Slashdot Mirror

ZigZag writes: "Marvin Minsky speaks about everything important (MUDs, education, AI, N(atural) I, immortality) while fighting with his MS Word for Mac presentation slides at the Game Developers Conference. Transcript, audio and video are available from Dr. Dobbs. It was in part a preview of his upcoming book The Emotion Machine. Some quotes from the talk will give you a feel: "Whenever you see a number, you should say `how sad'"; "Have you heard the theory that to learn something you should do it in little bits and not stay up all night working on it? If that were true, there would be no computer games"; "robotics people treasure their videos - because it won't work tomorrow.""

bhendrickson writes: "Berkeley law professor Lawrence Lessig delivered the most cogent speech I have heard defending the freedoms created by technology and threatened by expanding intellectual property laws. While Lessig's conclusions about napster, packet switching, and antitrust are far from revolutionary for Slashdot, his legal and historical perspective I found compelling. The Mp3 is available directly or as a stream both provided by technetcast ." Great thing to stream while you're at work.

bhendrickson writes: "Berkeley law professor Lawrence Lessig delivered the most cogent speech I have heard defending the freedoms created by technology and threatened by expanding intellectual property laws. While Lessig's conclusions about napster, packet switching, and antitrust are far from revolutionary for Slashdot, his legal and historical perspective I found compelling. The Mp3 is available directly or as a stream both provided by technetcast ." Great thing to stream while you're at work.

Slashback tonight with stuff to chew on re: XFS, the baseball-Everquest connection, and whether it's safe to login at SourceForge. Oh, and yet more on the state of HAL. Please read safely.

XFS on track Have no fear for XFS at present! Thanks to Steve Lord, Principal Engineer, Filesystem Software at SGI (no relation), for the following positive news about journaling file systems for GNU/Linux systems:

splord writes "I just became aware of the slashdot posting based on email I send to the XFS linux list yesterday and I want to clarify a couple of points.

1. Linuxcare was not 'sponsoring' the port, SGI was paying Linuxcare for work on the port. This contract was terminated by SGI and Linuxcare management, all the technical people involved wanted it to continue. I believe it was financial considerations on the part of both companies which resulted in the termination of the contract.

2. SGI is not stopping work on the port, but reduced headcount will change how fast we can respond to questions and problems.

I personally remain committed to working on the port, even if at some point SGI does not. Martin Peterson of Linuxcare has also stated he will continue doing XFS work on his own time. For now however, SGI does remain committed to the port, and work will continue."

Strike Two! OakLEE writes "Following up on last weeks article about the Everquest grudge between baseball players Curt Schilling and Doug Glanville, ESPN put this article in which Schilling accused Glanville of "slanderous lies being spewn, about the kind-hearted (computer) dwarf of mine. Stout and strong, yet gentle is he. But he will not allow his good name to be dragged through the mud by a reckless goof of a Paladin." They plan a "re-match" later online this week."

It's back for a hopefully not-too-limited time! After being compromised not long ago, everyone's favorite all-in-one Open Source development site SourceForge is back up. Interesting account of how it was compromised, too. Small comfort that it had to do with a stolen password rather than a code exploit, but even small comforts feel good.

Quick, only 7 months left! mvw writes "Two interesting features on the state of AI:

• Hal's Legacy: 2001's Computer as Dream and Reality is an article by Douglas B. Lenant, who is working on project cyc (pronounced psyche), a huge database of common knowledge with inference system, and gives his profound opinion and critique on 2001's HAL computer and how real intelligent computers should behave.

• It's 2001. Where Is HAL? is a lecture from AI legend Marvin Minsky (formats: video, mp3, transcript), who next to giving lots of funny annecdotes (e.g. what robotics and ESP have in common and why building physical robots is a stupid idea for students) talks about the state of present AI and some interesting ideas how to move on, that will be explained in detail in his upcoming book The Emotion Machine.

