I got a copy of this book hot off the presses, and while overall it's good, the first printing has some quality-control issues. The centerpiece of the first real chapter, the "basic electronics" chapter, is a big schematic diagram with various points labelled "A", "B", "C", etc. up to "K" or so. Unfortunately, the text spends several pages referring to these as points "1", "2", and "3" -- either the text or the diagram must've been changed at the last minute, and they don't correspond!
I bet this will be fixed soon, but still, it's kind of disconcerting.
> The Jargon Dictionary alone would be enough for him to be 'one of the tribe', and worth listening too.
He's widely considered to have fucked up the Jargon File, mostly due to his huge ego and lack of respect for history.
I know I'm in the minority, but I don't own [i]any[/i] cell phone, and fail to see the draw. I won't be buying one any time soon.
I generally don't want random people deciding that, just because the mood strikes them, I should drop what I'm doing and talk to them. The world is small and crowded enough as it is; why would I want to be able to "virtually bump into" anyone, anytime, anywhere?
Here's something that drives me insane about most ATM machines. When you put your card in, the first thing it does is ask you what language you want it to speak. It's nice, I suppose, that the machine will accomodate speakers of other languages. Why, though, does it ask me this question every single freaking time ? Is a French speaker going to feel like using the ATM in Spanish on some days? Is an English speaker going to suddenly forget English and revert to Vietnamese? Why in tarnation doesn't the machine remember this one little bit of information about me and not bother me with that same stupid question again? I speak English, dammit -- don't ask me about Urdu!
It's almost an anti-security device, too. If a French-speaker has their card stolen by an English-speaker, it the ATM only prompted in French, that would be at least a little bit of a deterrent for illicit use, wouldn't it be?
It's crazy to talk about a universally connected web of smart data when the individual machines are, even after years of evolution, so profoundly stupid.
>Yippie, *some* expertly written Java *can* come close to being as fast as *poorly* coded programs, written in compiled languages. Big whoop.
Bzzt, sorry. Looking at one computationally-intensive domain I'm familiar with (rule engines,) those vendors (like ILOG) that offer both a Java and a C rule engine tend to have performance within a factor of two for the two implementations. Many Java rule engines absolutely kick the asses of rule engines written in C.
Why do people like yourself feel threatened by the reality of Java's good performance?
Didn't say he doesn't know something about viruses -- he runs a security consulting firm after all. But 1) He didn't coin the term "computer virus" as numerous other posts on this story point out, and 2) he most certainly didn't "invent" self-replicating malware; there were Apple II viruses, for fuck's sake, and John Von Neumann had worked out a theory of self-replicating automata in the nineteen-forties. The only place where he's generally acknowledged as "the father of the computer virus" is in his own overinflated cranium.
Any time you read an article and see Fred Cohen's name, you can stop reading right there, because you know another so called "journalist" has fallen hook, line, and sinker for this guy's self-aggrandizing line of bullshit. Note that you'll never find an article quoting X as saying Fred Cohen is the father of computer viruses, unless X is Fred Cohen. He's shilling for his security consulting firm, plain and simple. He no more "invented" the computer virus than Al Gore invented the Internet. Please, Slashdot, stop feeding this buttplug's enormous ego!
Fred Cohen is the self-proclaimed father of computer viruses. Any time you see a story about how "Fred Cohen wrote the first computer virus," you can be sure that the only expert the reporter talked to was, you guessed it, Fred Cohen.
Judging from the general mood of this formerly great nation, far more likely, I think, that there'd be a car that steers to the right even though you're trying deperately to bear left.
> Microsoft has taken the stance that it doesn't want that happening on their systems,
That says it all, right there. I paid for it. What the hell gives them the right to believe it's still theirs?
There didn't seem to be any evidence in the article of any deep understanding; he's really just talking about a line-by-line translation. I wouldn't call this reverse engineering, either; more like "manually decompiling" to C, starting from the disassembler output.
