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Useful review.

I'm currently going through http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/sed2/, but I can see my using perl the more I do website programming. Would an experience scripter suggest that I switch to perl (for it seems it can perform similar text manipulation functions conveniently in a programming lanuage), or spend more time with sed/awk?

I'll probably do both incidentally, but opinions would be appreciated. It seems everyone rates perl.
I was going to switch to Python, but apparently Perl is better for smaller/one line regexp manipulation in scripts, and python for building large applications.

You're falling into a common misunderstanding about Free software.

With Free software, you *still own the copyright* to your work. If you want to put it in terms of IP (a term that I don't particularly like), you own the IP to your work. So there is *no* common ownership. It is not socialist in the least.

In most countries (probably all, but I don't know for sure), you can not own an idea. The term "Intellectual Property" refers to a monopoly granted by the state for certain things. In the case of copyright, it's a monopoly on making a copy. In the case of a patent, it is a monopoly to use or build a device. In the case of trademark, it is a monopoly to use a picture, phrase or name in a certain context.

You can own these monopolies. You can not own source code. Or rather, you can own the disk that the software resides on, but you can not own the code itself. It's not an ownable thing. All you can own is the IP (right to make copies, right to use the "software device" or right to use a name). Free software doesn't restrict your ownership of this IP.

Now if you want to talk about the GPL (most Free software is licensed under the GPL), there are some conventions. If you want to use software *that I own the copyright to", and that I have licensed under the GPL, you must agree to certain conditions. The conditions are spelled out in the GPL. This is the compensation I get for allowing you to make a copy of the software for which *I own the copyright* (Please make special note of the fact that *I own the copyright*).

Since *I own the copyright*, you have no right to use the code unless I agree. This is fundamental in the working of the GPL (and most other Free software licenses). Now, for the most part, I can ask for anything I want as compensation for letting you make a copy of that code. It's up to you to decide if you think it's worth it. Just because I ask for something that benefits others as well as myself, doesn't make it socialist. Or communist.

In fact, if you read http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/opensources/book/ti emans.html you can see how asking for the things that the GPL asks for can give me a considerable competative advantage against my competitors. In the world of Free software, allowing others to make copies of code that I own the copyright to gives me advantages. The more people that use and modify the software, the stronger my position in the market becomes.

Ideally, I would like to make the software ubiquitous. The more people that use the software, the more work there is to do on the software. Generally I can't keep up with the demand for more features (if you've worked in a proprietary software shop you realize that you can *never* keep up with feature demand, no matter how big you are). So allowing (and even encouraging) others to fill in the gaps doesn't weaken me. It only strengthens me. As Tiemann's article states, all the benefits tend toward the maintainer.

Not only does Free software not encourage community ownership, any business that uses Free software as their core asset uses IP ownership heavily to protect their investment. In fact, in order to succeed, I *must* make sure that others who modify the software make their changes available (ultimately) to me. Otherwise I can't win business to support *their* changes. Not only that, but branding is unbelievably important (witness the "Firefox" spats -- with *very* good reason). You must control your trademark IP.

As it turns out, patents are counter productive to Free software. This is why Free software advocates want to abolish software patents.

So I hope in some way that helps you understand how Free software is not in the least socialist. It is as capitalist as they come. Every Free software author (and even user) can become an entrepeneur and build a business. It encourages the free market more than proprietary software does. Although, I suppose if we *really* wanted to encourage the free market we would abolish *all* IP laws since monopolies are inherently counter to supporting a free market.

I fail to understand the point of this article. Explain to me again how the world is worse-off because IBM chose to open the code for Eclipse. Hall's argument appears to be that opening code may advantage a company like IBM by forcing smaller competitors like Borland to compete against a zero-cost product. That argument seems pretty myopic to me, to say the least. It reflects an outdated view of the software marketplace that ignores the fast-growing competitive threat of free software. Borland and other proprietary software companies are no longer competing just against one another. Their competitors now span the globe and include individual developers, noncommercial cooperatives, and yes, even some commercial entities like RedHat and IBM.

I guess I no longer care whether companies like Borland survive. Their contemporary equivalents now display their wares at SourceForge. In another ten or twenty years, many more people will look to open-source repositories, and not to Microsoft, IBM, Borland, Staples, or download.com, when they want to find some new piece of software. Of course, there's already so much free software available that all or most of the programs most ordinary people need are already included for free on a Linux distribution CD.

