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Created C++?????

I believe that would have been Bjarne Stroustrup.

--
grappler

Incidentally what level of math expertice are they assuming? I have taken up through differential calculus and still hardly know a damn thing contained.

Of course it's not a small book, and it's hard to get motivated to learn something when you don't know WHY you need it. So I'd suggest just skimming the math in Knuth and work on MIX and the programming stuff, then go back later.

In other words, eat your cake and ice cream first, and then tackle the broccoli.

Other folks have mentioned Thinking in Java, so I won't link it. While it's a damn good book, I liked Ivor Horton's Beginning Java a little better for newbies, since it doesn't focus quite as much on object orientation. I don't have the new edition, though I would expect the same high quality. Of course, Fatbrain has it. Wrox is my second favorite tech publisher after O'Reilly. Still, you can't beat a free book, so I'd at least check out the online version of Thinking.

I was very happy recently to pick up a copy of java 2 performance and idiom guide by Craig Larman and Rhett Guthrie (fatbrain) . The book is aimed at:

"Our intended audience is software engineers who have been recently introduced to Java, have a basic understanding of the language and libraries, and are ready for the next step: A deeper insight into how experienced developers use common language and library features in Java, and how to design Java systems with adequate performance."

As such I would highly recommend this book to anyone who is interested in writing large, stable and fast applications while being aware of the design choices that they are making.

I would go for "Thinking in Java" by Eckel, Bruce, available from Fatbrain.com at this page as it is one of the few books to really show you why you should follow the advice rather than yet another rehash of the java api (when are people going to realise that we don't want to pay money for a printout of the standard javadoc).

First of all, you should understand System Administration to some degree, this will help you understand basics like daemons, permissions, basic networking, and figuring out what you need and what's just cruft on your system. A text which I gladly recommend is Essential System Administration. This will *not* secure your system but it will help. A lot. Step two, learn about security specifically. You can read Practical Unix and Internet Security which gives a good overview and a fair amount of detail on securing a system, and being assured that they remain that way.

Once you finish doing this, you'll be on your way to being a *competant* admin (even if it is just your own machine). From then on, while you'll be far from a security expert, when some kiddie checks your doorknob, you can be assured that your door is locked, and they'll move on.

I know the books I mentioned cost $35 or so, which if you're young might be a non-trivial amount of money. If it is, I suggest saving up and buying them anyway. If you understand the stuff in them, then you'll know what you need to look up on the net for further info.

Good luck, and feel free to e-mail me with any further questions.

First of all, you should understand System Administration to some degree, this will help you understand basics like daemons, permissions, basic networking, and figuring out what you need and what's just cruft on your system. A text which I gladly recommend is Essential System Administration. This will *not* secure your system but it will help. A lot. Step two, learn about security specifically. You can read Practical Unix and Internet Security which gives a good overview and a fair amount of detail on securing a system, and being assured that they remain that way.

Once you finish doing this, you'll be on your way to being a *competant* admin (even if it is just your own machine). From then on, while you'll be far from a security expert, when some kiddie checks your doorknob, you can be assured that your door is locked, and they'll move on.

I know the books I mentioned cost $35 or so, which if you're young might be a non-trivial amount of money. If it is, I suggest saving up and buying them anyway. If you understand the stuff in them, then you'll know what you need to look up on the net for further info.

Good luck, and feel free to e-mail me with any further questions.

http://www1.fatbrain.com/asp/bookinfo/bookinfo.asp ?theisbn=020161622X&from=MJF138

has a "from=MJF138" suffix. That's not part of the information needed to order the book. Instead, it seems to indicate that the link is tied into that retailer's affiliate program, and somebody gets a 20% kickback on the transaction. This raises some serious questions. Who is MJF138, anyway? Heimos? VA Linux? Justin Harvey? Somebody else? The whole world wants to know.

Another good read in the same vein is Polya's How to solve it.

actually this is the best place to start.


Why? The primary recommendation of that link is to go out and buy the book I linked.

