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I run into this a great deal, even from people who are otherwise technically sophisticated.

Here are some things to let you learn for yourself just what is and is not possible:

* https://www.ibm.com/watson/dev...
* https://www.ibm.com/watson/ser...
* https://www.safaribooksonline....
* http://devarea.com/machine-lea...
* https://ai.google/research/pub...

In short, I can track real-time recombinant memetics geographically now. I'm trying to get permission from my employer to publish some animations I've been working on that model injection and growth geographically and looks a lot like infection models put out by the CDC. You can even model meme-interaction and the spawning of new memes (not the innocent pictures, actual radicalized hyperbole spreading geographically).

if you talk about the number of routers a large ISP has, it becomes a lot of work.

Configuring large numbers of routers isn't an unsolved problem, even if you roll your own automation.

A large ISP is insane if they dodn't use automation to configure their hardware -- it guarantees consistency across the network, which reduces their overhead.

At that point, adding a "new" router is no different from updating the configuration on an existing router.

If this were me, I'd log everyone requesting WikiLeaks and redirect most of them to the actual WikiLeaks. Then for those that ordered the secret sauce, some of them would see my own custom version of WikiLeaks (which would probably look just like the actual WikiLeaks, except the "upload leak" button would go to me instead.)

This would probably require some tricky DNS configuration, but it looks like BIND supports this. If they lost control of DNS, a bind configuration like that would make it way trickier to detect, and more useful, than a global redirect of "I captured your flag!!!"

Same name, two different things.

O'Reilly's Safari is a service that lets you read books online. It has a free trial period, then you have to pay for it.

Apple's Safari is a web browser.

I have to point out that O'Reilly (which I work for) has already made most of our tech books available for free. Students can sign up for online access using our "Safari for Schools" program at https://www.safaribooksonline.... ,

apple's proprietrary[sic]?languages

So, you, the Great Programmer, thinks that Objective-C is "proprietrary"?

This proves just how little you know...

Why shouldn't I talk about valid statistics? Here is one of the many places you can find the statistics: http://www.motherjones.com/blu...
This article says Americans spent 33% of their incomes on food in 1963, and by 2009 this had dropped to only 6%.

It's called Engel's Law.

I know you're not the only person making less they did 15 years ago. There are probably millions like you, but in spite of that, Mother Jones can still point out how much more affordable food tends to be these days. Engel's Law has not been violated. Instead of writing another ad-hominem attack, you'd do better to use that time learning about Engel's Law: http://my.safaribooksonline.co...

(Hey, that author also cites milk as an example of something that is now consuming a smaller fraction of family budgets.)

It's a pity this is not available outside the United States... I hope it will come to Europe soon. Their FAQ states: "When will you expand beyond the United States? Book rights are regional and right now we are focused on building a best-in-class offering for the U.S. market. We don’t have a timetable for international expansion, but we are committed to growing Oyster and making it universally accessible over time."

It reminded me of Safari Books, a subscription service for technical books. It was started by O'Reilly, but now contains books by a lot of other publishers like Addison Wesley and Manning. But subscription fees are considerably higher than for this new Oyster service. E.g. for an individual subscription with max. 10 books at a time in your library, you pay $28 / month or $299 / year. Obviously the value of such a service is strongly related with the content they offer. I couldn't find an overview of books Oyster offers, it would e.g. be nice to know if they have a good selection of technical books.

Heck, in all honesty, I'd probably drift over to a NetFlix-style rental system if such existed. Pay, say $1 or so to rent a book for a month or so. That's more or less equivalent, admittedly in my personal accounting, to supporting my local dead-tree library.

http://www.safaribooksonline.com/individuals

It's not all sadism, although a little of that certainly helps.

As is pointed out in some books, part of the "Hacker Mindset" involves identifying and questioning assumptions. ( eg: http://my.safaribooksonline.com/book/networking/security/9781593273422 )

Screwing around with the UI and diving the code to figure out where the assumptions are, whether or not they're valid, how the assumptions can be invalidated, and what unexpected things happen when the unexpected occurs -- For some people, that's the very definition of "a good time."

I used feedbooks with my eInk device. They have all of the Project Gutenberg collection, as well as a load of CC works, and a nice typesetting engine for generating PDFs for your device (or ePub or other formats). For technical books, Safari Books Online carries all of the major publishers and lets you access chapters via a subscription, or download entire books in PDF or ePUB. If you just want to buy them, InformIT carries all of Pearson's books (Prentice Hall, Addison-Wesley, and so on), and they usually charge less for DRM-free ePUB + PDF than Amazon charges for a DRM'd Kindle book. Oh, and on my last book Amazon managed to fuck up the formatting of the Kindle version (the version on InformIT was fine)...

which ultimately means more expensive tools for people like you who do know programming.

