The Insider News

BBC News[^]:

In a world first, on 3 December 1992, an engineer sent the message "Merry Christmas" from a PC to a mobile device using Vodafone's UK network. But the origins of the idea date back further to Matti Makkonen. Over a pizza at a telecoms conference in 1984, the former Finnish civil servant put forward the idea of a mobile phone messaging service. This was to become the SMS (short message service) standard.

The Security Practice[^]:

Many of the broad family of specifications commonly grouped under the “HTML5” umbrella are scheduled to be completed in 2013, and with the release of Internet Explorer 10, the users of every major web browser flavor can enjoy rich Web apps written on the open web platform, with no need for plugins. Lots of people are excited about HTML5, but one group I don’t see as particularly excited are security experts, or perhaps they’re only excited in a rather cynical fashion. Full employment! Browser botnets! A lifetime of conference talks!

Wired.com[^]:

Competition in automotive technology has long been about who’s got the most horsepower, the best towing capacity or the fastest acceleration. These days, though, it’s all about having the slickest infotainment systems and most-connected cars. The shift in focus from what’s under the hood to what’s behind the dashboard has brought a largely covert war to the auto industry over the operating systems that will control these gadgets. As in the smartphone biz, the battle line is between proprietary and open source software. The outcome will determine what these systems look like, how they work and how distinctive they are as automakers embrace walled gardens or open ecosystems.

dalpix.com[^]:

The original Arduino IDE is great for beginners, but it lacks a lot of features that advanced users need. And I've tried a lot of other solutions. But all were based on plugins and hacks to other IDEs, which lead to not-so-good performance. For example, a very famous plugin provided access to terminal console by adding a fixed option to the IDE Tools menu. So, if you're working with two different boards, you have to change this hard-coded option every-time....

Chris Patterson's Blog[^]:

IDisposable is a standard interface in the .NET framework that facilitates the deterministic release of unmanaged resources.... Despite IDisposable having only a single method named Dispose to implement, it is commonly implemented incorrectly. After reading this blog post it should be clear how and when to implement IDisposable, as well as how to ensure that resources are properly disposed when bad things happen (also knows as exceptions).

don't code today what you can't debug tomorrow[^]:

The... “multiple layers of defense” strategy applies to modern software development. For example, even though the compiler will scream at you if your code does not make sense, there is no reason to skip fixing it, if you happen to see it on your editor.... The principles are summarized as: If you screw up, you want to know earlier than later, and the first layer should have the lowest cost and effort.