Slashdot Mirror

Jeff Robertson writes: "Fiber optic cables have advantage of being difficult to wiretap. As optical amplifiers replace electro-optical regenerators in undersea routes, it gets even harder. Lightwave Magazine has an article quoting the Washington Post as claiming the National Security Agency 'is known to be hard at work trying to gain access to fiber optic cables' and the U.S. Navy will spend '$1 billion to retrofit its premier spy submarine, the USS Jimmy Carter' to get access to deep-sea fiber routes. They also assert that the U.S. government is bailing out Global Crossing to prevent its undersea routes falling into foreign hands."

David Kennedy writes: "Java Tools For Exteme Programming: Mastering Open Source Tools including Ant, JUnit and Cactus by Hightower & Lesiecki is a welcome addition to my bookshelf at work. It tackles a gap in the Java book market in dealing with the thorny issues of testing, integration and deployment." The rest of his review is below. Java Tools For Exteme Programming: Mastering Open Source Tools including Ant, JUnit and Cactus author Richard Hightower & Nicholas Lesiecki pages 516 publisher Wiley Computer Publishing rating 8 reviewer David Kennedy ISBN 047120708X summary Practical introduction to Java tools for Extreme Programming, with an emphasis on immediate results rather than deep theory.

In recent years there has been a increased emphasis on Agile Software Development. The most prominent of these methodologies is probably Extreme Programming.

What sets Extreme Programming apart from most other Agile Technologies, in my opinion at least, is that it has provided practical, easy-to-use tools to support its way of working. Most of these tools (Ant, JUnit etc) are Open Source and freely available. However popular these tools have been with the Open Source and Extreme Programming communities, it has arguably been difficult to introduce them to traditional IT development environments. This has been primarily due to the problems of justifying spending time on 'playing' with something and the difficulties of retro-fitting new tools to an existing development environment (think projects of 150+ people which have been releasing for 5-10 years for some idea of the potential problems).

It's worth noting that when embarking on a new, large-scale project it's very difficult to find a book discussing the issues of controlled builds, integration and deployment in practical terms. The most valuable aspect of Java Tools for eXteme Programming is that it's alone in its market niche.

The book is mainly useful as (a) an introduction to the various building and continuous testing tools out there and (b) a tutorial to getting them setup and working on your computer. As the authors note, there's a critical period where the user must get some result after playing with the tool for a short period of time or just give it up as 'too difficult.'

From a technical standpoint the book is very readable, but it doesn't tackle any one subject in great depth. It certainly provides enough information to get you up and running, and also, perhaps more valuably, illustrates how to integrate the tools together. It's an excellent primer for those who want to use the tools but are unsure of how exactly to start.

What's covered? Here are the chapter headings:

1. Introduction and Key Concepts
   1. Introduction to Extreme Programming
   2. J2EE Deployment Concepts
   3. Example applications
2. Mastering the Tools
   1. Continuous integration with Ant
   2. Building Java Applications with Ant
   3. Building J2EE applications with Ant
   4. Unit testing with JUnit
   5. Testing Container Services with Cactus
   6. Functional Testing with HttpUnit
   7. Measuring Application Performance with JMeter
   8. Load Testing with JUnitPerf
3. API and Tag Reference
   1. Ant Tag Reference
   2. Ant API Reference
   3. JUnit API Reference
   4. Cactus API Reference
   5. HttpUnit API Reference

If you use some of these tools already will you learn anything? Probably -- I personally have been using JUnit to test EJBs for almost nine months now but didn't know about JUnitPerf or Cactus.

Should you buy it? If you're new to the tools, then Yes. If you work in a professional but traditional IT shop, I'd buy one for the group (I have). It'd be particularly useful when dealing with management and proposing changes to working processes, or when trying to bring co-workers up to speed and sell them the benefits of agile ways of working.

You can visit the book's website at Wiley. You can purchase the Jave Tools For Extreme Programming from bn.com. Want to see your own review here? Just read the book review guidelines, then use Slashdot's handy submission form.

