Slashdot Mirror

LostInTranslation asks: "If I were an MBA looking to make a fantastic new dotcom company, I would look around places like /. to try and net some technical wizards to do my bidding. Sites like this collect that kind of tech genius. But the problem is that I already am a technical wizard, and what I need is someone who is driven to sell wizardry. Where does one find that kind of person? Is there some kind of newsgroup they frequent? I've done a few searches, but nothing of value came up. How does a geek find a suit that wants to be exploited?" "I should clarify: I've run at least two quasi-successful companies in the past ten years, bootstrapping and innovating along. I don't want to run my own business anymore. It's tiring, it takes me away from the front lines, and I don't have the right personality for it. I am looking for a business partner who can turn my good ideas into success stories. I've got angel investors waiting for something to spend on, I've got a massive number of satellite resources to make any idea shine, but I'm missing someone with that je ne sais quoi ... that chutzpah, that integrity in the face of adversity. And I'm not gambling anyone's money on my ideas when I'm fully aware I don't want to run the show.

Someone out there in Slash-land must know where these people collect. They all seem too buzzword-aware to not be on the web somewhere. So give it up: where are they hiding?"

LostInTranslation asks: "If I were an MBA looking to make a fantastic new dotcom company, I would look around places like /. to try and net some technical wizards to do my bidding. Sites like this collect that kind of tech genius. But the problem is that I already am a technical wizard, and what I need is someone who is driven to sell wizardry. Where does one find that kind of person? Is there some kind of newsgroup they frequent? I've done a few searches, but nothing of value came up. How does a geek find a suit that wants to be exploited?" "I should clarify: I've run at least two quasi-successful companies in the past ten years, bootstrapping and innovating along. I don't want to run my own business anymore. It's tiring, it takes me away from the front lines, and I don't have the right personality for it. I am looking for a business partner who can turn my good ideas into success stories. I've got angel investors waiting for something to spend on, I've got a massive number of satellite resources to make any idea shine, but I'm missing someone with that je ne sais quoi ... that chutzpah, that integrity in the face of adversity. And I'm not gambling anyone's money on my ideas when I'm fully aware I don't want to run the show.

Someone out there in Slash-land must know where these people collect. They all seem too buzzword-aware to not be on the web somewhere. So give it up: where are they hiding?"

bakunin writes "With Haloween here and gone, the fall NetHack season is open. The 6th annual /dev/null/nethack Tournament started at midnight, and will last through the rest of the month. You may wish to read the instructions and see what trophies are available this year before registering to compete."

mgessner asks: "I'm searching for some new and interesting things to read related to geekdom, humor, the Internet, and all things technological. Normally, I'd search Google for this, but trying to find something like RSS feeds on Google would be like looking for a needle in a haystack: there's just too much to sift through. So, does anyone want to share their favorite RSS feeds (other than our own beloved /.) they'd like to recommend?"

Prong_Thunder writes "A livejournal post written on October 18th (google cache, scroll down to 'a prayer for dubya') resulted in a visit from the US Secret Service nine days later, as it 'constituted a possible threat to the president'."

Iphtashu Fitz writes "The Associated Press is reporting that ICANN is nearing approval of two new top level domains: .travel and .post. The Universal Postal Union in Bern, Switzerland, wants ".post" for national postal services, local post offices, business partners and stamp collectors around the world. Private companies that provide postal services, such as Federal Express and UPS, also would be eligible. The Travel Partnership Corp., a New York-based trade group, seeks ".travel" for travel agents, airlines, bed and breakfast operators, tourism bureaus and others in the travel industry. ICANN is also considering eight other TLD's including .asia, .eu, and .jobs but they haven't progressed as far as .travel and .post. More information here."

donour (Donour Sizemore) writes "I recently bought a high-performance automobile that has a reputation for its tuning potential. Before making the purchase, I joined several online forums for enthusiasts in order to get a good reading on how happy people are with the particular model. I was amazed at the vibrant communities built around websites such as evolutionm.net and nasioc.com. A wealth of information is available, but the data is surrounded by noise. For every knowledgeable enthusiast, there are many more misinformed or incorrect speculators whose opinions usually spring from personal preference or a need to hear themselves talk. Enter David Vespremi's Car Hacks & Mods for Dummies." Read on for the rest of Sizemore's review. Car Hacks & Mods for Dummies author David Vespremi's pages 384 publisher Wiley & Sons rating 9 reviewer Donour Sizemore ISBN 0764571427 summary Presents the big-picture view of car mods that have to do with making the car stop, go, turn, and keep the occupants safe.

In general, I steer myself and others away from the "for Dummies" book series since I believe a lot of material at this level can be found on the internet for free. HOWTOs and tutorials abound for using and modifying most consumer products. In this case, the time saved from filtering online discussion is well worth it. The book is well organized, with separate sections devoted to handling, power, braking, engine management, safety, and cosmetics. There are 26 chapters spread across 360 pages. As you can see, chapters are short and can be tackled easily during lunch or a short taxi ride to retrieve your broken car.

Slashdot readers may be surprised to learn that there is no discussion of entertainment electronics such as stereos or car-mounted computers. This should not be confused with engine management units (ECU). ECUs are discussed at length. Car Hacks & Mods for Dummies main focus is making your car go, stop and turn. Sections were added for safety and cosmetics, but performance is by far the emphasis.

The book does not actually explain how to do any specific modifications whatsoever. Instead it serves as a guidebook to learn what options are out there and compare one upgrade path to another. For example, there is a great explanation of the differences between a turbocharger and a supercharger, but you're not going to get an analysis of the mods required to support your brand new 10.5cm hotside. Instead there are careful treatments of the pros and cons associated with almost any upgrade car car enthusiast may be considering. The coverage of jargon and rating systems used for various products is especially useful. Whenever a new subject or car component is mentioned, the author goes over regulating and standardizing bodies (the DOT, EPA, and SAE) as well as explains how parts, pieces, and fluids are rated. While this is useful when thinking about a new project, it isn't the information someone would want to rely on once they begin such an undertaking itself. The author clearly states, "this book is not intended to be an instruction manual."