Would you prefer a Fatbrain link instead?

At the beginning of the article R.I.P mentions the dearth of great writing on video games; I'd like to place here a plug for J.C. Herz's Joystick Nation : How Videogames Ate Our Quarters, Won Our Hearts, and Rewired Our Minds, and even more so Herz's New York Times Column Game Theory. Reading Game Theory is the highlight of my Thursday.

mahlen

When a team of marketing minions from Sears paid a visit to the company's production facilities, Bushnell made a lasting impression by riding around the factory floor on a conveyor belt, in a box. Elsewhere in the organization, happy employees tried to drive an executive mad by gradually adding lead weights to his telephone receiver.
--ATARI, 1974

Agreed. And one of the best books about the limitations of computers, pre-dating this one, is Roger Penrose's The Emperor's New Mind.

Penrose convincingly presents the flaws in the theories that computers will be able to 'think' and 'feel' as humans do, or even effectively simulate such.

1. The current stock price
2. Interest rates
3. The option strike
4. Dividends expected (yeah, right)
5. The "volatility"

Oh sure, kill my moderations on this interview by forcing me to reply..:]

As far as recent pop physics books go, check out The Elegant Universe: Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions, and the Quest for the Ultimate Theory, by Brian Greene. It was released in 1999, I believe.

ISBN# 0393046885
Hardcover version from fatbrain.com

I've just started reading the book myself, and so far it is a great read... if anyone here picks up a copy, send me an email, it's always good to have someone to discuss these things with..
__________________________________________ ___________________

My perception of what science fiction should really be like are the books of Stanislaw Lem. In his 1969 book 'Summa Technologiae', for example, he explains the concept of virtual reality. The Futurological Congress also touches upon this topic, but even goes a little further in that it describes a world where there is not one but many levels of nested virtual realities. Also very interesting is the book 'Dialogues', in which he, among other questions, discusses whether machines can be concious. The book was written in the 1960's. By far his best book, imho, is Fiasco. That's a book I'd like to see a film based on!

My perception of what science fiction should really be like are the books of Stanislaw Lem. In his 1969 book 'Summa Technologiae', for example, he explains the concept of virtual reality. The Futurological Congress also touches upon this topic, but even goes a little further in that it describes a world where there is not one but many levels of nested virtual realities. Also very interesting is the book 'Dialogues', in which he, among other questions, discusses whether machines can be concious. The book was written in the 1960's. By far his best book, imho, is Fiasco. That's a book I'd like to see a film based on!

OTOH, they have kindof a history of being..uh..a bit abusive of their "friends."

For all of you that aren't as fascinated by the NSA as I am, you need to read The Puzzle Palace by James Bamford.

[If you don't know who Clifford Stoll is, run do not walk to your favorite bookstore, perhaps F atbrain or Amazon.com, and get a copy of The Cuckoo's Egg : Tracking a Spy Through the Maze of Computer Espionage. --PSRC]

http://www.kleinbottle.com/acme_faq.htm

Who's behind Acme Klein Bottle?

Just me, Cliff Stoll. Nobody else.

Are you the same guy that ...

Yep, same guy.

Do you make these Klein Bottles yourself?

Not any longer. I tend to overwork the welds and have burnt myself too often. Worse, I take a long time to make a Klein Bottle. To keep prices reasonable, professional glassblowers make these to my specs.

I just picked up a book by Cliff Stoll (Known for the cracker non-fiction whodonnit Cuckoos Egg) in which he argues that Computers DO NOT belong in schools...I'd recommend this book highly.

His point is basically that while computers are nice, "real life" can and should be even nicer, but that we are losing track of those real life pleasures. He may be a little too hard on the electronic beasties, but it's a refreshing and necessary antidote to e-hype.

For many (perhaps most) of us technophiles who become deeply involved with computers, there comes a time when we realize - as a friend of mine put it - that a real flower is infinitely more interesting than the best hi-res JPEG image of a flower. We have to find the balance where using computers and the net is enhancing, rather than replacing, our life experience.

