Slashdot Mirror

Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "L. J. Rick reports at BBC that Babolat has released a tennis racket with gyroscopes, accelerometers, and a piezoelectric sensor in the handle that can assess your every shot, sensing where the ball strikes the racquet and the quality of the contact. ... The sensor can gather data such as ball speed, accuracy, and angle, and will pair the info with devices over Bluetooth or USB. 'We integrated sensors inside the handle of the racquet, but it does not change the specification. And these sensors will analyze your tennis game, so your swing — your motion — and all this information will be collected by the racquet,' says Gael Moureaux. The International Tennis Federation, aware of the growing influx of hi-tech equipment into the sport, has set up a program called Player Analysis Technology (PAT) to regulate such 'virtual coaches' as the Babolat racquet. The governing body wants to be calling the shots on where and how innovation can be used, as in the past it has found itself having to ban some products like the so-called 'spaghetti-strung' racquets (with double stringing that are already on the market and in use. In conjunction with its PAT approval program, the ITF has also brought in a new rule — Rule 31 — to reflect the growing use of connected equipment, and its possible role in tournament play. Approved devices need to be secure and protected against unauthorized access, to prevent 'sporting espionage' whereby data could be stolen. Knowing when an opponent's right hand gets tired during the second set would be a huge advantage. Despite the innovations, one trainer does not think he is in danger of being upstaged by a smart racquet. 'I think that it's great for feedback but you still need someone to analyze it,' says tennis coach says Nik Snapes. 'At the end of the day it's the practice and the ability of someone that makes the player, not necessarily the equipment in their hand.'"

Scientific Ninja writes "Astronomers in the University of Sydney have captured pictures of a 'union' between our closest neighboring galaxy, Andromeda, and its smaller neighbor, the Triangulum Galaxy. Published in the journal Nature on September 3rd, the research shows how large galaxies grow by incorporating stars from surrounding smaller galaxies. This popular model of galaxy evolution, called the 'hierarchical model,' predicts that large galaxies such as Andromeda, which can be seen with the naked eye from the northern hemisphere, should be surrounded by relics of smaller galaxies it has connected with."

Peter writes to tell us about a research group at the University of Sydney in Australia, who in the middle of some calculation wanted to check the numbers everybody uses for the thickness of our galaxy at the core. Using data available freely on the Internet and analyzing it in a spreadsheet, they discovered in a matter of hours that the Milky Way is 12,000 light years thick, vs. the 6,000 that had been the consensus number for some time.

An anonymous reader writes "An Australian researcher has come up with a novel way of developing optical fibres. Steven Manos, a researcher at the Optical Fibre Technology Centre in Sydney, Australia has developed a method of using genetic algorithims for discovering optimal designs of optical fibres. An article on his work had this to say "The problem with designing optical fibres is starting with a specific set of criteria and then coming up with a design to fit this. The computer program developed by Manos, which is run on supercomputers, does this by mimicking the process of evolution. The computer program combines two patterns to create a third fibre 'offspring', which Manos described as "similar but a bit different". This process is repeated thousands of times with the 10 designs best suited for the particular application chosen to 'breed' again." Another case of "When in doubt, use brute force"?"

CEHT asks: "As a research programmer at the university, I have encountered numerous times when I need to choose which language(s) or package(s) to use for different projects. Tradeoffs and performance issues have to be considered: results from one package may be more compatible with the data from other researchers, another package may find the solution faster and use less resources, and so forth. Maple, Matlab, Magma, and Mathematica are among the most well-known packages. Libraries such as IMSL is also popular. Of course, there are smaller (and mostly free) packages that tend to target specific types of problem, such as LiDIA, Singular, and LAPACK. The question is, how useful are these [and other] math packages? Do researchers use only one or two packages for most of their projects? Or do people like to mix things a little by pulling the strength of different packages together to solve a math problem? If not, do researchers write C/C++ programs and use GMP or Matpack to solve math problems?"

Current WTC happenings: The FBI is searching ISPs with FISA warrants. Architects and civil engineers are starting to speculate on why the towers collapsed. Pictures: NASA, a powerful photoessay, newspaper headlines. Current investigation news: LA Times, NY Times, CNN. They're finally starting to mention casualty figures. Finally, bjb writes: "It isn't the hollywood blockbuster of a story, but I'm a daily reader of Slashdot, and I was on the 38th floor of the WTC 1 building when the first plane hit. Oh, and I was reading Slashdot at the time. You can read about my experience here. It was originally an email that I sent out to friends and family, but I was asked by NPR's Talk of the Nation to make it a web page."

No surprise that Friday's The Message from Seattle column drew some heat here. But as happened after Columbine last year, the resulting testimony and e-mail - about Seattle (and Slashdot, too, which has become a model for some of the protester's software) - was powerful. Here are some of those perspectives, and a bonus -- you can listen to the riots in realtime with WinAmp:

On the Web, other people's eloquent testimony and experiences can often reach you quickly and freely and in better words than yours. It happened to me last year after the Columbine tragedy, and it's happening now after the WTO protests in Seattle.

When I wrote last Friday's column, "The Message from Seattle," I understood it would generate some heat on Slashdot. As is often the case, the sometimes thoughtful, frequently hostile criticism seemed to focus in the public Threads and the real discussion came via e-mail - the virtual realities of Slashdot.

Many of my e-mailers were disappointed that so many Slashdot readers contemptuously dismissed or, in their minds, completely misunderstood, the significance of Seattle, and accepted media stereotypes of the demonstrations as mostly the work of violent anarchists and radicals.

In fact, as almost everyone who was actually in Seattle reports, only a tiny fraction of the protests were violent and an equally small percentage of the protesters were in any sense of the term anarchistic. Clearly, smashing windows and terrifying people is a dumb way to spread a message, and this was condemned instantly by almost everybody. That's an easy issue. But the windows lost in Seattle and the residents, politicians and bureaucrats who felt intimidated or inconvenienced are besides the much larger point.

Gathering publicly to curb abuses of power, and to call attention to important social problems and potential injustices is in the best, not worst, traditions of democracy (it was the way modern democracy came about). The Seattle protests were also partly a consequence of the free and communicative bottom-up politics the Internet fosters.

The distorted coverage represents the way modern media work. Not only is most of journalism controlled - in many cases, literally owned -- by the very same kind of corporations the protesters in Seattle were targeting, but journalists can't resist covering public events in terms of their most extreme and controversial elements.

It's much simpler and more entertaining -- thus more profitable -- to focus on anarchy and violence than on these new and complex issues: regulation of emerging technologies, corporatization, the globalization of business, the exploitation of foreign labor, and the impact on all of the above on freedom, human rights and the environment. Journalists working for Disney, Microsoft, News America Corp., Viacom, GE, Time-Warner, Westinghouse -- these companies now own most major American print and broadcast outlets -- are hardly likely to ask tough questions about the nature of out-of-control corporatism.

For decades, the media has joined politicians and many educators in an ugly, continuing campaign -- sometimes America seems to detest its own offspring -- against the young and their culture: rock and roll, hip-hop, raves, music, movies, TV, video and computer games, and the geeks and nerds building the Net and the Web. Kids are continuously portrayed in various ways as dumb, dangerous, thieving, helpless, slothful, addicted or apathetic. In schools across America, kids who dress differently, act differently, spend too much time in "unconventional" activities like gaming or programming, or who speak their minds too openly are ostracized, placed on computerized lists as potentially dangerous, forced into counseling, sent home, suspended, or in a handful of cases, even jailed as potential terrorists.

Yet when thousands of people, many of them young, defy these witless stereotypes and travel across the country at their own expense to raise valid, long-overdue questions about morality, technology, the nature of work and the environment, they're branded thugs and anarchists. It's a wonder more of them aren't.

Thus the print and broadcast media brought us the parade of teenagers in ski-masks talking anarchy from secret locations in Seattle, as if this were the big news out of the WTO. These portrayals completely skewed the discussion of Seattle, and gave lazy, distracted and diffident people a good way to ignore or condemn it.

If it weren't so sad, it would have been funny. It didn't seem to occur to the "anarchists" - most of them, it turns out, nice (and at the moment, quite pleased with themselves) kids living around the University of Washington -- or the journalists covering them, that actual anarchists don't give interviews to the New York Times or go live on the "Today Show."

This coverage - and the often unthinking responses like some of those who posted on Slashdot Friday - obscured the nearly unprecedented gathering of so many diverse groups and interests. It's hard to recall an American political protest that represented so many different ideas, from so many different parts of the political spectrum. This Techno-Idealism is an offshoot of the way the Net works to move ideas around and connect people, cutting across narrow notions of ideology as being only to the "left" or "right." In fact (see below), open source software designed for Slashdot has become the model for many of the protest's organizers, coders contributing from different parts of the world.

Most of the people in Seattle were not only responsible - many tried to stop the window-busting -- but patriotic and idealistic. The protesters know that something important happened there last week.

Many e-mailers asked about this site. Slashdot is as diverse and tough-to-categorize as the protesters themselves. Intelligent and thoughtful lurkers abound, even dominate, whether they agree with opinions expressed or not.

The irony is that the people on Slashdot - even the most bellicose -- are building the very technology that is making this new kind of politics possible.

So here are excerpts from a very small handful of the hundreds of messages I received over the weekend that tell the story of Seattle the way it should be told - thanks to the Net, from people who were there.

From: Lonnie Princehouse To: jonkatz@slashdot.org Subject: Re: The Message from Seattle Date: Sat, Dec 4, 1999, 7:28 AM Dear JonKatz,

It is hard to say which is stronger- my appreciation of your article on Seattle's WTO clash, or my disappointment with the reaction of Slashdot's readers as a whole. It seems as though the mass media has missed the point of the protest entirely- the TV stations focus on "anarchists" (read: opportunists) smashing the windows of stores and looting, and on police "heroically" fighting back the evil crowds of *gasp*... protestors, most of whom, when interviewed, turn out to be complete idiots or fringe radicals. Sadly, it appears that this is the impression which most /. readers have come off with.

I was there. The protestors were extremely well organized. They were prepared. They were well-educated on the WTO. They were Teamsters, hippies, university students, Microsoft employees, steelworkers, union leaders, professors, lawyers, doctors, retirees, airline pilots, engineers, 30,000 - 50,000 people strong. And what we see on the news is a handful of idiot anarchists that decide to trash the place and provoke the police to attack thousands of non-violent protestors?