The author gets high marks for addressing safety -- both the driver's and the vehicle's -- before any modification. The emphasis on maintaining legal and effective safety devices on a tuner car is something you are not likely to get during an argument about which upgrade path is optimal, nor is it obvious that many safety 'upgrades' -- 4-point harnesses, flashy roll-bars -- actually decrease driver safety when used on the street. In addition the author consistently gives warning when introducing a mod that could put added stress on a vehicle.

If you are a professional mechanic, this book is not for you. You already know most of the contents. Mechanics would be better served by product literature and shop manuals. If you are thinking about modifying your car, but don't have any idea where to start, this is probably a good place. Just be sure to read the first chapter. Car modding quickly becomes expensive, and jumping in without knowing the attached costs (which this book addresses) can be a financial nightmare.

You can purchase Car Hacks & Mods from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

AchilleCB writes "Cnn and many other sources are jumping on the Google-privacy-bash bandwagon, they are carrying stories warning of more privacy implications regarding Google's Desktop Search, "if it's installed on computers at libraries and Internet cafes, users could unwittingly allow people who follow them on the PCs, for example, to see sensitive information in e-mails they've exchanged. That could mean revealed passwords, conversations with doctors, or viewed Web pages detailing online purchases." ... Type in "hotmail.com" and you'll get copies, or stored caches, of messages that previous users have seen. Enter an e-mail address and you can read all the messages sent to and from that address. Type "password" and get password reminders that were sent back via e-mail."

AchilleCB writes "Cnn and many other sources are jumping on the Google-privacy-bash bandwagon, they are carrying stories warning of more privacy implications regarding Google's Desktop Search, "if it's installed on computers at libraries and Internet cafes, users could unwittingly allow people who follow them on the PCs, for example, to see sensitive information in e-mails they've exchanged. That could mean revealed passwords, conversations with doctors, or viewed Web pages detailing online purchases." ... Type in "hotmail.com" and you'll get copies, or stored caches, of messages that previous users have seen. Enter an e-mail address and you can read all the messages sent to and from that address. Type "password" and get password reminders that were sent back via e-mail."

He starts by clearing up my error in saying he was a Unix co-creator in the original Call For Questions. From there he goes on to answer your questions both completely and lucidly. A refreshing change from the politicians and executives we've talked to so much recently, no doubt about it.

Pike:
First, let me clear up a misstatement. I am not a co-creator of Unix. I suppose I am described that way because I am co-author (with Brian Kernighan) of a book about Unix, but neither Brian nor I would want to take credit for creating Unix. Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie created Unix and deserve all the credit, and more. I joined their group - the Computing Science Research Center of Bell Labs - after 7th Edition Unix had come out.

1) Innovation and patents - by Zocalo
With so many of your ideas being used with such ubiquity in modern operating systems, what is your stance on the issue of patenting of software and other "intellectual property" concepts? Assuming that business isn't going to let IP patents go away as they strive to build patent stockpiles reminiscent of the nuclear arms buildup during the cold war, how would you like to see the issue resolved?

Pike:
Comparing patents to nuclear weapons is a bit extreme.

2) Systems research - by asyncster
In your paper, systems software research is irrelevant, you claim that there is little room for innovation in systems programming, and that all energy is devoted to supporting existing standards. Do you still feel this way now that you're working at Google?

Pike:
I was very careful to define my terms in that talk (it was never a paper). I was speaking primarily about operating systems and most of what I said then (early 2000) is still true.

Here at Google the issues are quite different. The scale of the problem we're trying to solve is so vast there are always challenges. I find it interesting that the slide in that talk about 'Things to Build' is a close match to the stuff we're doing at Google, if you squint a bit. To summarize:

GUI: Google put the cleanest, prettiest UI on the internet and work continues to find new ways to present data and make it easy to explore.

Component architectures: We use a number of big (BIG!) piece parts like the Google File System (GFS) and MapReduce (see the paper by Jeff Dean and Sanjay Ghemawat in the upcoming OSDI http://labs.google.com/papers/mapreduce.html) to build massive engines for processing data. Using those pieces we can harness zillions of machines with a few keystrokes to attack a problem like indexing the entire internet. (OK, it's not quite that easy, but it's still amazing.) I have a daily test job I run to monitor the health of one of the systems I'm developing; it uses a week of CPU time but runs for only a few minutes of real time.

Languages for distributed computing: I'm part of a team working on something along those lines that we hope to write up soon.

Bringing data to the user instead of the other way around: Those damn browsers are still in the way, but other ways of connecting to data are starting to appear, things like the Google API. However, the surface is barely scratched on this topic.

System administration: Google's production people are phenomenal at keeping all those machines humming and ready for your queries. They demonstrated that there was real progress to be made in the field of system administration, and they continue to push forward.

3) Back in The Day - by Greyfox
Were programmers treated as hot-pluggable resources as they are today? There seems to be a mystique to the programmer prior to about 1995.

From reading the various netnews posts and recollections of older programmers, it seems like the programmer back then was viewed as something of a wizard without whom all the computers he was responsible for would immediately collapse. Has anything really changed or was it the same back then as it is now? I'm wondering how much of what I've read is simply nostalgia.

Pike:
Isn't it just that today there are a lot more computers, a lot more programmers, and most people are familiar with what computers and programmers do? I'm not sure I understand your reference to 1995, but twenty or thirty years ago, computers were big expensive temples of modernity and anyone who could control their power was almost by definition a wizard. Today, even musicians can use computers (hi gary).

4) What are you doing... - by Mark Wilkinson
Google employees are apparently allowed to work on their own projects 20% of the time. Given that you probably can't comment on what you're doing for Google, what are you doing to fill the other 20%?

Pike:
One of the most interesting projects out there, one I am peripherally (but only peripherally) involved with, is the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope http://www.lsst.org, which will scan the visible sky to very high angular precision, in multiple colors, many times a year. It's got an 8.4 meter aperture and 10 square degree field, taking an image every 20 seconds with its 3 gigapixel (sic) camera. The resulting data set will be many petabytes of image and catalog data, a data miner's dream. The software for the telescope is as big a challenge as the instrument itself; just the real-time pixel pipeline on the mountain will make today's compute clusters look wimpy.