Unlike other professional activities, which often do require some substantial up front investments in tools and equipment, the only tool that's absolutely indispensable to a professional coder, a computer, can be had for less than $1000 dollars or even less than $500 for a decent used desktop (ex-corporate workstation). After the computer is available, the necessary software tools can mostly be had for free or a very nominal fee. Forking over additional cash for programming courses or a subscription to Safari can also help move things along. However, even with all of these resources, becoming a good coder takes talent, patience, perseverance, experience (gained through extensive practice) and most of all time. It's not something that comes easily or quickly to most people and many of them eventually give up after dabbling for a few months. If you doubt that, look at the pass rate for the basic "introduction to programming" course offered in any CS program. It's usually the first course in the subject that prospective students take and it serves to separate the wheat from the chaff. Failure to pass this course after multiple serious attempts is usually a reliable signal that CS in general and programming in particular are not in a student's professional future or at least not as a primary occupation (note: this is not the same as the "intro to cs" course that's offered to non-majors). Sometimes I think that the politicians out there promoting "lets teach everyone to program" don't fully appreciate that and how difficult, demanding (and boring) the profession can be to those are neither interested nor able. All they see are "good paying jobs" without ever asking themselves why the jobs pay so well in the first place. If it were that easy, everyone would be doing it.

Why bother with that effort? I have cleaned keyboards in a dishwasher. Just leave them for a few days before attempting to use.

I even had an O'Reilly *book* about ten years back that explained how to clean your keyboard in the dishwasher

Another example of prior art may be Safari Books Online. Of course, IANAL.

Subscription services for books like Safari Books Online http://my.safaribooksonline.com/9781449309473 already "loans" books with a model like this. They pay out from a pool based on the number of times a book is selected from their library. Of course a single use isn't going to pay out as much as a purchase, but the alternative is for a Safari-like subscription library to buy a single copy, or as many copies as would be used simultaneously, and do license management. And that opens the whole DRM can of worms.

An open-ended revenue model can be advantageous to authors of frequently-read books.

Also read The Clean Coder: A Code of Conduct for Professional Programmers

To go with the computers, it would be great if you had some sort of library. Even just one bookshelf with useful reference books: introduction to programming in Python, HTML 5 reference, vim reference, etc.

I'd like to suggest a Safari site license, if you can afford it. They might offer an affordable Safari license for schools?

http://safaribooksonline.com/

P.S. I hope the computers will have Linux available at least as an option.

steveha

They did rescind that in the 14 months since the article was written. Now you're perfectly free to write code that works on a variety of devices. And if you write code that runs poorly on a variety of devices, you'll be savaged in the reviews (as Safari Books Online was, with their Phonegap app release http://blog.safaribooksonline.com/2010/11/24/ipad-app-safari-to-go-update-november-24-2010/). They came back and rewrote it native, and people are much happier.

To sample some of the book, check out the Safari Books page. Test-Driven Javascript Development is available in many open formats with watermarks or from Amazon.com.

That Safari link is especially useful if you're on the fence about getting this title, you can view some of the book there. Also, I'm not seeing my score (9/10), publisher information, number of pages (475) or ISBN or any of that.

Perl 5.8 and above have native Unicode string and I/O support, per the first chapter of the most current rev of the Perl Cookbook, and you can use utf8 as well to write your scripts in Unicode.

No, I mean stuff like this which people use today already to make iPhone/iPad-specific websites that break everywhere else.

It's funny how history repeats... MS has considered "-webkit-text-size-adjust" so popular that IE in Windows Phone 7 will support it, despite it not being any kind of standard. Can you say "document.all" and "innerHTML"?

Suppose I have a Kindle (or, say, one of the requisite apps on some other hardware platform), and I've bought a few books for it that I've noted and highlighted. Suppose, then, that I lose my Kindle. Or it gets run over by a bus. Or stolen. Or dunked in a hot tub. Or whatever.

All I have to do is procure/install a new Kindle, enter the appropriate account identification, and my books and notes are transferred to the new device.

Which, you must admit, is pretty cool. (Hey luddites! The cloud has uses!)