Sheik Yerboutii asks: "The recent downtime caused by the Code Red and NIMDA worms has prompted my Manager to start considering moving away from IIS to Apache. I've been tasked with finding out just how difficult it will be to move to the new webserver. I've got to find out things like how to install and configure it (relatively easy, it's all documented at www.apache.org) but also, things like what do we de now that we've been working in VBScript ASP for about 6 moths?" We posted a similar question to this one, just over a year ago. Any changes or additions to the advice given in that discussion?

"I've read that Apache::ASP exists and that's got something to do with mod_perl but now I'm going in circles figuring out how to make this thing work. I also can't find straight answers on things like if we make the cut over, will we have to convert the VBScript ASP to Perl ASP?

Can anyone relay their experiences with cutting from IIS to Apache? Running ASP with Apache? Most importantly, what are the best resources available for Apache administrators? (hopefully something with a discussion forum)"

securitas writes "ID reports that German utilities started offering high speed Internet access via power lines last month, and Sweden and the Netherlands are not far behind. The companies claim to have resolved problems of interference and line noise. US trials are taking place in secret with Reston VA based PowerLine Technologies. Nortel and Siemens abandoned the technology in 1999 but if this is for real DSL and cable may have a new competitor."

johnathan spectre wrote in to tell us about these really cool plasma shoelaces. plasticPaddy wrote in to tell us about SkyBird, a nifty remote-control ornithopter. Fire up the flux capacitor, because feebeling wrote in about this WWW guide, circa 1993. seizer told us about some crazy guy TCP/IP tunneling through E-mail: now that's dedication. Speaking of crazy people, Green Monkey scared me with his submission, a Web site devoted to Pokémon butts. From the self-referential bucket, the Webby Awards have nominated Slashdot in the 'Community' and 'Print and Zines' categories. Go Vote and we get some trophy or something. _damnit_ wrote in with a nice little piece on the Ides of March. In case you're in the greater Boston area, Rob 'CmdrTaco' Malda will be speaking at the Geek Pride Festival at the end of the month.

coaxial writes: "At SuperComputing '99, the fastest network in the world, 2.4 gigabits, was built between the University of Washington and Microsoft's Redmond campus thanks to the DARPA-sponsored National Transparent Optical Network (NTON), the university's Pacific/Northwest Gigapop, and Nortel. You can read all about it from the NCSA now apart of The Alliance . " Cool, MP3's and DECSS'd DVD movies at the speed of the light.

vyzar writes "NOR.WEB Ltd, the joint venture between UK telco Norweb Telecom and Nortel Networks developing Digital Power Line technology, for carrying high-speed data over electricity supply lines, is being disbanded, and the technology dumped. Norweb Telecoms say that the technology has been "proved", but the project was disbanded for financial reasons. The fact that the technology leaked high levels of radio frequency in frequecy bands used by the UK emergency services, military, and radio hams; and that it was fighting an uphill battle with the UK radio licensing authorities, did not appear to be mentioned in news reports. "

Thanks to return reviewer Janice Wright for the following review of Terry Prachett, Ian Stewart, and Jack Cohen's effort The Science of Discworld. The book's a fun attempt to explain the science behind Prachett's incredibly funny world, Discworld. For those of you who haven't read Prachett, I am ashamed for you. Click below for more information. The Science of Discworld author Ian Stewart, Jack Cohen & Terry Pratchett pages 311 publisher Ebury Press (Random House) rating 8/10 reviewer Janice Wright ISBN summary A combination of fact and fantasy from masters of both investigates how the magic of "narrativium" informs the science of our world and worlds beyond.

For those who haven't had the pleasure, the Discworld moves through space on the back of four giant elephants who are in turn standing on the carapace of Great A'Tuin, the interstellar turtle. The Discworld is inhabited by all manner of creatures: trolls, dwarves, elves, a number of varieties of undead, and people - some of whom are wizards.

Our story starts with the wizards (and the wizzard), who for reasons that you will discover when you read the book, begin a project to study (that's wizard for "play with") The Roundworld. It starts to go wrong almost immediately. No matter how hard they try to get the planets to form nice, proper disc shapes, they keep getting spheres, globes, or balls. And they can't find a giant space turtle anywhere. It's obvious that the world they've created isn't a proper world at all. Or is it?