As for computers in the classroom, they have their place there. But they should be though more of as replacing textbooks than replacing teachers.

The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert A. Heinlein. The latest reprint has ISBN # 0312863551. Check it out here.

Take a look at it here...
----

Perutz's conclusion is that many people previously involved in bio-warfare projects are now sowing FUD to enhance their own prestige and to generate opportunities in spurious counterterrorism (as Henry Sokolski notes below, fears of terrorism have generated $10 billion annually in spending by the U.S. government alone).

Perutz quotes an article by Henry Sokolski, the director of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center in Washington, saying:

Last year President Clinton announced the US would spend $10 billion on countering terrorism, including biological and chemical threats, for fiscal year 2000. Would there be better things to spend such large sums of money on? As for biological attacks worldwide, seventy have occurred in the last century causing nine deaths, but only eighteen of these seventy attacks were made by terrorists. There are risks not only in underestimating the chemical and biological domestic terrorist threat, but in overestimating it as well.

Interesting.

I have read much of Mr. Heinlein's oeuvre and most of it is quite juvenile. His fertility obsession and his trite elitest philosophy make him almost unreadable. And as for character development, even Stranger in a Strange Land (arguably his best) while fairly entertaining was entirely full of smug static characters I wanted to hit over the head with a real moral dilemma that couldn't be solved with high school algebra.

Mr. Dick and Mr. Vonnegut, while much better writers, still tend to write about situations, not characters, so to damn Russell for only exploring one character fully when the writers you cite are largely uninterested in character seems a bit strange. And no one claimed that it was SF - the reviewer described it as somewhat unclassifiable.

If you want to read more about some of the other chararcters in the book, you might have a look at the sequel Children of God.

Interesting.

I have read much of Mr. Heinlein's oeuvre and most of it is quite juvenile. His fertility obsession and his trite elitest philosophy make him almost unreadable. And as for character development, even Stranger in a Strange Land (arguably his best) while fairly entertaining was entirely full of smug static characters I wanted to hit over the head with a real moral dilemma that couldn't be solved with high school algebra.

Mr. Dick and Mr. Vonnegut, while much better writers, still tend to write about situations, not characters, so to damn Russell for only exploring one character fully when the writers you cite are largely uninterested in character seems a bit strange. And no one claimed that it was SF - the reviewer described it as somewhat unclassifiable.

If you want to read more about some of the other chararcters in the book, you might have a look at the sequel Children of God.

Our deacon recommended this book to me a few months back. In fact she (I'm Episcopalian) didn't stop pestering me until I read it. Since then I've made several folks read it from a wide variety of backgrounds, all of whom ate it up. This includes my wife who is ordinarily not very fond of SF.

Having said that, I should warn anyone who reads it that it is quite an emotional roller-coaster if you care about the characters. I usually describe the book to people as starting off as a mix of L'Engle and Sartre and eventually doing a sudden nose dive through Stephen King and ending up reading like Elie Weisel. She does truly awful things to some of her characters that make you have to put the book down and stare at a wall for a while.

The comparison with Weisel is also a good reason for recommending the sequel Children of God. Weisel's life did not stop at the end of Night , and Sandoz's does not stop at the end of The Sparrow. The end of his journey (and that of the other characters) is as important as the beginning.

So please read it, but brace yourself.

Our deacon recommended this book to me a few months back. In fact she (I'm Episcopalian) didn't stop pestering me until I read it. Since then I've made several folks read it from a wide variety of backgrounds, all of whom ate it up. This includes my wife who is ordinarily not very fond of SF.

Having said that, I should warn anyone who reads it that it is quite an emotional roller-coaster if you care about the characters. I usually describe the book to people as starting off as a mix of L'Engle and Sartre and eventually doing a sudden nose dive through Stephen King and ending up reading like Elie Weisel. She does truly awful things to some of her characters that make you have to put the book down and stare at a wall for a while.