The fatal flaw in your argument is your unspoken assumption that a specific type of hardware owned by the provider is necessary to implement this scenario. I can think of three examples off the top of my head that invalidate that assumption. The first is available for MS Windows and OS/X today; Valve's Steam service.

"Ahh," you say, "That's for games, not books." True, but let's take a look at what Steam provides anyhow. There are hundreds of games from dozens of companies available through the store. The store is set up to allow an individual to purchase, download, and install any game listed on multiple PCs as long as only one login is active at any time.

The second is O'Reilly Publishing's Safari Books Online. This browser based, subscription service allows you to search through all of the online publications that O'Reilly has created. Depending upon the level of subscription that you buy, you can download immediately, or purchase access to, any publication that catches your interest.

The final example is Baen Publishing's Webscription.Net. Here you'll find books from Baen and six other publishing companies. Again, browser based so no special hardware necessary.

Although the name implies an ongoing charge to access material, no such subscription is required. Buy a book once and you can download it in several different DRM free formats. (Yes I said DRM FREE!)

Webscription keeps track of what you have already purchased, so a lost or trashed copy is no problem. Just log in and download your books again.

(BTW, Baen Publishing also hosts the Baen Free Library as a marketing tool. More than 40 authors have agreed to post some or all of their books there for free. Yes, I said FREE. DRM free, too. You don't even have to create an account to get access to all this largesse. :) Well worth browsing if you like science fiction or fantasy.)

Of the three alternate services that I've noted above, Webscription is clearly the most user friendly. What Amazon can provide that the other services can't is a much, MUCH broader range of material. That is a huge advantage and in IMO that is what is driving Kindle sales more than any other factor. (I don't mean to say that I think the hardware itself is trash. Quite the contrary.)

So, instead, please: Let's simply discuss the implications of Amazon sharing your highlights with others. (This is a matter that I really don't have any opinion on in this instance, but I guess I'll don my flamesuit anyway...)

The nub of the issue is that any vendor supplied solution inevitably means is that you're locked in to some extent. It's the nature of the beast. The question is, how much lock-in are you willing to accept in order to take advantage of the service? How much re-use of your personal information are you willing to accept?

Getting back to the immediate issue at hand: In my view, the fact that (a) it's only highlights; (b) it's anonymized; and (c) it's turned off by default makes it a pretty benign use of personal information. Frankly, if Amazon offered similar functionality as software on a platform that I already owned, I might seriously consider using it.

The real issue for me is that I have no d

Oreilly already has such a service.

Well what he does mention seems like they have the same style all over (lots of code).. You can read more than just the TOC (1/3 of every page), at the site..

150 http://my.safaribooksonline.com/search?category=itbooks.graphics.phshop

4.1.1. Data Integrity in HDFS

HDFS transparently checksums all data written to it and by default verifies checksums when reading data. A separate checksum is created for every io.bytes.per.checksum bytes of data. The default is 512 bytes, and since a CRC-32 checksum is 4 bytes long, the storage overhead is less than 1%.

Datanodes are responsible for verifying the data they receive before storing the data and its checksum. This applies to data that they receive from clients and from other datanodes during replication. A client writing data sends it to a pipeline of datanodes (as explained in Chapter 3), and the last datanode in the pipeline verifies the checksum. If it detects an error, the client receives a ChecksumException, a subclass of IOException.

When clients read data from datanodes, they verify checksums as well, comparing them with the ones stored at the datanode. Each datanode keeps a persistent log of checksum verifications, so it knows the last time each of its blocks was verified. When a client successfully verifies a block, it tells the datanode, which updates its log. Keeping statistics such as these is valuable in detecting bad disks.

Aside from block verification on client reads, each datanode runs a DataBlockScanner in a background thread that periodically verifies all the blocks stored on the datanode. This is to guard against corruption due to "bit rot" in the physical storage media. See Section 10.1.4.3 for details on how to access the scanner reports.

What resources are currently available for someone who's interested in learning Cobol? It seems that most books are long out-of-print.

I've recently decided to have a look at COBOL just for the sake of it, and, to my surprise, there was a bunch of more-or-less recent books on O'Reilly Safari about it. Here are those that were published after 2000:

• COBOL for the 21st Century
• PROGRAMMING IN COBOL/400: 2nd Edition

I've found the first book to be a reasonable overview of the language; I didn't yet look at the second one.

What resources are currently available for someone who's interested in learning Cobol? It seems that most books are long out-of-print.