And so, you see, I am thankful for your article, which gave much more credit to the intelligence of the protestors than the mainstream media has done. There is a camraderie in Seattle now; I get on the bus, and everyone talks about the protests. Strangers from all walks of life and occupations are suddenly friends by association and common ordeal.

Perhaps it is this unity that will ultimately come out of the "Battle of Seattle" (is it really a battle if one side doesn't fight back?)- the unity of the have-nots of all political standings and situations against the elite and the mega-corporations. Let us hope so.

Lonnie Princehouse

(Slashdot: snark23)

fnord@u.washington.edu

Senior, Applied & Mathematical Sciences

From: "Mack Hooper"

To: jonkatz@slashdot.org

Subject: Response to your article on the Seattle riots

Date: Fri, Dec 3, 1999, 4:33 PM

Jon, I believe you hit the nail right on the head in your article. The media fails to realize how strongly we, as citizens, feel about issues like this, despite their best efforts to sway our opinions.

Media has fallen prey to big business, and I feel that true journalism today is almost impossible to find, save outside the mainstream media. I never have taken the opportunity to read the book, yet I remember a fabulous quote from the movie "Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas". In one of the retrospective moments of the movie, Hunter Thompson, as played by Johnny Depp, is looking out the window and talking about the counterculture movement of the 60s and 70s. He says something about how he could see where the wave fell short, that this movement had so much momentum, then just died. I wish I remembered the quote, but it holds quite true. For a movement that stood for so much good, it is sad that it failed. Perhaps failed is the wrong word. With such lofty goals I can see why they fell short perhaps, but they made quite a difference, as we talk about that group to this day.

I am only 18, yet for many years have had strong political beliefs. I attribute it to my mom being a hippie at one point, and encouraging me to read and learn.

I for one am proud of what is happening on Seattle. It is certainly a shame that some protesters have resorted to violence, but I am proud that there are still people in this country who can feel so strongly about their beliefs to go out there risking life and limb to stand up for what they believe in. I find it quite amusing that the media seems to think that these protesters are, as you so succinctly put it, "a wanna-be-like-the-60's generation that has no real knowledge of global politics or indigenous social issues to call its own."

Drifting back to counter-culture movements, I am a music lover at heart, and I frequently attend parties that are better know as "raves." I often hesitate to use the word, as raves have been made out but mainstream media as nothing but gatherings for thousands of hedonistic drug-influenced teens.

When you are part of the scene, you realize how truly beautiful it is. Hundreds, sometimes thousands of people, coming together at an event for no reason other than a common love of music. Yet we always under attack by journalists and politicians alike. Why do they feel compelled to "protect us from ourselves"?

Why do they attack a group that embraces ideals of peace and love, much as hippies did? What is it that they fear?

Now to get to the point. The people who I meet and socialize with from these events are some of the more politically aware young adults I know. Most are about my age or slightly older, 18-25 or so. When you are subject to as much bad press as we are, you tend to be more aware of what is going on. I live in Orlando myself, but in Gainesville there is currently legislation pending to adopt the anti-rave bill there as well (Gainesville originally opted out of it). So many college students and other like-minded young adults there are banding together. We are going to city council meetings, voicing our opinions, signing petitions, registering people to vote.

I am doing my best to make sure that the people I know and love know exactly what is going on. I am on several rave-related mailing lists... This one [my column on Seattle] I felt especially compelled to post. I don't think many people realize how grand a scale this protest is on. They aren't just protesting the WTO, they are protesting the dehumanization of corporate America. For once we are standing up and not taking it any more. We aren't going to line the pockets of the rich at the expense of the greater good.

Peace,

Mack Hooper

From: Jason

To: jonkatz@slashdot.org

Subject: Stay strong!!

Date: Fri, Dec 3, 1999, 6:08 PM

I've been taking gas since Tuesday, every day, at the front, and I have been out until 2am chasing the out-of-control military out of my neighborhood (Capitol Hill). Gung-ho riot police storm through the streets like an invasion from Star Wars, shouting at everyone, charging at individuals, shooting and spraying people for no reason at all, concussion grenades every 30 seconds or so, gassing everyone,a lot of bystanders, a squad even chased me into a parking lot, but it happened to be the parking lot to my apartment so I had my key and got inside before they caught me (I slammed the steel door *hard*, then they came around the front but we closed it in time and ran).

This is a very black and white issue, with non-violent protestors having gas, grenades, and chemical pellets lobbed at us. The destruction of property is highly overrated, just an excuse for the police to run wild. The police are just harassing people to be macho, they were out of control but we overwhelmed them and finally chased them out. It's mostly over now except for the jail protests, to get our people out.

As for anarchy, Seattle is very far left, we have a lot of anarchists, but they're pretty non-violent, well intentioned, easy to get along with. Essentially they are seeking solutions not through politics but through voluntary and spontaneous cooperation of the people. The war against corporatism has a lot of support, fewer and fewer people still believe the myths of they were raised with, times are really changing, the consciousness of the world is really changing, almost like we wake up out of a trance.

-- Jason K in Seattle

From:

To: jonkatz@slashdot.org

Subject: Fwd: [planningandstrategy] Terra (fwd)

Date: Sat, Dec 4, 1999, 12:58 PM

From: Ben Siegel

Subject: [planningandstrategy] Terra.

My friend, Terra Lawson-Remer, was still in prison [in Seattle] as of approximately 10:30am PST. She told me that she personally was doing okay, but that she was outraged at the way she and her fellow prisoners have been treated. Not only have they been held for two nights in jail without being arraigned, but they have largely been forced to sleep in cold, damp jail cells without any type of blankets, pillows, etc. Additionally, most people have not been allowed to see lawyers, and when interviewed with police they have been told that if they continue to ask for legal representation their phone privileges will be taken away. During interviewed sessions prisoners have also been physically abused.

Terra is asking that local STARC [an anti-corporate, anti-sweatshop group] chapters do what they can to help the political prisoners be released as soon as possible. This means holding solidarity actions tonight or tomorrow and/or calling local Seattle officials to ask for their release (see info below).

Again, I would like to repeat that Terra seems to be holding up fine. However, it is outrageous that she and the others have been treating in the manner that they have. So please do what you can to pressure the Seattle PD for their release.

Please make a phone call to Mayor Schell's office and the office of Washington Governor Gary Locke, demanding the immediate release of all nonviolent protesters currently being detained for excercising their 1st Amendment rights of free speech and peacable assembly.

Also demand that all charges be dropped, as these protesters were nonviolent people of conscience taking a stand against lobbyists for corporate criminals.

(Sunday, Siegel wrote: I would just like to let you know that Terra has been released ... so it isn't necessary to ask people to press for her release. However, if people want to ask me about STARC then they should feel free to email me: benjamin.siegel@yale.edu.

From: Matthew Arnison Matthew Arnison. To: jonkatz@slashdot.org Subject: WTO and the indymedia.org Date: Mon, Dec 6, 1999, 2:10 AM

Hi jon,

I hope you've checked out http://www.indymedia.org - an independent media website about the Seattle protests, created by 400 activist journalists. The publishing system is open to all, and is Multimedia, we have collected several hundred stories, including dozens each of audio clips, videos and images. We want to further improve the software to include an audience rating system, and maybe an audience editing system, inspired by Slashdot. we reckon it's a groundbreaking part of the protest. And in an echo of the global nature of the street protests, the software behind the site is a global collaboration. i'm one of the coders, and i'm in Sydney, Australia. and of course, the publishing system is all free software: linux, php, postgresql, and the actual web php scripts we used are themselves a free software project (active.org.au/source/ has an earlier version).

cheers, Matthew.

From: "Chaim Krause" Subject: Listen to the riots in realtime with WinAmp Date: Wed, Dec 1, 1999, 5:02 PM

Enjoy

http://www.elsewhere.org/wto/

Mindphunk writes "I just stumbled across this paper which "makes the political and ethical case for the adoption of free software by Community Aid Abroad and other members of Oxfam International". Some really good content including that UNESCO is handing out Linux in Latin America. There's some interesting comparisons - especially like the "baby milk" and GM [genetically manipulated] food analogies."

Danny Yee, interpid book reviewer and Slashdot reader has sent us a review of Sendmail. So, if you've always been intrigued by this wonderful util, click below. Sendmail

Bryan Costales + Eric Allman
O'Reilly & Associates 1997

AbookreviewbyDannyYee(danny@cs.usyd.edu.au),Copyright©1998

There is no doubt that sendmail is one of the more complex systems a typical Unix system administrator is likely to have to deal with; my first glance at a sendmail.cf file was certainly off-putting. Leaving aside whether this isn't an argument for using a different MTA entirely, it certainly makes sendmail documentation important. The O'Reilly Sendmail book opens with a slow-paced 190 page tutorial, designed to put the faint-hearted at ease. This goes through the construction of a simple cf file, illustrating the workings of rulesets, macros, and workspaces. Next are sections on installation and configuration - compiling sendmail from source, using M4 to create config files, using checkcompat() - and on administration - covering interaction with the DNS, security, the mail queue, aliases, .forward files and mailing lists, and logging.

This is excellent stuff for people like me, seeking a basic understanding of how sendmail works and a guide to simple administration tasks. There may not be much in it for serious gurus, but they will appreciate the second half of Sendmail, which is a detailed reference manual, containing far more than most people will ever want to know (I have only glanced at it myself). This could, perhaps, have been printed as a separate book: not only are some people likely to want just the reference manual or just the tutorial and administration guide, but bundling them together makes for an awkwardly thick volume. (O'Reilly also publish a pocket-sized Sendmail Desktop Reference, which is basically a summary of and index into the reference manual in Sendmail.)

This second edition of Sendmail covers version 8.8, but most of it (and certainly the tutorial sections) won't date that rapidly. If you actually administer sendmail then it is an obvious O'Reilly title to add to your collection, but it may also interest curious users - after all, almost everyone uses sendmail, even if indirectly.

Browse 430 other book reviews by Danny Yee
Top | Subjects | Titles | Authors | Keywords | Publishers | Latest Get Sendmail over here.