Sure IBM has enough resources that they can develop a product like Eclipse and give it away, but what's the harm in that? Society as whole almost certainly benefits, if only in an economic sense, whenever commercial software can replaced by an effective no-cost alternative. Many of us, myself included, think that society also benefits, and perhaps benefits more greatly, when that no-cost alternative is also open-sourced and freely redistributable.

Open source has its greatest competitive advantage when it's written to fulfill some commodity function, be it serving up web pages, displaying a graphical desktop, or providing tools to develop software. These days an IDE is a commodity and not likely to be a major profit center in the years ahead.

Soon after the invention of web, a number of companies attempted to sell proprietary web-server software. Most of those companies are gone, destroyed by a bunch of ne'er-do-wells who took free software (NCSA httpd -- paid for by the US taxpayers no less) and refined it into the dominant web server on the planet. Even Sun and Tim O'Reilly probably aren't all that sad about the failure of their efforts to make money selling web-serving software. O'Reilly has no doubt made more money selling books about Apache and related software like PHP than it ever would have selling the web server software itself. Maybe that's why O'Reilly left the software business in 2001.

If having open software means that some 13-year-old who wants to learn Java can do so more easily with Eclipse, in the long run everyone benefits. If companies can't compete effectively against open-sourced software products, then that money would be better invested in some other endeavor.

Either we didn't put enough features in Vista, or we put in too many. Oh, and the same author has a 725 page manual for OSX.

This book does exist. And so does an article in it written by Pamela Jones.

17. Extending Open Source Principles Beyond Software Development
Pamela Jones

Using the Pipes editor, you can fetch any data source via its RSS, Atom or other XML feed, extract the data you want, combine it with data from another source, apply various built-in filters (sort, unique (with the "ue" this time:-), count, truncate, union, join, as well as user-defined filters), and apply simple programming tools like for loops. In short, it's a good start on the Unix shell for mashups.

It democratizes web programming, making it easier for people to have more control over the internet information services they consume, and providing a general-purpose platform for interacting with sites that is more powerful than the browser or feed-reader alone, but without requiring full programming skills.

"If you don't like it then don't come here to other open source / open standards sites."

Fair and balanced, like your name calling, mmm? ROFL!

Absolutely! Here at slashdot we counter the "closed-source bias" of the "mainstream media" with "fair and balanced" reporting that includes the Free Software point of view! Remember, every copy of Free as in Freedom you download comes with a free copy of _Free_as_in_Freedom_! Read about the war on Open Source waged by the Closed-Source zealots! Coming soon, _Linux_Advocacy_for_Kids_!

Write to submissionsd@slashdot.org, submissions@slashdot.org, nameandtown nameandtown nameandtown if you wish to opine... and no bloviating .. that is the slashdot commentors' job.

I agree with this advice, but maybe I'll put a bit of a spin on it. Writing Free software doesn't *have* to be done as a hobby. You can make good money from it. As an older person (geez, as a 40 year old, 50 doesn't really sound so much older anymore :-P ), you probably have some decent business experience. I would leverage this experience. And if you have some financial security, there's no reason you can't just take some risk and start working for yourself.

Many people are confused about how to start a business around Free software. The very best resource I've found is this short chapter written by Michael Tiemann:

http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/opensources/book/ti emans.html

This is from the guy (along with 2 buddies) that turned a $6,000 investment into $600 million of Redhat Stock. Not only that, but he somehow managed to get an executive position there as well. Along the way, they made their fair share of money (by the end of their first year they had sold $725,000 in contracts). IIRC, Cygnus was pulling in about $32 million a quarter when Redhat bought them.

My favorite quote: He's discussing using the GNU manifesto as a business plan. "if everybody thinks it's a great idea, it probably is, and if nobody thinks it will work, I'll have no competition!". As it turns out, I think he was right on both accounts. In fact, I'm still hard pressed to name more than a handful of companies who operate in the way that Cygnus did. So much opportunity wasted...

This is a great book, but my binding cracked after 2 weeks.

It's probably cracked by design, so that it lays flat. (Credit: I had no idea O'Reilly books did this until reading reading a sibling post about an O'Reilly Python book; I'm just being more explicit and providing a link).

I don't buy too many books from O'Reilly recently, but the last one I bought, Python in a Nutshell [amazon.com] uses a rather novel binding that allows the book to lay flat and is quite durable. I assumed all O'Reilly books would use this newer system.

