No I'm not. OS X is based on FreeBSD and is not Open Group certified last I heard. Moreover, one of the major features of OS X.2 IIRC was enhanced Linux compatibility.
The packets in question are (or at least could be) well formed.
Imagine that I own ISpy.com, and a user does a lookup on "user.jsmith.passwd.12345.ispy.com". Your server, in the middle, will forward that request to the NS for ispy.com more or less unchanged. And it doesn't have to be this obvious - it would certainly be easy enough to come up with some form of steganography appropriate to use in DNS.
Not that proxies are a bad idea, but in this case proxies will not prevent the attack. Mostly, they'll just give you the ability to log the attack easily.
Who cares if Linux is Unix at this point? We are rapidly approaching the point at which UNIX is a Linux-like operating system rather than Linux being a UNIX-like operating system. I'm more or less convinced that proprietary UNIX is dead as a major force in the market. Moving forward, Linux will be setting the agenda and proprietary UNIX will be playing catch up.
This is particularly evident when you notice that the major improvements in some recent version of Solaris (8 & 9, but not 10 apparently) is to add more open source software and stability improvements.
Depends on why you're not sleeping
on
Sleeping Problems?
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
As a long-time insomniac (read "programmer"), I've found that there are several different kinds of insomnia.
There are some medical - i.e. conditions other than insomnia - that can cause sleeplessness. If this is a new thing, you might ask your doctor although he's unlikely to be very interested.
Are you depressed? (Doesn't sound like.)
I find that often my schedule just gets out of wack. In such cases, I find that melatonin - available over the counter as a "diet suppliment" helps most. Melatonin is allegedly the compound your body makes at night and is why you tend to get sleepy at night - don't know if this is true or supplement "hype". However, it is as effective for me as prescription sleeping pills, but without some of the side effects. It DOES, however, have other side effects, particularly if you're hypertensive or have an Autoimmune problem. Read up first.
There are several kinds of sleeping pills available. The most common is diphenhydramine, i.e. benadryl. Available over the counter, don't take a big dose because a big dose can make you hyper. Doxylamine Succinate is also readily available otc, works much better for me than benadryl. It is usually found under the brand name "unisom", but not everything with a unisom label is doxylamine succinate. Buyer beware! Last, the doctor has many, many options, ranging from valium-like drugs (ambien, ativan, etc.) to anti-depressants (Remoron, one other whose name escapes), to blood pressure meds (clonidine.) However, I find that Doctors tend to be cavalier about side effects, so would try prescription meds last.
Most of all, exercise will help, especially first thing in the morning. It helps set your cycle.
"Sleep Hygiene" is important as well. When you go to bed, don't read: go to sleep. (If you're hitched, have sex - this is also a good sleep aid.) Don't do anything in bed but sleep and have sex. Put the clock where you can't see it - looking at the clock just gets you worried and keeps you up. Go to sleep at the same time every night, get up at the same time every day.
Yes, defense contractors have to go through various security related stuff, but these concerns don't really apply to vendors who make off-the-shelf components. If you make a filing cabinet that might be bought by a defense contractor, you don't have to have a security clearance. On the other hand, to use or install the filing cabinet, you do. Same deal with Microsoft - their programmers don't necessarily have to have clearances, because they are mostly building off-the-shelf components which can be used by contractors rather than building defense products per se.
Imagine the havoc a mole in Microsoft could create by putting some sort of Easter egg in the latest version of Exchange server, which the whole DOD runs on. It would be total chaos, caused by someone who's work is more or less invisble and who has never had to face a security clearance. And there are all kinds of easter eggs in Microsoft products, so don't say it couldn't happen. These things don't have to be benevolent.
* they will go back to being just a software company.* is just too far fetched, especially when they're sittin on top of billions and everything they've done as a company goes against that.
But the got rid of an awful lot of those Billions, didn't they?
Microsoft pays $35billion or so to shareholders in a one-time dividend.
Microsoft unloads Slate
Microsoft increases future dividends.
???
