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Whenever I hear of a "self-proclaimed hacker", I think "script kiddie black hat scum of the Earth".

A true hacker will /always/, by definition, be one who is fighting black hats, in order to defend the original meaning of the term, as opposed to the media interpretation.

A "self-proclaimed hacker", on the other hand, has failed to earn the name the honorable (legal) way and is thus trying to "earn" it by sheer brute force and fear, and by twisting the meaning of the word. Unfortunately, the bad guys have been winning that battle (over the name) ever since Wargames.

O'Reilly is really doing a good job of putting the original meaning back into use, but alas, as long as the general populace aren't reading tech books, they're going to be fooled by the scriptkiddies forever, for reasons obvious.

Of course not. Safari has absolutely nothing to do with music.

Please let us all keep in mind that only three years ago Parrot was merely an April Fool's joke (and quite brilliant at that). See the original Perl and Python Announce Joint Development press release on use Perl, the interview with Larry Wall and Guido van Rossum on Perl.com and the O'Reilly book announcement: Programming Parrot in a Nutshell by Guido van Rossum and Larry Wall. Does anyone remember the Perl + Python = Parrot Slashdot story? I am sure that back then absolutely no one was expecting that it might all come true some day. That's amazing how much has happened during those last few years.

I have submitted a story but it was rejected, so please let me resubmit it as a first post instead.

The long awaited Apocalypse 12 by Larry Wall has been just announced by chromatic on perl6-language mailing list. It is one of the most important documents explaining the Perl 6 language design. (All of the previous design decisions are available as Apocalypses by Larry Wall, Exegeses by Damian Conway and Synopses by Luke Palmer, Damian Conway and Allison Randal.) Apocalypse 12 talks about Object Oriented aspects of Perl 6, i.e. about Objects, Classes, Roles (also known as Traits), Multiple Dispatch and also covers some non-OO decisions:

"The official, unofficial slogan of Perl 6 is "Second System Syndrome Done Right!". After you read this Apocalypse you will at least be certain that we got the "Second System" part down pat. But we've also put in a little bit of work on the "Done Right" part, which we hope you'll recognize. The management of complexity is complex, but only if you think about it. The goal of Perl 6 is to discourage you from thinking about it unnecessarily." --- Larry Wall.

(Lameness filter didn't allow me to post the table of contents. Reason: Please use less whitespace.)

You can access the entire document as a print friendly version. The standard version of Apocalypse 12 is divided into 20 parts. Enjoy.

If you are new to Perl 6 and Parrot, then Perl 6 Essentials by Allison Randal, Dan Sugalski and Leopold Tötsch might be a great introduction. The second edition should be published soon.

My wife and I have not had cable for nigh upon 5 years now; we have a TV, but it's got a DVD, VCR and Gamecube hooked up to it.

Netflix has allowed me to watch TV shows that I'm interested in at my pace. A couple of episodes of Smallville here, some Stargate SG-1 there, etc. etc. We're also getting caught up on the movies that we missed in the theaters (mainly stuff that appeals to her than to me...) Other than that, the TV isn't on. I get my news from the radio, the local newspaper and Google News.

Instead, I read. And surf the net. And use Safari to "check out" books on subjects I'm interested in, to see if I want to buy them.

There are all sorts of things you can do if you're not sitting in front of the TV. For every amazing new TV show that's out there, there's probably an equally amazing comic, or novel, or movie. (And don't get me started on the crap that some people feel like wasting precious hours of their lives on...)

Jay (=

While this is an interesting book, its problem is that it is already out of date.

The Nutshell series includes some of the most well-worn and useful technical books I own

Never have truer words been spoken, as O'Reilly just released an update to Porn In A Nutshell

That's probably a good indication that a new edition is on its way. Like most other frameworks, Cocoa is constantly growing. Apple recently added the controller layer and key value binding to support it. These things are important, but they aren't mentioned in the Nutshell book right now. $16 isn't a bad deal for a slightly out of date edition, IMO, but if you want a complete reference, wait a month or two. WWDC is coming up, and I would be surprised if O'Reilly didn't update this volume then.