Danny Yee, interpid book reviewer and Slashdot reader has sent us a review of Sendmail. So, if you've always been intrigued by this wonderful util, click below. Sendmail

Bryan Costales + Eric Allman
O'Reilly & Associates 1997

AbookreviewbyDannyYee(danny@cs.usyd.edu.au),Copyright©1998

There is no doubt that sendmail is one of the more complex systems a typical Unix system administrator is likely to have to deal with; my first glance at a sendmail.cf file was certainly off-putting. Leaving aside whether this isn't an argument for using a different MTA entirely, it certainly makes sendmail documentation important. The O'Reilly Sendmail book opens with a slow-paced 190 page tutorial, designed to put the faint-hearted at ease. This goes through the construction of a simple cf file, illustrating the workings of rulesets, macros, and workspaces. Next are sections on installation and configuration - compiling sendmail from source, using M4 to create config files, using checkcompat() - and on administration - covering interaction with the DNS, security, the mail queue, aliases, .forward files and mailing lists, and logging.

This is excellent stuff for people like me, seeking a basic understanding of how sendmail works and a guide to simple administration tasks. There may not be much in it for serious gurus, but they will appreciate the second half of Sendmail, which is a detailed reference manual, containing far more than most people will ever want to know (I have only glanced at it myself). This could, perhaps, have been printed as a separate book: not only are some people likely to want just the reference manual or just the tutorial and administration guide, but bundling them together makes for an awkwardly thick volume. (O'Reilly also publish a pocket-sized Sendmail Desktop Reference, which is basically a summary of and index into the reference manual in Sendmail.)

This second edition of Sendmail covers version 8.8, but most of it (and certainly the tutorial sections) won't date that rapidly. If you actually administer sendmail then it is an obvious O'Reilly title to add to your collection, but it may also interest curious users - after all, almost everyone uses sendmail, even if indirectly.

Browse 430 other book reviews by Danny Yee
Top | Subjects | Titles | Authors | Keywords | Publishers | Latest Get Sendmail over here.

Danny Yee, interpid book reviewer and Slashdot reader has sent us a review of Sendmail. So, if you've always been intrigued by this wonderful util, click below. Sendmail

Bryan Costales + Eric Allman
O'Reilly & Associates 1997

AbookreviewbyDannyYee(danny@cs.usyd.edu.au),Copyright©1998

There is no doubt that sendmail is one of the more complex systems a typical Unix system administrator is likely to have to deal with; my first glance at a sendmail.cf file was certainly off-putting. Leaving aside whether this isn't an argument for using a different MTA entirely, it certainly makes sendmail documentation important. The O'Reilly Sendmail book opens with a slow-paced 190 page tutorial, designed to put the faint-hearted at ease. This goes through the construction of a simple cf file, illustrating the workings of rulesets, macros, and workspaces. Next are sections on installation and configuration - compiling sendmail from source, using M4 to create config files, using checkcompat() - and on administration - covering interaction with the DNS, security, the mail queue, aliases, .forward files and mailing lists, and logging.

This is excellent stuff for people like me, seeking a basic understanding of how sendmail works and a guide to simple administration tasks. There may not be much in it for serious gurus, but they will appreciate the second half of Sendmail, which is a detailed reference manual, containing far more than most people will ever want to know (I have only glanced at it myself). This could, perhaps, have been printed as a separate book: not only are some people likely to want just the reference manual or just the tutorial and administration guide, but bundling them together makes for an awkwardly thick volume. (O'Reilly also publish a pocket-sized Sendmail Desktop Reference, which is basically a summary of and index into the reference manual in Sendmail.)

This second edition of Sendmail covers version 8.8, but most of it (and certainly the tutorial sections) won't date that rapidly. If you actually administer sendmail then it is an obvious O'Reilly title to add to your collection, but it may also interest curious users - after all, almost everyone uses sendmail, even if indirectly.

Browse 430 other book reviews by Danny Yee
Top | Subjects | Titles | Authors | Keywords | Publishers | Latest Get Sendmail over here.

Danny Yee, interpid book reviewer and Slashdot reader has sent us a review of Sendmail. So, if you've always been intrigued by this wonderful util, click below. Sendmail

Bryan Costales + Eric Allman
O'Reilly & Associates 1997

AbookreviewbyDannyYee(danny@cs.usyd.edu.au),Copyright©1998

There is no doubt that sendmail is one of the more complex systems a typical Unix system administrator is likely to have to deal with; my first glance at a sendmail.cf file was certainly off-putting. Leaving aside whether this isn't an argument for using a different MTA entirely, it certainly makes sendmail documentation important. The O'Reilly Sendmail book opens with a slow-paced 190 page tutorial, designed to put the faint-hearted at ease. This goes through the construction of a simple cf file, illustrating the workings of rulesets, macros, and workspaces. Next are sections on installation and configuration - compiling sendmail from source, using M4 to create config files, using checkcompat() - and on administration - covering interaction with the DNS, security, the mail queue, aliases, .forward files and mailing lists, and logging.

This is excellent stuff for people like me, seeking a basic understanding of how sendmail works and a guide to simple administration tasks. There may not be much in it for serious gurus, but they will appreciate the second half of Sendmail, which is a detailed reference manual, containing far more than most people will ever want to know (I have only glanced at it myself). This could, perhaps, have been printed as a separate book: not only are some people likely to want just the reference manual or just the tutorial and administration guide, but bundling them together makes for an awkwardly thick volume. (O'Reilly also publish a pocket-sized Sendmail Desktop Reference, which is basically a summary of and index into the reference manual in Sendmail.)

This second edition of Sendmail covers version 8.8, but most of it (and certainly the tutorial sections) won't date that rapidly. If you actually administer sendmail then it is an obvious O'Reilly title to add to your collection, but it may also interest curious users - after all, almost everyone uses sendmail, even if indirectly.

Browse 430 other book reviews by Danny Yee
Top | Subjects | Titles | Authors | Keywords | Publishers | Latest Get Sendmail over here.

Danny Yee, interpid book reviewer and Slashdot reader has sent us a review of Sendmail. So, if you've always been intrigued by this wonderful util, click below. Sendmail

Bryan Costales + Eric Allman
O'Reilly & Associates 1997

AbookreviewbyDannyYee(danny@cs.usyd.edu.au),Copyright©1998

There is no doubt that sendmail is one of the more complex systems a typical Unix system administrator is likely to have to deal with; my first glance at a sendmail.cf file was certainly off-putting. Leaving aside whether this isn't an argument for using a different MTA entirely, it certainly makes sendmail documentation important. The O'Reilly Sendmail book opens with a slow-paced 190 page tutorial, designed to put the faint-hearted at ease. This goes through the construction of a simple cf file, illustrating the workings of rulesets, macros, and workspaces. Next are sections on installation and configuration - compiling sendmail from source, using M4 to create config files, using checkcompat() - and on administration - covering interaction with the DNS, security, the mail queue, aliases, .forward files and mailing lists, and logging.

This is excellent stuff for people like me, seeking a basic understanding of how sendmail works and a guide to simple administration tasks. There may not be much in it for serious gurus, but they will appreciate the second half of Sendmail, which is a detailed reference manual, containing far more than most people will ever want to know (I have only glanced at it myself). This could, perhaps, have been printed as a separate book: not only are some people likely to want just the reference manual or just the tutorial and administration guide, but bundling them together makes for an awkwardly thick volume. (O'Reilly also publish a pocket-sized Sendmail Desktop Reference, which is basically a summary of and index into the reference manual in Sendmail.)

This second edition of Sendmail covers version 8.8, but most of it (and certainly the tutorial sections) won't date that rapidly. If you actually administer sendmail then it is an obvious O'Reilly title to add to your collection, but it may also interest curious users - after all, almost everyone uses sendmail, even if indirectly.

Browse 430 other book reviews by Danny Yee
Top | Subjects | Titles | Authors | Keywords | Publishers | Latest Get Sendmail over here.

Danny Yee, interpid book reviewer and Slashdot reader has sent us a review of Sendmail. So, if you've always been intrigued by this wonderful util, click below. Sendmail

Bryan Costales + Eric Allman
O'Reilly & Associates 1997

AbookreviewbyDannyYee(danny@cs.usyd.edu.au),Copyright©1998

There is no doubt that sendmail is one of the more complex systems a typical Unix system administrator is likely to have to deal with; my first glance at a sendmail.cf file was certainly off-putting. Leaving aside whether this isn't an argument for using a different MTA entirely, it certainly makes sendmail documentation important. The O'Reilly Sendmail book opens with a slow-paced 190 page tutorial, designed to put the faint-hearted at ease. This goes through the construction of a simple cf file, illustrating the workings of rulesets, macros, and workspaces. Next are sections on installation and configuration - compiling sendmail from source, using M4 to create config files, using checkcompat() - and on administration - covering interaction with the DNS, security, the mail queue, aliases, .forward files and mailing lists, and logging.

This is excellent stuff for people like me, seeking a basic understanding of how sendmail works and a guide to simple administration tasks. There may not be much in it for serious gurus, but they will appreciate the second half of Sendmail, which is a detailed reference manual, containing far more than most people will ever want to know (I have only glanced at it myself). This could, perhaps, have been printed as a separate book: not only are some people likely to want just the reference manual or just the tutorial and administration guide, but bundling them together makes for an awkwardly thick volume. (O'Reilly also publish a pocket-sized Sendmail Desktop Reference, which is basically a summary of and index into the reference manual in Sendmail.)

This second edition of Sendmail covers version 8.8, but most of it (and certainly the tutorial sections) won't date that rapidly. If you actually administer sendmail then it is an obvious O'Reilly title to add to your collection, but it may also interest curious users - after all, almost everyone uses sendmail, even if indirectly.

Browse 430 other book reviews by Danny Yee
Top | Subjects | Titles | Authors | Keywords | Publishers | Latest Get Sendmail over here.

Danny Yee, interpid book reviewer and Slashdot reader has sent us a review of Sendmail. So, if you've always been intrigued by this wonderful util, click below. Sendmail

Bryan Costales + Eric Allman
O'Reilly & Associates 1997

AbookreviewbyDannyYee(danny@cs.usyd.edu.au),Copyright©1998

There is no doubt that sendmail is one of the more complex systems a typical Unix system administrator is likely to have to deal with; my first glance at a sendmail.cf file was certainly off-putting. Leaving aside whether this isn't an argument for using a different MTA entirely, it certainly makes sendmail documentation important. The O'Reilly Sendmail book opens with a slow-paced 190 page tutorial, designed to put the faint-hearted at ease. This goes through the construction of a simple cf file, illustrating the workings of rulesets, macros, and workspaces. Next are sections on installation and configuration - compiling sendmail from source, using M4 to create config files, using checkcompat() - and on administration - covering interaction with the DNS, security, the mail queue, aliases, .forward files and mailing lists, and logging.