Profit! (sorry, always wanted to do that.
This doesn't mean that MS is annoyed with Slate, it means they are changing their business strategy. I would hazard to guess that Microsoft has decided that, rather than becoming an evil empire that owns a small country and runs its own Media etc., they will go back to being just a software company.
I would look for them to off-load other products not related to their core competencies in the near future, and I expect they will divest themselves from many of the sidelines they've gotten into. The question in my mind is: what happens to MSN as a whole? Is Microsoft giving up on being a content company altogether? What about their promised search engine? The Xbox?
Doesn't the government of B.C. have something better to do that worry about US laws? Doesn't this just demonstrate the degree to which America has gained hegemony over most of the world? I mean, when the government of a free province of a separate, free country has nothing better to do than pass laws opposing our laws, I'd say that they're pretty well acknowledging that they've become U.S. Centric.
This line - the outsourcing of IT - reminds me of a legendary conversation with the great (?) philosopher Hegel.
Hegel was spouting off about his evolutionary view of history (Darwin did/not/ invent evolution, just applied this peculiarly 19th century obsession to a new area). Specifically, the evolutionary history of the New Testament church, and some poor student had the temerity to point out that "But, sir, the facts are otherwise." According to legend - I have no idea if its true - Hegel said "so much the worse for the facts."
As nice as outsourcing may be as a campaign slogan and/or excuse for Slashdoterotti unemployment, sadly, the facts are otherwise. This is why this political "issue" has gone under a rock lately.
When I was on my honeymoon (8 years ago) I ran across an ATM that dispensed coins. Tried it out by withdrawing 39.43 or something like that and it got it down to the penny.
I dunno.... Certainly there's something trivial in here somewhere. I think perhaps our society has slidden so far into the "rights" camp that we've given up common sense. Maybe what's trivial is the application of the "right"? Let's face it, to take an ammendment that was intended to defend free religious and political speech and apply it to forbid even the mildest restraint on Internet porn is a bit of a stretch - a stretch that never would have been made until the '30s or so.
What I think is missing in most calculations of "rights" is the realization that the overblown granting of "rights" unintended and unenumerated is basically a 20th century phenomenon. We managed to get along for quite a while without it and do things like eliminate slavery (constitutional amendment,/not/ the courts) grant women the vote (constitutional amendment,/not/ the courts), etc. I just don't know that an activist judiciary is a good thing, and I certainly don't think expansive interpretation of the constitution to grant "rights" hitherto unheard of (e.g. a woman's "right" to do with her body what she wants or the "right" of homosexuals to receive all the protections of an instituion designed to regulate pregnancy) is a good thing.
The protocol stack options are great, but they don't generally work for anything encrypted. That specifically includes IP/SEC, SSH, and SSL. So, it's not too bad for standard browsing, but sucks when you need to access your bank account or use a VPN.
The problem, as I understand it, is that encryption protocols tend to be very "chatty", sending keys back and forth, and that this forces them to be high latency.
Fundamentalism had nothing to do with the fall of Arab culture. In fact, Islamic fundamentalism is more or less a twentieth century invention, whereas Islamic culture lost its "edge" around the time of the Renaissance. Rather, the fall of Arab culture had a lot to do with a society and an economy that was utterly dependent on constant expansion to maintain itself. When no more expansion was available (thanks to geographical boundaries for the most part) the culture began to go into decline.
This is not the issue it was ten years ago, but one feature I absolutely want tightly integrated into my language is robust string handling. I still like perl's best (although perhaps only because I know it best). It simply seems to be more tightly integrated into the language as a whole.
No, I've seen the simpsons. I'm just sick of seeing this "shouldn't parents supervise their children" argument trotted out every time someone with no kids wants to make sure that some trivial infringement on his "rights" doesn't come to pass.
You know what I'm sick of? I'm sick of the pretension by many on slashdot that parents can somehow, magically (perhaps with the eyes in the back of our heads?) supervise and/or control every thing our children do.