  His prior book Society of the Mind was about Minsky's view of the mind being the result of the workings of a lot of different mental processes. This time he focusess on the question of knowledge representation and the need to keep a bag of different ones around to be able to understand and solve problems (great dissing of neural nets, genetic algorithms and statistical methods :-)

Regards,
Marc"

lamefrog writes: "Bjarne Stroustrup and other members of the C++ community recently met to discuss new work on the language for the first time post-ISO standard (C++0x) in an effort to keep the language moving, avoid fossilization and avoid being overtaken by proprietary extensions. Suggested new features center around the standard library and include support for multi-threading and simple platform-independent systems abstractions (handles, TCP/IP, memory maps etc...)" (Read more.)

"Most intriguing is a suggestion to include extended type information that will eliminate the need for IDLs and make it possible to generate standard bindings to external systems (COM, CORBA, SQL). Clearly Bjarne wants to position this as a platform-neutral, vendor-neutral, standardized alternative to the proprietary, vendor-supported languages that have emerged over the recent years. Audio MP3 and slides available on Dr. Dobb's TechNetCast." Thoughtfully, it's available to download as well (not just streaming), and accompanied by a transcript. Good listening.

ryants writes: "The transcript of an interesting panel discussion with Larry Lessig, Tim O'Reilly, John Barlow and others about digital freedoms is available here over at Dr Dobb's TechNetCast."

ryants writes: "The transcript of an interesting panel discussion with Larry Lessig, Tim O'Reilly, John Barlow and others about digital freedoms is available here over at Dr Dobb's TechNetCast."

Decado writes "I found out from gamasutra that Michael Abrash and Dr.Dobbs Journal have made Abrash's now out of print "Graphics Programming Black Book" available for free download here. Written at about the time he was finished on Quake it was one of the most readable and informative books on graphics programming. Abrash begins each chapter with a real life anecdote to the problem he is solving and you can't help but think he is a cool guy. Though fairly dated now it is still a great read and his approach to optimisation still holds true today."

mtDNA writes " Dr. Dobb's TechNetCast has a feature on ReconBots designed by Nikos Papanikolopoulos's lab. The bots are organized into teams. Each team is led by a large, controlling "Ranger" bot (running Linux) and supported by several tin-can-sized, cylindrical "Scout" bots. The Ranger disperses the scouts with a launcher that can shoot them up to seventy feet. After that, the scouts roam around sending back video, sound and other data. The scouts are 40mm cylinders specifically so they can be launched from a 40mm grenade launcher! The full story, including video of the scouts getting launched, is here." The story is from April 2000 but it doesn't seem that we ran it at the time.

mtDNA writes " Dr. Dobb's TechNetCast has a feature on ReconBots designed by Nikos Papanikolopoulos's lab. The bots are organized into teams. Each team is led by a large, controlling "Ranger" bot (running Linux) and supported by several tin-can-sized, cylindrical "Scout" bots. The Ranger disperses the scouts with a launcher that can shoot them up to seventy feet. After that, the scouts roam around sending back video, sound and other data. The scouts are 40mm cylinders specifically so they can be launched from a 40mm grenade launcher! The full story, including video of the scouts getting launched, is here." The story is from April 2000 but it doesn't seem that we ran it at the time.

K asks: "As a long time subscriber to many magazines(Linux Journal, Dr. Dobbs, Byte, etc.) and as a person who can't throw away anything written for fear it might one day be useful, I was wondering if anyone knew of any high speed scanners that would allow me to archive these magazines for (possible) future use. My house is just getting too clutered and I would hate to lose these data. In addition, are there any legal questions about this. I have purchased the magazines so I believe that I should be allowed to archive them in any fashion I choose. Is this wrong?"

