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It has ISBN 020155805X and you can purchase it online from:

• http://www.fatbrain.com
• http://www.barnesandnoble.com
• http://www.amazon.com
• http://www.chapters.ca (Canadian bookseller)

Mike

Tilting at Windmills for a Better Tomorrow

Back when society was composed of only Hunters and Gatherers we were entirely mobile and fragmented. Yet during the same time periods, archeologists have found no evidence of war, overpopulation, starvation (limited bandwidth, electronic censorship). It wasn't until after we settled down and developed cities that archeologists found evidence of the above mentioned.

Diamond puts to rest the 18th and 19th century romantic notion of the "Noble Savage". Take for instance the austronesian expansion: on island after island that the people we now call Polynesians settled, they killed off all large mammals and flighless birds. The same seem to have happened in Australia. Within centuries of the arrival of the "Aboriginis" all large mammals beside the kangoroo vanished.

The Hunters/Gatherers of New Guinea seem to live a "stable and congenial" life till they raid the neighboring tribe or they get raided by them.

--
"Web Users Should Not Engage in Promiscuous Browsing" --CERT

fatbrain's ematter lets you publish an electronic edition of your book. You set the price, and when someone buys one from them, they take half the money and send you the rest, making a 50% royalty rate for the author.

They'll take Acrobat, Word, Postscript, or flat text files. For pages that look nice and can be viewed on multiple platforms, including Windows, without putting any money in Bill Gates' pocket, I'm sure Acrobat will fit the bill.

Bob DuCharme
www.snee.com/bob

There is a book which you can find at ye ol Fatbrain titled Where Wizards Stay Up Late that is an interesting read (if your a true geek) about the whole ARPANET thing. It talks a bit about Davies and the whole idea of breaking data into packets. It turns out that there was a fellow in the US who came up with the idea at about the same time as Davies.

The books a bit dry at times but worth a read if your into that sort of thing

Picture, if you will, an internet kiosk completly independant from the physical infrastructure now used to access the internet today. The AC outlet on your peecee might be replaced by solar power, the dataline replaced with a satelite link. This is not far removed from the Transmeta webpad with a 18" digital dish on top, and a battery pack down below.

Such a device would have a big social impact around the globe because it could, quite literaly, be droped from the sky and just do what it does for a few hours a day (I know some of you are picturing a sceen from "the gods must be crazy" when the coke bottle hits the native on the head).

Anyway, the continued focus on low power consumtion can be combined with an emphysis on a focus on "infrastructure indepentant technologies" to provide an affordable killer thin client.

Now, if we can only get that magical universal translator into the mozilla nightlys. ;)
___

Jamie, before you go stating that "OSS != Security," please consider:

• Bugs in crypto systems are extraordinarily difficult to hunt down and squish. Read Applied Cryptography if you feel like getting your brain around why.
• A bug of this magnitude in a product with source code not available would probably never have been discovered.

PGP's license has never met the Open Source Definition (it's free to use only under certain circumstances). Despite this technicality, your headline is stupidly sensational and self-defeating. Wouldn't it have been much better to title it "Key Generation Bug Found in PGP 5"?

. . get yourself a copy of Database Nation and you'll see what the public outcry is all about.
Here's a summary:
This book is more than simply a journalistic summary of the current state of privacy rights and violations. It is a call to arms. Forty years ago, unbridled technology attacked our environment--and few people seemed to know or care. With the publication of Silent Spring in 1962, Rachel Carson opened our eyes. Her graphic depiction of the ecological and health ravages brought by technology made many people realize the risks as never before. Today, our environment still imperils us, but things are better than they might have been, and we have a population that's informed and, in many cases, activist. This book pleads the case for privacy in the same way. There is much that can be done with, not in spite of, technology. An aware public is the first step. It is our hope that this book will open the public's eyes to the many intrusions on our privacy before it is too late.
___

Micrsoft and its cronies love to use this 'innovate' word, but I don't think it means what they think it means. Maybe they're using MS Dictionary 1.0, I dunno.

