days, so you’ll want to set your netbook down in a corner and forget about it for a while. [Note: compressing so many of your system files does have a performance cost, but in day-to-day use, it's negligible]

Once this is done, reboot the netbook again and let it continue the installation as normal. That’s it!

All said and done, an 8GB SSD should have nearly 2GB of free space left—not much, but enough to work with. And given that most netbooks come with inbuilt, flush SD expansion slots, and that high-capacity SD cards are extremely affordable, having a small amount of space on your root drive isn’t at all prohibitive.

There are other ways to slim down a Windows 7 install—namely by using programs like vLite, which can strip out some of Windows’ fat directly from the ISO—but Windows’ built-in file compression is the easiest way to squeeze Windows 7 onto your skimpy 8GB SSD.

Setup and Customization Help
Windows 7 runs fairly well out of the box, but as with any new Windows installation, you’re going to need to download some drivers to get things working properly. Vista drivers usually do the trick, but sometimes workarounds are necessary. Thankfully, most popular netbooks have spawned helpful fan forums, many of which have active Windows 7 subforums. Some of the best:

• Aspire One
• ASUS Eee Pc
• Dell Mini
• MSI Wind
• HP Mini-Note

So there you go! Enjoy your new Windows 7 netbook! Please share your experiences in the comments-your feedback is a huge benefit to our Saturday guides. And of course, have a great weekend!