Look - I have four children, and I do my best. I try to maintain some idea of my oldest's websurfing habits, and have a silent proxy between him and the Internet that helps. I have a channel lock on my TV. I'm at home nigh on 24x7. But... the bottom line is that my wife and I are outnumbered 2:1, and there is no way that two people can supervise four children every minute of every day.
Moreover, at the end of the day, I have to allow my children to have some freedom or I become a far worse tyrant than Orin Hatch ever dreamed of being. I/can't/ watch them every minute of every day and expect them to grow up to be independent, responsible citizens. I have to give them some freedom to make mistakes and do my best to limit the scope of the mistakes.
What makes this difficult is that kids have to play with other kids, and I have little control over what these other kids might expose my kids to. What am I to do when the kid down the street has been reading Yugi-oh! slash with graphical scenes between characters in this children's TV show and decides to expose my children to it? He found it on Google looking for cards, and this is Not a hypothetical example. How am I to protect my mildly autistic four-year-old twin daughters from the sick ideas this 11-year-old kid gets from such sources? (Again, not a hypothetical example.) I kicked the kid the hell out, but wouldn't an ounce of prevention and -- dare I say DISCRETION -- on the part of the adults who write this crap have gone a long way? They are like the person who hand a gun to a four-year-old, then say "we didn't KNOW it was loaded."
Yes, my wife and I supervise our kids, and we are here/always/. But, tell me, how are we supposed to supervise each and every one of our children every minute of every day? It's a literal impossibility, and would be a bad thing if we tried. How do we supervise our children at school? (And if you think we can homseschool autistic twin four-year-olds, I invite you to try.)
Now, no doubt some member of the slashdoterotti will not pop up with the brilliant idea that I shouldn't have had more than two kids. But... first of all, I had no way of knowing that half of my children were going to be autistic. By the time this was at all apparent, all four children had been born. And there will be no more fruits of my loins, if you take my drift. Moreover... isn't society supposed to protect the weak and the helpless? Don't we want to be a society where children can grow up without fear? Where it is possible to raise more than one child (all the children you can really supervise rigorously) without having to worry about our children being exposed to every kind of sickness there is?
Now, to come back to the subject, I think Orin Hatch's argument is stupid. But I don't think some reasonable restraints of public speech on the Internet are stupid. I think they're necessary - just as they are in 'real' life. Lets face it, you don't get to go streaking down main street starkers and call it art - why should you get to do the same thing (or worse) on the 'net and defend it as free speech.
How long will a society that makes it difficult to raise more than one child last? Answer: 2-3 generations, max. So, keep up the good work guys. I've always liked the idea of anarchy, and I probably won't live to see it get bad.
When I was in college, I would (once or twice a semester) drink... to excess. This was in the early 90's, I had a Linux box, and I was pretty stinking impressed with myself for having 'root' on it. One night, stinking drunk and stinking impressed, I created a directory called '*' in the root directory of my hard drive. I was utterly impressed with my own wisdom and capabilities and/power/, being young, drunk, and root.
The next morning, I wake up, somewhat hung over, and decide that this directoy was a/stupid/ idea. So, I execute the obvious command:
rm -rf/*
I then wander off in search of some tylenol, and come back with two term papers irretrievably lost.
The obvious moral of this story is, "don't root under the influence." (From my more mature perspective, I would like to suggest that drinking less might also be a good plan.)
Money is perhaps more fun to use that Quicken. But I quit using it the minute I realized that it was giving me bogus numbers in my budget because I had deleted some scheduled transactions. I followed the instructions on Microsoft's website to fix the bug - a workaround that applied to (get this) Money versions since 1998! - and they didn't work.
I simply can't afford a finance package that doesn't give me accurate numbers. This kind of thing is the same reason I left my last finance package (Budget for Mac). To me, accuracy and stability are the absolute minimums for any finance package. Without them, I can't even consider any other features.
Man, I love it when people use math.:) Until proven otherwise, let's just agree that this guy is perhaps mistaken about his overall returns. Or perhaps there just aren't very many opportunities where he can apply his winning strategy. Either way, have to wonder why he doesn't just leave his money in for a year or 10 then buy australia.