wiredog writes "Dr. Dobbs has an article on the Apollo Guidance Computer with a jpg of a source code listing. Some specs: 70-lb box , Approximately 20 instructions, 16 bit word, ROM (rope core) 36K words; RAM (core) 2K words, Basic machine cycle: 2.048 MHz"

wiredog writes "Dr. Dobbs has an article on the Apollo Guidance Computer with a jpg of a source code listing. Some specs: 70-lb box , Approximately 20 instructions, 16 bit word, ROM (rope core) 36K words; RAM (core) 2K words, Basic machine cycle: 2.048 MHz"

wiredog writes "Dr. Dobbs has an article on the Apollo Guidance Computer with a jpg of a source code listing. Some specs: 70-lb box , Approximately 20 instructions, 16 bit word, ROM (rope core) 36K words; RAM (core) 2K words, Basic machine cycle: 2.048 MHz"

mccormi writes: "Dr. Dobb's Journal is covering a roundtable with four key members of the BSD movement at the recent USENIX Security Symposium 2000. The participants emphasized that reliability and security are achieved through simplicity. Other topics included the evolving distinction between Linux and BSD, why they don't use std::string, and why no one to likes IKE."

mccormi writes: "Dr. Dobb's Journal is covering a roundtable with four key members of the BSD movement at the recent USENIX Security Symposium 2000. The participants emphasized that reliability and security are achieved through simplicity. Other topics included the evolving distinction between Linux and BSD, why they don't use std::string, and why no one to likes IKE."

Dr. Dobb's Journal has an interview with Theo de Raadt of the OpenBSD project, discussing the future of OpenBSD, where they are now, driver development, the teams that work on OpenBSD, and how OpenBSD is supported. An interesting read describing the fearless leader of the "Secure By Default" BSD.

Dr. Dobb's Journal has an interview with Theo de Raadt of the OpenBSD project, discussing the future of OpenBSD, where they are now, driver development, the teams that work on OpenBSD, and how OpenBSD is supported. An interesting read describing the fearless leader of the "Secure By Default" BSD.

mirko writes "After some time with almost no news about it, Doctor Dobb's journal finally choosed to break the silence and to deliver quite a comprehensive article (also available here) about the forthcoming Debian Hurd ^[?] operating system."

bmongar writes " DrDobbs has an article about a project for a mirrored universal astronomy database. Jim Gray basically wants a netowrk of observatories around the world to publish their data and mirror other observatories' data. Basically creating a quadruple redundant system of data all avaliable online. He wants to create a new type of astronomer, the astronomer that is a data miner." As the article also says, the guy behind this is the guy behind the TerraServer as well.

bmongar writes " DrDobbs has an article about a project for a mirrored universal astronomy database. Jim Gray basically wants a netowrk of observatories around the world to publish their data and mirror other observatories' data. Basically creating a quadruple redundant system of data all avaliable online. He wants to create a new type of astronomer, the astronomer that is a data miner." As the article also says, the guy behind this is the guy behind the TerraServer as well.

wiredog pointed out an article that's currently running in Dr. Dobbs that talks about Hurd ^[?] , what it is, and what it is meant to do, as well as what's cool about it. The article starts off slow, but then gets into some good info.

Lerc asks: "If Microsoft is to be split up into OS and a non-OS Companies, what happens to the XBox? The XBox is not an operating system, so does that mean the non-OS company gets it? What operating system will it run? Currently the XBox is described as running a version of windows specifically designed for the XBox, but isn't preventing this type of tight binding the entire point of the split. Michael Abrash says "the DX 8 specification is an excellent reference for the chip, especially the new components". An interesting question. I would think that since the X-Box is a platform in and of itself, that it would go with the OS Group. What do you think?

"There are plenty of rumors and speculation about the demise of OpenGL because of the XBox. This at least shows peoples' concerns about Microsoft getting back into the anti-competitive ball game. Will they do it? Should they be given the opportunity?

If the Xbox were to be deemed OS like enough to be bundled into the OS company, you get into a whole mess regarding the games. It is traditional in the console industry to sell the console cheaply and make the money off of the games. Surely the OS business couldn't get into selling other software immediately. It would be ridiculous to allow one company to sell the XBox at a loss and for the other to make money off of the games."

tomii writes: "This one's tasty. Michael Abrash gives detailed information about the graphics system on Microsoft's new X-Box." Interesting information, and a pretty good 'tutorial' on graphics rendering in general. Also, a good treatise for working on fixed hardware.