This is excellent stuff for people like me, seeking a basic understanding of how sendmail works and a guide to simple administration tasks. There may not be much in it for serious gurus, but they will appreciate the second half of Sendmail, which is a detailed reference manual, containing far more than most people will ever want to know (I have only glanced at it myself). This could, perhaps, have been printed as a separate book: not only are some people likely to want just the reference manual or just the tutorial and administration guide, but bundling them together makes for an awkwardly thick volume. (O'Reilly also publish a pocket-sized Sendmail Desktop Reference, which is basically a summary of and index into the reference manual in Sendmail.)

This second edition of Sendmail covers version 8.8, but most of it (and certainly the tutorial sections) won't date that rapidly. If you actually administer sendmail then it is an obvious O'Reilly title to add to your collection, but it may also interest curious users - after all, almost everyone uses sendmail, even if indirectly.

Browse 430 other book reviews by Danny Yee
Top | Subjects | Titles | Authors | Keywords | Publishers | Latest Get Sendmail over here.

Danny Yee, interpid book reviewer and Slashdot reader has sent us a review of Sendmail. So, if you've always been intrigued by this wonderful util, click below. Sendmail

Bryan Costales + Eric Allman
O'Reilly & Associates 1997

AbookreviewbyDannyYee(danny@cs.usyd.edu.au),Copyright©1998

There is no doubt that sendmail is one of the more complex systems a typical Unix system administrator is likely to have to deal with; my first glance at a sendmail.cf file was certainly off-putting. Leaving aside whether this isn't an argument for using a different MTA entirely, it certainly makes sendmail documentation important. The O'Reilly Sendmail book opens with a slow-paced 190 page tutorial, designed to put the faint-hearted at ease. This goes through the construction of a simple cf file, illustrating the workings of rulesets, macros, and workspaces. Next are sections on installation and configuration - compiling sendmail from source, using M4 to create config files, using checkcompat() - and on administration - covering interaction with the DNS, security, the mail queue, aliases, .forward files and mailing lists, and logging.

This is excellent stuff for people like me, seeking a basic understanding of how sendmail works and a guide to simple administration tasks. There may not be much in it for serious gurus, but they will appreciate the second half of Sendmail, which is a detailed reference manual, containing far more than most people will ever want to know (I have only glanced at it myself). This could, perhaps, have been printed as a separate book: not only are some people likely to want just the reference manual or just the tutorial and administration guide, but bundling them together makes for an awkwardly thick volume. (O'Reilly also publish a pocket-sized Sendmail Desktop Reference, which is basically a summary of and index into the reference manual in Sendmail.)

This second edition of Sendmail covers version 8.8, but most of it (and certainly the tutorial sections) won't date that rapidly. If you actually administer sendmail then it is an obvious O'Reilly title to add to your collection, but it may also interest curious users - after all, almost everyone uses sendmail, even if indirectly.

Browse 430 other book reviews by Danny Yee
Top | Subjects | Titles | Authors | Keywords | Publishers | Latest Get Sendmail over here.

Danny Yee, interpid book reviewer and Slashdot reader has sent us a review of Sendmail. So, if you've always been intrigued by this wonderful util, click below. Sendmail

Bryan Costales + Eric Allman
O'Reilly & Associates 1997

AbookreviewbyDannyYee(danny@cs.usyd.edu.au),Copyright©1998

There is no doubt that sendmail is one of the more complex systems a typical Unix system administrator is likely to have to deal with; my first glance at a sendmail.cf file was certainly off-putting. Leaving aside whether this isn't an argument for using a different MTA entirely, it certainly makes sendmail documentation important. The O'Reilly Sendmail book opens with a slow-paced 190 page tutorial, designed to put the faint-hearted at ease. This goes through the construction of a simple cf file, illustrating the workings of rulesets, macros, and workspaces. Next are sections on installation and configuration - compiling sendmail from source, using M4 to create config files, using checkcompat() - and on administration - covering interaction with the DNS, security, the mail queue, aliases, .forward files and mailing lists, and logging.

This is excellent stuff for people like me, seeking a basic understanding of how sendmail works and a guide to simple administration tasks. There may not be much in it for serious gurus, but they will appreciate the second half of Sendmail, which is a detailed reference manual, containing far more than most people will ever want to know (I have only glanced at it myself). This could, perhaps, have been printed as a separate book: not only are some people likely to want just the reference manual or just the tutorial and administration guide, but bundling them together makes for an awkwardly thick volume. (O'Reilly also publish a pocket-sized Sendmail Desktop Reference, which is basically a summary of and index into the reference manual in Sendmail.)

This second edition of Sendmail covers version 8.8, but most of it (and certainly the tutorial sections) won't date that rapidly. If you actually administer sendmail then it is an obvious O'Reilly title to add to your collection, but it may also interest curious users - after all, almost everyone uses sendmail, even if indirectly.

Browse 430 other book reviews by Danny Yee
Top | Subjects | Titles | Authors | Keywords | Publishers | Latest Get Sendmail over here.

Reader and veteran book reviewer Danny Yee has written a review of Donald Knuth's The Art of Computer Programming. This book is a bit different from the normal pack, getting at the heart of how most computer systems function underneath, with much exploration into the algorithims and methods. So, for a better grasp of the fundament of computing, click below. The Art of Computer Programming
1: Fundamental Algorithms
2: Seminumerical Algorithms
3: Sorting and Searching

Donald E. Knuth
Addison-Wesley 1997, 1998

AbookreviewbyDannyYee(danny@cs.usyd.edu.au),Copyright©1998
Danny's Homepage

The tale of how Knuth took a decade off from writing The Art of Computer Programming to create the TeX typesetting language is one of the great legends of computer science. The appearance of a third edition of The Art of Computer Programming - typeset in you will never guess what! - is therefore a landmark event.

For those unfamiliar with the work, it is not about computer programming in the broad sense, but about the algorithms and methods which lie at the heart of most computer systems. Fundamental Algorithms contains background information for the series. Chapter one provides mathematical preliminaries and basic programming concepts, along with an introduction to the MIX assembly language, used throughout for implementations. Chapter two covers simple information structures: lists, trees, and related data structures.

The two chapters in Seminumerical Algorithms cover pseudo-random numbers - their generation and statistical testing - and numerical computation - doing arithmetic with floating point numbers, rationals, and polynomials. Almost everyone who has ever programmed has written a bubble sort at some point, but the full complexities of sorting algorithms are another story entirely. After an introduction to the mathematics of permutations, Sorting and Searching presents and analyses an extensive array of algorithms for sorting in memory (insertion, exchange, selection, permutations, Sorting and Searching presents and analyses an extensive array of algorithms for sorting in memory (insertion, exchange, selection, merging, and distribution algorithms), sorting on secondary storage, and searching,

The Art of Computer Programming is not a work for everyone, not even for all programmers. It will be an valuable reference for those working on the implementation and optimisation of key algorithms and data structures, but the more mathematically inclined will dip into it simply for pleasure. Knuth himself clearly enjoys the subtleties of the mathematics as much as anything: he writes at one point

Even if sorting were almost useless, there would be plenty of rewarding reasons for studying it anyway! The ingenious algorithms that have been discovered show that sorting is an extremely interesting topic to explore in its own right. Many fascinating unsolved problems remain in this area, as well as quite a few solved ones. [ Sorting and Searching, page 3]

and he provides some gloriously learned historical tidbits and mathematical digressions. The mathematics is heavy going in places, but the more difficult sections are marked and the material is laid out in such a way that those seeking algorithms to implement and performance analyses can skip the proofs and derivations and the more esoteric material.

Exercises are liberally provided, along with proper answers, which take up around a quarter of each volume. The exercises are carefully graded in difficulty on a scale from 0 to 50, and range from trivial tests of definitions to unsolved research problems. Reading The Art of Programming is a serious enough undertaking in itself (I have only read about a third of it so far myself), but anyone who succeeds in doing all the exercises will probably have earnt themselves several doctorates!

There is plenty of new material in this third edition, including new algorithms, examples, and exercises. The somewhat archaic MIX language has been retained, but we are promised its replacement by a modern, RISC "MMIX" in the next edition. Another incentive to purchase this edition, for those who already have the second, is the vastly improved typesetting. But the most exciting news of all is that volumes four and five are finally going to appear, followed by another revision of volumes one to three and then maybe by volumes six and seven (on the theory of languages and compilers).

Browse 400 other book reviews by Danny Yee
Top | Subjects | Titles | Authors | Keywords | Publishers | Latest

Thanks to Danny for graciously submitting this review. If you are interested in picking this book up, grab volume one here, volume two here and volume three here. If anyone else is interested in doing reviews, please e-mail me, hemos.

Reader and veteran book reviewer Danny Yee has written a review of Donald Knuth's The Art of Computer Programming. This book is a bit different from the normal pack, getting at the heart of how most computer systems function underneath, with much exploration into the algorithims and methods. So, for a better grasp of the fundament of computing, click below. The Art of Computer Programming
1: Fundamental Algorithms
2: Seminumerical Algorithms
3: Sorting and Searching

Donald E. Knuth
Addison-Wesley 1997, 1998

AbookreviewbyDannyYee(danny@cs.usyd.edu.au),Copyright©1998
Danny's Homepage

The tale of how Knuth took a decade off from writing The Art of Computer Programming to create the TeX typesetting language is one of the great legends of computer science. The appearance of a third edition of The Art of Computer Programming - typeset in you will never guess what! - is therefore a landmark event.

For those unfamiliar with the work, it is not about computer programming in the broad sense, but about the algorithms and methods which lie at the heart of most computer systems. Fundamental Algorithms contains background information for the series. Chapter one provides mathematical preliminaries and basic programming concepts, along with an introduction to the MIX assembly language, used throughout for implementations. Chapter two covers simple information structures: lists, trees, and related data structures.