You mean... THIS one? :)

http://www1.fatbrain.com/asp/bookinfo/bookinfo.asp ?theisbn=031222222X

If you want to see where this is heading, just turn once again to the car industry: once American companies got their asses kicked by the Japanese, they adopted their techniques, and Surprise! Cars now come out of their factories with higher quality, in less time, and at less cost (adjusted for inflation and new features :-)

A good book on this (from 1986-8, so it leaves off when the US auto industry was in pretty much the nadir of its decline) is David Halberstam's The Reckoning... I'd go into further detail, but you have to read the book. It goes into Ford & Nissan overall, but it's very rich with both history and personality (particularly Mr. K of Datsun 240Z fame) and an excellent read.

There are definitely some lessons to learn, particularly regarding American hubris during fat economic times..

Your Working Boy,

Perl is no more OO than VB or C++

I'f your feeling brave, and want to explore this concept then read Jim Copliens book Multi-Paradig m Design for C++

Thad

I'd comment more about Vinge, but I haven't found a copy of True Names yet.

I'm surprised that True Names and Other Dangers is out of print. It also features Run, Bookworm, Run!, Long Shot, and a few other stories. Find it if you can.

According to Amazon.com, True Names: And the Opening of the Cyberspace Frontier

A study of True Names, Vernor Vinge's critically acclaimed novella that invented the concept of cyberspace, features that complete text of the novella, as well as articles by Richard Stallman, John Markoff, Hans Moravec, Patricia Maes, Timothy May, and other cyberspace pioneers.

I checked Amazon for info, but since they're patent abusing bastards who should be first against the wall when the revolution comes I'll probably buy from Fatbrain or my local bookstore.

here's a link to the fatbrain profile for the book A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper by John Allen Paulos.

I was one of those someones, but I didn't think to post my reply here. You addressed pretty much the same points I did, except this one:

All the tools you need to build your own ISO is included in OpenBSD, anybody can make them. Yet nobody does. Think about that.

Actually, one company has, and charges $4.99 for it.

They instituted it due to popular demand.

If enough people wanted a cheap version on CD that they were willing to pay for it in sufficient quantities to make it economical for CheapBytes to pay to burn thousands of copies, how can anyone say there's no demand for the ISO image?

I guarantee you, if they provided an official free ISO, it'd be a major download on LinuxISO.org the day it made it to their site.

The other thing I addressed is *WHY* people want this thing in the first place.

One, as you said, is the download factor; you know you've got the whole thing if the ISO you downloaded is the same size on your HD as it is on the FTP site.

Another is, installing for somebody else, such as at an installfest at your local LUG. Whether you install it from floppies, from an FTP or NFS server, or even just by copying hard drives with Ghost or dd, it's still good to be able to hand the person a CD he can use to reinstall or fix or update or etc. later, when he doesn't have that high-speed connection available.

Another is, snaring people at events. If you can slap a disk in their hand, that's pretty cool. They're more likely to try it than if you just give them a card with http://www.openbsd.org on it.

Another is, businesses. I don't want to have to rely on the availability of another system for my install in some circumstances. In others, when I do use another system to power my install, I still don't want to be stuck *HAVING* to rely on it.

Another is, books and magazines. It's a lot easier for SysAdmin, or even Linux Journal, to justify including a CD if they don't have to burn the damn thing themselves.

McGraw Hill is publishing a series of Unix books right now that include CDs related to the various topics, such as Steve Maxwell's Unix Network Management Tools and the twice-as-long Red Hat Linux Network Managment Tools. Wouldn't you like to see something like "OpenBSD Network Management Tools"?

Or the inclusion of a CD with Building Linux and OpenBSD Firewalls?

Or the inclusion of OpenBSD instead of FreeBSD in some other book?

I would. Anybody who wants to see OpenBSD get used by more people should, too.

But leaving aside completely the question of an official ISO, they're accidentally (it appears) giving the impression that they're against that, when they claim to not be against it at all.