Auxon writes "Dr.Dobb's reported today a new discovery in the nature of carbon nanotubes that may be a key contribution to the realization of nanotechnological dreams. The article describes the accidental findings by "Hongjie Dai, Stanford assistant professor of chemistry, and graduate student Thomas Tobler in collaboration with University of Kentucky theoretical physicists," who used an Atomic Force Microscope (AFM) to bend a tiny nanotube. As the tube bends, the electrical conductivity decreases; something predicted NOT to happen in previous theoretical work. "As one side of the tube is pushed closer to the other, carbon atoms form bonds across the inside of the tube. Normally, each carbon atom binds to three other carbons, leaving one electron free for use in conducting electricity. But when the walls of the tube come close together, each carbon binds to four rather than three carbons. The resulting decrease in the number of free electrons causes the electrical conductance to slow. "The AFM tip squashes the tube, causing each atom to bond with more atoms," said Dai. "This causes the tube to turn from an electrical conductor into an insulating structure similar to that found in diamonds." Remarkably, the dent disappears once the perturbing tip is removed. This high mechanical reversibility allows the full recovery of the nanotube's electrical property, Dai said.""

Auxon writes "Dr.Dobb's reported today a new discovery in the nature of carbon nanotubes that may be a key contribution to the realization of nanotechnological dreams. The article describes the accidental findings by "Hongjie Dai, Stanford assistant professor of chemistry, and graduate student Thomas Tobler in collaboration with University of Kentucky theoretical physicists," who used an Atomic Force Microscope (AFM) to bend a tiny nanotube. As the tube bends, the electrical conductivity decreases; something predicted NOT to happen in previous theoretical work. "As one side of the tube is pushed closer to the other, carbon atoms form bonds across the inside of the tube. Normally, each carbon atom binds to three other carbons, leaving one electron free for use in conducting electricity. But when the walls of the tube come close together, each carbon binds to four rather than three carbons. The resulting decrease in the number of free electrons causes the electrical conductance to slow. "The AFM tip squashes the tube, causing each atom to bond with more atoms," said Dai. "This causes the tube to turn from an electrical conductor into an insulating structure similar to that found in diamonds." Remarkably, the dent disappears once the perturbing tip is removed. This high mechanical reversibility allows the full recovery of the nanotube's electrical property, Dai said.""

Carnage4Life writes "Dr. Dobbs Journal has a very insightful article on the shortage of IT professionals that is constantly being touted by the media and industry execs. It debunks this myth by discussing the results of the IT Workforce Data Project which indicate that there is anything but a shortage of IT professionals in industry today. " Good points, talking about the oft-heard of preference for recent grads and such. What do you folks think? Is it hard to find a job?

Carnage4Life writes "Dr. Dobbs Journal has a very insightful article on the shortage of IT professionals that is constantly being touted by the media and industry execs. It debunks this myth by discussing the results of the IT Workforce Data Project which indicate that there is anything but a shortage of IT professionals in industry today. " Good points, talking about the oft-heard of preference for recent grads and such. What do you folks think? Is it hard to find a job?

Our most prolific reader, Anonymous Coward, writes "Here is an article by Bruce Schneier of Counterpane Internet Security from Dr. Dobb's Journal that describes a way to 'model threats against computer systems'." This is Bruce Schneir at his best. Many of the thoughts in this article aren't about cryptography but about other ways intruders might defeat your security measures, and about how to determine what kind of attacks you might expect to face.

Our most prolific reader, Anonymous Coward, writes "Here is an article by Bruce Schneier of Counterpane Internet Security from Dr. Dobb's Journal that describes a way to 'model threats against computer systems'." This is Bruce Schneir at his best. Many of the thoughts in this article aren't about cryptography but about other ways intruders might defeat your security measures, and about how to determine what kind of attacks you might expect to face.

Chris Siegler writes "An Op-Ed over at Dr. Dobb's, on whether Linux can change to meet the needs of the mainstream user, and the consequences if we don't. " Interesting piece-talks about the potential for fragmentation, and that all of the big name companies coming to play are probably the greatest potential cause of that. I'm not incredibly worried about fragmentation, but more about how things change can alter the community. What do you folks think?