The two chapters in Seminumerical Algorithms cover pseudo-random numbers - their generation and statistical testing - and numerical computation - doing arithmetic with floating point numbers, rationals, and polynomials. Almost everyone who has ever programmed has written a bubble sort at some point, but the full complexities of sorting algorithms are another story entirely. After an introduction to the mathematics of permutations, Sorting and Searching presents and analyses an extensive array of algorithms for sorting in memory (insertion, exchange, selection, permutations, Sorting and Searching presents and analyses an extensive array of algorithms for sorting in memory (insertion, exchange, selection, merging, and distribution algorithms), sorting on secondary storage, and searching,

The Art of Computer Programming is not a work for everyone, not even for all programmers. It will be an valuable reference for those working on the implementation and optimisation of key algorithms and data structures, but the more mathematically inclined will dip into it simply for pleasure. Knuth himself clearly enjoys the subtleties of the mathematics as much as anything: he writes at one point

Even if sorting were almost useless, there would be plenty of rewarding reasons for studying it anyway! The ingenious algorithms that have been discovered show that sorting is an extremely interesting topic to explore in its own right. Many fascinating unsolved problems remain in this area, as well as quite a few solved ones. [ Sorting and Searching, page 3]

and he provides some gloriously learned historical tidbits and mathematical digressions. The mathematics is heavy going in places, but the more difficult sections are marked and the material is laid out in such a way that those seeking algorithms to implement and performance analyses can skip the proofs and derivations and the more esoteric material.

Exercises are liberally provided, along with proper answers, which take up around a quarter of each volume. The exercises are carefully graded in difficulty on a scale from 0 to 50, and range from trivial tests of definitions to unsolved research problems. Reading The Art of Programming is a serious enough undertaking in itself (I have only read about a third of it so far myself), but anyone who succeeds in doing all the exercises will probably have earnt themselves several doctorates!

There is plenty of new material in this third edition, including new algorithms, examples, and exercises. The somewhat archaic MIX language has been retained, but we are promised its replacement by a modern, RISC "MMIX" in the next edition. Another incentive to purchase this edition, for those who already have the second, is the vastly improved typesetting. But the most exciting news of all is that volumes four and five are finally going to appear, followed by another revision of volumes one to three and then maybe by volumes six and seven (on the theory of languages and compilers).

Browse 400 other book reviews by Danny Yee
Top | Subjects | Titles | Authors | Keywords | Publishers | Latest

Thanks to Danny for graciously submitting this review. If you are interested in picking this book up, grab volume one here, volume two here and volume three here. If anyone else is interested in doing reviews, please e-mail me, hemos.

Reader and veteran book reviewer Danny Yee has written a review of Donald Knuth's The Art of Computer Programming. This book is a bit different from the normal pack, getting at the heart of how most computer systems function underneath, with much exploration into the algorithims and methods. So, for a better grasp of the fundament of computing, click below. The Art of Computer Programming
1: Fundamental Algorithms
2: Seminumerical Algorithms
3: Sorting and Searching

Donald E. Knuth
Addison-Wesley 1997, 1998

AbookreviewbyDannyYee(danny@cs.usyd.edu.au),Copyright©1998
Danny's Homepage

The tale of how Knuth took a decade off from writing The Art of Computer Programming to create the TeX typesetting language is one of the great legends of computer science. The appearance of a third edition of The Art of Computer Programming - typeset in you will never guess what! - is therefore a landmark event.

For those unfamiliar with the work, it is not about computer programming in the broad sense, but about the algorithms and methods which lie at the heart of most computer systems. Fundamental Algorithms contains background information for the series. Chapter one provides mathematical preliminaries and basic programming concepts, along with an introduction to the MIX assembly language, used throughout for implementations. Chapter two covers simple information structures: lists, trees, and related data structures.

The two chapters in Seminumerical Algorithms cover pseudo-random numbers - their generation and statistical testing - and numerical computation - doing arithmetic with floating point numbers, rationals, and polynomials. Almost everyone who has ever programmed has written a bubble sort at some point, but the full complexities of sorting algorithms are another story entirely. After an introduction to the mathematics of permutations, Sorting and Searching presents and analyses an extensive array of algorithms for sorting in memory (insertion, exchange, selection, permutations, Sorting and Searching presents and analyses an extensive array of algorithms for sorting in memory (insertion, exchange, selection, merging, and distribution algorithms), sorting on secondary storage, and searching,

The Art of Computer Programming is not a work for everyone, not even for all programmers. It will be an valuable reference for those working on the implementation and optimisation of key algorithms and data structures, but the more mathematically inclined will dip into it simply for pleasure. Knuth himself clearly enjoys the subtleties of the mathematics as much as anything: he writes at one point

Even if sorting were almost useless, there would be plenty of rewarding reasons for studying it anyway! The ingenious algorithms that have been discovered show that sorting is an extremely interesting topic to explore in its own right. Many fascinating unsolved problems remain in this area, as well as quite a few solved ones. [ Sorting and Searching, page 3]

and he provides some gloriously learned historical tidbits and mathematical digressions. The mathematics is heavy going in places, but the more difficult sections are marked and the material is laid out in such a way that those seeking algorithms to implement and performance analyses can skip the proofs and derivations and the more esoteric material.

Exercises are liberally provided, along with proper answers, which take up around a quarter of each volume. The exercises are carefully graded in difficulty on a scale from 0 to 50, and range from trivial tests of definitions to unsolved research problems. Reading The Art of Programming is a serious enough undertaking in itself (I have only read about a third of it so far myself), but anyone who succeeds in doing all the exercises will probably have earnt themselves several doctorates!

There is plenty of new material in this third edition, including new algorithms, examples, and exercises. The somewhat archaic MIX language has been retained, but we are promised its replacement by a modern, RISC "MMIX" in the next edition. Another incentive to purchase this edition, for those who already have the second, is the vastly improved typesetting. But the most exciting news of all is that volumes four and five are finally going to appear, followed by another revision of volumes one to three and then maybe by volumes six and seven (on the theory of languages and compilers).

Browse 400 other book reviews by Danny Yee
Top | Subjects | Titles | Authors | Keywords | Publishers | Latest

Thanks to Danny for graciously submitting this review. If you are interested in picking this book up, grab volume one here, volume two here and volume three here. If anyone else is interested in doing reviews, please e-mail me, hemos.

Reader and veteran book reviewer Danny Yee has written a review of Donald Knuth's The Art of Computer Programming. This book is a bit different from the normal pack, getting at the heart of how most computer systems function underneath, with much exploration into the algorithims and methods. So, for a better grasp of the fundament of computing, click below. The Art of Computer Programming
1: Fundamental Algorithms
2: Seminumerical Algorithms
3: Sorting and Searching

Donald E. Knuth
Addison-Wesley 1997, 1998

AbookreviewbyDannyYee(danny@cs.usyd.edu.au),Copyright©1998
Danny's Homepage

The tale of how Knuth took a decade off from writing The Art of Computer Programming to create the TeX typesetting language is one of the great legends of computer science. The appearance of a third edition of The Art of Computer Programming - typeset in you will never guess what! - is therefore a landmark event.

For those unfamiliar with the work, it is not about computer programming in the broad sense, but about the algorithms and methods which lie at the heart of most computer systems. Fundamental Algorithms contains background information for the series. Chapter one provides mathematical preliminaries and basic programming concepts, along with an introduction to the MIX assembly language, used throughout for implementations. Chapter two covers simple information structures: lists, trees, and related data structures.

The two chapters in Seminumerical Algorithms cover pseudo-random numbers - their generation and statistical testing - and numerical computation - doing arithmetic with floating point numbers, rationals, and polynomials. Almost everyone who has ever programmed has written a bubble sort at some point, but the full complexities of sorting algorithms are another story entirely. After an introduction to the mathematics of permutations, Sorting and Searching presents and analyses an extensive array of algorithms for sorting in memory (insertion, exchange, selection, permutations, Sorting and Searching presents and analyses an extensive array of algorithms for sorting in memory (insertion, exchange, selection, merging, and distribution algorithms), sorting on secondary storage, and searching,

The Art of Computer Programming is not a work for everyone, not even for all programmers. It will be an valuable reference for those working on the implementation and optimisation of key algorithms and data structures, but the more mathematically inclined will dip into it simply for pleasure. Knuth himself clearly enjoys the subtleties of the mathematics as much as anything: he writes at one point

Even if sorting were almost useless, there would be plenty of rewarding reasons for studying it anyway! The ingenious algorithms that have been discovered show that sorting is an extremely interesting topic to explore in its own right. Many fascinating unsolved problems remain in this area, as well as quite a few solved ones. [ Sorting and Searching, page 3]

and he provides some gloriously learned historical tidbits and mathematical digressions. The mathematics is heavy going in places, but the more difficult sections are marked and the material is laid out in such a way that those seeking algorithms to implement and performance analyses can skip the proofs and derivations and the more esoteric material.

Exercises are liberally provided, along with proper answers, which take up around a quarter of each volume. The exercises are carefully graded in difficulty on a scale from 0 to 50, and range from trivial tests of definitions to unsolved research problems. Reading The Art of Programming is a serious enough undertaking in itself (I have only read about a third of it so far myself), but anyone who succeeds in doing all the exercises will probably have earnt themselves several doctorates!

There is plenty of new material in this third edition, including new algorithms, examples, and exercises. The somewhat archaic MIX language has been retained, but we are promised its replacement by a modern, RISC "MMIX" in the next edition. Another incentive to purchase this edition, for those who already have the second, is the vastly improved typesetting. But the most exciting news of all is that volumes four and five are finally going to appear, followed by another revision of volumes one to three and then maybe by volumes six and seven (on the theory of languages and compilers).

Browse 400 other book reviews by Danny Yee
Top | Subjects | Titles | Authors | Keywords | Publishers | Latest

Thanks to Danny for graciously submitting this review. If you are interested in picking this book up, grab volume one here, volume two here and volume three here. If anyone else is interested in doing reviews, please e-mail me, hemos.

Reader and veteran book reviewer Danny Yee has written a review of Donald Knuth's The Art of Computer Programming. This book is a bit different from the normal pack, getting at the heart of how most computer systems function underneath, with much exploration into the algorithims and methods. So, for a better grasp of the fundament of computing, click below. The Art of Computer Programming
1: Fundamental Algorithms
2: Seminumerical Algorithms
3: Sorting and Searching

Donald E. Knuth
Addison-Wesley 1997, 1998

AbookreviewbyDannyYee(danny@cs.usyd.edu.au),Copyright©1998
Danny's Homepage

The tale of how Knuth took a decade off from writing The Art of Computer Programming to create the TeX typesetting language is one of the great legends of computer science. The appearance of a third edition of The Art of Computer Programming - typeset in you will never guess what! - is therefore a landmark event.