The comparison with Weisel is also a good reason for recommending the sequel Children of God. Weisel's life did not stop at the end of Night , and Sandoz's does not stop at the end of The Sparrow. The end of his journey (and that of the other characters) is as important as the beginning.

So please read it, but brace yourself.

For a better look at Verne's vision of the future (and how accurate it could be), read his Paris in the Twentieth Century.

Originally written in 1863, it wasn't published until 1995. In it, Verne "predicts" fax machines, bank computers, and - more importantly - the overwhelming role of technology and business in defining culture. The foreword from 1995 explains how his technical predictions were quite plain based on the technology that was being developed at the time, but I find his portrayal of a culture that forgot its purpose to be much more amazing.

This book is definitely not a cheery glance at a time of spaceships, but rather a depressing look at what happens when we forget what all this technology is for.

It's Your Money or Your Life, after all.

Check out Cookwise by Shirley Corriher. Truly a Geek cookbook -- no it doesn't have recipes for Coke and Hoho casserole, it's just the kind of cookbook that Julia Child would have written if she had a degree in chemistry (in fact, Shirley is who Julia calls when she can't get a recipie to work).

She goes behind the lore to the science of cooking; down to the chemical and physical properties of the ingredients. As a result, not only are the recipies unusually reliable, but relatively simple for the results you get.

Amaze your mom with hard boiled eggs with yolks that stay as yellow as butter! Make grandma envious of your incomparable pie crusts! Win the heart of that gal down in accounting with chocolate cakes that equal or exceed those from the fanciest bakery!

Remember: Knowledge is Power; Science is Knowlege; and Cooking is Science.

Good luck, and have fun!

Cold weather did not made the O rings brittle, it made them less malleable. And the O rings were fine until the boosters starting to flex during launch. Check out What Do You Care What Other People Think?, by Richard Feynman, which contains (among other things) Dr. Feynman's account of his experience on the NASA comittee charged with finding out why Challenger exploded.

I suggest you look at Fatbrain for your next book order and not reward Amazon.

It matters to my son, because I would not order the astronomy book he wanted from Amazon. Instead he chose another book, we ordered from Fatbrain and got a better price.

I'm not suggesting it's a good idea to write business logic in VB, but there is a book on doing so under SAP R/3, so *someone* must be doing it.

His next book Tides of War is due to be published in March, and is also set in ancient Greece this time about General Alcibiades, Athens most brilliant millitary leader. His first book Legend of Bagger Vance is kind of a mystic novel about golf and life, and while good, is not in the same league as Gates of Fire.

<RANT> As for all the posts wondering how this is News for Nerds, most of us enjoy a good book, this is a good book, hence the review. It was obvious from the topic is wasn't going to be about technology, why did you click through and read it? Better yet, why did you take the time to post 'This doesn't belong on Slashdot!!'? Noone forced you to read it, noone forced you to reply, and noone voted you Editor-in-Chief of Slashdot. </RANT>

His next book Tides of War is due to be published in March, and is also set in ancient Greece this time about General Alcibiades, Athens most brilliant millitary leader. His first book Legend of Bagger Vance is kind of a mystic novel about golf and life, and while good, is not in the same league as Gates of Fire.

<RANT> As for all the posts wondering how this is News for Nerds, most of us enjoy a good book, this is a good book, hence the review. It was obvious from the topic is wasn't going to be about technology, why did you click through and read it? Better yet, why did you take the time to post 'This doesn't belong on Slashdot!!'? Noone forced you to read it, noone forced you to reply, and noone voted you Editor-in-Chief of Slashdot. </RANT>

A little background knowledge would go a VERY long way

Michael Abrash was one of the engine coders at id during Quake development. His Graphics Programming Black Book, Special Edition contains not only most of his stuff on the Zen of ASM but also several (nearly a dozen) chapters on the mathematical and design underpinnings of Quake.

fatbrain claims this book is "out of stock indefinitely", but if you can get your hands on a copy, it should give you a leg up on the rendering engine, at least. Barnes and Noble claims to have it in stock.