Hmm, interesting. I haven't bought an O'Reilly book for awhile, but this is good to know. I did some googling, and the binding style is called RepKover. Apparently they stopped using this binding as a cost saving measure in 2001 after the dotcom bust, and resumed it in 2004. They don't use it for all books though (some are too thin or too fat).

If you get the book over O'Reilly's Safari service, what you're saying is very possible! (with the help of some custom CSS and Firefox)

aalib lets you play movies using ascii art. An aalib flash player would actually be pretty cool....

Plants are protein too. What you mean to say is that dogs are carnivores and therefore higher on the food chain. Every time you convert food by feeding it to an animal, you lose 90% of your biomass. So if you grow dog meat by feeding your dogs rabbits which you feed grass, then you have to grow 100 pounds of grass to grow 1 pound of dog meat. Better to eat the 10 pounds of rabbit yourself.

This is not exactly advanced science: I learned it in sixth grade. If slashdotters don't know know what a food chain is, either schools have declined since my day, or slashdotters don't retain anything that isn't in comic book form.

Lisp is the oldest, still in use, high level programming that exists today

Technically, Fortran (1954) has that honor over Lisp (1958). Source: O'Reilly.

Another thought: I don't know how much of that control equipment is for voltage regulation of the panels or inverters to 120V ..... but if you are using inverters to power your networking equipment, consider replacing it with 12v equipment. You'll use far less power. But don't skimp, and make sure there is some kind of regulator circuit between your transceiver & the battery bank. Here's a couple of relevant links: http://www.dailywireless.org/2006/08/04/solar-roof net-wiki/ http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/wirelesscommnet/ind ex.html?CMP=ILL-4GV796923290 Out of curiosity, can you provide us with more details on the quoted system as well as what you are providing power to? more solar goodness here: http://www.dailywireless.org/2005/08/09/more-solar -wifi/

If your reason for pirating books is honestly a derivative of your need for an electronic format, may I suggest O'Reilly's Safari service? For $10/month, I get searchable, bookmarkable access to the best programming books I've had the privilege to use.

Best of all, it works over the web, even over dial-up, so I have access from anywhere I can get to the Internet. It works well on any resolution I happen to use, which is a far cry from PDFs or eBooks. Finally, you can print hard copies of any section of interest.

The note about revenues compared to one Costco store is pretty sad. It makes me wonder where any of the other "blogger" "elite" sites stock up. I always deeply suspected that most of the "web 2.0" and "blogger" fad was just a giant San Francisco circle jerk by people who think far too highly of themselves.

But, is anything in Web 2.0 even defined?

You could consult the guy who popularized the term: Web 2.0 Compact Definition.

Some folks swear by 'em, some folks hate 'em. Check out http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/dbhardware2/ Covers a range of embedded devices from PICs to DSPs and talks about the various buses you'll see.

This book is so important that several ComS professors recommended it for their students who use Linux. You may not use many of the commands in there now, but soon enough you will be plugging away and you will want to know how to add things to your $PATH, etc. This book is a great starting reference for such learning material.

Auuugh! It's a cookbook! Run away if you can!

I wonder how this one compares to its O'Reilly equivalent: http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/mongrelpdf/

never ever ever ever let someone learn perl as their first langauge

Simon Cozens makes a good case for Perl as a first language:

There's nothing about Perl that is difficult to understand if presented appropriately; the difficulty is presenting some of the concepts in an appropriate way, and that's a question about how good the teacher is, not the language

If you want the students to be able to start managing and manipulating data quickly, then Perl is a plausible way to go. Even if you want to teach the fundamentals of computer science, Perl is at least as suitable as any language to illustrate the concepts.

For students who don't go on to do CS degrees, the language they learn in high school may also be the last language they learn. For non-professional programmers, Perl is the only language they'll ever need. The same is probably equally true about Python, Tcl and other real-world languages so the question may simply be which one does the teacher know the best.

