The Insider News

The Old New Thing[^]:

Today's Little Program monitors windows as they come and go. When people contemplate doing this, they come up with ideas like installing a WH_CBT hook or a WH_SHELL hook, but one of the major problems with those types of hooks is that they are injected hooks. Injection is bad for a number of reasons.... This is where accessibility comes in handy, because accessibility lets you specify whether you want your hook to be an injected or non-injected one.

Hack a Day[^]:

There’s a treasure trove of excellent yet ancient games made for DOS that are nearly unplayable on modern computers. Awesome games like the Lucasarts SCUMM adventures, the original Civilization and SimCity, Starflight, the King’s Quest series and even Leisure Suit Larry aren’t played much today because of the near impossibilities of getting them to run on modern hardware or setting up an emulator with proper sound. Patrick has been doing his best to help out classic gamers with an x86 emulator for the Raspberry Pi. It’s designed to be a very capable DOS box with 20 MB of extended memory, a 640×480 display with 256 colors, an ~20MHz 486 emulated CPU, and a Soundblaster 2.0 sound card.

Scientific American[^]:

Turing patterns are a perennial favorite among science writers, especially in light of the 100th anniversary of Turing’s birth last year. Also? Pretty! And narrative angles like why the tiger has stripes play to broad audiences, so editors love them too. Scientists, on the other hand, have mixed feelings about Turing’s little foray into mathematical biology.... Turing was a mathematician, first and foremost, and his proposed mechanism is (by his own admission) a highly simplified and idealized take on a messy, complicated system.

infoarena.ro[^]:

Algorithms and their complexity often occur in critical parts of computer systems, but I find that few engineers have a good understanding of how a O(n!) algorithm compares to a O(n^5) one. In the coding contest world, competitors think about these tradeoffs all the time. No wonder, there's a set of numbers every algorithm designer should know. The table below shows the limits that can be reached in a few seconds by algorithms of different complexities, n being the input size. I've added some algorithms and data structure examples for each complexity class.

AnandTech[^]:

Earlier this month I posted my review of the TECK, an ergonomic keyboard with mechanical switches that’s looking to attract users interesting in a high quality, highly ergonomic offering and don’t mind the rather steep learning curve or the price. The TECK isn’t the only such keyboard, of course, and I decided to see what other mechanical switch ergonomic keyboards I could get for comparison. Next up on the list is the granddaddy of high-end ergonomic keyboards, the Kinesis Contour Advantage.

Telekommunisten[^]:

In his March 16, 2013 opinion column on CNN.com, Bruce Schneier called the Internet a “surveillance state”. In the piece, Schneier complains that the Internet now serves as a platform which enables massive and pervasive surveillance by the state. State sponsored and ordained surveillance, however, is not synonymous with the Internet. Schneier’s use of the word ‘state’ is ill-advised, his goading conclusion thereby misses the mark.

Ars Technica[^]:

Launching a new mobile OS is a difficult project since the market leaders, Android and iOS, have such a big lead. Even Microsoft, with its near-infinite financial resources and vast ecosystem of complementary products, has struggled to gain traction. And new entrants face a chicken-and-egg problem: developers don't want to write apps for a platform without many users, while users don't want to buy a phone without many apps. Mozilla, the non-profit foundation behind Firefox, believes it can tackle this dilemma.

The Verge[^]:

Many veteran developers have learned their lesson and given up on iCloud’s Core Data syncing entirely. "Ultimately, when we looked at iCloud + Core Data for [our app], it was a total no-go as nothing would have worked," said one best-selling iPhone and Mac developer. "Some issues with iCloud Core Data are theoretically unsolvable (stemming from the fact that you’ve put an object model on top of a distributed data store) and others are just plain bugs in the implementation," he said. Syncing alternatives exist, but none of them live up to the goals iCloud set out to achieve nearly two years ago...

Macworld[^]:

One of the guys who works on Windows Azure Mobile Services gave me a demo of its support for iOS. What? Microsoft supporting iOS? What? That isn’t the Microsoft (I thought) I knew. Once I got over the shock, I expected that I’d have to write code in C# (a Microsoft language), that services would run behind IIS (a Microsoft webserver), and that I’d have to use Visual Studio (a Microsoft developer tool) on Windows, which I don’t have. That would be typical Microsoft, right? Instead: The code is JavaScript, the webserver is Node.js, and I can write code in any text editor. No Microsoft things. The company even released some related code as open source and put it on GitHub.