• Michael Abrash's Graphics Programming Black Book, Special Edition at Barnes and Noble.
• Michael Abrash's Graphics Programming Black Book, Special Edition at fatbrain.com

A little background knowledge would go a VERY long way

Michael Abrash was one of the engine coders at id during Quake development. His Graphics Programming Black Book, Special Edition contains not only most of his stuff on the Zen of ASM but also several (nearly a dozen) chapters on the mathematical and design underpinnings of Quake.

fatbrain claims this book is "out of stock indefinitely", but if you can get your hands on a copy, it should give you a leg up on the rendering engine, at least. Barnes and Noble claims to have it in stock.

• Michael Abrash's Graphics Programming Black Book, Special Edition at Barnes and Noble.
• Michael Abrash's Graphics Programming Black Book, Special Edition at fatbrain.com

Or check the card catalog of your local libraries.

Or check the card catalog of your local libraries.

It seems that the links have been to fatbrain.com lately anyway, so it's not so much of an issue. Of course, they're running NT with Active Server Pages, so there goes Geek Idealisim ;-)

If this boycott will have the intended effect. I mean, the problem is that RMS (and /. for that matter) are preaching to the converted. I guess it may be an unfair assumption on my part, but I imagine that a large percentage of the geek population doesn't shop at amazon anyhow, they probably look to sites like fatbrain which cater more specifically to their interests. So even if RMS got 100% geek support for the idea, it might not dent amazon.com's hits in the least.

• They tried to buy Ingram Book Company, a wholesale book retailer. This would mean that thousands of independent book stores (the kind I like) would be dependent on B&N (their competitor) for books.
• The American Booksellers Association and two dozen independent booksellers have filed suit against B&N, contending that B&N "engaged in a pattern and practice of soliciting, inducing, and receiving secret, discriminatory, and illegal terms from publishers and distributors."
• B&N open up huge stores in strip malls, which are institutions I cannot support. Amazon.com doesn't do this.

• US Companies selling defective products overseas
• Mobil Oil involved in Indonesian massacres
• 4,000 babies die every day due to being bottle-fed, thanks to companies like Nestle

• LISP has a completely regular syntax (well, let's say Scheme, since there are some disgusting hacks in Common Lisp). PERL has a syntax from Hell.
• LISP does stupid stuff for you - for example, you don't have to keep track of garbage, as you do with C. Perl doesn't garbage collect either (AFAIK), but it does at least have automatic memory allocation.
• LISP has a very different typing model from either PERL or C - every object has the potential to have any possible type. Lists are first-class objects, so you don't have to write yet another stupid list traversal routine every time you want to make a list of things, and you can build trees out of lists. This turns out to be very powerful once you understand it, but it's a little hard to wrap your brain around at first.

I would suggest actuallty trying to write some code in raw Scheme, not emacs LISP, that does some sort of interesting data structure manipulation, preferably recursively. Maybe pick up a copy of SICP, The Little Schemer or The Seasoned Schemer.

• LISP has a completely regular syntax (well, let's say Scheme, since there are some disgusting hacks in Common Lisp). PERL has a syntax from Hell.
• LISP does stupid stuff for you - for example, you don't have to keep track of garbage, as you do with C. Perl doesn't garbage collect either (AFAIK), but it does at least have automatic memory allocation.
• LISP has a very different typing model from either PERL or C - every object has the potential to have any possible type. Lists are first-class objects, so you don't have to write yet another stupid list traversal routine every time you want to make a list of things, and you can build trees out of lists. This turns out to be very powerful once you understand it, but it's a little hard to wrap your brain around at first.

I would suggest actuallty trying to write some code in raw Scheme, not emacs LISP, that does some sort of interesting data structure manipulation, preferably recursively. Maybe pick up a copy of SICP, The Little Schemer or The Seasoned Schemer.

