The Insider News

Ars Technica[^]:

It's not every day you get a proper new title in the SimCity series. In fact, it's been a bit over ten years since SimCity 4 last showed us what it was like to control the fate of a vast metropolis (Socities and Sim City Social notwithstanding). So it's fair to say that our expectations were high as we sat down with final release code for the new game, which launches in the US tomorrow. Even without access to the full global servers, which EA hasn't turned on yet, we were excited to try promised new features like undulating curved roads, government buildings with snap-on expansions, and a regional commodity system that lets you buy and sell excess resources.

Nic Young[^]:

Python provides a high level threading library that makes threading virtually painless.... Anybody with any experience with threads know that you have to have a way to synchronize the tasks between the threads. Python once again makes this easy by providing the Queue data structure. The following will be an in depth look at one of the multi-threaded paradigms you can take advantage of using Python's built-in threading and Queue library.

Haacked[^]:

Developers take pride in speaking their mind and not shying away from touchy subjects. Yet there is one subject makes many developers uncomfortable. Testing.... No, I’m talking about the kind of testing where you get your hands dirty actually trying the application. Where you attempt to break the beautifully factored code you may have just written.

NSHipster[^]:

That's right: this edition of NSHipster covers a topic so obscure, it doesn't even officially exist. Back Row is a private framework used in the Apple TV user experience. Its name is a reference to Front Row, an application included in Mac OS X 10.4 – 10.6 that paired with the Apple Remote to transform the Mac into a couch-friendly media center. The original Apple TV could be described as a "short Mac Mini", which ran a modified version of Front Row on a stripped-down build of Mac OS X. It was little more than an iTunes remote, streaming content from a shared iTunes library on a separate computer.

Somasegar's blog[^]:

For those of you who have downloaded our preview builds of these tools, you’ll find some very welcome enhancements in this release.... They enable a continuous integration workflow, with both the on-premises Team Foundation Server and the cloud-hosted Team Foundation Service supporting build workflows for apps for Office and SharePoint. Windows Azure cloud service projects can be used to easily create provider-hosted apps for SharePoint. The workflow designers have been dramatically improved, with a lot of fit-and-finish applied since the last preview. Remote debugging is now much more applicable and powerful, thanks to Service Bus. And a whole lot more.

another techie’s log[^]:

You had one job, Posterous, before shutting down. You promised us an archive before disappearing, and you delivered. Sort of. A general note for everyone: unless you really, really know what you’re doing, and boilerplate far exceeds the amount of data inserted, do not use template languages to generate XML.

SimHQ[^]:

For those that don't know me I've been in the computer game business for over 22 years. I started off at MicroProse as part of their coin-op group, and then brought over to sim group when coin-op (then a separate company) was shut down. After that I was one of 5 guys recruited to start up the Jane's / Origin group in Baltimore, later moved under Jane's / EA when Origin went MMO only. When that studio closed I went back to MicroProse, at the time part of Infograme US later renamed Atari, and then BreakAway Games where I'm at now. There were no sims during these last two so I probably won't bring up any stories from those times, even if some of the stuff at BreakAway was military oriented....

ReadWrite[^]:

For decades, Microsoft Windows was the computer platform of choice — not just for the overhwelming majority of computer users, but also for a growing legion of malware creators. As the dominant computing platform, it offered the fattest, most lucrative target, and some of its fundamental architecture decisions made it vulnerable to many kinds of malware. With the transition to the mobile era, Windows is no longer at the center of the computing universe — for users or for hackers. That role is now occupied by Android.

caitiem[^]:

I’d like to examine a single point of failure that communication with most third party services have: SSL Certificates. Most services implement an all or nothing policy regarding SSL Certificates. Either it meets the criteria (correct host name, acceptable signature algorithm, valid date, etc…) or it does not. However, this black and white policy forces your service to have a single point of failure outside of your control. Implementing a flexible policy, that can be updated on the fly without deploying new code, reduces the damage this single point of failure can cause.

Quote:

Good news for audio on the web: the latest nightly builds of Firefox on Windows 7 have H.264 and MP3 support enabled by default! Work is ongoing to bring these features to the Mac OS X and Linux versions...

Pete Brown's 10rem.net[^]:

There are lots of places where you can get in trouble online. From viruses and malware to chatting with basement neckbeards, to posting inappropriate photos of themselves. Kids are naturally curious and also feel like they are impervious to harm. Combine this with perceived anonymity of the Internet, and you can get into all sorts of bad spots.

Peter Ritchie's MVP Blog[^]:

One might argue that “expiry” of a certificate may not be that important. That’s a specific decision for a specific client of said server. I’m not going to suggest that ignoring the expiry is a good or a bad thing. But, you’re well within your rights to come up with your own policy on the “validity” of a certificate from a specific server. For example, you might ignore the expiry all together, or you may have a two-week grace period, etc. etc. So, how would you do that?

I. M. Wright’s “Hard Code”[^]:

After decades as a professional software engineer, working for six different firms (large and small), I can honestly say that Microsoft is by far the best. I can also honestly say that Microsoft is far from perfect. My monthly rants typically focus on problems that individual engineers or managers can change by being better individual engineers and managers, by using different approaches or tools, or by altering the way they think about issues. However, Microsoft also has system-wide issues. I know how to solve them, but Microsoft executives and engineers may not like my solutions.

8th Light[^]:

Browser cookies are a good way to provide a stateless protocol with some memory. Unfortunately, they're also good for hijacking application sessions and impersonating users. There are a number of attacks that utilize improper use of session cookies. Session hijacking is among the most common and potentially destructive cookie attacks.

GitHub[^]:

The earliest versions of the very first c compiler known to exist in the wild written by the late legend himself dmr. These are not capable of being compiled today with modern c compilers like gcc. I am only posting these here for the enjoyment and reminiscing of the spark that ignited a soon to be trillion dollar industry. Enjoy.

The Codex[^]:

Considering MySQL? Use something else. Already on MySQL? Migrate. For every successful project built on MySQL, you could uncover a history of time wasted mitigating MySQL's inadequacies, masked by a hard-won, but meaningless, sense of accomplishment over the effort spent making MySQL behave. Thesis: databases fill roles ranging from pure storage to complex and interesting data processing; MySQL is differently bad at both tasks. Real apps all fall somewhere between these poles, and suffer variably from both sets of MySQL flaws.

AnandTech[^]:

The move makes sense when looking at the market's state. 7200RPM mobile hard drives have always been a premium product and are mostly found in high-end laptops or built-to-order configurations. Due to the decline in SSD prices over the last few years, the market for faster hard drives has quickly faded away because users seeking for performance have opted for SSDs instead of 7200RPM hard drives. While 7200RPM 2.5" hard drives are still significantly cheaper per GB than SSDs, even a small (32-128GB) SSD will provide better overall performance when used as an OS and applications drive...