Look at this quote from the FAQ at LinuxISO.org's site:

4/26/00 - Lots of questions again about OpenBSD. Here is a link to OpenBSD's FAQ talking about ISO images. I feel it is a good idea to respect their wishes as the good folks there have given us a great OS. - billy

See, he interprets this (link to OpenBSD FAQ entry) to mean that they are opposed to people doing this.

They could fix this as simply as adding the following: "If you do create one, feel free to distribute it."

Or better, follow the above with: "If you do, and you're on a stable site that will be there for the long haul such as http://www.linuxiso.org or http://www.sourceforge.net, let us know and we'll link you in this FAQ."

That is, if those are their true intentions. But I see a lot the same old elitist attitude here. Their attitude seems to be: (this is not a quote, this is the impression I get)

"If people choose to misunderstand our FAQ, then that's their problem, not ours."

In reality, anyone who does computer support of any kind (which is what a FAQ is) can tell you:

If it isn't obvious to the reader/user, it isn't obvious.

Just change the FAQ, dudes. If that's too much work, let me know and I'll provide you with the new wording, guaranteed to make it clear that:

1) You encourage people to make ISOs available.
2) You don't do so yourself merely because you don't see the need.
3) You encourage people to buy from you if possible in order to support the project.

--

I was one of those someones, but I didn't think to post my reply here. You addressed pretty much the same points I did, except this one:

All the tools you need to build your own ISO is included in OpenBSD, anybody can make them. Yet nobody does. Think about that.

Actually, one company has, and charges $4.99 for it.

They instituted it due to popular demand.

If enough people wanted a cheap version on CD that they were willing to pay for it in sufficient quantities to make it economical for CheapBytes to pay to burn thousands of copies, how can anyone say there's no demand for the ISO image?

I guarantee you, if they provided an official free ISO, it'd be a major download on LinuxISO.org the day it made it to their site.

The other thing I addressed is *WHY* people want this thing in the first place.

One, as you said, is the download factor; you know you've got the whole thing if the ISO you downloaded is the same size on your HD as it is on the FTP site.

Another is, installing for somebody else, such as at an installfest at your local LUG. Whether you install it from floppies, from an FTP or NFS server, or even just by copying hard drives with Ghost or dd, it's still good to be able to hand the person a CD he can use to reinstall or fix or update or etc. later, when he doesn't have that high-speed connection available.

Another is, snaring people at events. If you can slap a disk in their hand, that's pretty cool. They're more likely to try it than if you just give them a card with http://www.openbsd.org on it.

Another is, businesses. I don't want to have to rely on the availability of another system for my install in some circumstances. In others, when I do use another system to power my install, I still don't want to be stuck *HAVING* to rely on it.

Another is, books and magazines. It's a lot easier for SysAdmin, or even Linux Journal, to justify including a CD if they don't have to burn the damn thing themselves.

McGraw Hill is publishing a series of Unix books right now that include CDs related to the various topics, such as Steve Maxwell's Unix Network Management Tools and the twice-as-long Red Hat Linux Network Managment Tools. Wouldn't you like to see something like "OpenBSD Network Management Tools"?

Or the inclusion of a CD with Building Linux and OpenBSD Firewalls?

Or the inclusion of OpenBSD instead of FreeBSD in some other book?

I would. Anybody who wants to see OpenBSD get used by more people should, too.

But leaving aside completely the question of an official ISO, they're accidentally (it appears) giving the impression that they're against that, when they claim to not be against it at all.

Look at this quote from the FAQ at LinuxISO.org's site:

4/26/00 - Lots of questions again about OpenBSD. Here is a link to OpenBSD's FAQ talking about ISO images. I feel it is a good idea to respect their wishes as the good folks there have given us a great OS. - billy

See, he interprets this (link to OpenBSD FAQ entry) to mean that they are opposed to people doing this.

They could fix this as simply as adding the following: "If you do create one, feel free to distribute it."

Or better, follow the above with: "If you do, and you're on a stable site that will be there for the long haul such as http://www.linuxiso.org or http://www.sourceforge.net, let us know and we'll link you in this FAQ."

That is, if those are their true intentions. But I see a lot the same old elitist attitude here. Their attitude seems to be: (this is not a quote, this is the impression I get)

"If people choose to misunderstand our FAQ, then that's their problem, not ours."

