The Insider News

The Codeless Code[^]:

An illustrated collection of (sometimes violent) fables, concerning the Art and Philosophy of software development.

APOD[^]:

What is all this fuss about the Higgs boson? The physics community is abuzz that a fundamental particle expected by the largely successful Standard Model of particle physics may soon be found by the huge Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN in Europe. Here's an explanation for the non-physicist.

New Scientist[^]:

It's turned into science's worst-kept secret. Tomorrow, physicists at CERN near Geneva in Switzerland are expected to announce the discovery of the Higgs boson, the culmination of a 50-year quest to find the elusive particle that gives others their mass. Here's how they got there.

Vanity Fair[^]:

Analyzing one of American corporate history’s greatest mysteries—the lost decade of Microsoft, Kurt Eichenwald traces the “astonishingly foolish management decisions” at the company that “could serve as a business-school case study on the pitfalls of success.” Relying on dozens of interviews and internal corporate records—including e-mails between executives at the company’s highest ranks—Eichenwald offers an unprecedented view of life inside Microsoft during the reign of its current chief executive, Steve Ballmer.

Java Code Geeks[^]:

I’ve been scratching my head lately regarding management, and what is it good for. Wherever you go you’ll find bad managers. Actually, bad or good is not the correct term here – it’s effectiveness.

Crooked Timber[^]:

The open data movement is a hammer which has gathered the support of many nails. There are the curious taxpayers, who feel their annual checks mean they deserve a peek at the interesting facts the government has collected. There are the ambitious business owners, who see an opportunity to privatize profits from work with socialized costs. And there are the self-styled activists, who believe that if we reveal the data on what the government is really doing, we will arrest corruption by exposing it to sunlight.

Microsoft explains why it killed the Windows 8 Start button[^]

Microsoft removed the Start button from Windows 8's Consumer Preview version earlier this year, generating a lot of discussion and mixed reaction over a user interface element that was first introduced in Windows over 15 years ago. In an interview with PC Pro, the company has revealed that telemetry data was a big part of the decision to scrap the Start button and traditional Start menu in Windows 8.