Throughout this wonderful mix of hard science and funny fantasy, Jack Cohen and Ian Stewart (professors of biology and physics respectively, and co-authors of Figments of Reality and The Collapse of Chaos) step in every other chapter to explain the things that are confusing the wizards. Why are the planets round? Why do they insist on travelling around the sun in predictable ellipses. Yes, it's because of gravity, every schoolchild knows that. But what, exactly is gravity?

Via the wizards' assumptions about how a world should work and Jack & Ian's delightful prose, we are taken back to the basics of the science we learned in school and then forgot, secure in the knowledge that we "understood" how our world works. As the scientists explain, this is partly because most of the science we learn in school is what they have dubbed "lies-to-children". "Lies-to-children" are the stock of vast (untrue) over-simplifications that make science easier to teach, and easier to learn. And, most of the time "lies-to-children" are necessary in order to have something to build on to learn the next bit. The problem, they seem to be saying, is when the forget that it's really a "lie", and it turns into "believing-we-understand" instead of "wanting-to-know-more".

That is certainly not to say that The Science of Discworld is a children's book. You could certainly read it to children, though beware that this will probably result in time spent running around the back yard with oranges and footballs to explain the orbit of the planets, and so on. It is packed full of complex ideas and current theories. Most chapters start with the absolute basics and then swiftly bring you right up to date with the most recent discoveries from the High-Z Supernova Search Team (or what have you).

What I liked best about the book was the way the authors mentioned just enough about a particular topic (and dropped a couple of names or events; such as Jocelyn Bell's discovery of pulsars, or Adrian Thompson's experiments with Genetic Algorithms) for me to be able to go off and find out more about the things that I found particularly interesting. On the other hand, this brevity with most of the topics might frustrate some people.

What does it cover? Everything. Ok, so that's probably not a very good answer. There's this story about these wizards who create a universe and mess about with it for a while and get things wrong and shout at each other a lot. And there's a computer. And a librarian who's an ourangutan. It's a very funny story. Terry Pratchett wouldn't have written 35 books and be the second-biggest selling author in Britain if he weren't rather good at that sort of thing. In between every chapter of the funny story about the wizards there is a chapter of "hard" science. The stuff in the science chapters goes something like this:

• Science - what does it mean to think scientifically?
• Time, space & the big bang
• The stars, the elements, and more about the stars
• Newton, Einstein, and others
• Chaos, Emergence, and Langton's Ant (Note: if anyone has the url of a good site that demonstrates Langton's Ant, please post it as a follow-up. Thanks!)
• The planets, their orbits, & more about the stars
• The Earth from magma core to the atmosphere and the moon
• Philosophy on the nature of Light & Dark
• Life. Blue-green algae, Darwin, genetic algorithms
• Some notes on statistics and probability
• The Dinosaurs
• Mammals & DNA
• Neurology & culture
• Where do we go from here?

It should be obvious by now, but just in case it's not, I'll mention explicitly (as the authors themselves do on the second page of the text) that this is not a "The Science of Star Trek" type of book that speculates about the evolutionary feasibility of flying, fire-breathing dragons or tries explains what a thaum is (as if you could explain it, which you can't because a thaum isn't real, Terry just made it up).

Should I buy this book? Yes if: Probably
not if:

• You've been meaning to start reading some Popular Science
  • You already read an awful lot of Popular Science
    • You're looking for a good introduction/
      jumping-off point into a wide variety of interesting current scientific ideas
      • You've just finished a degree in Earth Sciences
        • You've read Figments of Reality and loved it's style
          • You thought all that icky biology stuff and all that stuff about different kinds of rocks in school was terribly boring
            • You can't think of a present for your bright 10-12 year old son/daughter/
              neice/nephew/etc. who has grown out of dinosaurs and has been pestering you to explain "how the stars work."

Can I buy this book? So far The Science of Discworld has only been published in the UK. As of June 10th, the authors hadn't even started discussions with American publishers, so the UK version is likely to be the only one available for quite a while. Buy it from Amazon.co.uk with the British spellings intact.