In reality, anyone who does computer support of any kind (which is what a FAQ is) can tell you:

If it isn't obvious to the reader/user, it isn't obvious.

Just change the FAQ, dudes. If that's too much work, let me know and I'll provide you with the new wording, guaranteed to make it clear that:

1) You encourage people to make ISOs available.
2) You don't do so yourself merely because you don't see the need.
3) You encourage people to buy from you if possible in order to support the project.

--

I was one of those someones, but I didn't think to post my reply here. You addressed pretty much the same points I did, except this one:

All the tools you need to build your own ISO is included in OpenBSD, anybody can make them. Yet nobody does. Think about that.

Actually, one company has, and charges $4.99 for it.

They instituted it due to popular demand.

If enough people wanted a cheap version on CD that they were willing to pay for it in sufficient quantities to make it economical for CheapBytes to pay to burn thousands of copies, how can anyone say there's no demand for the ISO image?

I guarantee you, if they provided an official free ISO, it'd be a major download on LinuxISO.org the day it made it to their site.

The other thing I addressed is *WHY* people want this thing in the first place.

One, as you said, is the download factor; you know you've got the whole thing if the ISO you downloaded is the same size on your HD as it is on the FTP site.

Another is, installing for somebody else, such as at an installfest at your local LUG. Whether you install it from floppies, from an FTP or NFS server, or even just by copying hard drives with Ghost or dd, it's still good to be able to hand the person a CD he can use to reinstall or fix or update or etc. later, when he doesn't have that high-speed connection available.

Another is, snaring people at events. If you can slap a disk in their hand, that's pretty cool. They're more likely to try it than if you just give them a card with http://www.openbsd.org on it.

Another is, businesses. I don't want to have to rely on the availability of another system for my install in some circumstances. In others, when I do use another system to power my install, I still don't want to be stuck *HAVING* to rely on it.

Another is, books and magazines. It's a lot easier for SysAdmin, or even Linux Journal, to justify including a CD if they don't have to burn the damn thing themselves.

McGraw Hill is publishing a series of Unix books right now that include CDs related to the various topics, such as Steve Maxwell's Unix Network Management Tools and the twice-as-long Red Hat Linux Network Managment Tools. Wouldn't you like to see something like "OpenBSD Network Management Tools"?

Or the inclusion of a CD with Building Linux and OpenBSD Firewalls?

Or the inclusion of OpenBSD instead of FreeBSD in some other book?

I would. Anybody who wants to see OpenBSD get used by more people should, too.

But leaving aside completely the question of an official ISO, they're accidentally (it appears) giving the impression that they're against that, when they claim to not be against it at all.

Look at this quote from the FAQ at LinuxISO.org's site:

4/26/00 - Lots of questions again about OpenBSD. Here is a link to OpenBSD's FAQ talking about ISO images. I feel it is a good idea to respect their wishes as the good folks there have given us a great OS. - billy

See, he interprets this (link to OpenBSD FAQ entry) to mean that they are opposed to people doing this.

They could fix this as simply as adding the following: "If you do create one, feel free to distribute it."

Or better, follow the above with: "If you do, and you're on a stable site that will be there for the long haul such as http://www.linuxiso.org or http://www.sourceforge.net, let us know and we'll link you in this FAQ."

That is, if those are their true intentions. But I see a lot the same old elitist attitude here. Their attitude seems to be: (this is not a quote, this is the impression I get)

"If people choose to misunderstand our FAQ, then that's their problem, not ours."

In reality, anyone who does computer support of any kind (which is what a FAQ is) can tell you:

If it isn't obvious to the reader/user, it isn't obvious.

Just change the FAQ, dudes. If that's too much work, let me know and I'll provide you with the new wording, guaranteed to make it clear that:

1) You encourage people to make ISOs available.
2) You don't do so yourself merely because you don't see the need.
3) You encourage people to buy from you if possible in order to support the project.

