Sometime ago (I think it was last September) I read that IEEE had selected Microsoft as the Most Innovative Company of the Year(**). Since I couldn't think of anything MS had innovated in the preceding year, and since this was the same year when huge strides were being made elsewhere (Linux, Java, Real Media, cable modems, you name it), I concluded that MS had managed to stack the board of IEEE, and that the award was a show put on for the DOJ.
It appears that IEEE is no longer objective, which makes them irrelevant as a standards body.
** - Hearsay Warning: Although I read this in a major publication (one of the major weekly PC-industry papers), I was never able to corroborate it on IEEE's website.
It's just three weeks now since my son and I started running Linux, and we've already accumulated a few hundred dollars in books to go along with our free OS.:)
My problem was that none of my 20+ years of programming experience involved Unix. I thus bought a bunch of books, and started digging. Though most of the books were good, none of them seemed to give me what I needed most, which was a grasp of the basic underlying concepts of how a Unix system runs. This book filled the gap. The book starts at just the right place, by describing the standard directory structure, and the Init process by which Unix configures itself. Lots of books have how-to instructions, but this is the book that gave me the basic understanding that will allow me to make progress.
We haven't gotten far enough along to say how well this book would serve a veteran Linux person, but for an experienced programmer who's new to Linux, the Linux Companion for System Administrators is an excellent book.
I thought I saw a documentary once which said that, as the Germans were pushing towards Moscow, the retreating Russian army was burning the crops and food stocks ahead of them, to prevent the Germans from gaining new supplies. The resulting starvation was responsible for a large percentage of the Russian civilian deaths.
Of course, Stalin's evil, and questionable military tactics, does not diminish the tremendous sacrifices made by the Russian people in order to defeat Hitler's army. And, to be fair, the German people and footsoldiers were mostly victims as well. It is interesting to ask how much each individual citizen is responsible when their society is gripped by evil. What would you do? Would you recognize it in your own society, and work to defeat it? Is it happening to some degree right now?
Slashdot Mirror
Sometime ago (I think it was last September) I read that IEEE had selected Microsoft as the Most Innovative Company of the Year(**). Since I couldn't think of anything MS had innovated in the preceding year, and since this was the same year when huge strides were being made elsewhere (Linux, Java, Real Media, cable modems, you name it), I concluded that MS had managed to stack the board of IEEE, and that the award was a show put on for the DOJ.
It appears that IEEE is no longer objective, which makes them irrelevant as a standards body.
** - Hearsay Warning: Although I read this in a major publication (one of the major weekly PC-industry papers), I was never able to corroborate it on IEEE's website.
It's just three weeks now since my son and I started running Linux, and we've already accumulated a few hundred dollars in books to go along with our free OS. :)
My problem was that none of my 20+ years of programming experience involved Unix. I thus bought a bunch of books, and started digging. Though most of the books were good, none of them seemed to give me what I needed most, which was a grasp of the basic underlying concepts of how a Unix system runs. This book filled the gap. The book starts at just the right place, by describing the standard directory structure, and the Init process by which Unix configures itself. Lots of books have how-to instructions, but this is the book that gave me the basic understanding that will allow me to make progress.
We haven't gotten far enough along to say how well this book would serve a veteran Linux person, but for an experienced programmer who's new to Linux, the Linux Companion for System Administrators is an excellent book.
I thought I saw a documentary once which said that, as the Germans were pushing towards Moscow, the retreating Russian army was burning the crops and food stocks ahead of them, to prevent the Germans from gaining new supplies. The resulting starvation was responsible for a large percentage of the Russian civilian deaths.
Of course, Stalin's evil, and questionable military tactics, does not diminish the tremendous sacrifices made by the Russian people in order to defeat Hitler's army. And, to be fair, the German people and footsoldiers were mostly victims as well. It is interesting to ask how much each individual citizen is responsible when their society is gripped by evil. What would you do? Would you recognize it in your own society, and work to defeat it? Is it happening to some degree right now?