• LISP has a completely regular syntax (well, let's say Scheme, since there are some disgusting hacks in Common Lisp). PERL has a syntax from Hell.
• LISP does stupid stuff for you - for example, you don't have to keep track of garbage, as you do with C. Perl doesn't garbage collect either (AFAIK), but it does at least have automatic memory allocation.
• LISP has a very different typing model from either PERL or C - every object has the potential to have any possible type. Lists are first-class objects, so you don't have to write yet another stupid list traversal routine every time you want to make a list of things, and you can build trees out of lists. This turns out to be very powerful once you understand it, but it's a little hard to wrap your brain around at first.

I would suggest actuallty trying to write some code in raw Scheme, not emacs LISP, that does some sort of interesting data structure manipulation, preferably recursively. Maybe pick up a copy of SICP, The Little Schemer or The Seasoned Schemer.

This is exactly what I thought of when I saw the headline. Wonderful book -- I just, coincidentally, reread it last week. One of the better nonfiction books I've read in quite a while.

ISBN: 0-679-60261-5

The discussion of the technology is likely to be of interest to almost any /. reader, but what really stands out is the depth of character narration, and the humanity it brings to the story.

Soul Of A New Machine.

John

Introduction to Algorithms, Cormen, Leiserson and Rivest (yes, Ron Rivest, the R in RSA).

Far more mathematically rigorous than the O'Reilly book (from what I read of the O'Reilly book in the bookstore - I didn't buy it because it didn't look like much I didn't already have). No actual code, just pseudocode. I think this is the book you want if you really want to learn about algorithms (but not if you just want to get stuff done in Perl).

It's expensive, but it's a tome (>1000 pages). It was a good class textbook and still makes a very good reference. Check out the Table of Contents.

Introduction to Algorithms, Cormen, Leiserson and Rivest (yes, Ron Rivest, the R in RSA).

Far more mathematically rigorous than the O'Reilly book (from what I read of the O'Reilly book in the bookstore - I didn't buy it because it didn't look like much I didn't already have). No actual code, just pseudocode. I think this is the book you want if you really want to learn about algorithms (but not if you just want to get stuff done in Perl).

It's expensive, but it's a tome (>1000 pages). It was a good class textbook and still makes a very good reference. Check out the Table of Contents.

This kind of reminded me of the fatbrain name story -- which I had to admit is a name that really catches my fancy. It's a pretty good piece about how they went about putting a more effective marketing spin on "Computer Literacy", and makes "those people who make up names for other people" sound a whole lot less petty than the salon article does.

And it makes me want to buy stuff from fatbrain. :)

IIRC, the study (in Tog On Interface) concluded that while it feels like a keyboard is quicker, a mouse provides the ability to multitask in certain circumstances. 'Course, as has been mentioned, Tog worked for Apple, and with a Mac, there's no question that your productivity very quickly goes to zero if you ignore the mouse.

I stopped my rather voluminous commerce with Amazon.com back when Slashdot first posted the ludicrous patent claim, but I did not fly into the arms of B&N as a result. B&N are no better, and the only small comfort I draw from this silliness is that B&N are getting a taste of their own goods.

Remember when B&N first got into the .com market? They immediately tried to overcome the tremendous lead Amazon had built, not through better prices or service, but through a silly lawsuit enjoining Amazon.com from calling themselves "The World's Largest Bookstore". This in spite of the fact that Amazon.com stocked more titles than B&N (mortar or on-line). They claimed that since Amazon's "store" was virtual and the stock was all in a cheap wharehouse somewhere, that it didn't count.

So "no thanks" to both of them. I tried out Fatbrain for the first time a fortnight ago, and I'm not sure I'd go back to Amazon if they repented and donated millions to the High-School Geek Defense Fund. Fatbrain is consistently as cheap as or cheaper than Amazon. I've heard similarly good things about Bookpool, but they didn't have several titles I wanted, so I went back to Fatbrain.

But I don't doubt that Fatbrain will do something as fat-headed as B&N and Amazon at some point and I'll have to look elsewhere as well. Oh well. Negotiis non capitem habet nisi pecuniam.