For those unfamiliar with the work, it is not about computer programming in the broad sense, but about the algorithms and methods which lie at the heart of most computer systems. Fundamental Algorithms contains background information for the series. Chapter one provides mathematical preliminaries and basic programming concepts, along with an introduction to the MIX assembly language, used throughout for implementations. Chapter two covers simple information structures: lists, trees, and related data structures.

The two chapters in Seminumerical Algorithms cover pseudo-random numbers - their generation and statistical testing - and numerical computation - doing arithmetic with floating point numbers, rationals, and polynomials. Almost everyone who has ever programmed has written a bubble sort at some point, but the full complexities of sorting algorithms are another story entirely. After an introduction to the mathematics of permutations, Sorting and Searching presents and analyses an extensive array of algorithms for sorting in memory (insertion, exchange, selection, permutations, Sorting and Searching presents and analyses an extensive array of algorithms for sorting in memory (insertion, exchange, selection, merging, and distribution algorithms), sorting on secondary storage, and searching,

The Art of Computer Programming is not a work for everyone, not even for all programmers. It will be an valuable reference for those working on the implementation and optimisation of key algorithms and data structures, but the more mathematically inclined will dip into it simply for pleasure. Knuth himself clearly enjoys the subtleties of the mathematics as much as anything: he writes at one point

Even if sorting were almost useless, there would be plenty of rewarding reasons for studying it anyway! The ingenious algorithms that have been discovered show that sorting is an extremely interesting topic to explore in its own right. Many fascinating unsolved problems remain in this area, as well as quite a few solved ones. [ Sorting and Searching, page 3]

and he provides some gloriously learned historical tidbits and mathematical digressions. The mathematics is heavy going in places, but the more difficult sections are marked and the material is laid out in such a way that those seeking algorithms to implement and performance analyses can skip the proofs and derivations and the more esoteric material.

Exercises are liberally provided, along with proper answers, which take up around a quarter of each volume. The exercises are carefully graded in difficulty on a scale from 0 to 50, and range from trivial tests of definitions to unsolved research problems. Reading The Art of Programming is a serious enough undertaking in itself (I have only read about a third of it so far myself), but anyone who succeeds in doing all the exercises will probably have earnt themselves several doctorates!

There is plenty of new material in this third edition, including new algorithms, examples, and exercises. The somewhat archaic MIX language has been retained, but we are promised its replacement by a modern, RISC "MMIX" in the next edition. Another incentive to purchase this edition, for those who already have the second, is the vastly improved typesetting. But the most exciting news of all is that volumes four and five are finally going to appear, followed by another revision of volumes one to three and then maybe by volumes six and seven (on the theory of languages and compilers).

Browse 400 other book reviews by Danny Yee
Top | Subjects | Titles | Authors | Keywords | Publishers | Latest

Thanks to Danny for graciously submitting this review. If you are interested in picking this book up, grab volume one here, volume two here and volume three here. If anyone else is interested in doing reviews, please e-mail me, hemos.

Reader and veteran book reviewer Danny Yee has written a review of Donald Knuth's The Art of Computer Programming. This book is a bit different from the normal pack, getting at the heart of how most computer systems function underneath, with much exploration into the algorithims and methods. So, for a better grasp of the fundament of computing, click below. The Art of Computer Programming
1: Fundamental Algorithms
2: Seminumerical Algorithms
3: Sorting and Searching

Donald E. Knuth
Addison-Wesley 1997, 1998

AbookreviewbyDannyYee(danny@cs.usyd.edu.au),Copyright©1998
Danny's Homepage

The tale of how Knuth took a decade off from writing The Art of Computer Programming to create the TeX typesetting language is one of the great legends of computer science. The appearance of a third edition of The Art of Computer Programming - typeset in you will never guess what! - is therefore a landmark event.

For those unfamiliar with the work, it is not about computer programming in the broad sense, but about the algorithms and methods which lie at the heart of most computer systems. Fundamental Algorithms contains background information for the series. Chapter one provides mathematical preliminaries and basic programming concepts, along with an introduction to the MIX assembly language, used throughout for implementations. Chapter two covers simple information structures: lists, trees, and related data structures.

The two chapters in Seminumerical Algorithms cover pseudo-random numbers - their generation and statistical testing - and numerical computation - doing arithmetic with floating point numbers, rationals, and polynomials. Almost everyone who has ever programmed has written a bubble sort at some point, but the full complexities of sorting algorithms are another story entirely. After an introduction to the mathematics of permutations, Sorting and Searching presents and analyses an extensive array of algorithms for sorting in memory (insertion, exchange, selection, permutations, Sorting and Searching presents and analyses an extensive array of algorithms for sorting in memory (insertion, exchange, selection, merging, and distribution algorithms), sorting on secondary storage, and searching,

The Art of Computer Programming is not a work for everyone, not even for all programmers. It will be an valuable reference for those working on the implementation and optimisation of key algorithms and data structures, but the more mathematically inclined will dip into it simply for pleasure. Knuth himself clearly enjoys the subtleties of the mathematics as much as anything: he writes at one point

Even if sorting were almost useless, there would be plenty of rewarding reasons for studying it anyway! The ingenious algorithms that have been discovered show that sorting is an extremely interesting topic to explore in its own right. Many fascinating unsolved problems remain in this area, as well as quite a few solved ones. [ Sorting and Searching, page 3]

and he provides some gloriously learned historical tidbits and mathematical digressions. The mathematics is heavy going in places, but the more difficult sections are marked and the material is laid out in such a way that those seeking algorithms to implement and performance analyses can skip the proofs and derivations and the more esoteric material.

Exercises are liberally provided, along with proper answers, which take up around a quarter of each volume. The exercises are carefully graded in difficulty on a scale from 0 to 50, and range from trivial tests of definitions to unsolved research problems. Reading The Art of Programming is a serious enough undertaking in itself (I have only read about a third of it so far myself), but anyone who succeeds in doing all the exercises will probably have earnt themselves several doctorates!

There is plenty of new material in this third edition, including new algorithms, examples, and exercises. The somewhat archaic MIX language has been retained, but we are promised its replacement by a modern, RISC "MMIX" in the next edition. Another incentive to purchase this edition, for those who already have the second, is the vastly improved typesetting. But the most exciting news of all is that volumes four and five are finally going to appear, followed by another revision of volumes one to three and then maybe by volumes six and seven (on the theory of languages and compilers).

Browse 400 other book reviews by Danny Yee
Top | Subjects | Titles | Authors | Keywords | Publishers | Latest

Thanks to Danny for graciously submitting this review. If you are interested in picking this book up, grab volume one here, volume two here and volume three here. If anyone else is interested in doing reviews, please e-mail me, hemos.

Reader and veteran book reviewer Danny Yee has written a review of Donald Knuth's The Art of Computer Programming. This book is a bit different from the normal pack, getting at the heart of how most computer systems function underneath, with much exploration into the algorithims and methods. So, for a better grasp of the fundament of computing, click below. The Art of Computer Programming
1: Fundamental Algorithms
2: Seminumerical Algorithms
3: Sorting and Searching

Donald E. Knuth
Addison-Wesley 1997, 1998

AbookreviewbyDannyYee(danny@cs.usyd.edu.au),Copyright©1998
Danny's Homepage

The tale of how Knuth took a decade off from writing The Art of Computer Programming to create the TeX typesetting language is one of the great legends of computer science. The appearance of a third edition of The Art of Computer Programming - typeset in you will never guess what! - is therefore a landmark event.

For those unfamiliar with the work, it is not about computer programming in the broad sense, but about the algorithms and methods which lie at the heart of most computer systems. Fundamental Algorithms contains background information for the series. Chapter one provides mathematical preliminaries and basic programming concepts, along with an introduction to the MIX assembly language, used throughout for implementations. Chapter two covers simple information structures: lists, trees, and related data structures.

The two chapters in Seminumerical Algorithms cover pseudo-random numbers - their generation and statistical testing - and numerical computation - doing arithmetic with floating point numbers, rationals, and polynomials. Almost everyone who has ever programmed has written a bubble sort at some point, but the full complexities of sorting algorithms are another story entirely. After an introduction to the mathematics of permutations, Sorting and Searching presents and analyses an extensive array of algorithms for sorting in memory (insertion, exchange, selection, permutations, Sorting and Searching presents and analyses an extensive array of algorithms for sorting in memory (insertion, exchange, selection, merging, and distribution algorithms), sorting on secondary storage, and searching,

The Art of Computer Programming is not a work for everyone, not even for all programmers. It will be an valuable reference for those working on the implementation and optimisation of key algorithms and data structures, but the more mathematically inclined will dip into it simply for pleasure. Knuth himself clearly enjoys the subtleties of the mathematics as much as anything: he writes at one point

Even if sorting were almost useless, there would be plenty of rewarding reasons for studying it anyway! The ingenious algorithms that have been discovered show that sorting is an extremely interesting topic to explore in its own right. Many fascinating unsolved problems remain in this area, as well as quite a few solved ones. [ Sorting and Searching, page 3]

and he provides some gloriously learned historical tidbits and mathematical digressions. The mathematics is heavy going in places, but the more difficult sections are marked and the material is laid out in such a way that those seeking algorithms to implement and performance analyses can skip the proofs and derivations and the more esoteric material.

Exercises are liberally provided, along with proper answers, which take up around a quarter of each volume. The exercises are carefully graded in difficulty on a scale from 0 to 50, and range from trivial tests of definitions to unsolved research problems. Reading The Art of Programming is a serious enough undertaking in itself (I have only read about a third of it so far myself), but anyone who succeeds in doing all the exercises will probably have earnt themselves several doctorates!

There is plenty of new material in this third edition, including new algorithms, examples, and exercises. The somewhat archaic MIX language has been retained, but we are promised its replacement by a modern, RISC "MMIX" in the next edition. Another incentive to purchase this edition, for those who already have the second, is the vastly improved typesetting. But the most exciting news of all is that volumes four and five are finally going to appear, followed by another revision of volumes one to three and then maybe by volumes six and seven (on the theory of languages and compilers).

Browse 400 other book reviews by Danny Yee
Top | Subjects | Titles | Authors | Keywords | Publishers | Latest

Thanks to Danny for graciously submitting this review. If you are interested in picking this book up, grab volume one here, volume two here and volume three here. If anyone else is interested in doing reviews, please e-mail me, hemos.