--

It's not Linux specific, but it is a superb overview of the problems and solutions in low-end parallel computing. It also discusses the three favourite solutions (SMP, NUMA and clusters) in depth and goes over their strengths and weaknesses.
--
Cheers

This cryptography possibility is outlined in some detail in John Gribben's "Shroedinger's Kittens", around page 108.

• The user shouldn't be able to shoot themselves in the foot. People, even experienced technical people, make mistakes. Often. This is why providing undo is far better than asking "Are you sure you want to do this?" (Usually, people don't even listen to questions like that and simply respond with "yes".) These problems get really bad when it isn't clear that the user is making a choice they won't be able to back out of. (I once had a friend who messed the driver for the CD-ROM on his Windows machine. Where was the driver software he needed to install: on a CD which came with the machine.)
• Make the choices visible. Invisible or inaccessible controls suck. If I might need to change it, there should be a way to do so. Unless you're certain the user won't need it, don't hide it or turn it off. When something is disabled, the relationship between it and whatever controls whether its an option should be obvious. The worst is controls that can only be changed sometimes, but affect the outcome when they are inaccessible. (Yes, I've seen GUIs with this all too often.)
• Provide feedback early. The smaller the temporal separation between a user making a choice and the time the users observe the consequences, the better. The longer the delay, the harder it is for the user to get the system adjusted to their needs. (Imagine, for example, trying to adjust a light with a dimmer switch if you couldn't see the light from the dimmer. It would be an iterative process of adjust, run and go check the light, run back and adjust, run back and check. Frustrating to say the least.) In other words: an interactive process beats a batch one. (This is also one reason why people choose interpreted languages over compiled ones: faster turnaround.)
• Think about usability from the beginning. Software engineers tend to focus on functionality first and leave usability to the back end. This is why, for example, /etc is such a rats nest of shell scripts and configuration files, each with its own format and oddities. They weren't designed for uability, they evolved to provide functionality. Sure, they work, but when something goes wrong or when you need to change something, figuring it out takes way too long. (And don't kid yourself, the number of people who fully grok the /etc on their system is really small.)

• aboot: expected 1, not 2 program headers

• I had to ask somebody else who had the same problem before, which shouldn't have been necessary. One person should always be able to debug a problem. If it requires this sort of "oral tradition," then the error messages, comments, and documentation are inadequate.
• Why exactly is there this spooky limit on the size of the kernel, and how does it relate to my choices? If it was clear to me when I'd been configuring the kernel, that would have been great. (Imagine if the X configurator said "Whoa there, you kernel's gonna be too big to load, maybe you should make sound support into a module?") If it warned me when I was building it, that wouldn't have been too bad. (Obviously, it would be easy to make a post-build tool which checks for this problem.) But no, I had to attempt to boot this kernel in order to find out that it wouldn't work. (Like I said, provide feedback early.)

Anyone who designs user interfaces (which really includes any software which will ever be used by humans) should read Donald Norman's "The Psychology/Design of Everyday Things." It will change the way you look at the computers you use and the software you write.

I feel this is an excellent book! All I knew about mySQL is that was open source and one of the many weapons in the MS Smackdown. But as far as actual SQL queries I knew not one thing. I couldn't find a good resource online for mySQL so I picked this book up and was very happy. The step by step approach to thgins int he book is nice too. But what I favor is the appendix for the SQL commands. Of course the examples are nice too. This book shows you everything, from just gettign data to administering the database. A book that comes highly recommended to anyone wanting t learn mySQL!

I also reccomend
Professional PHP Programming

I'd encourage anyone who's interested to read a book like Bananas, Beaches and Bases (I especially like "Carmen Miranda on my Mind") to see where all this came from. The BBC article gives you an inkling where it's going.

Disclamer: I have never used thier service, only heard about it.

However, FatBrain (www.fatbrain.com) offers what they call "Print On Demand" services which permit authors of software (amongst others) to provide electronic manuals, and give them an option to buy the printed manual from FatBrain. What makes this system interesting is that there is no risk to you: they literally print the book on demand just before shipping. That way, there isn't excess inventory, and you could even set the print costs to just above the cost to print the manual--that way, your company saves on printing costs and inventory costs, and for those (like myself) who want printed manuals, they have a low-cost alternative to printing the whole thing out.