There are probably no bad languages to learn first, just bad teachers. If the teacher were bad, C would probably not be the first language you would want the students to encounter.

http://listserv.buffalo.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind9609& L=dccs&T=0&P=1886
http://www.oreilly.com/news/differences_nt.html
http://www.windowsitpro.com/Article/ArticleID/2816 /2816.html

text from first link

For those of you interested in Windows NT, I've got some
interesting news for you. Andrew Schulman, Senior Editor at O'Reilly &
Associates, wrote this interesting article recently:

Differences Between NT Server and Workstation are Minimal

Registry Settings Used to Force Use of Microsoft Web Server

Andrew Schulman
Senior Editor, O'Reilly & Associates
[log in to unmask]

Microsoft recently introduced version 4.0 of NT Workstation (NTW) and NT
Server (NTS), and claims that there are substantial technical differences
between the Workstation and Server products. Microsoft uses this claim to
justify an $800 price difference between NTW and NTS, as well as legal
limits on web server usage in NTW, both of which have enormous impact on
existing NTW users. But what if the supposed technical differences at the
heart of NTW and NTS are mythical?

We have found that NTS and NTW have identical kernels; in fact, NT is a
single operating system with two modes. Only two registry settings are
needed to switch between these two modes in NT 4.0, and only one setting in
NT 3.51. This is extremely significant, and calls into question the related
legal limitations and costly upgrades that currently face NTW users.

Introduction

In the course of the ongoing controversy over its restriction of only ten
web connections in NT Workstation 4.0, Microsoft representatives
have asserted that there are substantial technical differences between
NT Server and NT Workstation. From this, Microsoft draws these
conclusions:

1.that these differences justify the large price difference between
the two products (street prices: NT 4.0 Workstation $260,
Server 4.0 w/ 5 client $730, Server 4.0 w/ 10 client $1080)
2.that third-party web servers such as O'Reilly WebSite or
Netscape Enterprise Server should not be run on top of the
cheaper NT Workstation product, and
3.that customers should instead buy Microsoft's more expensive
NT Server product, which comes already bundled with a "free"
web server, Microsoft Internet Information Server (IIS). IIS
competes with web servers from third-party vendors such as
O'Reilly and Netscape.

For example, Microsoft spokesman Mark Murray was quoted by
Reuters:

"The crux of this issue is that NT Workstation and NT
Server are two very different products intended for two
very different functions."

In fact, the recent fight between Microsoft and Netscape, including
Netscape's open letter to U.S. Department of Justice's Antitrust
Division, was touched off when Microsoft sent email to Netscape,
complaining about a price comparison chart at Netscape's web site.
According to Microsoft's letter (July 30):

If the user wishes to utilize more than the ten [web]
connections, the user must license Windows NT
server.... Microsoft is also concerned

The parent post was about enterprise edition, not SE. I haven't seen any EE 5 books out yet, although I know O'Reilly's Enterprise JavaBeans 3.0 is out, which to me was the most important part of EE 5. Although, I have to admit, I haven't bought the book because going through the NetBeans tutorials pretty much teach you all you need to know about EJB3 (assuming you get the basic idea of enterprise design patterns and have a conceptual idea of how EJBs work). Also, at the moment your choices for an EE 5 container are pretty slim (pretty much only glassfish). If you're deploying on JBoss like I am you can only use EJB3 and a handful of other technology like JAX-WS 2 and then only if you set it up right and include the right libraries.

It is a bit of a shame, because EE 5 has really made enterprise Java a lot simpler and for some of us has made it a great choice for developing apps. Hopefully the amount of good documentation will increase soon.

My current favorite Java programming book is Java Concurrency in Practice by Broan Goetz and others. It's not for beginners, but if you really want to understand how to write multi-threaded code in Java you need to read this book. Several times, probably, because it's a tricky subject.

Other books I like for Java are Effective Java (though he needs to update it for Java 1.5) and Java Puzzlers.

I don't know of any books that are good descriptions of the Java 1.5 features for experienced programmers. Some people like Thinking in Java, but it seems pretty wordy to me. I originally learned Java from Java in a Nutshell but it's been something like 8 years, so I don't know if the newer editions are any good.

Disclaimer: some of the authors of these books are my co-workers, though I don't know them very well.

What's the best way to get back into using Java? I took a couple of programming classes when it was still Java 1.3/1.4 a few years ago and totally missed the jump to Java 5/6.

I actually enjoyed the Head First Java book from O'Reilly, though I'll probably get mocked for it here.... I admit, it can feel a bit "kiddie" to have a lot of pictures, do puzzles and so on, but involving the right half of your brain makes stuff stick better, and for me, makes it fun and fast to learn. Second edition has some Java5 stuff in it.