Just out of curiosity, what books/methods would you recommend? I'm certainly open to being proven wrong, but thus far haven't seen anything but buy and hold investing that offered a conistent return. Can you describe your anualized return?
I'm not advocating "THE MARKET" portfolio - although it's better than day trading. I'm advocating that individual investors look at the businesses of individual companies and make informed buying decisions comparing those business fundamentals to current market prices. My assumption is that the market is/inefficient/, and that there are companies out there which are undervalued and companies which are overvalued. By buying the undervalued companies, I can do well.
Technical analysis, on the other hand, depends utterly on the assumption that the market is basically efficient, and that there are no true "values" in a general sense.
Now, the truth is probably somewhere in the middle. To my way of thinking, at this time most of the market is inflated (not efficient). This means that you might have some short term luck with TA as you mess around with price fluctuations on already inflated stocks. On the other hand, there are some bargains out there, and also some tech companies that may grow a great deal over the next few years.
But, at the end of the day, 80% of mutual funds, the great bastions of TA, underperform the market. Sorry, I don't buy it.
Look - you don't get to define "business value". That is defined in broad parameters by your bosses. Now, if your boss is smart, he will encourage you to give your smarts to him. But if your boss is not smart, it is still your job to solve the problems he wants solved. Not the ones you think are neat or easy.
It is just further proof that competent, smart, skilled employees are not welcome in the workplace.
Nope. It's proof that it doesn't matter how competent, smart, or skilled you are, nobody wants to deal with a smartass know-it-all who thinks that he knows better than everyone else in the whole company. If I'm your manager, I don't care how skilled you are. I do care what/my/ boss thinks of me. Frankly, if you can't help me get his good opinion so I can get my house on the hill and/my/ good reputation, then you're useless to me.
It's a dog eat dog world. If you want something different, I'd suggest a good church (if you could find one.) All a hunder years of liberalism has accomplished is to make people/pretend/ that the world is anything different. Of course, these people who are busy pretending wouldn't know an economics textbook unless it hit them upside the head.
here's my unrelated, off-topic, unsolicited opinion - your mileage may vary.
I've watched several people go broke on the gospel of technical analysis. To me, the tell-tale is that I never hear people who are into technical analysis talk about their total return, after taxes and commissions. Instead, I always hear them talk about the stocks they made money on. I happen to be privy to my father's portfolio, and using technical analysis, churning his portfolio, paying taxes, he has made 8.3% a year over the last 10 years. And he more or less does this full time since his retirement.
In the same period, I've averaged 17% APR, even allowing for the.com dive. My dad makes a killing on a few stocks, but in the long run he loses because of the stocks that he makes a little bit on, but not enough to cover his brokerage fees.
My advice is this: pick a few companies whose product you believe in. Figure out what their historical P/E is. Compensate for the fact that P/E's are going up nowadays (I usually allow 20:1 where traditional value is 14.5:1.) Then estimate -- and here's the art of it -- where their earnings are going in 3 years. If the P/E based on future earnings is less than your target P/E, buy.
Then,/ignore/ "the market". I mean it. Look at your portfolio once a month, and whatever you do don't watch CNNFN or pay attention to analysts whose main interest is to get you to churn your portfolio. Buy and hold, and pay attention only to your companies' BUSINESS, not the market.
Maybe some of you can make TA work for you. If so, more power to you. But my money's on buy-n-hold. TA isn't investing, it's trading and gambling. Doing research for more effective TA doesn't make it not random any more than reading the sports pages makes betting on sports not random. And you don't really need any software to do it, although Quicken might be nice. As far as a book, I'd recommend "Stocks for the Long Run" by Spiegel. He goes into a lot more detail than the Lynch's of the world. Also, get yourself a good book on reading balance sheets. You'll need it.