My understanding is that print-on-demand services is also provided by Barnes and Nobel, though I couldn't find any information on their web site.

For more information about FatBrain's print on demand services, visit http://www1.fatbrain.com/inf oexchange/program.asp?vm=c

--

Simple rules are to avoid using http sessions as data structures, use object pools as much as possible (not just for database connections), try and keep things as stateless as you can possibly get away with, pay attention to the hardware on which your web app will be deployed (for instance, if your db host dwarfs your middle tier by ten orders of magnitude it might not make sense to cache SQL results in the middle tier after all), and try to keep the presentation layer clean and relatively code-free for the designers (who will otherwise cost you tons of time in mistakes and inane questions). There are other more specific tips, such as refer to values via references to existing data structures rather than instantiating new Strings to hold such values.

A decent Java book on concurrent design is: Concurrent Programming in Java: Design Principles and Patterns.

Alvin Toffler wrote about this idea several decades ago in Future Shock. He talked about the accelerating pace of our lives. He pointed out that past generations had seen a rate of change that could be ignored, or in the first half of this century slowly adapted to. That is obviously no longer the case. He spoke of obsolescent knowledge. It seems clear to me (although I haven't read it yet) that Faster explores those ideas with the perspective that several decades of living with constant change has brought.

Our rate of change carries with it twin dangers, the Scylla and Charibdis of our age. Merely to keep up, one must be an unrepentant neophile. And yet, we cannot blindly accept all that is new as a boon. I don't believe that we can keep new ideas from being distributed, nor would I approve of doing it. We need to constantly consider the consequences they may bring and prepare ourselves for them.

This is absolutely unacceptable.

The ability to distribute information through the population is critical to the maintainence and control of society, and allowing it to come into the hands of those whose stated purpose is making shareholders (i.e. not regular people, workers, the environment, etc) happy can only be dangerous.

Implicitly, if that one party gets control over things, the rest of us tend to get screwed over -- after all, they are looking after their interests, not yours and mine. Why would they bother to do anything that helps the other 90% of the American and 99% of the global population, unless maybe it happens to be as a side effect of an activity that is otherwise purely profitable to themselves.

The mass media are already too homogenous. It's bread & circuses all over again: we get fed a steady diet of nothing worth watching, and not enough people are complaining about it. And while, yes, the digital new media are somewhat immune to the influence of the old media, still the danger is present.

We really can't ignore this or allow it to go unchecked. Read up. Read Noam Chomsky's "Manufacturing Consent". Listen to Disposeable Heroes of Hiphoprisy's Drug of a Nation. Watch C-Span rather than Jerry Springer; Adbusters rather (or in additon to ;-) Slashdot; wave signs, write letters, make web pages, consider civil disobedience and acts of anarchy a la "Fight Club" -- but whatever you do, fight back and make a difference.

We need it, badly. We're on the wrong track these days...

I'd write more, and more cogently, but I'm too tired right now...

This is absolutely unacceptable.

The ability to distribute information through the population is critical to the maintainence and control of society, and allowing it to come into the hands of those whose stated purpose is making shareholders (i.e. not regular people, workers, the environment, etc) happy can only be dangerous.

Implicitly, if that one party gets control over things, the rest of us tend to get screwed over -- after all, they are looking after their interests, not yours and mine. Why would they bother to do anything that helps the other 90% of the American and 99% of the global population, unless maybe it happens to be as a side effect of an activity that is otherwise purely profitable to themselves.

The mass media are already too homogenous. It's bread & circuses all over again: we get fed a steady diet of nothing worth watching, and not enough people are complaining about it. And while, yes, the digital new media are somewhat immune to the influence of the old media, still the danger is present.

We really can't ignore this or allow it to go unchecked. Read up. Read Noam Chomsky's "Manufacturing Consent". Listen to Disposeable Heroes of Hiphoprisy's Drug of a Nation. Watch C-Span rather than Jerry Springer; Adbusters rather (or in additon to ;-) Slashdot; wave signs, write letters, make web pages, consider civil disobedience and acts of anarchy a la "Fight Club" -- but whatever you do, fight back and make a difference.