Dream.In.Code[^]:

At any given time the Windows operating system is tracking statistics for the system and many of the processes / applications that are currently running on it. Things like the number of processors, how many threads are executing, how often the CLR is in garbage collection, the number of I/O operations being performed etc are all tracked through things called performance counters.... Reading performance counters involves using the PerformanceCounter class which you can find in the System.Diagnostics namespace. It takes the category, the counter name and optionally an instance.

API UX[^]:

Let’s say you’re building your first API. Be it public, private, or some hybrid thereof, don’t be surprised if your first defect is date/time-related. Do not underestimate how much trouble you can get into when it comes to handling date and times. Here are some tips which might keep you out of this potential future.

codeofrob.com[^]:

I've been able to quote the "rules" from SOLID word for word this past half-decade quite easily, but my relationship and understanding of how these seemingly innocuous statements impact my code has changed over time much like my relationship and understanding of TDD. So, for the next 5 entries, I will jot down my current relationship with SOLID...

JetBrains .NET Tools Blog[^]:

One of ReSharper’s most notable features, Code Analysis, is now unleashed and ready to hunt for bad and dead code—without even opening Visual Studio. Dubbed as InspectCode, it is as simple as a command-line tool can be and requires a minimum of one parameter—your solution file. But as it runs it will apply all of ReSharper’s code inspections—that’s over 1,400 of them—to code in all languages supported by ReSharper!

mycplus.com[^]:

Hello, world! Programs are usually written to make the text “Hello, world!” appear on a computer screen. This is also a basic sanity check for an installation of a new programming language. The first Hello World program appeared in chapter 1.1 of the first edition of Kernighan & Ritchie’s original book about C, ‘The C Programming Language’, in 1978. This is considered to be the first ever “Hello World!” program.

Smartbear[^]:

I know. If you wanted to be a lawyer, you would have gone to law school instead of spending your nights poring over K&R. Tough. In 2013, if you're an open source programmer you need to know a few things about copyright law. If you don't, bad things can happen. Really bad things.

Techdirt[^]:

One of the key problems is that software patents are essentially patents on mathematical algorithms -- sets of instructions for carrying out a calculation. Since it has long been a principle that you can't patent mathematical formulae or laws of nature, there is a tension there: if software is just mathematics, why should you be able to patent it at all? New Scientist points to an interesting article in the April 2013 issue of Notices of the American Mathematical Society, in which David A. Edwards proposes a radical way of solving that conundrum.... In particular, he believes it should be possible to patent mathematics, and hence software.

Runtime Era[^]:

By common definition, the purpose of a job interview is to allow an employer to screen candidates and find someone to fill an open job position. Each and every applicant must prove his or her worth to the potential employer. Many will apply, but only one (or very few) will be selected. In the world of software, the overall hiring process follows the same sort of pattern. I always aim to impress any potential employer by showcasing my work and showing the best of my abilities. However, I expect any potential employer to reciprocate and make an effort to impress me. When the interviewer finally asks me, "Do you have any questions for me?", I like to conduct a little interview of my own.

Rock, Paper, Shotgun[^]:

I should just repeat the headline a few times and then drop in the link to the free download, but a little context may be helpful. Playing Football Manager, so people jest, is like playing with spreadsheets, poring over lists and figures. They are wrong. Playing with spreadsheets doesn’t lead to a management simulation, it’s more of an arena-based roguelike sort of experience. Cary Walkin, an accountant and MBA candidate at the Schulich School of Business in Toronto, has created an RPG in Excel. Much of the content is procedurally generated, with more than 2,000 possible enemy types and 1,000 item combinations, but there are also boss encounters and a story with several endings.

The Official Microsoft Blog[^]:

To make sure everyone knows what we’re planning and can participate in this rapidly growing ecosystem, I’m pleased to announce and personally invite you to our next developer conference, Build 2013, which is taking place June 26-28, 2013 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. It’s been a while since our last developer event in the Bay Area, and we’re looking forward to a fantastic gathering. Save the date and mark your calendar for the opening of registration next week, at 9 a.m. PT on Tuesday, April 2 at www.buildwindows.com.