Reader and veteran book reviewer Danny Yee has written a review of Donald Knuth's The Art of Computer Programming. This book is a bit different from the normal pack, getting at the heart of how most computer systems function underneath, with much exploration into the algorithims and methods. So, for a better grasp of the fundament of computing, click below. The Art of Computer Programming
1: Fundamental Algorithms
2: Seminumerical Algorithms
3: Sorting and Searching

Donald E. Knuth
Addison-Wesley 1997, 1998

AbookreviewbyDannyYee(danny@cs.usyd.edu.au),Copyright©1998
Danny's Homepage

The tale of how Knuth took a decade off from writing The Art of Computer Programming to create the TeX typesetting language is one of the great legends of computer science. The appearance of a third edition of The Art of Computer Programming - typeset in you will never guess what! - is therefore a landmark event.

For those unfamiliar with the work, it is not about computer programming in the broad sense, but about the algorithms and methods which lie at the heart of most computer systems. Fundamental Algorithms contains background information for the series. Chapter one provides mathematical preliminaries and basic programming concepts, along with an introduction to the MIX assembly language, used throughout for implementations. Chapter two covers simple information structures: lists, trees, and related data structures.

The two chapters in Seminumerical Algorithms cover pseudo-random numbers - their generation and statistical testing - and numerical computation - doing arithmetic with floating point numbers, rationals, and polynomials. Almost everyone who has ever programmed has written a bubble sort at some point, but the full complexities of sorting algorithms are another story entirely. After an introduction to the mathematics of permutations, Sorting and Searching presents and analyses an extensive array of algorithms for sorting in memory (insertion, exchange, selection, permutations, Sorting and Searching presents and analyses an extensive array of algorithms for sorting in memory (insertion, exchange, selection, merging, and distribution algorithms), sorting on secondary storage, and searching,

The Art of Computer Programming is not a work for everyone, not even for all programmers. It will be an valuable reference for those working on the implementation and optimisation of key algorithms and data structures, but the more mathematically inclined will dip into it simply for pleasure. Knuth himself clearly enjoys the subtleties of the mathematics as much as anything: he writes at one point

Even if sorting were almost useless, there would be plenty of rewarding reasons for studying it anyway! The ingenious algorithms that have been discovered show that sorting is an extremely interesting topic to explore in its own right. Many fascinating unsolved problems remain in this area, as well as quite a few solved ones. [ Sorting and Searching, page 3]

and he provides some gloriously learned historical tidbits and mathematical digressions. The mathematics is heavy going in places, but the more difficult sections are marked and the material is laid out in such a way that those seeking algorithms to implement and performance analyses can skip the proofs and derivations and the more esoteric material.

Exercises are liberally provided, along with proper answers, which take up around a quarter of each volume. The exercises are carefully graded in difficulty on a scale from 0 to 50, and range from trivial tests of definitions to unsolved research problems. Reading The Art of Programming is a serious enough undertaking in itself (I have only read about a third of it so far myself), but anyone who succeeds in doing all the exercises will probably have earnt themselves several doctorates!

There is plenty of new material in this third edition, including new algorithms, examples, and exercises. The somewhat archaic MIX language has been retained, but we are promised its replacement by a modern, RISC "MMIX" in the next edition. Another incentive to purchase this edition, for those who already have the second, is the vastly improved typesetting. But the most exciting news of all is that volumes four and five are finally going to appear, followed by another revision of volumes one to three and then maybe by volumes six and seven (on the theory of languages and compilers).

Browse 400 other book reviews by Danny Yee
Top | Subjects | Titles | Authors | Keywords | Publishers | Latest

Thanks to Danny for graciously submitting this review. If you are interested in picking this book up, grab volume one here, volume two here and volume three here. If anyone else is interested in doing reviews, please e-mail me, hemos.

Reader and veteran book reviewer Danny Yee has written a review of Donald Knuth's The Art of Computer Programming. This book is a bit different from the normal pack, getting at the heart of how most computer systems function underneath, with much exploration into the algorithims and methods. So, for a better grasp of the fundament of computing, click below. The Art of Computer Programming
1: Fundamental Algorithms
2: Seminumerical Algorithms
3: Sorting and Searching

Donald E. Knuth
Addison-Wesley 1997, 1998

AbookreviewbyDannyYee(danny@cs.usyd.edu.au),Copyright©1998
Danny's Homepage

The tale of how Knuth took a decade off from writing The Art of Computer Programming to create the TeX typesetting language is one of the great legends of computer science. The appearance of a third edition of The Art of Computer Programming - typeset in you will never guess what! - is therefore a landmark event.

For those unfamiliar with the work, it is not about computer programming in the broad sense, but about the algorithms and methods which lie at the heart of most computer systems. Fundamental Algorithms contains background information for the series. Chapter one provides mathematical preliminaries and basic programming concepts, along with an introduction to the MIX assembly language, used throughout for implementations. Chapter two covers simple information structures: lists, trees, and related data structures.

The two chapters in Seminumerical Algorithms cover pseudo-random numbers - their generation and statistical testing - and numerical computation - doing arithmetic with floating point numbers, rationals, and polynomials. Almost everyone who has ever programmed has written a bubble sort at some point, but the full complexities of sorting algorithms are another story entirely. After an introduction to the mathematics of permutations, Sorting and Searching presents and analyses an extensive array of algorithms for sorting in memory (insertion, exchange, selection, permutations, Sorting and Searching presents and analyses an extensive array of algorithms for sorting in memory (insertion, exchange, selection, merging, and distribution algorithms), sorting on secondary storage, and searching,

The Art of Computer Programming is not a work for everyone, not even for all programmers. It will be an valuable reference for those working on the implementation and optimisation of key algorithms and data structures, but the more mathematically inclined will dip into it simply for pleasure. Knuth himself clearly enjoys the subtleties of the mathematics as much as anything: he writes at one point

Even if sorting were almost useless, there would be plenty of rewarding reasons for studying it anyway! The ingenious algorithms that have been discovered show that sorting is an extremely interesting topic to explore in its own right. Many fascinating unsolved problems remain in this area, as well as quite a few solved ones. [ Sorting and Searching, page 3]

and he provides some gloriously learned historical tidbits and mathematical digressions. The mathematics is heavy going in places, but the more difficult sections are marked and the material is laid out in such a way that those seeking algorithms to implement and performance analyses can skip the proofs and derivations and the more esoteric material.

Exercises are liberally provided, along with proper answers, which take up around a quarter of each volume. The exercises are carefully graded in difficulty on a scale from 0 to 50, and range from trivial tests of definitions to unsolved research problems. Reading The Art of Programming is a serious enough undertaking in itself (I have only read about a third of it so far myself), but anyone who succeeds in doing all the exercises will probably have earnt themselves several doctorates!

There is plenty of new material in this third edition, including new algorithms, examples, and exercises. The somewhat archaic MIX language has been retained, but we are promised its replacement by a modern, RISC "MMIX" in the next edition. Another incentive to purchase this edition, for those who already have the second, is the vastly improved typesetting. But the most exciting news of all is that volumes four and five are finally going to appear, followed by another revision of volumes one to three and then maybe by volumes six and seven (on the theory of languages and compilers).

Browse 400 other book reviews by Danny Yee
Top | Subjects | Titles | Authors | Keywords | Publishers | Latest

Thanks to Danny for graciously submitting this review. If you are interested in picking this book up, grab volume one here, volume two here and volume three here. If anyone else is interested in doing reviews, please e-mail me, hemos.

Reader and veteran book reviewer Danny Yee has written a review of Donald Knuth's The Art of Computer Programming. This book is a bit different from the normal pack, getting at the heart of how most computer systems function underneath, with much exploration into the algorithims and methods. So, for a better grasp of the fundament of computing, click below. The Art of Computer Programming
1: Fundamental Algorithms
2: Seminumerical Algorithms
3: Sorting and Searching

Donald E. Knuth
Addison-Wesley 1997, 1998

AbookreviewbyDannyYee(danny@cs.usyd.edu.au),Copyright©1998
Danny's Homepage

The tale of how Knuth took a decade off from writing The Art of Computer Programming to create the TeX typesetting language is one of the great legends of computer science. The appearance of a third edition of The Art of Computer Programming - typeset in you will never guess what! - is therefore a landmark event.

For those unfamiliar with the work, it is not about computer programming in the broad sense, but about the algorithms and methods which lie at the heart of most computer systems. Fundamental Algorithms contains background information for the series. Chapter one provides mathematical preliminaries and basic programming concepts, along with an introduction to the MIX assembly language, used throughout for implementations. Chapter two covers simple information structures: lists, trees, and related data structures.

The two chapters in Seminumerical Algorithms cover pseudo-random numbers - their generation and statistical testing - and numerical computation - doing arithmetic with floating point numbers, rationals, and polynomials. Almost everyone who has ever programmed has written a bubble sort at some point, but the full complexities of sorting algorithms are another story entirely. After an introduction to the mathematics of permutations, Sorting and Searching presents and analyses an extensive array of algorithms for sorting in memory (insertion, exchange, selection, permutations, Sorting and Searching presents and analyses an extensive array of algorithms for sorting in memory (insertion, exchange, selection, merging, and distribution algorithms), sorting on secondary storage, and searching,

The Art of Computer Programming is not a work for everyone, not even for all programmers. It will be an valuable reference for those working on the implementation and optimisation of key algorithms and data structures, but the more mathematically inclined will dip into it simply for pleasure. Knuth himself clearly enjoys the subtleties of the mathematics as much as anything: he writes at one point

Even if sorting were almost useless, there would be plenty of rewarding reasons for studying it anyway! The ingenious algorithms that have been discovered show that sorting is an extremely interesting topic to explore in its own right. Many fascinating unsolved problems remain in this area, as well as quite a few solved ones. [ Sorting and Searching, page 3]

and he provides some gloriously learned historical tidbits and mathematical digressions. The mathematics is heavy going in places, but the more difficult sections are marked and the material is laid out in such a way that those seeking algorithms to implement and performance analyses can skip the proofs and derivations and the more esoteric material.

Exercises are liberally provided, along with proper answers, which take up around a quarter of each volume. The exercises are carefully graded in difficulty on a scale from 0 to 50, and range from trivial tests of definitions to unsolved research problems. Reading The Art of Programming is a serious enough undertaking in itself (I have only read about a third of it so far myself), but anyone who succeeds in doing all the exercises will probably have earnt themselves several doctorates!