A word of caution
...to those who have not yet read any of Mr. Terry Pratchett's books. The Science of Discworld drops a number of tantalizing hints about the other Discworld books. You might well decide to buy one, just satisfy your curiosity about a particular character or story. Discworld books are addictive, with a capital "ADD". At first you'll casually pick up a paperback next time you're at the bookstore (I recommend Feet of Clay or The Colour of Magic), then perhaps you'll order the most recent hardback(s) from Amazon.co.uk. Next thing you know you're singing the Hedgehog song in the shower and doing very strange things with tapioca. It isn't pretty, and there's no known cure, but at least you won't be alone.
You have been warned.

Note: This is not yet availible in the US, but can be ordered from Amazon.uk.

Thanks to return reviewer Janice Wright for the following review of Terry Prachett, Ian Stewart, and Jack Cohen's effort The Science of Discworld. The book's a fun attempt to explain the science behind Prachett's incredibly funny world, Discworld. For those of you who haven't read Prachett, I am ashamed for you. Click below for more information. The Science of Discworld author Ian Stewart, Jack Cohen & Terry Pratchett pages 311 publisher Ebury Press (Random House) rating 8/10 reviewer Janice Wright ISBN summary A combination of fact and fantasy from masters of both investigates how the magic of "narrativium" informs the science of our world and worlds beyond.

For those who haven't had the pleasure, the Discworld moves through space on the back of four giant elephants who are in turn standing on the carapace of Great A'Tuin, the interstellar turtle. The Discworld is inhabited by all manner of creatures: trolls, dwarves, elves, a number of varieties of undead, and people - some of whom are wizards.

Our story starts with the wizards (and the wizzard), who for reasons that you will discover when you read the book, begin a project to study (that's wizard for "play with") The Roundworld. It starts to go wrong almost immediately. No matter how hard they try to get the planets to form nice, proper disc shapes, they keep getting spheres, globes, or balls. And they can't find a giant space turtle anywhere. It's obvious that the world they've created isn't a proper world at all. Or is it?

Throughout this wonderful mix of hard science and funny fantasy, Jack Cohen and Ian Stewart (professors of biology and physics respectively, and co-authors of Figments of Reality and The Collapse of Chaos) step in every other chapter to explain the things that are confusing the wizards. Why are the planets round? Why do they insist on travelling around the sun in predictable ellipses. Yes, it's because of gravity, every schoolchild knows that. But what, exactly is gravity?

Via the wizards' assumptions about how a world should work and Jack & Ian's delightful prose, we are taken back to the basics of the science we learned in school and then forgot, secure in the knowledge that we "understood" how our world works. As the scientists explain, this is partly because most of the science we learn in school is what they have dubbed "lies-to-children". "Lies-to-children" are the stock of vast (untrue) over-simplifications that make science easier to teach, and easier to learn. And, most of the time "lies-to-children" are necessary in order to have something to build on to learn the next bit. The problem, they seem to be saying, is when the forget that it's really a "lie", and it turns into "believing-we-understand" instead of "wanting-to-know-more".

That is certainly not to say that The Science of Discworld is a children's book. You could certainly read it to children, though beware that this will probably result in time spent running around the back yard with oranges and footballs to explain the orbit of the planets, and so on. It is packed full of complex ideas and current theories. Most chapters start with the absolute basics and then swiftly bring you right up to date with the most recent discoveries from the High-Z Supernova Search Team (or what have you).

What I liked best about the book was the way the authors mentioned just enough about a particular topic (and dropped a couple of names or events; such as Jocelyn Bell's discovery of pulsars, or Adrian Thompson's experiments with Genetic Algorithms) for me to be able to go off and find out more about the things that I found particularly interesting. On the other hand, this brevity with most of the topics might frustrate some people.