NullPointer writes "Dr. Dobb's has given their 1999 Excellence in Programming Awards to Guido Van Rossum and Donald Becker" Congrats to both of you. For those in the dark, Guido is our favorite Python god, and Becker is our favorite Linux Ethernet god (besides fixing my broken laptop X key at ALS :)

Zagadka writes "John Ousterhout, creator of TCL, has written an article called Free Software Needs Profit for Dr. Dobb's. It discusses the relationship open source software and commercial software can have with each other. "

Zagadka writes "John Ousterhout, creator of TCL, has written an article called Free Software Needs Profit for Dr. Dobb's. It discusses the relationship open source software and commercial software can have with each other. "

A name that all the book reviewers know SEGV has sent in a review of Scott Meyers' CD work Effective C++ CD. This is a stray from our normal book reviews, but figured people would appreciate seeing Scott Meyers' newest effort. Effective C++ CD author Scott Meyers pages publisher Addison Wesley rating 10 reviewer SEGV ISBN 0-201-60615-1 summary More than the sum of its hardcopy contents, this electronic resource earns a place on the programmer's bookshelf.

What to Expect?

I wasn't sure exactly what to expect. Subtitled "85 Specific Ways to Improve Your Programs and Designs," I knew this CD was an electronic version of Scott Meyers' already-published books, which I had previously reviewed for Slashdot:

• Effective C++ Second Edition
• More Effective C++

So I knew a priori that the content was excellent, but how would it be packaged and presented? Would it be Windows-only, forcing me to use it only at work as I run Linux at home? Would it be awkward to read onscreen? Would it be easily searchable? Could I annotate and print portions of it?

A Pleasant Surprise

I was pleasantly surprised when the package contained only a CDROM with these instructions printed on it:

To start, open INDEX.HTM
System requirements: Netscape Navigator 4.0+ (on Unix, Mac, or Win32) or Microsoft Internet Explorer 4.0+ (on Win32 only).

So far so good! I had no problems using the CD with Communicator 4.5 on NT 4.0, and Communicator 4.04 on Debian GNU/Linux 2.0. Pretty much any modern browser with Java and JavaScript support should work. If you experience browser problems, the publisher provides helpful advice.

Initial Impressions

The CD has a nice look and feel to it. A navigation area is always present, acting as a control and providing a colour indication of where you are in the CD.

The text is decent to read and is true HTML, not merely raw text. It seems Meyers is conscious of the fact that an electronic version must add value to complement a printed version, otherwise it is not useful for its target audience.

Overall, I'd say this offering is a well though out and put together product, and not just a cheap knock-off.

Content

The CD (which itself has a printing number) contains the latest printings of the two books. It also boasts five magazine articles chosen by Meyers to augment the material in the books:

• "Exception Handling: A False Sense of Security" by Tom Cargill, from C++ Report Nov-Dec 1994.
• "Coping With Exceptions" by Jack W. Reeves, from C++ Report Mar 1996.
• "Exception-Safe Generic Containers" by Herb Sutter, from C++ Report Sep 1997, Nov-Dec 1997.
• "Counting Objects in C++" by Scott Meyers, from C/C++ Users Journal Apr 1998.
• "A First Look at C++ Program Analyzers" by Scott Meyers and Martin Klaus, from Dr. Dobb's Journal Feb 1997.

The first three are highly recommended for anyone dealing with exceptions. And of course, since any function may throw an exception, that means anyone writing C++! The object counting article elaborates on an idea from Effective C++ Item 14, illustrating some subtle language issues along the way. The final article outlines the state of the art in commercial static C++ analysis tools in September 1996.

Hyperlinks

The CD has links everywhere. Let me repeat: everywhere. In addition to hyperlinking existing references, Meyers added many cross references to the books and articles to further solidify the material.

Links to the internet at large are redirected through Addison Wesley Longman's online site so that they may stay current. And every single paragraph on the CD is anchored and hyperlinked, to facilitate electronic referencing and bookmarking.