That's probably a good indication that a new edition is on its way. Like most other frameworks, Cocoa is constantly growing. Apple recently added the controller layer and key value binding to support it. These things are important, but they aren't mentioned in the Nutshell book right now. $16 isn't a bad deal for a slightly out of date edition, IMO, but if you want a complete reference, wait a month or two. WWDC is coming up, and I would be surprised if O'Reilly didn't update this volume then.

Don't forget O'Reilly offers upgrades to their books. If you absolutely must have Cocoa in a Nutshell now, snag it from Amazon and then send in your title page and $27.97 when the new edition arrives. Cheaper than buying the old edition at full price and then upgrading to the newer.

If you can wait, of course, you'll get it cheapest of all.

linky biography

This is certainly a step in the right direction....

O'Reilly writes: Linux for Non-Geeks introduces you to Linux, without the technical jargon and advanced topics that you'd find in other books. You'll learn how to use Linux to do the normal, day-to-day computer stuff that you know how to do with another operating system, like connecting to and surfing the Internet, listening to CDs, playing with audio files, customizing your desktop, playing games, downloading software and fonts, printing, and more. Includes a complete installation of Fedora Linux on two CDs. [Full Description]

For Stallman, the opposition to security was both ethical and practical. On the ethical side, Stallman pointed out that the entire art of hacking relied on intellectual openness and trust. On the practical side, he pointed to the internal structure of ITS being built to foster this spirit of openness, and any attempt to reverse that design required a major overhaul. -- Free as in Freedom

The decision to move to GForge was made by Bradley Kuhn and the system adminitrators, according to Richard Stallman. They considered Savane could not be made secure enough. -- Sylvain Beucler, 2004

I implemented BIND on our home network. I personally didn't think it was all that tricky, though figuring out how to get DHCP to dynamically update the DNS took a little bit. Now, whenever we turn on a machine on the network (laptop, desktop, whatever) the hostname is automagically registered in DNS. It's a caching server, so generally it speeds up DNS queries quite a bit. The ISPs servers sucked for quite some time, so setting up our own DNS server we bypassed all that.

Best way to implement is to get an old box, stick a basic install of slackware on it, download/compile the latest release of BIND, and get yourself the O'Reilly book "DNS and Bind" for how to configure it. For basic setup, the DNS-Howto is good enough, but for advanced stuff (Dynamic DNS) you'll want the O'Reilly book for sure.

As far as maintenance goes, all I've ever had to do was minor tweaking at the beginning, occasional security updates (though I don't worry too much about this since it's only available to the internal trusted network, not the outside world), and deleting a couple of the servers I was using as forwarders when they got crappily slow and started bogging things down.

while your talking about the subject, in Free as in Freedom (free online version), ISBN:
0-596-00287-4, you can read here a specific example of what motivated Stallman in the search for free software and more importantly what context he uses the term.

Hrm something I read recently, possibly the O'Reilly Ethernet book said that 30% limit was for the standard before the full CSMA/CD functionality was added ,i.e. the old experimental slotted aloha nets.

With the CSMA/CD the rates went up to the 90s

On another slant, all the Safari sites, like this one have, right beneath the search function on the left a box you can check to "Search for code fragments only".... Of course, these are published expressly for the purpose of educating, so there's nothing illegal about using snippets of code from technical books. I wonder how much actual production code contains code from O'Reilly (or insert other publisher) books in it?

Errr...go ask O'Reilly

While DBA types have used the info. architecture label, the term was coined in 1975 by Richard Saul Wurman to refer to something far removed from entity-relationship diagrams.

Edit /etc/ttys. Uncomment the "/usr/libexec/getty" line, comment out the "/System/Library/CoreServices/loginwindow.app" one. Hasta la vista, Aqua.

