The Insider News

Daemonic Dispatches[^]:

Thomas Ptacek tweeted yesterday that "If you're not learning crypto by coding attacks, you might not actually be learning crypto." Judging by the number of twitter "favourites" and "retweets" of this comment, it seems to have struck a chord; but with all respect to Thomas, I absolutely disagree. Not only is it possible to learn cryptography without writing a line of code, but coding attacks is entirely useless for learning about modern cryptography; the best route to learning modern cryptography is a study of mathematical proofs.

Dream.In.Code[^]:

I'm interested in people's current predictions on what will happen to the various languages over the next few years. Java has had a bad press in recent years but has a major new release. Is this a new lease of life, particularly with Android taking off so rapidly?

Kloud Blog[^]:

Many years ago, back in Uni, I saw 2 guys in a computer lab writing a whole programming assignment without running it even once. The program was of relatively decent size written in C and consequently there were hundreds of compilation errors. That’s so silly, I thought.... After graduation I used to be a C++ programmer. The syntax sometimes was quite tricky and you would often compile after every new line of code. Sometimes, you would dare to write a whole function, just to find 10 compilation errors. Since then the way I code has changed with help of modern IDE...

Channel 9[^]:

Ever wondered how the pro’s physically manage to make a module? Well ok, you can get a fancy pick and place machine or send off for someone to assemble your module, but you can do it by hand. It is not as hard as expected. As part of a .NET Gadgeteer hands on event at the Modern Jago in Shoreditch we were delighted to have Justin Wilson from Ingenuity Micro attend and show us how things are done (www.ingenuitymicro.com). He has designed and built an nice collection of .NET Gadgeteer modules and mainboards and expects to have them available shortly.

Haacked[^]:

Code review is a tricky business. Code is full of hidden mines that lay dormant while you test just to explode in a debris of stack trace at the most inopportune time – when its in the hands of your users. The many times I’ve run into such mines just reinforce how important it is to write code that is intention revealing and to make sure assumptions are documented via asserts. Such devious code is often the most innocuous looking code.

@jhooks[^]:

When I use the term “enterprise” to describe software, I typically mean “software that helps people get work done more efficiently.” In this sense, Angry Birds and your favorite Twitter client are not enterprise applications. A Twitter client that has additional features to facilitate and track a company’s social engagement, on the other hand, might fall into the enterprise category. An application that is used in a call center to track incoming support requests is definitely “enterprise”. A system that connects several “legacy” systems and presents employees with a unified interface and saves 1000s of man-years every month of application context switching? Enterprise.

Ludwig Wendzich[^]:

I remember how in University my photography class and I struggled to grasp exposure and how it worked. We had exercises where for hours on end we were asked to "play" with the settings and get a feel for what they do. I don't like getting a "feel" for something. I like knowing how it works.... The trick was learning what each of the vertices afforded and cost you. That was the key to our DSLR simulator.

TechRepublic[^]:

Haswell is Intel’s new family of processors targeted at the PC and server market. With Haswell Intel has designed a processor suited to new PC form factors – laptops no thicker than 25mm, PC/tablet hybrids, pure tablets and all-in-one PCs. In particular Intel has targeted the fourth generation chip at serving what it calls the ‘ultrabook’ market. Intel defines ultrabooks as mobile computers thinner than 25mm, with touchscreen and voice control as standard and possibly convertible into either a tablet or laptop.