I realize that many of you will recoil at the mention of a piece of mainstream pop culture like this, but the "risky behavior" comment reminds me of the 80's movie "Death Becomes Her" with Meryl Streep. These women become magically immortal, and the first thing they do is get themselves killed. Then they need to deal with the indignity of parts falling off and other icky things that happen to dead folk who inconveniently can't just lay down and rot. They go through a LOT of flesh-colored spray paint. I thought it was pretty funny at the time, anyway.
To some extent, editors encourage this. The author may not feel like being funny, but the editor says "be funny," so that's what you get. So much of the humor geeks that like is exclusionary -- suits don't get it, editors don't get it, publishers don't get it -- so (and I'm serious here) the author is forced into the "lowest common denominator" of humor: the pun, something which everybody gets, even if nobody likes.
Well, the "democracy" entry mentions rule by majority vote, and the "republic" entry mentions rule by elected officials according governed by a body of laws. According to this, we in the U.S. currently live in neither.
There must have been a misunderstanding here. Surely they don't think that their cash flow won't be injured if they stop producing shrinkwrap software? Both companies and Joe Sixpack like cardboard boxes and plastic CD cases. ISO-download-only would literally destroy their company.
The comments from McVoy are so asinine that one wonders how anyone could possibly have uttered them; in fact, are we sure that he did? Do we know that the message(s) aren't forgeries? Maybe RMS was the victim of a prank?
XML is more structured than INI files, tags can be nested, and can have attributes
Several standard APIs for parsing, with multiple robust implementations
Tools. Graphical XML editors and viewers, browser support, etc.
XSLT is a nice scripting language for querying, formatting, rearranging, extracting, and building XML.
Books and example code. There's a wealth of information on ways to use XML out there now.
Critical mass. Enough people are using XML that you can exchange XML data with other people and expect them to know how to deal with it; and this large mass of applications means that the number of available tools, books, and resources just keeps growing.
You could compare XML to something like KIF or even XML's own parent SGML and ask "Why XML? Why now?" Critical mass, I think, is most important, more than anything else. You could do all the same things with another file format -- but you wouldn't have the range of tools, APIs, and features to choose from.
Slashdot Mirror
I got a copy of this book hot off the presses, and while overall it's good, the first printing has some quality-control issues. The centerpiece of the first real chapter, the "basic electronics" chapter, is a big schematic diagram with various points labelled "A", "B", "C", etc. up to "K" or so. Unfortunately, the text spends several pages referring to these as points "1", "2", and "3" -- either the text or the diagram must've been changed at the last minute, and they don't correspond!
I bet this will be fixed soon, but still, it's kind of disconcerting.
> The Jargon Dictionary alone would be enough for him to be 'one of the tribe', and worth listening too. He's widely considered to have fucked up the Jargon File, mostly due to his huge ego and lack of respect for history.
I know I'm in the minority, but I don't own [i]any[/i] cell phone, and fail to see the draw. I won't be buying one any time soon.
I generally don't want random people deciding that, just because the mood strikes them, I should drop what I'm doing and talk to them. The world is small and crowded enough as it is; why would I want to be able to "virtually bump into" anyone, anytime, anywhere?
When you squeeze my lemon, I'm gonna roll right outa bed...
Joel said this first, and better, in Things You Should Never Do, Part I.
It's almost an anti-security device, too. If a French-speaker has their card stolen by an English-speaker, it the ATM only prompted in French, that would be at least a little bit of a deterrent for illicit use, wouldn't it be?
It's crazy to talk about a universally connected web of smart data when the individual machines are, even after years of evolution, so profoundly stupid.
>Yippie, *some* expertly written Java *can* come close to being as fast as *poorly* coded programs, written in compiled languages. Big whoop. Bzzt, sorry. Looking at one computationally-intensive domain I'm familiar with (rule engines,) those vendors (like ILOG) that offer both a Java and a C rule engine tend to have performance within a factor of two for the two implementations. Many Java rule engines absolutely kick the asses of rule engines written in C. Why do people like yourself feel threatened by the reality of Java's good performance?
Didn't say he doesn't know something about viruses -- he runs a security consulting firm after all. But 1) He didn't coin the term "computer virus" as numerous other posts on this story point out, and 2) he most certainly didn't "invent" self-replicating malware; there were Apple II viruses, for fuck's sake, and John Von Neumann had worked out a theory of self-replicating automata in the nineteen-forties. The only place where he's generally acknowledged as "the father of the computer virus" is in his own overinflated cranium.