What does it cover? Everything. Ok, so that's probably not a very good answer. There's this story about these wizards who create a universe and mess about with it for a while and get things wrong and shout at each other a lot. And there's a computer. And a librarian who's an ourangutan. It's a very funny story. Terry Pratchett wouldn't have written 35 books and be the second-biggest selling author in Britain if he weren't rather good at that sort of thing. In between every chapter of the funny story about the wizards there is a chapter of "hard" science. The stuff in the science chapters goes something like this:

• Science - what does it mean to think scientifically?
• Time, space & the big bang
• The stars, the elements, and more about the stars
• Newton, Einstein, and others
• Chaos, Emergence, and Langton's Ant (Note: if anyone has the url of a good site that demonstrates Langton's Ant, please post it as a follow-up. Thanks!)
• The planets, their orbits, & more about the stars
• The Earth from magma core to the atmosphere and the moon
• Philosophy on the nature of Light & Dark
• Life. Blue-green algae, Darwin, genetic algorithms
• Some notes on statistics and probability
• The Dinosaurs
• Mammals & DNA
• Neurology & culture
• Where do we go from here?

It should be obvious by now, but just in case it's not, I'll mention explicitly (as the authors themselves do on the second page of the text) that this is not a "The Science of Star Trek" type of book that speculates about the evolutionary feasibility of flying, fire-breathing dragons or tries explains what a thaum is (as if you could explain it, which you can't because a thaum isn't real, Terry just made it up).

Should I buy this book? Yes if: Probably
not if:

• You've been meaning to start reading some Popular Science
  • You already read an awful lot of Popular Science
    • You're looking for a good introduction/
      jumping-off point into a wide variety of interesting current scientific ideas
      • You've just finished a degree in Earth Sciences
        • You've read Figments of Reality and loved it's style
          • You thought all that icky biology stuff and all that stuff about different kinds of rocks in school was terribly boring
            • You can't think of a present for your bright 10-12 year old son/daughter/
              neice/nephew/etc. who has grown out of dinosaurs and has been pestering you to explain "how the stars work."

Can I buy this book? So far The Science of Discworld has only been published in the UK. As of June 10th, the authors hadn't even started discussions with American publishers, so the UK version is likely to be the only one available for quite a while. Buy it from Amazon.co.uk with the British spellings intact.

A word of caution
...to those who have not yet read any of Mr. Terry Pratchett's books. The Science of Discworld drops a number of tantalizing hints about the other Discworld books. You might well decide to buy one, just satisfy your curiosity about a particular character or story. Discworld books are addictive, with a capital "ADD". At first you'll casually pick up a paperback next time you're at the bookstore (I recommend Feet of Clay or The Colour of Magic), then perhaps you'll order the most recent hardback(s) from Amazon.co.uk. Next thing you know you're singing the Hedgehog song in the shower and doing very strange things with tapioca. It isn't pretty, and there's no known cure, but at least you won't be alone.
You have been warned.

Note: This is not yet availible in the US, but can be ordered from Amazon.uk.

Janice Wright has been gracious enough to send us a review of Steven Pinker's How the Mind Works. Obviously not a programmming manual (well, perhaps more then we want to think. Hmm.), this is an insightful book into the little that is known about how the human brain functions. Click below if you like your grey matter. How The Mind Works author Steven Pinker pages publisher US: W.W. Norton; UK: Penguin Books rating 8 reviewer Janice Wright ISBN 0393318486 summary teven Pinker tackles some of the biggest questions in psychology and sociology (How did humans develop the capacity for abstract thought? Will we ever understand what it means to be self aware? Why do we fall in love?) from an evolutionary biology perspective. This book makes some worthwhile points on the nature/nurture debate.

Book reviews often start "If you only read one book this year...", but considering the slashdot readership, I'll amend that to: "If you only read one non-fiction book not published by O'Reilly this year, this one would be a good choice." The second chapter is about computers, and the second to last chapter is about sex, so a geek's gotta love it.

Though to be honest, the computer bits aren't terribly technical. They focus on the computational theory of the mind, and how as a theory, it gives us a useful, but woefully incomplete understanding of the human mind. There is, however, a fascinating technical explanation of stereo vision and how stereograms (magic-eye pictures) work, why some people can't see them, and a great explanation of how to do the trick with your eyes that you need to see them - the stereogram in the book is the first one I've ever been able to see, and it's almost worth the cover price just for that.