If that style of learning is not for you, or if you are too advanced for that level, the Java Tutorial was pretty recently updated with new trails for Java 5 and Java 6, so you should find an appropriate level for you quickly. Also Java 5 Developer's Notebook is a neat guide.

What's the best way to get back into using Java? I took a couple of programming classes when it was still Java 1.3/1.4 a few years ago and totally missed the jump to Java 5/6.

I actually enjoyed the Head First Java book from O'Reilly, though I'll probably get mocked for it here.... I admit, it can feel a bit "kiddie" to have a lot of pictures, do puzzles and so on, but involving the right half of your brain makes stuff stick better, and for me, makes it fun and fast to learn. Second edition has some Java5 stuff in it.

If that style of learning is not for you, or if you are too advanced for that level, the Java Tutorial was pretty recently updated with new trails for Java 5 and Java 6, so you should find an appropriate level for you quickly. Also Java 5 Developer's Notebook is a neat guide.

Lets be clear what we are talking about here. The risk is that with special equipment someone might be able to read the same information that is printed on the card. RFID credit and debit cards have been around for awhile speedpass being an example. And while it is possible to read the information passed between the card and reader with enough effort, you probably hand your credit card to the waiter in a restaurant and don't even think about it. That person walks out of your sight and in some cases steals the information.

The solution is to watch the data and flag suspicious transaction. Most credit card companies now offer a zero liability identity theft policy.

This is a separate issue from the RFID passports raised by some of the other posters. The danger there is not really identity theft, although that's bound to happen as it does today with the paper form. The danger in a remote readable passport is that it can be used as a trigger for an explosive or to target persons of a certain nationality in a crowd. There's no reasonable defense for using RF over a contact coupling to read a passport. There's no added danger in a card that has to touch the reader to be read.

That's actually a fine solution for credit cards as well, although the risks are much less.

Disclaimer: I did write a book on RFID http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/rfid/, but other than that I don't have any vested interest in the technology.

If you'd like Google to stop indexing your page, you can.

http://www.oreilly.com/pub/h/220

No one owes you anything. Stop crying like a little girl. There are plenty of other real actual bad things you could be crying and protesting about, so I encourage you to focus your efforts there.

I recommend reading this book for this little bit of precious advice (from memory, actual content may be different): "Vacation is not about checking your email every 5 minutes. Vacation is about not thinking about work at all. Vacation is not an inconvenience, it's something that will allow you to rest, disconnect and come back completely relaxed and un-stressed to your desk. It's not something your employer grudgingly grant you, it's something he knows you need to be more productive".

Read the book. It has a ton of wisdom and it explains much better than I could why you need to disconnect while on vacation. Very sysadmin-centric, but applicable to almost every job out there (the vacation part).

So yeah: no phone, email, pager, blackberry or anything.

If anything, this is a perfect example of why Amazon must keep patents. Our patent system is so broke the only way to defend yourself from "evil" companies like SCO is to stock your own ammunition.

It's like nuclear proliferation, until every company in the world signs a treaty, you have to continue to stockpile patents. Amazon officials have said in numerous interviews, patents are taken whenever they can be granted under the current (broken) system to prevent someone else from patenting an idea and turning around and suing THEM.

• See Jeff's comments here: http://www.oreilly.com/pub/a/oreilly/ask_tim/2000/ bezos_0300.html
• And other links here: http://www.oreilly.com/news/patent_archive.html

Amazon is not playing the IP company (like SCO and others) that sits around and looks for people to sue, they sue when needed to protect their patents, which they taken whenever possible to protect themselves from being on the other end of the warhead. If we could just fix this broke system none of this would be needed. As long as the patent office will allow something like 1-Click to be patented, companies like IBM, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, eBay, and others must aggressively seek patents just to protect themselves.

If anything, this is a perfect example of why Amazon must keep patents. Our patent system is so broke the only way to defend yourself from "evil" companies like SCO is to stock your own ammunition.

It's like nuclear proliferation, until every company in the world signs a treaty, you have to continue to stockpile patents. Amazon officials have said in numerous interviews, patents are taken whenever they can be granted under the current (broken) system to prevent someone else from patenting an idea and turning around and suing THEM.