Check the attitude at the door. I worked with Solaris, SCO Unix, FreeBSD and Linux. Just because someone wants a nice environment doesn't make them a wannabee, it's called 'progress'. Same reason we don't sleep in caves anymore.

Now, if you want to talk about what chicks really dig, you should check out the rack of SUN equipment under my bed. *fonz-style-thumbs-up*

It proposes that every computer be installed with an OP Client which would allow law enforcement ('Good guys.') and copyright holders (RIAA, MPAA) to remotely destroy the computer of any user who has been involved in copyright infringement ('evil-doer').

For those of you new to slashdot, April 1st is normally a "non-stuff that matters" day around here. Today is all about nerds playing jokes on the uninformed.

My favorite joke was the Parrot Prank which involved everyone's favourite publisher O'Reilly. That one even took me in for about a day. Anyone else have a favourite?

It proposes that every computer be installed with an OP Client which would allow law enforcement ('Good guys.') and copyright holders (RIAA, MPAA) to remotely destroy the computer of any user who has been involved in copyright infringement ('evil-doer').

For those of you new to slashdot, April 1st is normally a "non-stuff that matters" day around here. Today is all about nerds playing jokes on the uninformed.

My favorite joke was the Parrot Prank which involved everyone's favourite publisher O'Reilly. That one even took me in for about a day. Anyone else have a favourite?

I was active in a very minor way with Linux when I worked at Sun. The management just didn't get Linux at the time. It is moves like this that will be necessary to get numbers for Desktop Linux. This is also the sort of thing that is going to be necessary to make the $100 PC happen-and the $50 PC happen. For all of their flaws, Sun and Walmart may be getting that they are companies that benefit by emergence of really low cost personal computing--because sale of really cheap pc's means more sale of servers and software.

If it's anything like the Mac OS X book he wrote for Panther users, I would say it's likely to be very helpful as a guide.

"I knew a jackass who used to run a Windows NT4 Server as his desktop... For some horribly retarded reason, he was under the delusion that it ran better than NT Workstation."

Insightful, thank you.

In truth, it is fairly well known that the core NT4 WKS/SRV operating system executables (ntosknrl.exe, hal.dll, xxxdriver.sys, etc) are identical. Given that NT Server typically is tuned to provide longer thread execution quantums, page out memory less frequently, etc., it is not surprising that performance differences would be perceived between the two systems under certain loads.

From a 1996 Mark Russinovich article in Windows NT Magazine, "Inside the Difference Between Windows NT Workstation and Windows NT Server" ,

"...a binary comparison of the installation CDs reveals that the code base is the same."

"Workstation and Server are tuned in a variety of ways to suit their distinct roles...only a Registry key or two determines which type of runtime tuning the kernel and user-level applications will perform."

"Although NT Workstation and NT Server share the same bits, the few tweaks that the system makes according to the product type can significantly affect the performance of the systems, so that given the same workloads, one or the other will perform better."

Andrew Schulman's article on the subject is still also still available on O'Reilly's website.

I think he was referring to Safari Bookshelf. At least I hope he was. I think it was just a misguided attempt at humor.

My problems with XP are:

• The XP references to test development skip over a huge can of worms. Where I work (a disk drive company), the product firmware engineers don't write, or even know, the test system languages, and we use more than a few. In addition , many of the tests are canned, or beyond our control, like WinBench. IMHO, test software needs it's own team. It is unreasonable to say the product firmware engineers will just "code up" a test to verify a new feature. The test code could involve as much work as the product feature.
• Working in teams. We have a couple of asian engineers who don't seem to have a firm grasp of, how can I put this delicately, "personal hygiene". I would not like to be the "partner" of either one. We couldn't pair them together because they work in different disciplines. And most of the engineers here are code cowboys who would strongly rebel at having someone peer over their shoulder full time. Personally, I would have to troll slashdot from home, and how much fun is that?