5) Database filesystems - by defile
The buzz around filesystems research nowadays is making the UNIX filesystem more database-ish. The buzz around database research nowadays is making the relational database more OOP-ish.

This research to me sounds like the original designers growing tired of the limitations of their "creations" now that they're commodities and going back to the drawing board to "do things right this time". I predict the reinvented versions will never catch on because they'll be too complex and inaccessible.

Of course, this second system syndrome isn't just limited to systems. It happens to bands, directors, probably in every creative art.

I think what we've got in the modern filesystem and RDBMS is about as good as it gets and we should move on. What do you think?

Pike:
This is not the first time databases and file systems have collided, merged, argued, and split up, and it won't be the last. The specifics of whether you have a file system or a database is a rather dull semantic dispute, a contest to see who's got the best technology, rigged in a way that neither side wins. Well, as with most technologies, the solution depends on the problem; there is no single right answer.

What's really interesting is how you think about accessing your data. File systems and databases provide different ways of organizing data to help find structure and meaning in what you've stored, but they're not the only approaches possible. Moreover, the structure they provide is really for one purpose: to simplify accessing it. Once you realize it's the access, not the structure, that matters, the whole debate changes character.

One of the big insights in the last few years, through work by the internet search engines but also tools like Udi Manber's glimpse, is that data with no meaningful structure can still be very powerful if the tools to help you search the data are good. In fact, structure can be bad if the structure you have doesn't fit the problem you're trying to solve today, regardless of how well it fit the problem you were solving yesterday. So I don't much care any more how my data is stored; what matters is how to retrieve the relevant pieces when I need them.

Grep was the definitive Unix tool early on; now we have tools that could be characterized as `grep my machine' and `grep the Internet'. GMail, Google's mail product, takes that idea and applies it to mail: don't bother organizing your mail messages; just put them away for searching later. It's quite liberating if you can let go your old file-and-folder-oriented mentality. Expect more liberation as searching replaces structure as the way to handle data.

6) Thoughts on Bell Labs - by geeber
Plan 9, Unix and so many other great things came out of Bell Labs. Since the crash of the internet bubble, telecom companies have suffered immensely. One of the results of this is that Lucent has systematically dismantled one of the world's greatest industrial research facilities. You spent a great part of your career at Bell Labs. What are your thoughts about the history and future (if any) of Bell Labs, and how did the culture of the Labs influence the growth of Unix?

Pike:
It's unfair to say `systematically dismantled', as though it was a deliberate process and there's nothing left. A more honest assessment might be that changes in the market and in government regulation made it harder to keep a freewheeling research lab thriving at the scale of the old Bell Labs. Bell Labs Research is much smaller these days, but there are still some very bright people working there and they're doing great stuff. I hope one day to see Bell Labs restored to its former glory, but the world has changed enough that that may never happen.

I could go on for pages about the old Bell Labs culture, but I must be brief. When I arrived, in 1980, the Computing Science Research Center, also known as 127 (later 1127; therein lies a tale) had recently launched 7th Edition Unix and the Center, after a long period of essentially zero growth, was just entering a period of rapid expansion. That expansion brought in a lot of new people with new ideas. I was a graphics guy then, and I hooked up with Bart Locanthi, another graphics guy, and we brought graphics to Research Unix with the Blit. Other folks brought in new languages, novel hardware, networking; all kinds of stuff. That period in the early 80s generated a lot of ideas that influenced Unix both within the Labs and in the outside community. I believe the fact that the Center was growing was a big part of its success. The growth not only provided new ideas, it also generated a kind of enthusiasm that doesn't exist in the steady state or in a shrinking group. Universities harness a variant of that energy with the continuous flow of graduate students; in industrial research you need to create it in other ways.

One odd detail that I think was vital to how the group functioned was a result of the first Unix being run on a clunky minicomputer with terminals in the machine room. People working on the system congregated in the room - to use the computer, you pretty much had to be there. (This idea didn't seem odd back then; it was a natural evolution of the old hour-at-a-time way of booking machines like the IBM 7090.) The folks liked working that way, so when the machine was moved to a different room from the terminals, even when it was possible to connect from your private office, there was still a `Unix room' with a bunch of terminals where people would congregate, code, design, and just hang out. (The coffee machine was there too.) The Unix room still exists, and it may be the greatest cultural reason for the success of Unix as a technology. More groups could profit from its lesson, but it's really hard to add a Unix-room-like space to an existing organization. You need the culture to encourage people not to hide in their offices, you need a way of using systems that makes a public machine a viable place to work - typically by storing the data somewhere other than the 'desktop' - and you need people like Ken and Dennis (and Brian Kernighan and Doug McIlroy and Mike Lesk and Stu Feldman and Greg Chesson and ...) hanging out in the room, but if you can make it work, it's magical.

When I first started at the Labs, I spent most of my time in the Unix room. The buzz was palpable; the education unparalleled.

(And speaking of Doug, he's the unsung hero of Unix. He was manager of the group that produced it and a huge creative force in the group, but he's almost unknown in the Unix community. He invented a couple of things you might have heard of: pipes and - get this - macros. Well, someone had to do it and that someone was Doug. As Ken once said when we were talking one day in the Unix room, "There's no one smarter than Doug.")

7) Languages - by btlzu2

Hello!

Maybe this is an overly-asked question, but I still often ponder it. Does object-oriented design negate or diminish the future prospects of Unix's continuing popularity?

I've developed in C (which I still love), but lately, I've been doing a lot of purely object-oriented development in Java. Using things like delegation and reusable classes have made life so much easier in many respects. Since the *nixes are so dependent upon C, I was wondering what future you see in C combined with Unix. Like I said, I love C and still enjoy developing in Unix, but there has to be a point where you build on your progress and the object-oriented languages, in my opinion, seem to be doing that.

Thank you for all your contributions!!!

Pike:
The future does indeed seem to have an OO hue. It may have bearing on Unix, but I doubt it; Unix in all its variants has become so important as the operating system of the internet that whatever the Java applications and desktop dances may lead to, Unix will still be pushing the packets around for a quite a while.

