The Insider News

FierceCIO TechWatch

In an unprecedented move, Microsoft earlier this week shipped four non-security related updates to its Windows 8 operating system--barely two weeks before it goes on sale on October 26.

Nettuts+[^]:

At a young age, we learn to count on our fingers – starting out with 1-5, then 1-10, and maybe, if you’re particularly enterprising as a toddler, you will learn to count to 20, 30, and beyond. No one ever attempts to enlighten us that we are actually making some more complex mathematical assumptions; we all know Base10, to be precise. In this article, we’ll start by gaining a more rounded understanding of Base10 and its structure, then we will discuss binary (Base2, the building blocks of computing). Finally, we’ll finish things up by talking about Base32 and Base64. At each stage we will discuss the advantages and uses for each type.

the pluralsight blog[^]:

This post is in response to Dr. Dobb’s editor, Andrew Binstock’s recent editorial about the universality of unit testing. I think we all can agree that it’s universally accepted that unit tests are good. But what about Test Driven Development (TDD)?

Zor's Blog[^]:

There seems to be a lot of confusion among developers on how garbage collectors actually work. They really aren’t as magical as some people think; in many ways, some garbage collectors are actually quite crude and — by modern developer standards — evil, unmaintainable, and full of subtle gotchas (the latter is certainly true no matter one’s perspective). In this post, I’ll try to shed some light on how GCs work in a way that (hopefully) any developer can understand. I do assume that the reader is at least familiar with basic computer memory concepts (C knowledge is preferred).

Engine Yard Blog[^]:

After changing all these settings, a single quad core vm (though using only one core) with 1Gig of RAM has been able to handle all the load that’s been thrown at it. We never run out of open file handles, never run out of ports, never run out of connection tracking entries and never run out of RAM.

TechCrunch[^]:

The risk is clear, if the data dries up so does your business. For all that have created apps based largely on API calls, consider what would happen if that information fire hose wasn’t there anymore. The companies who provide these APIs may not disappear, but it will definitely be a game-changer. The changes to Twitter’s API should serve as a warning sign and an important reminder.

Groklaw[^]:

You probably have heard computer professionals say that software is mathematics. You've certainly read it on Groklaw more than once. But is it true? What does that statement mean? I want to show you, first, why it's true, and I will also answer some typical criticisms. My purpose, however, is to suggest a way to develop a test for when a patent involving software is or is not patent-eligible, now that the Federal Circuit has granted an en banc review of CLS Bank International v. Alice Corporation.

All this[^]:

Even after slide rules with trig functions (and, later, calculators) became commonplace, Mohr’s circle was still a handy tool for remembering how to transform stresses, and it remained so because engineers were taught to think graphically.

PandoDaily[^]:

Microsoft is betting that users will want a single interface that does everything—an OS that feels the same across your phone, your tablet and your desktop. It’s a huge gamble, but if Microsoft gets it right, the strategy could play off: The firm would be able to leverage its PC monopoly to push developers into building apps for tablets and phones—potentially bringing Microsoft’s app store to parity with Apple’s.