We need it, badly. We're on the wrong track these days...

I'd write more, and more cogently, but I'm too tired right now...

I think Apple is already thinking about how to get QT on other platforms (besides Mac OS and Windows). I think their answer will be QuickTime for Java. With QT 4.1, Java applets can now make calls to the QuickTime sub-system. I don't know how much of the API is available through Java, but this will most likely be how Apple achieves true cross-platform support. Check out the QuickTime for Java book for more info..

As to Apple having a QT player with an X (as in X Window, not Mac OS X) interface floating around, that is very unlikely. Apple's GUI for OS X will be there own vector based Quartz. Apple will not officially be supporting X Windows on Mac OS X (although John Carmak has ported XFree86 to Mac OS X).

One last thing, the Sorenson codec is not Apple's to Open Source, it is licensed from a third-party, as are many parts of QuickTime. This of course, would be a major hinderance to Open Sourcing QuickTime.

Scot Hacker, author of The BeOS Bible, had an article over at BeNews about a possible way around this. Worth investigating once the free version is actually available.

This will never happen without a major philosophy change at MS. Right now, for better or worse, MS views their proprietary OS as the keystone in their monopoly^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H dominant market position. Neal Stephenson talkes about this in his essay In the beginning was the command line (also available in dead tree format

-y

the Unix System Administration Handbook, 3rd edition, soon to be published. Here's the link to it at fatbrain

It covers system admin from a multi-os perspective- linux, as well as freeBSD, and a couple of others, too, which I don't remember.

I've been a fan since the first edition, and can't wait for this one.

That may be true. But the odds of the person on trial and the criminal having the same DNA are much, much smaller.

This turns into the birthday paradox. I.e. It *much* easier to find two people with the same birthday than it is to find someone with your birthday in a room of people. It's because for the first problem, the number of paris in the crowd is what is important, so the number goes up much faster than the linear rise in the number of people in the room. (Exponential I think).

So it's very unlikely, that you'd find someone with the same DNA as you. But it much easier to find two people with the same DNA (and that still ain't likely).

You can read a little more about it in Applied Cryptography by Bruce Schneier. He discusses the same thing in regards to, IIRC, know plaintext attacks against crypto systems.

--Ty

Actually, the book is based on real, if highly speculative, science.

The part about time travel and multiple universes is based on the book, The Fabric of Reality by David Deutsch, a physicist from Oxford University. I don't believe that Deutsch proves his case but the book is quite interesting (and quite out there).

You can get this book at Fatbrain or at your local library.

Steve M

Here's another "uglier" horror link:

Wilde Publishing

I read with interest this little swipe at the "BIG BOYS."

This particular "little guy" just wrote to me to tell me I am not a worthy "author" for even reading at his bookstore...

Whats a independent author/publisher to do these days to get attention in any shape or form? I guess I'll just have to let my little "lack of diversity" speak for itself....

Wilde Publishing

Wilde Publishing

eMatter is definitely on the up and up.
See my e-site:
WILDE PUBLISHING

WILDE PUBLISHING

TRY FATBRAIN.COM'S eMATTER

WILDE PUBLISHING

I would suggest taking a look at one of several good books on the topic, and peruse some of the excellent websites pointed out by others, then get involved!

My personal favorite book is Biological Sequence Analysis by Richard Durbin and Sean Eddy, two workers in the field whom I greatly respect. The book is engaging and pretty thorough, and plenty to get stared with!

Join us! Hack the genome!

Why would it take an ocean? I would think at all you would need is a large enough body of water to support the required chemical reactions. Along with the right chemicals of course. A smaller body of water might be preferable as it would keep the chemicals in closer proximity.

...they've found these microbes that thrive in 115F environments and eat iron and secrete sulphuric acid...

An interesting popular book on this subject is Dark Life by Michael Ray Taylor. Taylor is a caver that worked with scientists to discover a number of previously unknown lifeforms. The book also discusses the so-called Martian fossils.