Reading Stephen Pinker, I always get the impression that his style comes from years of trying to keep his first-year university psychology class awake on a Monday morning at 9am. He does this with a combination of some very challenging ideas and highly entertaining writing.

In the first chapter, he makes the somewhat radical claim that innate biology has an equal, if not greater role than culture in shaping our desires, thoughts, and actions. He then spends the next 500 pages convincing us with a combination of well reasoned arguments and the results of rigorous scientific studies. He is, however, careful to remind us regularly of the limits of scientific enquiry, and of how much we still don't know "Virtually nothing is known about the functioning microcircuitry of the human brain, because there is a shortage of volunteers willing to give up their brains to science before they are dead." (p. 184)

His main thrust throughout much of the book is to debunk the "natural = good" equation that is quoted to so often these days. Aggressiveness, for instance, especially in male humans, is 'natural' in the sense that it was once adaptive (i.e. a trait that allowed it's organism to reproduce more successfully). Aggressiveness, is therefore 'natural' to male humans. This doesn't mean that men "can't help" being aggressive, or that men who beat their wives are somehow not at fault because it is "in their genes". As Pinker puts it:

"...happiness and virtue have nothing to do with what natural selection designed us to accomplish in the ancestral environment. They are for us to determine. In saying this, I am no hypocrite even though I am a conventional straight white male. Well into my procreating years I am, so far, voluntarily childless, having squandered my biological resources reading and writing, doing research, helping out friends, and jogging in circles, ignoring the solemn imperative to spread my genes. By Darwinian standards I am a horrible mistake, a pathetic looser, not one iota less than if I were a card-carrying member of Queer Nation. But I am happy to be that way, and if my genes don't like it, they can go jump in the lake."

Having explained how the brain thinks and how the eyes see, he goes on to consider how the capacity for emotion may have been adaptive (and therefore selected for) in our early evolution, and starts with a great example: "the yuck factor". We get a very cool theory of why we find certain things disgusting, why what's considered disgusting is highly cultural, and why the thing that elicits the strongest "yuck factor" response is food.

The first six chapters have covered key aspects of the human condition:

Chapter 1: The Standard Equipment talks about how the brain is wired Chapter 2: Thinking Machines covers the "human mind as computer" and the computational theory of the mind Chapter 3: Revenge of the Nerds explains Pinker's theory of how early humans prospered by exploiting what he calls the "cognitive niche" Chapter 4: The Mind's Eye explains the role that vision, and in particular colour, stereo vision as one of the factors that allowed humans to evolve such prodigious brain-power Chapter 5: Good Ideas is about how we use logic, comparison, and statistics in interpersonal relationships Chapter 6: Hotheads deals with the gamut of human emotions from altruism to envy

All this has laid the groundwork for the second to last chapter, which he calls "Family Values". Some theories in the social sciences claim that people are born as virtually "blank slates" and that their upbringing, socialisation, education, etc. accounts for the way they 'turn out'. Criminality, substance abuse, and even the more petty human failings such as greed and vanity are assumed to have psychological underpinnings that come from one's childhood experiences. Pinker claims instead that some parts of the 'dark side' of being human is genetically encoded. He emphasises that this does not in any way excuse anti-social behaviour, but is simply another way of looking at what our conscience is up against when we feel the urge to take the credit for another's idea, sneak onto the subway without paying, help ourselves to the larger piece of cake, or cheat on our partner.

It's a long book, and it may take a little perserverence to get though it, but it's worth the effort because Pinker's ideas are interesting, challenging, and thought provoking. I don't agree with everything he says, and I think he sometimes over-simplifies an example to the point where it's no longer valid. Often, I found myself thinking "But human being are more complicated than that!" when he was explaining some facet of modern human behaviour in terms of the selection pressures of hunter-gatherers on the savannah. But all-in-all it is well worth reading. And at the end of it either you'll be able to see stereograms or you'll know exactly why you can't. To pick this book, head over to Amazon.