There is plenty of new material in this third edition, including new algorithms, examples, and exercises. The somewhat archaic MIX language has been retained, but we are promised its replacement by a modern, RISC "MMIX" in the next edition. Another incentive to purchase this edition, for those who already have the second, is the vastly improved typesetting. But the most exciting news of all is that volumes four and five are finally going to appear, followed by another revision of volumes one to three and then maybe by volumes six and seven (on the theory of languages and compilers).

Browse 400 other book reviews by Danny Yee
Top | Subjects | Titles | Authors | Keywords | Publishers | Latest

Thanks to Danny for graciously submitting this review. If you are interested in picking this book up, grab volume one here, volume two here and volume three here. If anyone else is interested in doing reviews, please e-mail me, hemos.

Matthew Arnison has written a piece on technology, standards, and an interesting look on the hows and whys. It's worth a gander, so if you're curious, read on. The following is an editorial writting by Slashdot reader Matthew Arnison

Betamax Logic

"OK, well your system might be better quality, but buying that would be like buying a Betamax."

Oh you've heard this one. Windows is VHS - a bit crappy but it keeps people happy. Macs and Linux are Betamax - they start playing faster and give a bit of a better image, but you can't get any movies to watch on one.

The analogy has huge tracking problems and enourmous sound dropouts, but why is that?

Let's start with people using the gear, and why they want to. Homebodies were willing to shell out for their own video deck for a couple of reasons. First, they could rent movies and watch them at home. Second, they could record stuff off the telly and keep it to gawk at later. Maybe swap with their friends. Make wedding videos.

They didn't buy into it for cinema quality in the home: witness the huge resurgence of cinema-going once people realised a cinema and a video at home are just *not* the same thing. So the quality edge of Betamax didn't matter much. I mean a lot of people don't have that good a telly anyway. You're not going to notice superior sound with one tinny TV speaker.

This set of reasons means standards were more important than quality. And with two completely incompatible tapes, a standards war is a war of marketing and distribution. Video rental shops didn't want to stock copies of every movie in two different formats - why should they waste the floorspace when they could have more movies, or (what seems to happen here) heaps more of the same easy-money blockbusters so they're never left short. I don't know the details, but I reckon VHS must have won in this marketing and distro war.

Now let's look at who isn't using VHS. Professionals aren't using it. They actually use Betacam, a derivative of that complete failure (oh right) Betamax. Or 1 inch tape. The grungy end of independent video production uses either Hi8 tape or maybe SVHS for editing. And then there's the arty filmy types for which using any kind of video tape is just a joke. Despite VHS winning the home video front, lots of other formats are roaring away in their happy niches. And digital video tapes like Mini DV are storming in.

So if Windows is the VHS of computers, what kind of sense does that make? Because a lot of people wanting a plug and play box have it, does that give you a reason to build a web server with it? Handle your network mail? Do your graphic design?

There's a couple of key differences where the analogy starts breaking up. They're about why people want to use computers. They use them to help them get something done. Most folks don't want to frig round with their computer for the sake of it.

So a standard is important. It means you can swap your work around, and don't have to relearn your skills. Means you can get software.

But things aren't nearly so incompatible as in video land. A Linux server will do email with Windows. A Mac can produce web graphics for viewing on Windows. A DVD movie should play on all three. VHS tapes just won't even go in the slot of a Betamax deck.

You might think Windows has the inevitable edge in gaming. Just like VHS. But it's temporary. Look what happened to Sega. Gaming technology is moving too quickly for one company to sit on it. Home video does the job people are wanting pretty well, so no reason to leave the safety of a standard.

This is like word processing and spreadsheets. Since the Mac (or maybe Xerox) defined the point and click paradigm nothing's changed very much. So it's pretty easy for a giant to offer a few baubles and sit on that one - so we get Microsoft Office. People don't notice so much if it craps up on them occaisionally - after all their video deck and their car do too.

It's not the same thing for servers. People use servers to communicate. Like the phone. And if the phone doesn't work, people are going to scream. If it's dodgy enough, people are going to go back to writing letters or dropping round. Because they want to communicate. There's enough problems interacting with your average human being, you don't want more problems interacting with the phone.

The novelty will wear off. People aren't stupid. They'll realise that what's important for a server is not that it runs the same word processor they have on their desktop. What's important is that when they want to write an email to someone, it gets there. When they want to swap files, the network drive opens just like a local drive. They don't want to be told that a service pack upgrade means the server is down for the morning rebooting six times. They don't want to be told they can't do their research on the web for a week until a hotfix is released for a security hole. They don't want to know. It's as irrelevant as what brand switch your phone company uses. The damn things just work.

Imagine a building full of people trying to get work done, frustrated the server isn't coping with the after lunch surge. Imagine hundreds of homes shorted off the internet by a registry corruption. Imagine hordes streaming away from Hotmail if it started crapping out the way the Microsoft web site does. Hotmail (owned by Microsoft) did, so they stuck with Sun servers after sussing out a switch to NT.

It's hard to imagine Windows straggling the divide between server reliability and word processing jingles. 'Cos that's what NT is trying to do. It's like recommending one tape format for both home videos and network television studios. Yeah, like I can really see the TV exec saying, "oh we better go SVHS, everyone else is. It's the same cassette as my VHS deck at home, so if my studio staff are off sick I can work the presentation suite. The viewers don't care if the picture breaks up every day or so."

Maybe Windows will get there. But it's Not There yet. Windows everywhere makes almost as little sense as VHS everywhere. That's good for software diversity. And because I reckon the tools we use shape the way we work and think, that's good for cultural diversity too.

Matthew Arnison has written a piece on technology, standards, and an interesting look on the hows and whys. It's worth a gander, so if you're curious, read on. The following is an editorial writting by Slashdot reader Matthew Arnison

Betamax Logic

"OK, well your system might be better quality, but buying that would be like buying a Betamax."

Oh you've heard this one. Windows is VHS - a bit crappy but it keeps people happy. Macs and Linux are Betamax - they start playing faster and give a bit of a better image, but you can't get any movies to watch on one.

The analogy has huge tracking problems and enourmous sound dropouts, but why is that?

Let's start with people using the gear, and why they want to. Homebodies were willing to shell out for their own video deck for a couple of reasons. First, they could rent movies and watch them at home. Second, they could record stuff off the telly and keep it to gawk at later. Maybe swap with their friends. Make wedding videos.

They didn't buy into it for cinema quality in the home: witness the huge resurgence of cinema-going once people realised a cinema and a video at home are just *not* the same thing. So the quality edge of Betamax didn't matter much. I mean a lot of people don't have that good a telly anyway. You're not going to notice superior sound with one tinny TV speaker.

This set of reasons means standards were more important than quality. And with two completely incompatible tapes, a standards war is a war of marketing and distribution. Video rental shops didn't want to stock copies of every movie in two different formats - why should they waste the floorspace when they could have more movies, or (what seems to happen here) heaps more of the same easy-money blockbusters so they're never left short. I don't know the details, but I reckon VHS must have won in this marketing and distro war.

Now let's look at who isn't using VHS. Professionals aren't using it. They actually use Betacam, a derivative of that complete failure (oh right) Betamax. Or 1 inch tape. The grungy end of independent video production uses either Hi8 tape or maybe SVHS for editing. And then there's the arty filmy types for which using any kind of video tape is just a joke. Despite VHS winning the home video front, lots of other formats are roaring away in their happy niches. And digital video tapes like Mini DV are storming in.

So if Windows is the VHS of computers, what kind of sense does that make? Because a lot of people wanting a plug and play box have it, does that give you a reason to build a web server with it? Handle your network mail? Do your graphic design?

There's a couple of key differences where the analogy starts breaking up. They're about why people want to use computers. They use them to help them get something done. Most folks don't want to frig round with their computer for the sake of it.

So a standard is important. It means you can swap your work around, and don't have to relearn your skills. Means you can get software.

But things aren't nearly so incompatible as in video land. A Linux server will do email with Windows. A Mac can produce web graphics for viewing on Windows. A DVD movie should play on all three. VHS tapes just won't even go in the slot of a Betamax deck.

You might think Windows has the inevitable edge in gaming. Just like VHS. But it's temporary. Look what happened to Sega. Gaming technology is moving too quickly for one company to sit on it. Home video does the job people are wanting pretty well, so no reason to leave the safety of a standard.

This is like word processing and spreadsheets. Since the Mac (or maybe Xerox) defined the point and click paradigm nothing's changed very much. So it's pretty easy for a giant to offer a few baubles and sit on that one - so we get Microsoft Office. People don't notice so much if it craps up on them occaisionally - after all their video deck and their car do too.

It's not the same thing for servers. People use servers to communicate. Like the phone. And if the phone doesn't work, people are going to scream. If it's dodgy enough, people are going to go back to writing letters or dropping round. Because they want to communicate. There's enough problems interacting with your average human being, you don't want more problems interacting with the phone.

The novelty will wear off. People aren't stupid. They'll realise that what's important for a server is not that it runs the same word processor they have on their desktop. What's important is that when they want to write an email to someone, it gets there. When they want to swap files, the network drive opens just like a local drive. They don't want to be told that a service pack upgrade means the server is down for the morning rebooting six times. They don't want to be told they can't do their research on the web for a week until a hotfix is released for a security hole. They don't want to know. It's as irrelevant as what brand switch your phone company uses. The damn things just work.

Imagine a building full of people trying to get work done, frustrated the server isn't coping with the after lunch surge. Imagine hundreds of homes shorted off the internet by a registry corruption. Imagine hordes streaming away from Hotmail if it started crapping out the way the Microsoft web site does. Hotmail (owned by Microsoft) did, so they stuck with Sun servers after sussing out a switch to NT.

It's hard to imagine Windows straggling the divide between server reliability and word processing jingles. 'Cos that's what NT is trying to do. It's like recommending one tape format for both home videos and network television studios. Yeah, like I can really see the TV exec saying, "oh we better go SVHS, everyone else is. It's the same cassette as my VHS deck at home, so if my studio staff are off sick I can work the presentation suite. The viewers don't care if the picture breaks up every day or so."

Maybe Windows will get there. But it's Not There yet. Windows everywhere makes almost as little sense as VHS everywhere. That's good for software diversity. And because I reckon the tools we use shape the way we work and think, that's good for cultural diversity too.