Any time you read an article and see Fred Cohen's name, you can stop reading right there, because you know another so called "journalist" has fallen hook, line, and sinker for this guy's self-aggrandizing line of bullshit. Note that you'll never find an article quoting X as saying Fred Cohen is the father of computer viruses, unless X is Fred Cohen. He's shilling for his security consulting firm, plain and simple. He no more "invented" the computer virus than Al Gore invented the Internet. Please, Slashdot, stop feeding this buttplug's enormous ego!
Fred Cohen is the self-proclaimed father of computer viruses. Any time you see a story about how "Fred Cohen wrote the first computer virus," you can be sure that the only expert the reporter talked to was, you guessed it, Fred Cohen.
Judging from the general mood of this formerly great nation, far more likely, I think, that there'd be a car that steers to the right even though you're trying deperately to bear left.
This reminds me of O.J.'s promise not to rest until he personally found the real killers.
Now that's a subtle joke. 50% "Informative" mods -- scary.
http://216.239.41.104/search?q=cache:BAqUaiHp3yAJ: www.24hourmuseum.org.uk/nwh_gfx_en/ART18464.html+s tonehenge+laser+scan&hl=en&ie=UTF-8
> Microsoft has taken the stance that it doesn't want that happening on their systems, That says it all, right there. I paid for it. What the hell gives them the right to believe it's still theirs?
Earl Grey, hot!
There didn't seem to be any evidence in the article of any deep understanding; he's really just talking about a line-by-line translation. I wouldn't call this reverse engineering, either; more like "manually decompiling" to C, starting from the disassembler output.
I realize that many of you will recoil at the mention of a piece of mainstream pop culture like this, but the "risky behavior" comment reminds me of the 80's movie "Death Becomes Her" with Meryl Streep. These women become magically immortal, and the first thing they do is get themselves killed. Then they need to deal with the indignity of parts falling off and other icky things that happen to dead folk who inconveniently can't just lay down and rot. They go through a LOT of flesh-colored spray paint. I thought it was pretty funny at the time, anyway.
To some extent, editors encourage this. The author may not feel like being funny, but the editor says "be funny," so that's what you get. So much of the humor geeks that like is exclusionary -- suits don't get it, editors don't get it, publishers don't get it -- so (and I'm serious here) the author is forced into the "lowest common denominator" of humor: the pun, something which everybody gets, even if nobody likes.
Well, the "democracy" entry mentions rule by majority vote, and the "republic" entry mentions rule by elected officials according governed by a body of laws. According to this, we in the U.S. currently live in neither.
Dude, it's like a billion dollars a month to police Iraq, not a day.
The story says you get double the battery life with an external battery pack. Man. This thing would be sweet for watching movies on airplanes!
There must have been a misunderstanding here. Surely they don't think that their cash flow won't be injured if they stop producing shrinkwrap software? Both companies and Joe Sixpack like cardboard boxes and plastic CD cases. ISO-download-only would literally destroy their company.
The comments from McVoy are so asinine that one wonders how anyone could possibly have uttered them; in fact, are we sure that he did? Do we know that the message(s) aren't forgeries? Maybe RMS was the victim of a prank?
- XML is more structured than INI files, tags can be nested, and can have attributes
- Several standard APIs for parsing, with multiple robust implementations
- Tools. Graphical XML editors and viewers, browser support, etc.
- XSLT is a nice scripting language for querying, formatting, rearranging, extracting, and building XML.
- Books and example code. There's a wealth of information on ways to use XML out there now.
- Critical mass. Enough people are using XML that you can exchange XML data with other people and expect them to know how to deal with it; and this large mass of applications means that the number of available tools, books, and resources just keeps growing.
You could compare XML to something like KIF or even XML's own parent SGML and ask "Why XML? Why now?" Critical mass, I think, is most important, more than anything else. You could do all the same things with another file format -- but you wouldn't have the range of tools, APIs, and features to choose from.