On a related topic, let me say that I'm not much of a fan of object-oriented design. I've seen some beautiful stuff done with OO, and I've even done some OO stuff myself, but it's just one way to approach a problem. For some problems, it's an ideal way; for others, it's not such a good fit.

Here's an analogy. If you want to make some physical artifact, you might decide to build it purely in wood because you like the way the grain of the wood adds to the beauty of the object. In fact many of the most beautiful things in the world are made of wood. But wood is not ideal for everything. No amount of beauty of the grain can make wood conduct electricity, or support a skyscraper, or absorb huge amounts of energy without breaking. Sometimes you need metal or plastic or synthetic materials; more often you need a wide range of materials to build something of lasting value. Don't let the fact that you love wood blind you to the problems wood has as a material, or to the possibilities offered by other materials.

The promoters of object-oriented design sometimes sound like master woodworkers waiting for the beauty of the physical block of wood to reveal itself before they begin to work. "Oh, look; if I turn the wood this way, the grain flows along the angle of the seat at just the right angle, see?" Great, nice chair. But will you notice the grain when you're sitting on it? And what about next time? Sometimes the thing that needs to be made is not hiding in any block of wood.

OO is great for problems where an interface applies naturally to a wide range of types, not so good for managing polymorphism (the machinations to get collections into OO languages are astounding to watch and can be hellish to work with), and remarkably ill-suited for network computing. That's why I reserve the right to match the language to the problem, and even - often - to coordinate software written in several languages towards solving a single problem.

It's that last point - different languages for different subproblems - that sometimes seems lost to the OO crowd. In a typical working day I probably use a half dozen languages - C, C++, Java, Python, Awk, Shell - and many more little languages you don't usually even think of as languages - regular expressions, Makefiles, shell wildcards, arithmetic, logic, statistics, calculus - the list goes on.

Does object-oriented design have much to say to Unix? Sure, but no more than functions or concurrency or databases or pattern matching or little languages or....

Regardless of what I think, though, OO design is the way people are taught to think about computing these days. I guess that's OK - the work does seem to get done, after all - but I wish the view was a little broader.

8) One tool for one job? - by sczimme
Given the nature of current operating systems and applications, do you think the idea of "one tool doing one job well" has been abandoned? If so, do you think a return to this model would help bring some innovation back to software development?

(It's easier to toss a small, single-purpose app and start over than it is to toss a large, feature-laden app and start over.)

Pike:
Those days are dead and gone and the eulogy was delivered by Perl.

9) Emacs or Vi? - by Neil Blender

Pike:

Neither.

When I was a lad, I hacked up the 6th Edition ed with Tom Duff, Hugh Redelmeier, and David Tilbrook to resuscitate qed, the editor Ken Thompson wrote for CTSS that was the inspiration for the much slimmer ed. (Children must learn these things for themselves.) Dennis Ritchie has a nice history of qed at http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/who/dmr/qed.html> .

I liked qed for one key reason: it was really good at editing a number of files simultaneously. Ed only handled one file at a time.

Ed and qed were command-driven line editors designed for printing terminals, not full-screen displays. After I got to Bell Labs, I tried out vi but it could only handle one file at a time, which I found too limiting. Then I tried emacs, which handled multiple files but much more clumsily than qed. But the thing that bothered me most about vi and emacs was that they gave you a two-dimensional display of your file but you had only a one-dimensional input device to talk to them. It was like giving directions with a map on the table, but being forced to say "up a little, right, no back down, right there, yes turn there that's the spot" instead of just putting your finger on the map.

(Today, emacs and vi support the mouse, but back in 1980 the versions I had access to had no support for mice. For that matter, there weren't really many mice yet.)

So as soon as the Blit started to work, it was time to write an editor that used the mouse as an input device. I used qed (mostly) and emacs (a little) to write the first draft of jim, a full-screen editor that showed you text you could point to with a mouse. Jim handled multiple files very smoothly, and was really easy to use, but it was not terribly powerful. (Similar editors had been at Xerox PARC and other research labs but, well, children must learn these things for themselves.)

A few years later I took the basic input idea of jim and put a new ed-like command language underneath it and called it sam, a locally popular editor that still has its adherents today. To me, the proof of sam's success was that it was the first full screen editor Ken Thompson liked. (He's still using it.) Here's the SP&E paper about sam from 1987: http://plan9.bell-labs.com/sys/doc/sam/sam.pdf.

A few years later, I decided the pop-up menu model for commanding an editor with a mouse was too restrictive, so I started over and built the much more radical Acme, which I'm using to write these answers. Here's the Acme paper: http://plan9.bell-labs.com/sys/doc/acme/acme.pdf

I don't expect any Slashdot readers to switch editors after reading these papers (although the code is available for most major platforms), but I think it's worth reading about them to see that there are ways of editing - and working - that span a much larger gamut than is captured by the question, 'Emacs or vi?'

10) Biggest problem with Unix - by akaina
Recently on the Google Labs Aptitude Test there was a question: "What's broken with Unix? How would you fix it?"

What would you have put?

Pike:
Ken Thompson and I started Plan 9 as an answer to that question. The major things we saw wrong with Unix when we started talking about what would become Plan 9, back around 1985, all stemmed from the appearance of a network. As a stand-alone system, Unix was pretty good. But when you networked Unix machines together, you got a network of stand-alone systems instead of a seamless, integrated networked system. Instead of one big file system, one user community, one secure setup uniting your network of machines, you had a hodgepodge of workarounds to Unix's fundamental design decision that each machine is self-sufficient.

Nothing's really changed today. The workarounds have become smoother and some of the things we can do with networks of Unix machines are pretty impressive, but when ssh is the foundation of your security architecture, you know things aren't working as they should.

Looking at things from a lower altitude:

I didn't use Unix at all, really, from about 1990 until 2002, when I joined Google. (I worked entirely on Plan 9, which I still believe does a pretty good job of solving those fundamental problems.) I was surprised when I came back to Unix how many of even the little things that were annoying in 1990 continue to annoy today. In 1975, when the argument vector had to live in a 512-byte-block, the 6th Edition system would often complain, 'arg list too long'. But today, when machines have gigabytes of memory, I still see that silly message far too often. The argument list is now limited somewhere north of 100K on the Linux machines I use at work, but come on people, dynamic memory allocation is a done deal!