Perhaps a better approach is to talk to the customer (whoever that is; usually a representative of who needs the software or who's paying for the software) regularly, balancing what the customer really wants with when and how the developers can produce it.

(Disclaimer: I wrote a book about that.)

I'll admit I haven't read it, and therefore can't vouch for its quality, but Linux for Non-Geeks sounds like it may fit the bill.

Oh, wait... do you want your boss to read it?

Oh, wait... do you want your boss to read it?

I think these guys have you covered.

How on earth is it insightful? If you read some of the interviewes with the people involved in designing .Net, their IL was designed to target a JIT. Quote: I think one of the key differences between our IL design and Java byte code specifically, is that we made the decision up-front to not have interpreters. Our code will always run native. So, even when you produce IL, you are never running an interpreter.

But appart from that, it was kinda funny.

I'm curious if anyone remebers the Linus - Tanenbaum: polemics.
Of course Mach is a great idea: WIndows NT/2000, NeXT, Mac OS X, OpenDarwin, etc. but Linux is not dying...

read this please

I checked it out on safari...

It looks good.

Try Unix in a Nutshell. There's about 10 pages in that book that are absolutely essential.

If you like scripting and all things Unix I highly recommned Unix Power Tools. I bought a copy last month. All the things about Unix that could not necessarily fill an entire book other their own nicely packaged together.

And best of all it's available on O'Reilly's Safari service.

I just read this book on the Safari website. The chances that I would have read it without Safari were pretty slim (though having the book show up on Slashdot helps those chances a lot.)

Safari is definately worth a look for any techie, and the first two weeks are free.

Here's a link to the full contents of the book on Safari.

The book itself is also good. As the review said, it was nicely detailed where needed and skims over points that could be skimmed.

Some people might not like reading the books on your monitor, but it doesn't bother me. I think the electronic search features (in a specific book, across all books, etc.) really makes the service much more useful.

Again, I'm not trying to plug, but after years of spending at least $50 a month on books I'm really satisfied with safari.

"Windows Reverse Engineering (PDF)"

Aaron Hillegass's most excellent Cocoa introduction Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X

When you're done with that one, skip on over and check out my defacto Cocoa bible, Cocoa Programming. Just a fantastic book, application design reference and compilation of knowlege from many years of working with these frameworks.

O'Reilly's Cocoa in a Nutshell, the API listing you've been yearning for.

Always remember to include Apple's own Cocoa developer pages.

If you are lazy to read it, that is the summary: immagine you have a small company and have a client that wants some kind of software. Your options are:

1. Develop everything in-house, keep the source code and try to resell the software to other clients.

2. Leverage on an open source software, make some modifications and charge for it. The client will propably have the right to keep the source code of the software (if you have used software licensed under the GPL), but you have spent less time and money getting the job done.

Of course there are lot of possiblities between these two possibilites, so go read the article if you want to learn about it!

I read this book.

I think a Unix for MacOS publication would be useful for those migrating to Apple from some (any) other platform.

As someone else already pointed out, that's a different book.

For casual Mac users? No way is this going to be of any use to them. If they were so inclined, they'd already have some experience on another OS by now.

If they are so inclined and want to get that experience, they can now do so without having to use another OS to get it, and this book will help them to do so.

(posted with Safari on my iBook G4, with pretty antialiased transparent terminal windows ssh'd to my Slackware boxen in the background)

Try Running MacOSX, which is like a younger brother to the venerable Running Linux.

Curious about other writing I've done? There's some useful free info online at 404 error page, particularly for Apache admins, and another book that slashdotters will appreciate is my Wicked Cool Shell Scripts. And, yes, Virginia, the latter includes specific scripts for Mac OS X too.

Hi, I am Brian Jepson, the author (the clever one) of the book. Please take a minute to read a sample chapter.

I hope you will like it, dumbasses.

So where is the Learning Mac OS X for the unix geek?

It just so happens it's available from O'Reilly as well. The Panther edition is due out in June.