• See Jeff's comments here: http://www.oreilly.com/pub/a/oreilly/ask_tim/2000/ bezos_0300.html
• And other links here: http://www.oreilly.com/news/patent_archive.html

Amazon is not playing the IP company (like SCO and others) that sits around and looks for people to sue, they sue when needed to protect their patents, which they taken whenever possible to protect themselves from being on the other end of the warhead. If we could just fix this broke system none of this would be needed. As long as the patent office will allow something like 1-Click to be patented, companies like IBM, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, eBay, and others must aggressively seek patents just to protect themselves.

http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/esa2/author.html

AEleen Frisch, yo. Mad pr0pz.

The issue with coding is not compliance with CSS standards (those are well published) but rather in how the various browsers interpret those standards.

The code is standard; the parsing and rendering methodologies are not.

I, for one, appreciate a book that addresses these non-standard behaviors when parsing standard code. The review posted by samzenpus exposes these insights, and contrasts them from the plethora of "standards reference" books. (many from the same publisher)

Sometimes, hacks are the way to do it. (conditional HTML comments, like CSS itself, are only partially effective) It's not that any, given book leads us to write "non-compliant code", (unless you count FrontPage) but that the differences of current browsers in-use require the "non-compliant" variations.

In my book, when the page you create works for everyone viewing it, it is compliant.

As fixes go, [person]'s was oblique but elegant. It didn't fix the mechanical side of the problem, but it did the next best thing by closing the information loop between user and machine. Thanks to a few additional lines of software code, AI Lab employees could eliminate the 10 or 15 minutes wasted each week in running back and forth to check on the printer. In programming terms, [person]'s fix took advantage of the amplified intelligence of the overall network.

Similar situation, embedded-system style issue for a printer, ability to fix software was useful mostly to customers. Check the URL to find out who the person was. He quotes this situation when describing his particular interest in open source.

People who ask for statistics tend to forget the fact that unlike OS X, Linux runs on rather more than just personal computers and servers. There is a large and growing market for embedded Linux that includes:

3 million Tivo subscribers in the US, plus another million in the UK (Sky+).

These mobile phones use Linux as their OS: http://www.linuxdevices.com/articles/AT9423084269. html

According to this article (http://www.internetnews.com/wireless/article.php/ 3584431), Linux had a 23% share of the mobile phone market in 2005, which is nearly twice as much as Microsoft's 12.5% during the same period.

In this article (http://www.gartner.com/press_releases/asset_13247 3_11.html), Gartner say that there were 778.75 million mobile phones sold in 2005, so Linux's 23% of that equates to something in excess of 179 million units, which is a hell of a lot more than the 4 million or so Macs that were sold in the same year.

Note also that embedded Linux is used on a lot more than mobile phones, e.g:

A bunch of VOIP phones: http://www.linuxdevices.com/articles/AT9615003856. html
Linux-based routers, switches, and similar devices: http://linuxdevices.com/articles/AT2005548492.html
Tablets and webpads with Linux: http://linuxdevices.com/articles/AT8349493265.html
A high-end music synthesizer: http://digitalmedia.oreilly.com/2005/11/09/inside- the-korg-oasys.html

I could probably Google around and find all manner of other embedded systems running Linux, but cannot be bothered.

netr00t's got solid advice for you.

http://slashdot.org/~netr00t

I would add, get a Lawyer, as in, have a Lawyer (anyway).
If you're in the USA, you should know by now, mostly morons make the "rules" of conduct, try not to participate.
Pay the Man:

http://www.forescout.com/index.php?url=products&se ction=activescout

http://www.winternals.com/

Useful:
http://www.sysinternals.com/SecurityUtilities.html

http://www.porcupine.org/forensics/forensic-discov ery/

http://www.fish2.com/tct/help-when-broken-into

Firewalls and Internet Security
http://www.wilyhacker.com/

First Ed. (online)
http://www.wilyhacker.com/1e/

Practical UNIX and Internet Security
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/puis3/

FWIW
http://exuberant.ms11.net/index.html

http://exuberant.ms11.net/98sesp.html

http://exuberant.ms11.net/links.html

http://www.oldversion.com/

Microsoft says they've taken steps aimed at the root causes of IE security problems, as in doing a real redesign.

It's not exactly sandboxed, but it has to ask permission from a "request broker" before changing anything in the rest of the system, and the request broker is smaller, more auditable, and not handling malicious input all the time. Troublesome features like installing Browser Help Objects are off by default.

If we're lucky this could be like IIS 6. If we're not lucky, it should still be better than the malware installation engine everyone's running now.