I started keeping a list of these annoyances but it got too long and depressing so I just learned to live with them again. We really are using a 1970s era operating system well past its sell-by date. We get a lot done, and we have fun, but let's face it, the fundamental design of Unix is older than many of the readers of Slashdot, while lots of different, great ideas about computing and networks have been developed in the last 30 years. Using Unix is the computing equivalent of listening only to music by David Cassidy.

11) Re: Plan9 - by Spyffe

Rob,

Right now, there are a large number of research kernels. Plan 9, Inferno, AtheOS, Syllable, K42, Mach, L4, etc. all have their own ideas about the future of the kernel. But they all end up implementing a POSIX interface because the UNIX userland is the default.

The kernel space needs to be invigorated using a new userland that demands new and innovative functionality from the underlying system. Suppose you were to design a user environment for the next 30 years. What would the central abstractions be? What sort of applications would it support?

Pike:
At the risk of contradicting my last answer a little, let me ask you back: Does the kernel matter any more? I don't think it does. They're all the same at some level. I don't care nearly as much as I used to about the what the kernel does; it's so easy to emulate your way back to a familiar state.

Applications - web browsers, MP3 players, games, all that jazz - and networks are where the action is today, and aside from irritating little incompatibilities, the kernel has become a commodity. Almost all the programs I care about can run above Windows, Unix, Plan 9, and on PCs, Macs, palmtops and more. And that, of course, is why these all have a POSIX interface: so they can support those applications.

And then there's the standard network protocols to glue things together. It's all a uniform sea of interoperability (and bugs).

I think the future lies in new hardware as much as in new software. A generation from now machines will be so much more portable than they are now, so much more powerful, so much more interactive that we haven't begun to think about the changes they will bring. This may be the biggest threat to Microsoft: the PC, the desktop, the laptop, will all go the way of the slide rule. As one example, when flexible organic semiconductor displays roll out in a few years, the transformation in how and where people use computers and other devices will be amazing. It's going to be a wild ride.

===============

NW writes "According to a post at IETF's MAIL-SIG list, Google has begun to sign outgoing email from Gmail with Yahoo's DomainKeys signatures. This is the first large provider of email that is actually doing so (not even Yahoo has started that yet)."

astrab writes "The Argentinian programmer Sergio Sancho, 30, won the 'Google Code Jam 2004' programming contest, whose final was held yesterday in Google HQ (Mountain View, CA), and pocketed $10,000. According to Dirson, Sergio studies at UBA (University of Buenos Aires, Argentina) and works at the Research and Development Center which Core Security owns in Buenos Aires. More information also in the official Google Blog."

astrab writes "The Argentinian programmer Sergio Sancho, 30, won the 'Google Code Jam 2004' programming contest, whose final was held yesterday in Google HQ (Mountain View, CA), and pocketed $10,000. According to Dirson, Sergio studies at UBA (University of Buenos Aires, Argentina) and works at the Research and Development Center which Core Security owns in Buenos Aires. More information also in the official Google Blog."

dioscaido writes "Users of the Google Desktop Search software beware -- it indexes your files across all users on your PC, bypassing user protections. The Google cache feature allows all users to browse the contents of messages and files it has indexed, irrespective of who is logged in. 'This is not a bug, rather a feature,' says Marissa Mayer, Google's director of consumer Web products. 'Google Desktop Search is not intended to be used on computers that are shared with more than one person.'" Reminds me of a Neal Stephenson essay: "The Hole Hawg is dangerous because it does exactly what you tell it to. It is not bound by the physical limitations that are inherent in a cheap drill, and neither is it limited by safety interlocks that might be built into a homeowner's product by a liability-conscious manufacturer. The danger lies not in the machine itself but in the user's failure to envision the full consequences of the instructions he gives to it."

hanky writes "Google brings search to your very desktop with Google Desktop, a mini Google index of your own. Search your filesystem, Outlook or Outlook Express inbox, AIM instant message transcripts, and Internet Explorer cache. There's a full introduction to the Google Desktop over at the O'Reilly Network. It's Windows-only, but still cool enough for this Mac guy to find it intriguing."

Pan T. Hose writes "The long awaited release of Parrot 0.1.1 "Poicephalus" has been finally announced on perl.perl6.internals newsgroup and perl6-internals mailing list simultaneously by Leopold Toetsch followed by an announcement on use Perl by Will Coleda and now also on Slashdot." (Read on for a list of changes since the last release, as well as a number of useful links.) Pan T. Hose continues "The most important changes since the previous version 0.1.0 (code-named 'Leaping Kakapo' and released in February) are:

• Python support: Parrot runs 4/7 of the pie-thon test suite
• Better OS support: more platforms, compilers, OS functions
• Improved PIR syntax for method calls and <op>= assignment
• Dynamic loading reworked including a "make install" target
• MMD - multi method dispatch for binary vtable methods
• Library improvement and cleanup
• BigInt, Complex, *Array, Slice, Enumerate, None PMC classes
• IA64 and hppa JIT support
• Tons of fixes, improvements, new tests, and documentation updates

The amazing project which no one had any idea would go so far from the original April Fool's Joke by Simon Cozens (also posted on Slashdot on April 1, 2001) to really unite Perl and Python one day (not to mention Tcl, Scheme, Forth and Ruby, to name just a few) is now available for download from CPAN and via CVS. Those who are not up-to-date with Perl 6 mailing lists can read This Week in Perl 6 weekly summaries by Piers Cawley to have some idea on how's the project been going in the last two years. It's important to read Apocalypses, Exegeses and Synopses together with RFCs and Parrot Design Documents for better understanding of the underlying rationale, especially the superiority of register-based Virtual Machines (like Parrot VM) over stack-based one (like JVM) for modern (dynamically-typed) OO languages with multiple inheritance, operator overloading, traits, roles and much, much more. Parrot Docs, FAQ and examples are also very helpful. This is a very important step in the direction of Perl 6 which we are all looking forward to."