Slashdot Mirror
Imagine that I own ISpy.com, and a user does a lookup on "user.jsmith.passwd.12345.ispy.com". Your server, in the middle, will forward that request to the NS for ispy.com more or less unchanged. And it doesn't have to be this obvious - it would certainly be easy enough to come up with some form of steganography appropriate to use in DNS.
Not that proxies are a bad idea, but in this case proxies will not prevent the attack. Mostly, they'll just give you the ability to log the attack easily.
This is particularly evident when you notice that the major improvements in some recent version of Solaris (8 & 9, but not 10 apparently) is to add more open source software and stability improvements.
- There are some medical - i.e. conditions other than insomnia - that can cause sleeplessness. If this is a new thing, you might ask your doctor although he's unlikely to be very interested.
- Are you depressed? (Doesn't sound like.)
- I find that often my schedule just gets out of wack. In such cases, I find that melatonin - available over the counter as a "diet suppliment" helps most. Melatonin is allegedly the compound your body makes at night and is why you tend to get sleepy at night - don't know if this is true or supplement "hype". However, it is as effective for me as prescription sleeping pills, but without some of the side effects. It DOES, however, have other side effects, particularly if you're hypertensive or have an Autoimmune problem. Read up first.
- There are several kinds of sleeping pills available. The most common is diphenhydramine, i.e. benadryl. Available over the counter, don't take a big dose because a big dose can make you hyper. Doxylamine Succinate is also readily available otc, works much better for me than benadryl. It is usually found under the brand name "unisom", but not everything with a unisom label is doxylamine succinate. Buyer beware! Last, the doctor has many, many options, ranging from valium-like drugs (ambien, ativan, etc.) to anti-depressants (Remoron, one other whose name escapes), to blood pressure meds (clonidine.) However, I find that Doctors tend to be cavalier about side effects, so would try prescription meds last.
- Most of all, exercise will help, especially first thing in the morning. It helps set your cycle.
- "Sleep Hygiene" is important as well. When you go to bed, don't read: go to sleep. (If you're hitched, have sex - this is also a good sleep aid.) Don't do anything in bed but sleep and have sex. Put the clock where you can't see it - looking at the clock just gets you worried and keeps you up. Go to sleep at the same time every night, get up at the same time every day.
That's all that comes to mind.Imagine the havoc a mole in Microsoft could create by putting some sort of Easter egg in the latest version of Exchange server, which the whole DOD runs on. It would be total chaos, caused by someone who's work is more or less invisble and who has never had to face a security clearance. And there are all kinds of easter eggs in Microsoft products, so don't say it couldn't happen. These things don't have to be benevolent.
- Microsoft pays $35billion or so to shareholders in a one-time dividend.
- Microsoft unloads Slate
- Microsoft increases future dividends.
- ???
- Profit! (sorry, always wanted to do that.
This doesn't mean that MS is annoyed with Slate, it means they are changing their business strategy. I would hazard to guess that Microsoft has decided that, rather than becoming an evil empire that owns a small country and runs its own Media etc., they will go back to being just a software company.I would look for them to off-load other products not related to their core competencies in the near future, and I expect they will divest themselves from many of the sidelines they've gotten into. The question in my mind is: what happens to MSN as a whole? Is Microsoft giving up on being a content company altogether? What about their promised search engine? The Xbox?
Doesn't the government of B.C. have something better to do that worry about US laws? Doesn't this just demonstrate the degree to which America has gained hegemony over most of the world? I mean, when the government of a free province of a separate, free country has nothing better to do than pass laws opposing our laws, I'd say that they're pretty well acknowledging that they've become U.S. Centric.
Hegel was spouting off about his evolutionary view of history (Darwin did /not/ invent evolution, just applied this peculiarly 19th century obsession to a new area). Specifically, the evolutionary history of the New Testament church, and some poor student had the temerity to point out that "But, sir, the facts are otherwise." According to legend - I have no idea if its true - Hegel said "so much the worse for the facts."
As nice as outsourcing may be as a campaign slogan and/or excuse for Slashdoterotti unemployment, sadly, the facts are otherwise. This is why this political "issue" has gone under a rock lately.