I've recently decided to have a look at COBOL just for the sake of it, and, to my surprise, there was a bunch of more-or-less recent books on O'Reilly Safari about it. Here are those that were published after 2000:

• COBOL for the 21st Century
• PROGRAMMING IN COBOL/400: 2nd Edition

I've found the first book to be a reasonable overview of the language; I didn't yet look at the second one.

1. 1) Follow the Eclipse install guide from the Android dev site.
2. 2) Complete the various Hello World, Hello Views, and Notepad tutorials from the Android dev site. They are kept updated and are well written.
3. 3) Then read through this book. It really is a good one.

-Rod

1. 1) Follow the Eclipse install guide from the Android dev site.
2. 2) Complete the various Hello World, Hello Views, and Notepad tutorials from the Android dev site. They are kept updated and are well written.
3. 3) Then read through this book. It really is a good one.

-Rod

There is no reason why those same books couldn't be available in a digital format on the internet (except lack of reliable DRM), but you'd still have to pay for them.

Indeed. While Petzold's book isn't available, this is probably due to it being somewhat outdated now, the last edition having been released in 1998. Few people are programming to the Win32 API these days, but rather using a framework on top of it (e.g. MFC or .NET). The .NET equivalent and the Perl book are both available.

There is no reason why those same books couldn't be available in a digital format on the internet (except lack of reliable DRM), but you'd still have to pay for them.

Indeed. While Petzold's book isn't available, this is probably due to it being somewhat outdated now, the last edition having been released in 1998. Few people are programming to the Win32 API these days, but rather using a framework on top of it (e.g. MFC or .NET). The .NET equivalent and the Perl book are both available.

Also, there's really not anything that approaches the value of a good textbook available on line.

Oh, I don't know about that - I've found the Safari Books Online service to be quite useful.

The expectation is that you already know how to learn languages. The issue with only learning C, C++, and Java is that they all use a related syntax and they are all statically typed. This is not enough variety. I would suggest that before you hit the real world you learn at least one language that isn't the same. Python, Ruby are excellent choices at this time. Lisp, Haskell, Erlang are also possibilities if you'd like to explore functional programming.

But C, C++, Java and C# are the most commonly used and once one has good command over them one is that much more hireable. As you pointed out these languages are all related and IMHO the best way to solve the depth-of-knowledge problem he mentioned is not to specialise. Go out and get a couple of books on general OOP and Software design that doesn't tie you to a specific language but that teaches you OOP and general Software design principles on a higher, language independent level, this is one of my favorites. Once you have that kind of understanding you can switch between the above mentioned languages relatively easily. After that is done the most important thing is to get experience. This is IMHO best done (and I'm sure other people's milage varies) by getting an entry level job and either joining a FOSS project for additional experience or write a few small commercial apps of some sort. If you take the latter route the important thing isn't so much, say, writing a killer app for the iPhone or Android that will make you a millionaire over night as much as it is simply to establish a track record you can point at when applying for a job. If you make a few bucks along the way that doesn't hurt either. The beauty of joining FOSS projects or setting up your own is that even if all you can get in this economy is a job flipping burgers at McDonald's you can still build credible experience in your spare time.

Hardcovers will still be around: in fact, I suspect we'll see publishers start to include e-book copies of the text as a way to entice people to buy the very profitable hardcovers.

They already do that to various degrees. For example, a "C# Programming Language (3rd edition)" hardbook I've purchased recently came with an access code for a free 2-month subscription to that particular book on O'Reilly Safari. Sometimes it's the other way around - I recall purchasing a few technical ebooks where they give you a discount if you later purchase the printed version.

It's a pretty good product--the only bad thing about it is from the publisher's standpoint, since IIRC it requires you to prepare your books in a new format (which is a not-insignificant undertaking) and Amazon has near-complete control over the pricing structure. (The pricing structure thing hurts authors, too.)

Speaking as an author who's had to deal with format issues, I'm hear to tell you that they have to do it anyway.

Don't want to overstate my experience as a mass-market writer. Most of what I've written is obscure, boring technical documentation only a few specialists ever read. But a couple years ago, I got a writing contract with Sun to help update the Java Tutorial, which had been neglected for a really long time. This document is still authored in a kludgy preprocessed HTML system designed over a decade ago. The preprocessor (which was somebody's very first Perl program!) is this evil thing that was designed to generate both web content and PDFs for the printed version. I'm just good enough with Perl and HTML/CSS to update the web generator so the tutorial pages had a more modern look and feel, but I would have been totally out of my depth making the PDF generator work.