Pan T. Hose writes "The long awaited release of Parrot 0.1.1 "Poicephalus" has been finally announced on perl.perl6.internals newsgroup and perl6-internals mailing list simultaneously by Leopold Toetsch followed by an announcement on use Perl by Will Coleda and now also on Slashdot." (Read on for a list of changes since the last release, as well as a number of useful links.) Pan T. Hose continues "The most important changes since the previous version 0.1.0 (code-named 'Leaping Kakapo' and released in February) are:

• Python support: Parrot runs 4/7 of the pie-thon test suite
• Better OS support: more platforms, compilers, OS functions
• Improved PIR syntax for method calls and <op>= assignment
• Dynamic loading reworked including a "make install" target
• MMD - multi method dispatch for binary vtable methods
• Library improvement and cleanup
• BigInt, Complex, *Array, Slice, Enumerate, None PMC classes
• IA64 and hppa JIT support
• Tons of fixes, improvements, new tests, and documentation updates

The amazing project which no one had any idea would go so far from the original April Fool's Joke by Simon Cozens (also posted on Slashdot on April 1, 2001) to really unite Perl and Python one day (not to mention Tcl, Scheme, Forth and Ruby, to name just a few) is now available for download from CPAN and via CVS. Those who are not up-to-date with Perl 6 mailing lists can read This Week in Perl 6 weekly summaries by Piers Cawley to have some idea on how's the project been going in the last two years. It's important to read Apocalypses, Exegeses and Synopses together with RFCs and Parrot Design Documents for better understanding of the underlying rationale, especially the superiority of register-based Virtual Machines (like Parrot VM) over stack-based one (like JVM) for modern (dynamically-typed) OO languages with multiple inheritance, operator overloading, traits, roles and much, much more. Parrot Docs, FAQ and examples are also very helpful. This is a very important step in the direction of Perl 6 which we are all looking forward to."

Pan T. Hose writes "The long awaited release of Parrot 0.1.1 "Poicephalus" has been finally announced on perl.perl6.internals newsgroup and perl6-internals mailing list simultaneously by Leopold Toetsch followed by an announcement on use Perl by Will Coleda and now also on Slashdot." (Read on for a list of changes since the last release, as well as a number of useful links.) Pan T. Hose continues "The most important changes since the previous version 0.1.0 (code-named 'Leaping Kakapo' and released in February) are:

• Python support: Parrot runs 4/7 of the pie-thon test suite
• Better OS support: more platforms, compilers, OS functions
• Improved PIR syntax for method calls and <op>= assignment
• Dynamic loading reworked including a "make install" target
• MMD - multi method dispatch for binary vtable methods
• Library improvement and cleanup
• BigInt, Complex, *Array, Slice, Enumerate, None PMC classes
• IA64 and hppa JIT support
• Tons of fixes, improvements, new tests, and documentation updates

The amazing project which no one had any idea would go so far from the original April Fool's Joke by Simon Cozens (also posted on Slashdot on April 1, 2001) to really unite Perl and Python one day (not to mention Tcl, Scheme, Forth and Ruby, to name just a few) is now available for download from CPAN and via CVS. Those who are not up-to-date with Perl 6 mailing lists can read This Week in Perl 6 weekly summaries by Piers Cawley to have some idea on how's the project been going in the last two years. It's important to read Apocalypses, Exegeses and Synopses together with RFCs and Parrot Design Documents for better understanding of the underlying rationale, especially the superiority of register-based Virtual Machines (like Parrot VM) over stack-based one (like JVM) for modern (dynamically-typed) OO languages with multiple inheritance, operator overloading, traits, roles and much, much more. Parrot Docs, FAQ and examples are also very helpful. This is a very important step in the direction of Perl 6 which we are all looking forward to."

schneelocke writes "What's the value of the Linux kernel? After an offer by one Jeff V. Merkey to pay 50K USD for a BSD-licensed copy of Linux, David Wheeler does some calculations and comes up with an estimate of 612M USD." Wheeler has come up with a number of interesting software-worth estimates and other quantified facts about Free software; since some aspects involve ineffables and hypotheticals, the details can be argued, but he provides a good framework with SLOCCount.

Lumpish Scholar asks: "Backups are important, so we should tell our friends and family to buy a bunch of CD-Rs and...what? The operating system most of them are stuck with comes with backup software, but 'Windows Backup Does Not Back Up to CD-R, CD-RW, or DVD-R Devices (this behavior is by design). I've looked in the obvious places, but nothing comes across as better than adequate. There's got to be something that can do full or incremental backups (which in part means keeping track of what's already been backed up), that can back up files bigger than a single CD-R, and that's relatively fast and easy. What have you used to solve this problem, for yourself or others, for Windows or for better operating systems?"

Formica writes "A programmer working for the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services was fired for running SETI software on a state server. As quoted in this article, department head Tom Hayes says, 'I think that people can be comfortable that security has beamed this man out of our building.' More articles from Google."

An anonymous reader writes "Google's new Google Print service (that lets you see scanned pages from printed books) has a pile of advanced browser-disabling DRM in it ('Pages displaying your content have print, cut, copy, and save functionality disabled in order to protect your content.'). This works with JavaScript turned off, even in Free Software browsers. Seth Schoen has posted preliminary notes on some breaks to the DRM (beyond just automating a screenshotting process), including a proposal for a circumventing proxy that would fetch Google Print pages and strip out the DRM. A full exploration of the html obfuscation and DRM employed by Google would be very interesting; certainly the ability for a remote attacker to disable critical browser features like save, right-click, copy and cut against the user's wishes is a major security vulnerability in Moz/Firefox and should be fixed ASAP."