When I was on my honeymoon (8 years ago) I ran across an ATM that dispensed coins. Tried it out by withdrawing 39.43 or something like that and it got it down to the penny.
What I think is missing in most calculations of "rights" is the realization that the overblown granting of "rights" unintended and unenumerated is basically a 20th century phenomenon. We managed to get along for quite a while without it and do things like eliminate slavery (constitutional amendment, /not/ the courts) grant women the vote (constitutional amendment, /not/ the courts), etc. I just don't know that an activist judiciary is a good thing, and I certainly don't think expansive interpretation of the constitution to grant "rights" hitherto unheard of (e.g. a woman's "right" to do with her body what she wants or the "right" of homosexuals to receive all the protections of an instituion designed to regulate pregnancy) is a good thing.
The problem, as I understand it, is that encryption protocols tend to be very "chatty", sending keys back and forth, and that this forces them to be high latency.
Fundamentalism had nothing to do with the fall of Arab culture. In fact, Islamic fundamentalism is more or less a twentieth century invention, whereas Islamic culture lost its "edge" around the time of the Renaissance. Rather, the fall of Arab culture had a lot to do with a society and an economy that was utterly dependent on constant expansion to maintain itself. When no more expansion was available (thanks to geographical boundaries for the most part) the culture began to go into decline.
This is not the issue it was ten years ago, but one feature I absolutely want tightly integrated into my language is robust string handling. I still like perl's best (although perhaps only because I know it best). It simply seems to be more tightly integrated into the language as a whole.
No, I've seen the simpsons. I'm just sick of seeing this "shouldn't parents supervise their children" argument trotted out every time someone with no kids wants to make sure that some trivial infringement on his "rights" doesn't come to pass.
Look - I have four children, and I do my best. I try to maintain some idea of my oldest's websurfing habits, and have a silent proxy between him and the Internet that helps. I have a channel lock on my TV. I'm at home nigh on 24x7. But ... the bottom line is that my wife and I are outnumbered 2:1, and there is no way that two people can supervise four children every minute of every day.
Moreover, at the end of the day, I have to allow my children to have some freedom or I become a far worse tyrant than Orin Hatch ever dreamed of being. I /can't/ watch them every minute of every day and expect them to grow up to be independent, responsible citizens. I have to give them some freedom to make mistakes and do my best to limit the scope of the mistakes.
What makes this difficult is that kids have to play with other kids, and I have little control over what these other kids might expose my kids to. What am I to do when the kid down the street has been reading Yugi-oh! slash with graphical scenes between characters in this children's TV show and decides to expose my children to it? He found it on Google looking for cards, and this is Not a hypothetical example. How am I to protect my mildly autistic four-year-old twin daughters from the sick ideas this 11-year-old kid gets from such sources? (Again, not a hypothetical example.) I kicked the kid the hell out, but wouldn't an ounce of prevention and -- dare I say DISCRETION -- on the part of the adults who write this crap have gone a long way? They are like the person who hand a gun to a four-year-old, then say "we didn't KNOW it was loaded."
Yes, my wife and I supervise our kids, and we are here /always/. But, tell me, how are we supposed to supervise each and every one of our children every minute of every day? It's a literal impossibility, and would be a bad thing if we tried. How do we supervise our children at school? (And if you think we can homseschool autistic twin four-year-olds, I invite you to try.)
Now, no doubt some member of the slashdoterotti will not pop up with the brilliant idea that I shouldn't have had more than two kids. But ... first of all, I had no way of knowing that half of my children were going to be autistic. By the time this was at all apparent, all four children had been born. And there will be no more fruits of my loins, if you take my drift. Moreover ... isn't society supposed to protect the weak and the helpless? Don't we want to be a society where children can grow up without fear? Where it is possible to raise more than one child (all the children you can really supervise rigorously) without having to worry about our children being exposed to every kind of sickness there is?