Get it at your local library or at Fatbrain.

Steve M

Been there, done that.

With this latest in a string of stories about Amazon and their evil "1-click patent". Not to mention the numerous stories about the evils of software patents, why do we still find this in the book reviews section:

The books here are brought to us in Partnership with Amazon.com.

I'm amazed this post has a score 4, considering it seems to have even less fact checking than your average /. story.
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No, really. We should, as a group, put our collective money where our collective mouth is and go somewhere else. Fatbrain, maybe. How about some recommendations?

• fatbrain.com {.}
• bookpool.com
• alldirect.com
• kingbooks.com
• borders.com

And of course, it's always best to do a search for the cheapest price at places like pricescan.com

Absolutely! C++ is indeed a poor OOPL. Its backwards compatibility with C (and the CPP) make it needlessly complex. One has to be extremely careful with C++ if one intends to engineer reliable OO software systems efficiently. A better OOPL would foster good techniques without being overly restrictive.

Check out Ian Joyner's paper "C++??: A Critique of C++" and the book it spawned "Objects Unencapsulated: Java, Eiffel, and C++??" for a thought-provoking and thorough analysis of the language. You won't regret it!

That reminds me, does anyone have an undistorted copy of tape 1 of the Feynman Physics lectures, part of "Six Easy Pieces"? The published tape apologizes for the distortion on the original tape from 1961. It's not only high-density digital media that is having problems...

Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences by N.J. Sloane and S. Plouffe, USD$57. It is actually neat; I found it in a (university) library once. There is a fine line between "combinatorics" and "recreational mathematics" sometimes, and that's good. The book will certainly have a large number of sequences that you'll find interesting if you have any interest in mathematics whatsoever. Other sequences are horribly technical. It's a very useful book and not as boring as some of the previous posters think.

My wrists aren't in the greatest shape after typing pretty much non-stop for the last few years, so it's time to try a new keyboard.

RSI needn't be localized to the wrists, even if it feels like it is. The entire upper body musculature (shoulders, neck, upper arms, lower arms, wrists, hands) is involved in providing support as you type. Double-crush syndrome is where nerves are pinched at multiple locations such as at the shoulders and at the elbow. Each individual nerve impingement is not enough to cause a problem, but the two in conjunction can impair hand/wrist function. The problem can often seem to be a "wrist problem" when it is actually more insidious than that.

To use myself as a case study, I was feeling wrecked in the wrists after writing and defending my Ph.D. proposal. The above book helped me to identify many problems. E.g. I'd gotten away for years with bad upper body posture while at the keyboard, not taking enough (or any) breaks, bad mousing habits, and more. The above book helped me to identify these problems and learn to correct them. Even with that knowledge, recovery was a long and uncertain time. Since then, I have made it a point to become more active, including a whole-body approach to strengthening and stretching.

That said, this book can also help you determine if you require medical help. At its worst, RSI can permenantly and severely impair your ability to use your hands, leaving you weak and in pain.

If anyone would like more details, other book references, etc. please reply via email, removing all 'spam' from my email address.

If you want to read an ficitional account of every day life at Microsoft, try reading Douglas Coupland's Microserfs. The book describes a group of friends who watch the lawn get cut everyday or every other day at the same time to ensure the grass is at the same lenght and the email exchange between friends is incredibly funny. Here's a link to the official Douglas Coupland web site. Since I read the book several years ago, I included a posting from the Fatbrain web site: "Microserfs: a hilarious, fanatically detailed, and oddly moving book about a handful of misfit Microsoft employees who realize that they don't have lives and subsequently become determined to get lives inside the lightning-paced world of high-tech 1990s' American geek culture. Amid a Seattle backdrop of software corporate cultishness ("B-B-B-B-Bill!") and the financial terror of San Francisco and Silicon Valley tech startups, the members of Coupland's quirky ensemble "stick a piece of dynamite inside themselves, like a cartoon cat, in the hopes that when they reassemble their exploded pieces they will be somebody different"