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Category: Technology

Getting Healthcare.gov to Handle 50,000 Users

Healthcare.gov, the US Government’s health insurance exchange website for states that didn’t provide their own, was supposed to handle about 50,000 to 60,000 simultaneous users. Unless you have been living under a rock, you know what a complete disaster the website as been. But it didn’t (and doesn’t) have to be that way.

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Microsoft is the Anti-Apple

This week Microsoft posted a series of videos on YouTube clearly mocking Apple’s creative process. One of the actors is obviously supposed to be Jonathan Ive. Some have said the other bears a resemblance to Steve Jobs and that if that’s who they were mocking, it’s in poor taste. While Microsoft is no stranger to poor taste, I think they were mocking Tim Cook, not Steve Jobs.

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The beginning of the end of software patents?

Last week, the country of New Zealand (or “Middle Earth” for Lord of the Rings fans like me) joined the EU in passing legislation banning software patents. They did this because it’s becoming impossible for software developers to innovate without finding themselves violating someone’s patent. This drives up the cost of software development and drives down innovation.

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Dumb Ways to Code

Dumb Ways to Code

By Geoff Perlman

Sung to the tune of “Dumb Ways to Die” by Tangerine Kitty

Use an object that's out of scope
Don't escape your SQL quotes
Ship without a beta test
Think Google Translate to localize is best
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Take advantage of your multi-core processor

Nearly all CPUs used by your devices, from computers to tablets to phones, now contain multiple CPU cores. With a multi-core CPU, your computer can literally do multiple things at one time, which is called multiprocessing. And with a little careful planning, your Xojo apps can use multiprocessing for significant performance improvements in your apps.

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Faster Internet

I’ve discovered a way to potentially speed-up your Internet access. Before we get to that, it occurs to me that the way in which computers find each other on the Internet may be a bit of a mystery to many. If you’d like to understand how it all works read this first.

Your devices (computers, tablets and smartphones) are constantly accessing their assigned DNS server and since they often can’t continue until a response is received, the speed of your DNS server can have a big effect on the speed of your Internet access. If you’re using any of the Internet classes in Xojo, this will of course affect the performance of your apps as well. Not all DNS servers are created equal. You are probably using one at your Internet provider and it may not be the fastest DNS server available to you. But with all the DNS servers out there, how can you know which one is fastest?

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