Fortunately, that wasn't my problem. For this revision, Sun had agreed with the publisher that converting the HTML into PDF was the publisher's job. Instead of trying to get our old, kludgy setup working, they hired this consultant to convert our HTML to XML, which could then be fed into an off-the-shelf XSL-FO processor to create the PDF. I was extremely skeptical that he could pull this off, but in fact he did an excellent job.

The really ironic part was that the PDF then got converted back to HTML for the Safari Books Online version. Although I'm reasonable proud of the look and feel I created for the original version, Safari's version is better.

The bottom line here is that publishers already have to think about delivering to multiple formats: PDF, HTML (with automatically generated navigation), WAP, and now eBooks. It's helpful, but not absolutely necessary, that the original content be authored in XML or SGML. The main reason to use these formats actually has more to do with maintaining large document bases and reusing content.

Nope, not very. There is an interesting story on Ars about the rise and fall and rise again of eBooks.

Interestingly, Safari OnLine (an O'Reiley site) doesn't mention this new initiative at all.

you know what, DragonTHC, I can empathize with your frustration. but please don't assume that you are somehow morally superior to the poster. the whole 'you should be ashamed' or "you're an incompetent @$$licker" attitude is awfully presumptive. if you read the post carefully, the person says: "I am absolutely shocked at how much is taking place within this company that I have little to no experience with." It is hard to believe that this person would be "shocked" if the employer actually disclosed all of the details that the job entailed up front. Therefore one can assume he/she wasn't given the whole story before accepting the position. Speaking from experience, a situation like this, however overwhelming, is a great motivator to learn new skills, consume vast quantities of caffeine, or to start searching for a new job. supaneko, i would advise that you check out a subscription to O'reilly's Safari Books Online ($20/month). That way you can search through and check out a great many books on multiple topics w/o breaking the bank.

I still enjoy they actual book feelings though. Weight, smell, etc... Some parts of reading a book have nothing to do with what is written... At least for me.

Another poster gave you an answer for fiction. For reference books, Safari Books Online has books from most of the major computing / IT related publishers. PTG are now launch a line of 'short cuts,' which are shorter than full-length books (30-200 pages) and will only be available in PDF form - no dead-tree editions at all - which can be bought via Safari or directly from the publisher.

$10 per month? The web site says 15-20....

I just have a bookmark... it gives me every book I need =)

Is there an online version?

Why yes there is:
http://msdn.safaribooksonline.com/?XmlId=032133678 X

Forbes is reporting that Amazon plans to sell books by the page, so you could purchase only the excerpt you're interested in.

Well, we read only a page a time, so I guess that would work.

What I found more interesting though was the mention of a program called Amazon Upgrade, which will allow you to view books you own from any web browser.

What I'd find interesting is having free access to O'Reilly's on-line versions of printed books I've already bought and paid for. Or even better, have the good folks at O'Reilly send me a bound and printed copy of whatever it is I'm paying for the privilege of reading on their pricey website, or previously bought as an electronic version. Or maybe they'll just start including an electronic version on CD gratis with every book they sell, and save me all this head scratching? Or maybe someone else will come up with a Netflix version of a Monthly Book Club and confuse the hell out of everyone.

So many options. so little time.

Interesting value-add proposition.

Indeed. I consider myself a cliche.

O'Reilly and friends index their books and provide a search service which shows you excerpts.

If you search for "full text indexing" at Safari you'll get a list of books discussing indexing, and the first item in the menus is an excerpt from a page on full-text indexing in Que's Special Edition Using Microsoft® Exchange 2000 Server.

You can buy the book or just pay to read it online, your choice.

--dave

This sort of thing is vital for decrypting your files after your death, or if you are injured and suffer amnesia, or other morbid scenarios in which your data outlives you.

Why buy the book when you read it on safari, along with thousands of other books with a free 14 day trial..

I wasn't a big fan of the online book idea until I tried Safari for the first time a few months ago. A quick search for snort reveals 38 different books that focus on or have chapters dealing with snort, included the one book "Intrusion Detection with Snort" that was mentioned in this review. The retail cost of these three books alone would cover a safari subscription for a year (10 books out at any given time). There is a free 14 day trial, it got me hooked. I ended up selling 20+ books in my bookshelf that were already on Safari, covering my Safari fees for the next 2 years.

speaking of which... has anyone subscribed to safari books online (or the o'reilly flavor of it)? what do you think of it? is it worth the cash? i like to have a book in hand, so i'm on the fence w/ this, however i like the fact that i have access to lots of books...