An anonymous reader writes "Google's new Google Print service (that lets you see scanned pages from printed books) has a pile of advanced browser-disabling DRM in it ('Pages displaying your content have print, cut, copy, and save functionality disabled in order to protect your content.'). This works with JavaScript turned off, even in Free Software browsers. Seth Schoen has posted preliminary notes on some breaks to the DRM (beyond just automating a screenshotting process), including a proposal for a circumventing proxy that would fetch Google Print pages and strip out the DRM. A full exploration of the html obfuscation and DRM employed by Google would be very interesting; certainly the ability for a remote attacker to disable critical browser features like save, right-click, copy and cut against the user's wishes is a major security vulnerability in Moz/Firefox and should be fixed ASAP."

jSpectre writes "Google's been busy introducing a lot of new things this week. The latest, a SMS search service. SMS a message to 46645 (googl) and find local business listings, product prices, dictionary definitions, and more. Go Google!"

jSpectre writes "Google's been busy introducing a lot of new things this week. The latest, a SMS search service. SMS a message to 46645 (googl) and find local business listings, product prices, dictionary definitions, and more. Go Google!"

jSpectre writes "Google's been busy introducing a lot of new things this week. The latest, a SMS search service. SMS a message to 46645 (googl) and find local business listings, product prices, dictionary definitions, and more. Go Google!"

jSpectre writes "Google's been busy introducing a lot of new things this week. The latest, a SMS search service. SMS a message to 46645 (googl) and find local business listings, product prices, dictionary definitions, and more. Go Google!"

jSpectre writes "Google's been busy introducing a lot of new things this week. The latest, a SMS search service. SMS a message to 46645 (googl) and find local business listings, product prices, dictionary definitions, and more. Go Google!"

An anonymous reader writes "As a sequel to the previous Slashdot story where a car 'began accelerating to 120 mph on its own', Renault (the car manufacturer) has examined the supposed faulty car, and as many of us have suspected, no anomaly has been found (google translation). Renault will initiate a court action to discover the truth about the matter. Read more about it here (translation)."

An anonymous reader writes "As a sequel to the previous Slashdot story where a car 'began accelerating to 120 mph on its own', Renault (the car manufacturer) has examined the supposed faulty car, and as many of us have suspected, no anomaly has been found (google translation). Renault will initiate a court action to discover the truth about the matter. Read more about it here (translation)."

Rescate writes "As reported by Reuters,Google is launching Google Print, which will show book excerpts next to regular Google search results. A spokesman said, "We're trying to index every book there is, and make it searchable for our users." Even though this competes with Amazon's A9 search which also searches within books, Google says the two companies will continue to work together, and that Google Print will link to Amazon, as well as other sellers, to buy books listed in the search results. Google will demonstrate the technology Thursday, Oct. 7 at the Frankfurt Book Fair."

prostoalex writes "USA Today and dozens of others report that Washington state archives went online. Over the past two years project participants scanned 1 million documents issued by state and country authorities. The archive is located in my alma mater Eastern Washington University (go Eagles!) The 800 terabyte storage system was developed by Microsoft and EDS."

mindriot writes "When Hicham Dequiedt, driving on a highway between Vierzon and Riom in central France in his Renault Vel Satis this Sunday, was overtaking a truck, his car began accelerating to 120 mph on its own, apparently due to a defect in the cruise control system. Stomping on the brakes proved pointless and, having a magnetic card for a car key, he could not cut the ignition. After calling the police from his cell phone who then attempted to clear the streets of any danger to him, in what he described as the most fearful event of his life, he raced down the highway for another hour before finally managing to stop the car. Read about the incident here or, in more detail, in this article by the German 'Spiegel' (translation). The case is still under investigation. Are we putting too much trust in the increasing number of electronic systems that our lives depend upon?"

An anonymous submitter writes "For the last ten years, the readers of the Usenet newsgroup rec.arts.int-fiction have held a yearly interactive fiction competition. For fans of the old Infocom games as well as for newcomers to the genre, the competition is a chance to enjoy some of the best short adventure games available anywhere. And now, this year's entries are finally available for public testing. Visit IFcomp.org to download the games and interpreters for all of your favorite platforms. For the next six weeks, judges will play, score, and review." The website explains Windows and Mac installation pretty well; you'lll have to figure it out on your own for Linux but there is plenty of help available (i.e., "apt-cache search infocom" for Debian).

snark42 writes "According to Reuters and some other sources the hole in the ozone layer shrank 20% this year to a mere 9 million square miles. Of course scientists caution this would have to continue for at least a couple more years to be a trend or anything to get excited about."

pacopico writes "HP's much hyped and highly-regarded UDC system has gone the way of the dodo. The Register charts the technology's demise and points to the few other reporters who covered UDC's end. Spent some time at HP checking out UDC and am sad to see it go. Ahead of its time to be sure."

(54)T-Dub writes "Wired has an interesting article about the status of news.google.com. It has been 3 years since its release and the major bugs have long since been ironed out, so why is it still in beta? Apparently, it's because Google hasn't been able to figure out how to make money off of it. Slapping up some Google Adwords seems like the obvious solution. The problem is that Google News has multi-million-dollar news publishers scared because of the incredibly low-cost method that Google has employed to bring us 'up the minute news.' Currently they are able to scrape the content of news sites under fair use because they are not using it for commercial purposes. Once they move away from the nonprofit, educational purposes of their system they can expect to be deluged by cease and desist orders. Before you break out the tissue box though, remember that google sent their own cease and desist orders to a Google News RSS feeder a few months back."

(54)T-Dub writes "Wired has an interesting article about the status of news.google.com. It has been 3 years since its release and the major bugs have long since been ironed out, so why is it still in beta? Apparently, it's because Google hasn't been able to figure out how to make money off of it. Slapping up some Google Adwords seems like the obvious solution. The problem is that Google News has multi-million-dollar news publishers scared because of the incredibly low-cost method that Google has employed to bring us 'up the minute news.' Currently they are able to scrape the content of news sites under fair use because they are not using it for commercial purposes. Once they move away from the nonprofit, educational purposes of their system they can expect to be deluged by cease and desist orders. Before you break out the tissue box though, remember that google sent their own cease and desist orders to a Google News RSS feeder a few months back."

knovis writes "The Ansari X Prize is being attempted at this moment: 9:30am EST. Bert Rutan and Paul Allen's Scaled Composites is preparing to make the first of 2 launches necessary. For the uninitiated, the X-Prize is a $10M prize available to the first entirely privately funded organization that creates a vehicle that travels to 100km above the earth's surface (low earth orbit) twice within 2 weeks. IIRC, SpaceShipOne is planning 3 flights for that 2 week period, for safety. Best of luck to Private Spaceflight. Did anyone else notice that Virgin Galactic has just been launched?" Project Zen writes "MSNBC has an article about how the seats won't be filled with people but mementos of the crew." Several readers sent links to CNN's story on the flight, and space.com's continuing coverage, including by webcam; NASA TV also has an eye on the launch. (Watch this space for updates.) Update: 09/29 15:57 GMT by T : Disconnect writes "As reported all over, SpaceShipOne successfully flew its first X-Prize flight attempt. As of now (11:45:40EST) the officials have not cleared the flight as successful, but it's looking good."