Don't expect your friends and relatives to report fewer malware installations, though. The bad guys will just shift to a different infection vector if IE7 lives up to its promises.

Obviously it depends on your field. I'm more involved with modeling than multimedia. However, my understanding was that professionals were using a forked version of gimp for video editing on linux clusters. Is there a commercial version that scales this far? I really don't know. But in terms of professional use, I don't think amateurs have clusters for their video editing.

Likewise, way back when Alias/Wavefront's Maya was cock-of-the-walk, it was available for Linux. Maya used to be *the* app for pro work. Graphics people seemed to be absolutely snobbish about it. Autodesk bought them from SGI, but it looks like Autodesk Maya 8 is still available for (64-bit only) linux. The hard core mathematical physics geek in me finds myself asking: have you looked at Mathematica for visual transformations? Sorry, had to ask...

I had friends who were into Bluegrass, and looking at recording their jam sessions (we are talking a couple hundred people showing up for three day weekends at least once per month thru the spring, summer, and into the fall). I didn't track their progress, as I graduated and moved on to another university, but the impression I gathered was that tools existed. I think they were using Ardour / Jack with RME Hammerfall cards. Obviously this won't work with SoundBlaster toys. Postings on a recent real time kernel article here at slashdot had a number of people talking about what acceptance of real time patches into the kernel will mean in terms of multi-channel live recording. I don't know if Jack is enough for "real" work, or if other real time patches are needed. Again, it isn't really my field. I do remember wanting to buy this really cool synthesizer, but couldn't rationalize it in my budget. $8,000 for a linux sound system? Thats alot of $$$ even for a Korg...

What made you sound like a troll was suggesting that the tens of thousands of applications that are available for linux aren't. If anything, the abundance of software is more disconcerting than the lack of it. If you want to know, "is MS Word available", well only using Wine or Crossover, which to my thinking means "no." If you want to know, "are there word processors", there are many many many approaches. I'm sorry if I misunderstood, I certainly didn't mean to be offensive.

So these aren't my fields, but hopefully this will point you towards information. My understanding is that for professional (studio labs) work, linux is there for audio and video, using Free tools. In terms of graphics, I won't debate gimp & blender & such, because I just don't know. Maya is supposed to be top of the line, though. Hope this helps :-)

Now whoever came up with the term Web 2.0 in the first place?

I've heard people credit the term to Tim O'Reilly but I'm not sure
how accurate that is.


It is really a phrase with no specific meaning in the first place.


Yes.

I never even noticed there was a switch-over or a release of HTTP protocol v. 2. So it is really anyones own make up of a defintion for Web 2.0 (when is 2.1 getting released? can't wait)

Just wait until you see what we announce at the Gopher 3.1 Expo.

That's just Brian Reid's dubious recollection from 1979. Reid could probably be fairly classed as a mortal enemy of RMS. You should read the online (Free) book you cite instead of just copying and pasting from wikipedia. (It's funny you left out the online source http://www.oreilly.com/openbook/freedom/ where your misdirection could be exposed.)

I have two beefs with this. First, I don't see how "free as in speech" applies in any meaningful way against proprietary software. The owners of the code chose what to do with that code. If they chose to hide code, then that seems compatible with the "free as in speech" paradigm. Ie, I can chose to speak or not to speak. That is part of the actual freedom of speech.

Second, there seems to be a number of people over the years who claim that Stallman hates charging money for software. He's clearly "free as in speech", whatever that really means, but it's also claimed here and there that he also supports "free as in beer". For example,

Such rude behavior was reflected against other, unsettling developments in the hacker community. Brian Reid's 1979 decision to embed "time bombs" in Scribe, making it possible for Unilogic to limit unpaid user access to the software, was a dark omen to Stallman. "He considered it the most Nazi thing he ever saw in his life," recalls Reid. Despite going on to later Internet fame as the cocreator of the Usenet alt heirarchy, Reid says he still has yet to live down that 1979 decision, at least in Stallman's eyes. "He said that all software should be free and the prospect of charging money for software was a crime against humanity."

I think that this would be a good target as far as literature is concerned. I know that this costs ~$8k on Amazon so the copyrights are probably worth a lot but I think that a lot of these titles are public domain. If they are, I think it would be worth making a proposition in the millions to Penguin for their editions to be made available on the Wiki. I'm a computer scientist so I don't know how realistic this would be. Of course, they could probably host Project Gutenberg for free if they wanted.