Search Facilities

The CD provides two alternatives to your browser's "find in page" search facility. The first is a comprehensive merged index of the two books. The second is a search applet, modified from the Design Patterns CD search applet. It displays the resulting hits, with their enclosing paragraph for context if you select it. I found it easy to scan through hits until I found an interesting paragraph, then to jump to that document.

Although the search applet is aware of the entire CD, it appears that it can search only for one keyword. I'd really prefer more sophisticated search string options, such as multiple keywords, boolean operations, and perhaps even full regular expressions.

Configuration Facilities

For a set of web pages, the CD is impressively configurable. You can choose between five navigation area sizes, and five image sizes. You can view the books by item, by chapter, or in their entirety. And of course you can change text size in your browser.

Performance and Licensing

To implement the configurability options, there are actually five copies of each image and three copies of each book on the CD. Still, the total data size is a mere 16MB, which easily fits on a hard drive for greater performance and frees a CDROM drive for other use. This is also important because, given technology, actually altering the HTML files is really the only viable way of annotating the CD.

The CD comes with a single user license. You must contact the publisher for additional network license options. The short story is: you can make the CD available on a non-internet-accessible server to as many users as you have licenses, and you can purchase additional network licenses more cheaply the more you buy.

Summary

I've been using the CD both at work and at home for a couple of weeks, and I continue to find it a valuable resource. It easily subs in for my absent printed books, although of course I can't use it without a computer. The articles are useful, and the index and search applet allow me to quickly find what I am looking for.

Really, I have only three complaints:

• the search applet is somewhat limited
• there could be more magazine articles
• Scott's author photo is starting to look less like Eddie Van Halen and more like Gene Simmons

However, I don't think any of those detracts from the CD enough to reduce its 10/10 rating. In the worst case, since the CD is composed of text HTML files, you could apply other search utilities (eg, grep) to it.

The CD's online site has a demo, which I recommend trying if you want to get a feel for the CD before you purchase it. In addition to the general look and feel, navigation area, and search applet, it includes all of the magazine articles and a few of the books' items.

I'm happy with the CD, and recommend it as a professional resource.

To pick this up and help Slashdot, head over to Computer Literacy.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction
Effective C++ Second Edition
More Effective C++
Magazine Articles
Search the CD

Dr Dobbs Journal analyses the impact that Windows Programmers could have on Linux arguing that they could boost Linux' usability drastically. So what do you think Windows programmers could do to/for Linux? Do you think the ensuing culture struggle will be positive or negative? Link from LWN.

Since many people responded positively to the programming poll, here is a presentation of the TwoFish encryption algorithm, a possible DES-replacement which is unencombered by patents and for which a sample source code implementation is available. Basic Cryptography concepts are explained here and more simply here, while a look at unbalanced Feistel networks are also online. An alternative to TwoFish is Loki 97. Don't assume this article sets the tone for the series (it's rather hard) and the series will be varied. A substantial number of you wanted to be able to look only at news sections that interested you, and I think Rob is looking at implementing that.

DDJ has a report on the Palm Dev Conf, which is worth a read. Although Palm did release the source code to all but 10% of their ROM, people may not modify it or use sections of it. It's therefore mainly of interest to those trying to extend the OS with cool hacks, but denies PalmOS the chance of becoming the "Linux of handhelds". The report also covers the Palm VII, a PalmPilot with a 9600 RF modem included, which distributes processing off the PalmPilot onto the base-station for expensive operations such as HTML parsing.

Gary William Flake has written a book entitled ``The Computational Beauty of Nature: Computer Explorations of Fractals, Chaos, Complex Systems, and Adaptation.'' The book's companion website is located at here. Art & Math can work so well together sometimes. Tom Murphy sent us a link to Chris Wenham os OS/2 E-zine's rant on Conspiracy Theories anf the FSF. Mentions Slashdot for some reason too. alank sent us an article on free software that you might enjoy. Gunfighter wrote in to say that recent User Friendly strips will be of interest to Red Hat users, Finally W. O. Frobozz sent us a link to an article about Gary Kildall of CP/M and DRI fame. Worthwhile read.