IEEEmember writes "The Swiss are claiming the world's first binding Internet vote in a national referendum. Voters were given lottery style scratch-off cards that allowed them to vote either by Internet, snail mail or in person. Internet votes can be cast from any computer accessing the elections site securely over the web. Electronic voting has been implemented to combat declining participation in elections. Stories from The Age, swissinfo and CBS available at Google News. The IEEE is calling attention to the current process for establishing standards for electronic voting. Project 1583 - Voting Equipment Standard and Project 1622 - Electronic Data Interchange are being developed by Standards Coordinating Committee 38 rather than being relegated to a single society to ensure the broad range of electronic voting issues can be addressed adequately. These standards are being written for use in the U.S. however some parties have shown an interest in extending them to other countries."

Enkidu writes "Spiegel and other German media are reporting that a complete private Mars mission (automated translation) is planned for 2009. Organizations behind are AMSAT and Mars Society Germany."

malibucreek writes "More trouble for Google News? Yesterday, it was Google News censoring stories for China. Today, the Online Journalism Review details a potential conservative bias in the site's algorithm for news search results. The story also includes some details about how Google ranks stories on its news page. Turns out that on Google News, backlinks do *not* improve search positioning."

An anonymous reader writes "German news source Spiegel are reporting (english babelfish translation) that some TV journalists have found a seemingly abandoned Russian space shuttle in the Persian Gulf. It looks like it could be the atmospheric test demonstrator Buran OK-GLI which was in Sydney, Australia. Pictures here (external) and here (internal). Boy, what I would give to be able to sit in that seat and flip those switches!" Another reader, grm_wnr writes "German tabloid newspaper Bild reports that a russian Buran shuttle has been found in the Bahrain desert. Here is the story (in german, Google translation here). What's funny is that noone knows how it ended up there. At least the fate of one of the four Buran prototypes is now confirmed." There is not much confirmation on this, outside of a few pictures... let the reader beware.

mOoZik writes "A story carried by New Scientist suggests that Google might be playing into the hands of the Chinese government by blocking certain news stories which may be deeded inappropriate. Some users recently reported that Google's Chinese news search returned different results depending when they searched using a computer based outside of China. The claims were substantiated by researchers who connected to computers inside the country. Read on and decide for yourself."

ars writes "Yahoo is reporting that AOL is adding a new feature alowing customers to use two passwords to log on. The second password comes from a small small device from RSA Securitywhich displays a new password each minute. The scheme is called two-factor authentication and will cost $1.95 a month plus a one-time $9.95 fee. It's aimed at small business and people who conduct large transactions online."

scapermoya writes "Today was the official launch day of Amazon's A9.com search engine, which has been in public beta for some time now. It uses results from Google, and adds some personalized features, like bookmarks and search history. Its Java-heavy inteface reminds me of Gmail, which is nice. It doesn't seem like it was designed to supplant Google, but rather to flesh out some things that a certain demographic of people might like."

prostoalex writes "InterWoven patented locating and identifying image content via shapes, texture, color or resemblance to another image. No official word yet on whether the company thinks there are any infringers."

GraWil writes "Despite the nay sayers citing its death in 1965, the FORTRAN standards committee has now released the final FORTRAN 2003 specification. In an announcement to the comp.lang.fortran group, Michael Metcalf annouced that 'Fortran 2003 has passed its ballot with flying colours: 20 yeses, 0 noes, 8 abstains.' Strictly speaking, the 2003 and past standards are not freely available but drafts can be found online. FORTRAN 2003 is an upwardly-compatible extension of the current standard, FORTRAN 95, adding and extending support for exception handling, object-oriented programming, and improved interoperability with the C language. In other FORTRAN news, the GNU FORTRAN 95 compiler has made amazing progress over the past year. Gfortran will be part of gcc-4.0 when released (probably in 2005)."

GraWil writes "Despite the nay sayers citing its death in 1965, the FORTRAN standards committee has now released the final FORTRAN 2003 specification. In an announcement to the comp.lang.fortran group, Michael Metcalf annouced that 'Fortran 2003 has passed its ballot with flying colours: 20 yeses, 0 noes, 8 abstains.' Strictly speaking, the 2003 and past standards are not freely available but drafts can be found online. FORTRAN 2003 is an upwardly-compatible extension of the current standard, FORTRAN 95, adding and extending support for exception handling, object-oriented programming, and improved interoperability with the C language. In other FORTRAN news, the GNU FORTRAN 95 compiler has made amazing progress over the past year. Gfortran will be part of gcc-4.0 when released (probably in 2005)."

An anonymous reader submits "Amazon have put up a new version of their A9 search engine. The "Beta" label was dropped, the color scheme changed, and new search types were added: Images (provided by Google), Movies (provided by IMDB), and Reference (provided by GuruNet). Several sources are already reporting this." Theopd writes with a more critical view of the hype surrounding A9's launch (note the link to battellemedia); read on below.

theodp writes "As Amazon's search service A9.com officially goes live today after being in beta for months, it's receiving rave reviews. A Business 2.0 story penned by John Battelle says A9 has raised the bar for innovation in search. Paying heed to John Battelle's statement that Google and everyone else involved in search are going to be watching A9, BusinessWeek asks: Can Amazon Go Beyond Google? And the NY Times reports that A9 is insanely powerful (story linked above), relying on a quote from - you guessed it - John Battelle. The NYT notes that Battelle is the organizer of the upcoming Web 2.0 conference, but doesn't mention that his conference's keynoters include A9 CEO Udi Manber, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, Amazon Board Member John Doerr, Amazon's Wall Street Cheerleader Mary Meeker, and Amazon subsidiary Alexa's Brewster Kahle."