Now, to come back to the subject, I think Orin Hatch's argument is stupid. But I don't think some reasonable restraints of public speech on the Internet are stupid. I think they're necessary - just as they are in 'real' life. Lets face it, you don't get to go streaking down main street starkers and call it art - why should you get to do the same thing (or worse) on the 'net and defend it as free speech.
How long will a society that makes it difficult to raise more than one child last? Answer: 2-3 generations, max. So, keep up the good work guys. I've always liked the idea of anarchy, and I probably won't live to see it get bad.
I wrote Linux - started with the IP stack after inventing the Internet, then had to make a kernel to use it.
Your Pal,
Al
The next morning, I wake up, somewhat hung over, and decide that this directoy was a /stupid/ idea. So, I execute the obvious command:
I then wander off in search of some tylenol, and come back with two term papers irretrievably lost.The obvious moral of this story is, "don't root under the influence." (From my more mature perspective, I would like to suggest that drinking less might also be a good plan.)
I simply can't afford a finance package that doesn't give me accurate numbers. This kind of thing is the same reason I left my last finance package (Budget for Mac). To me, accuracy and stability are the absolute minimums for any finance package. Without them, I can't even consider any other features.
Man, I love it when people use math. :) Until proven otherwise, let's just agree that this guy is perhaps mistaken about his overall returns. Or perhaps there just aren't very many opportunities where he can apply his winning strategy. Either way, have to wonder why he doesn't just leave his money in for a year or 10 then buy australia.
Just out of curiosity, what books/methods would you recommend? I'm certainly open to being proven wrong, but thus far haven't seen anything but buy and hold investing that offered a conistent return. Can you describe your anualized return?
Technical analysis, on the other hand, depends utterly on the assumption that the market is basically efficient, and that there are no true "values" in a general sense.
Now, the truth is probably somewhere in the middle. To my way of thinking, at this time most of the market is inflated (not efficient). This means that you might have some short term luck with TA as you mess around with price fluctuations on already inflated stocks. On the other hand, there are some bargains out there, and also some tech companies that may grow a great deal over the next few years.
But, at the end of the day, 80% of mutual funds, the great bastions of TA, underperform the market. Sorry, I don't buy it.
It's a dog eat dog world. If you want something different, I'd suggest a good church (if you could find one.) All a hunder years of liberalism has accomplished is to make people /pretend/ that the world is anything different. Of course, these people who are busy pretending wouldn't know an economics textbook unless it hit them upside the head.
I've watched several people go broke on the gospel of technical analysis. To me, the tell-tale is that I never hear people who are into technical analysis talk about their total return, after taxes and commissions. Instead, I always hear them talk about the stocks they made money on. I happen to be privy to my father's portfolio, and using technical analysis, churning his portfolio, paying taxes, he has made 8.3% a year over the last 10 years. And he more or less does this full time since his retirement.
In the same period, I've averaged 17% APR, even allowing for the .com dive. My dad makes a killing on a few stocks, but in the long run he loses because of the stocks that he makes a little bit on, but not enough to cover his brokerage fees.
My advice is this: pick a few companies whose product you believe in. Figure out what their historical P/E is. Compensate for the fact that P/E's are going up nowadays (I usually allow 20:1 where traditional value is 14.5:1.) Then estimate -- and here's the art of it -- where their earnings are going in 3 years. If the P/E based on future earnings is less than your target P/E, buy.
Then, /ignore/ "the market". I mean it. Look at your portfolio once a month, and whatever you do don't watch CNNFN or pay attention to analysts whose main interest is to get you to churn your portfolio. Buy and hold, and pay attention only to your companies' BUSINESS, not the market.
Maybe some of you can make TA work for you. If so, more power to you. But my money's on buy-n-hold. TA isn't investing, it's trading and gambling. Doing research for more effective TA doesn't make it not random any more than reading the sports pages makes betting on sports not random. And you don't really need any software to do it, although Quicken might be nice. As far as a book, I'd recommend "Stocks for the Long Run" by Spiegel. He goes into a lot more detail than the Lynch's of the world. Also, get yourself a good book on reading balance sheets. You'll need it.