As far as educational works go, I'm all for the textbooks. Grade school & high school, of course. But what I'd really like to see is the "Canonical works" of each field. I'm talking about the standard books that are used to teach each major in the United States. They could do a survey of books and then attempt to contact the authors & publishers to work a deal. Some titles I've seen on everyone's shelves are, of course, the Donald Knuth series and this list has a lot of standards I recognize just by the covers.

The most important thing for them to do would to pay lawyers and literature experts to scan the internet for potential authors willing to put out books for free. I've seen some classic computer science books go up like this and I'm sure that if Wikipedia asked for permission to host, they would be able to with mild restrictions. Like the author having the final say on what is kept and removed from the Wiki page. I mean, look at O'Reilly's OpenBook Project, don't you think they would allow Wikipedia to host that for a tiny one time fee? I'd bet that sales would increase if they even put a link to buy the book. I've heard a lot of authors argue for their books to be put online so that people will feel compelled to buy a hardcopy. Wasn't that the point of Google's textbook preview search?

Other people they could target is an open invitation to any estates that own the rights of long dead authors to have their ancestor's works published. Dr. Suess, anyone? I mean, how do you license a loved one's works and continually soak up money for them? To me, the work of Disney in this respect is just plain rotten and ruined some good guidelines to release works to the public domain.

I don't know, I just think that they should spend money over a period of time searching for permission to host books for free or nearly free. I have hope that this is done very very well and augments the OLPC project nicely.

I stumbled upon this link you may be able to pull the electronic version of the book from somewhere... I don't know if this helps.

First thing I did when I got home, was remaster the CD to get rid of that pocket knife background for KDE in the Knoppix 3.4 CD that came with the book.

-- Rapidweather

Why didn't he just read Slashdot? Faster, cheaper, and probably holds the core user/developer base that would have the most to say on the subject of Microsoft software. Face it: even the most virulent criticism of MS here would contain enough useful information that if Gates & Co. actually paid attention, they'd find innumerable ideas for improving their wares. And all for free.

Slashdot is useless to them because people here realize that there is no way M$ can fix itself. Their strategy of buying "mature" software, marketing it loudly and destroying all "competition" ran out of steam ten years ago. Before it, the NDA, non free way ran out of steam back in the 80s, as explained here. If M$ did not represent a significant public harm, it would all be comical. Instead, a court proved monopoly that sues public schools has the advocacy of your federal government.

We can be sure they are following their 1998 Halloween document plan to disrupt the free software community by astroturfing Slashdot. Their goals would be to bury useful information in garbage and make reading and posting an consistently unpleasant experience.

In my shop, our weakest bits are our third party components. However, we would not be as far along as we are without these components. This is also nothing new. Components have been around for a long, long time. The first place where components took off was GUI. When's the last time you wrote a message pump? Books like Better, Faster, Lighter Java and the push towards SOA are all about reusable components. The move now is to componentize the business tier. BPEL and YAWL are technologies that attempt to make it easy to publish and consume business process components. Assembling components is about build versus buy and accelerating schedules and it is also about reducing complexity (reducing maintenance costs) because good component based development (whether yours or someone elses) reduces coupling.

If you 'invest' in a book, make sure that it covers at least python 2.2 ... You don't want a 1.6x book which will leave you in the dark about new style classes, scoping rules etc. (ie. if you get the O'Reilly Learning Python book, make sure it is 2nd Ed.)

Having said that I'm going to totally contradict myself by pointing you in the direction of Instant Python. (Actually I'm warning you that this is out of date, it's just such a quick hand up that it's still worth a look at.) More generally a list of on-line python tutorials can be found here.

I have been tutoring a 7th or 8th-grader in Python for several months now using the book How to Think Like a Computer Scientist: Learning with Python. It's released for free under the GFDL, and I printed up two copies of it via PrintFu, and it seems to be a pretty good text. However, it's primarily geared towards those with no prior programming experience. Regardless, I learned the language along with him as I tutored, and learned some general programming things from the book. I have no idea to what extent you are familiar with programming, but I was able to look at various things and think things like, "Oh, those are the equivalent of Perl hashes". I found that Python and Perl have a good deal in common when compared to a language like C (caveat: I am most familiar with C and Perl). But, it is indeed free, so it could serve as a simple introduction to Python before you spend money on something like the O'Reilly text.