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Interesting: Preface The TCP/IP protocols were conceived during a time that was quite different from the hostile environment they operate in now. Yet a direct result of their effectiveness and widespread early adoption is that much of today's global economy remains dependent upon them. While many textbooks and articles have created the myth that the Internet Protocols (IP) were designed...

Ronald Loui, In Praise of Scripting: Real Programming Pragmatism, IEEE Computer, vol. 41, no. 7, July 2008. [Openly accessible draft here] The July IEEE Computer carries an article arguing for the use of scripting languages as first programming languages, and also arguing for a greater study of what the author calls "language pragmatics" (the original article is behind the IEEE paywall, but you can find a draft that has roughly the same content here). The argument for using scripting languages as educational languages can be summed up by Loui's abstract: The author recommends that scripting, not Java, be taught first, asserting that students should learn to love their own possibilities before they learn to loathe other people's restrictions. The bulk of the article is devoted to exploring this basic theme in more depth, and provides an interesting contrast to the arguments in favor of moving away from Java (and scripting languages) advanced in Computer Science Education: Where Are the Software Engineers of Tomorrow? (discussed earlier on LtU here). Loui spends the latter part of the article arguing that, in addition to syntax and semantics, research on programming language should include a formal study of language pragmatics. According to Loui, a formal study of pragmatics would address questions such as:

• What is the average lifetime of a program written in language X for programmers of type Y, for a program of type Z?
• What is the average time spent authoring versus debugging a program in language X for programmers of type Y, for a program of type Z?
• What is the consumption of short-term memory when programming in language X for programmers of type Y, for a program of type Z?

Contrary to popular belief, homicide due to mental illness is declining, at least in England and Wales: The rate of total homicide and the rate of homicide due to mental disorder rose steadily until the mid-1970s. From then there was a reversal in the rate of homicides attributed to mental disorder, which declined to historically low levels, while other homicides...

At this moment, Adi Shamir is giving an invited talk at the Crypto 2008 conference about a new type of cryptanalytic attack called "cube attacks." He claims very broad applicability to block ciphers, stream ciphers, hash functions, etc. My personal joke -- at least I hope it's a joke -- is that he's going to break every NIST hash submission...

Illegally diverting water is terrorism: South Australian Premier Mike Rann says the diversion of water from the Paroo River in Queensland is an act of terrorism during a water crisis. Anonymously threatening people with messages on playing cards, like the Joker in The Dark Knight, is terrorism: Giles County deputies arrest two county teenagers they say made terroristic threats to...

This is interesting: Exactly who was behind the cyberattack is not known. The Georgian government blamed Russia for the attacks, but the Russian government said it was not involved. In the end, Georgia, with a population of just 4.6 million and a relative latecomer to the Internet, saw little effect beyond inaccessibility to many of its government Web sites, which...

Wow: The provisional, 8,000-man Cyber Command has been ordered to stop all activities, just weeks before it was supposed to be declared operational....

A command-line, textual, and probably linguistic, interface to the browser. I am not sure how complex they are planning of making this, nor how it meshes with visions of the future of web browsing, but it's worth keeping an eye on. I spent some time thinking about site-specific scripting, and had some discussions with students about building a site-specific DSL compiled to Greasemonkey scripts, but alas nothing came of it. It would be interesting to see whether Ubiquity command lines could be integrated into scripts, and how extensible the vocabulary is going to be, and on what level (i.e., site by site, via plugins etc.) Clearly also related to the often discussed topic of "end-user programming".

True, people do think I am a bit of an asshole, but those are the types who take everything they read on the internet seriously.Anyway, you ever notice how when some dick writes about startups or entrepreneurship on his "Random Musings of an X Programmer" blog, he writes it with a holier-than-thou tone, implying that anybody who is not an entrepreneur is somehow either dumb or less of a man?  You know, cocksteaks like Paul Graham?Well, I'm not one of those guys.  I'm just full of piss and vinegar, and I call 'em as I see 'em.Being A Successful Entrepreneur Is Free License To Act Like A DickIf you start a company and manage to sell it or IPO, then you really are entitled to hold your nose up to first-time founders at parties.  You can listen to their pitches, let them ask you for $250,000 in exchange for 10% equity, and then tell them to come back when they have users.  You earned that shit.You earned that shit as much as someone who won $10,000 on a scratch-off lottery ticket earned the right to look down on other people for not buying lottery tickets, and then tell them that they're doing it all wrong when they finally do buy a lottery ticket.  No, no, no... you're supposed to buy the Scratch4Millions ticket, not the Pot Of Gold ticket.  Dumbass.  Why don't you know that?Want To Start A Company?  Don't Do It In Software.Well, why start your own company in the first place?  If you're doing it for money, chances are you're going to end up worse off financially at the end. I make less than 30% of my previous industry salary as a startup founder.  If the company is successful, then great.  If not, then I've lost a few good earning years.  Money can be made elsewhere, without nearly as much bullshit: Wall Street, the court room and the operating room, to name a few.  If you're a smart person, you can succeed at any one of these.I didn't go off on my own hoping for riches.  I did it so I wouldn't have to take shit from anybody.  And you know what?  I still take plenty of shit.  From investors, the illegitimate tech media, from bloggers, from users, everybody.  Doing a startup outside of software, most importantly, outside of the Silicon Valley microcosm, means you will take substantially less shit from substantially fewer people.So Why Do It?Good question.  If you ask a lot of founders why they did it, they'll give you some smoke-up-the-ass answer about wanting to change the world.  The true answer, the one I would give if you got me drunk enough, is fucked if I knew.  But I am starting to figure it out:

• Being an entrepreneur doesn't mean you're smart.  A smart guy will figure out how to make a bunch of money while taking on much less risk.  Corollary to this, there are a lot of dumb entrepreneurs out there.
• Being an entrepreneur doesn't mean that your dick is longer than most.  No, the guy in high school who got with all the girls while you sat in your room playing Starcraft has that one covered.
• As an entrepreneur, probably 2 days out of 3 are better than they would be if I had a real job.  That's probably the best reason I can come up with.

Will my startup make it?  Who knows, but at least it was more fun than a colonoscopy.

An index of fiction. The site was inspired by Margaret Atwood's infamous comment that Oryx and Crake isn't really science fiction, because science fiction is "talking squids in outer space." This prompted a hunt for science fiction which actually did feature talking squids in outer space....

The proceedings of the 2008 LLVM Developers' Meeting have been posted. The presentations included some overviews of various LLVM subsystems and internals and a few projects targeting the LLVM. Previous meeting's proceedings are also available.

This comment is absolutely correct....

They said -- and it's almost too stupid to believe -- that: the balaclava "could be used to conceal someone's identity or could be used in the course of a criminal act". Don't they realize that balaclavas are for sale everywhere in the UK? Or that scarves, hoods, handkerchiefs, and dark glasses could also be used to conceal someone's identity?...

What's wrong with this picture, from an affidavit filed into a random Los Angeles court concerning divorce proceedings (his emphasis): "I personally maintain and control ALL access security codes and passwords. I have been and am the ONLY individual in the company who can physically access the building, its contents AND precious metal vaults simultaneously, twenty-four hours a day. All others have limited access that is monitored and/or time-controlled (clock-based) and recorded in security records. Alarm calls are sent directly to me at all hours. ... ... I personally designed and customized the installation of a complex, ultra-sophisticated DOUBLE REDUNDANT security system that is both physical (in the building and its parameters) and virtual (reporting to his private office network round the clock.) This custom, high security system monitors and controls the safety of the corporate headquarters and all its contents, the safety of its employees, and the active 24/7 implementation of advanced, anti-theft, crime prevention. I oversee and monitor all security issues round the clock through a Virtual Private Network set-up at my home office." Nothing, as long as the above mentioned person is available forever. Unfortunately he is now in jail, charged with much the same situation as the e-gold founders faced over the last two years. Checking the webpage: Dear Customer, 05 August, 2008, 1:00pm PST: The e-Bullion website will be unavailable for a period of approximately four hours while our Tech Dept. performs routine maintenance. We apologize for any inconvenience caused by this interruption to service. e-Bullion Management Is this a coincidence? Maybe, but it is just another reminder that serious and professional operations do not subscribe to superhero status as described above, for any of a hundred routine and boring scenarios. (More details might be found here, written up by Ian Lamont of the Standard. Poking around a bit there is also a complication that the other side of the divorce proceedings, his wife, was murdered, and the LA police allege that there is a connection of some form.)...

I guess we should note the attempts to smooth over the split amongst implementers that is going down in the JavaScript community with the Oslo Summit and Harmony trying to bring back peace. All programming languages are politics. The attempt to do the right things runs into competing interests and debates over what is the right thing to do. The split in the JavaScript community has been apparent now for a while, with the incrementalists wrapped up in version 3.1 and the more ambitious wrapped up in 4.0. Here's hoping that the wheels don't fall off. From a programming language standpoint, the particulars aren't as interesting as observing how language evolution takes place.

In the middle of a sensationalist article about risks to children and how giving them cell phones can help, there's at least one person who gets it. Since the 1999 Columbine High School shootings and the 9/11 terrorist attacks, many parents feel better having a way to contact their children. But hundreds of students on cell phones during an emergency...

I don't know any of the details, but this seems like a good use of data mining: Mr Tancredi said Verisign's fraud detection kit would help "decrease the time between the attack being launched and the brokerage being able to respond". Before now, he said, brokerages relied on counter measures such as restrictive stock trading or analysis packages that only...

Some things that have been disturbing my desktop for too long. First, a silver bullet spotted: Verisign Aims to Deflate 'Pump and Dump' Scams August 11, 2008 By David Needle. A fraud-detection service warns online brokerages when they're about to make a trade that looks fishy. Verisign is taking a new approach to the battle against so-called "pump and dump" schemes that artificially hype stocks. A new module for the company's VIP Fraud Detection Service, set for release this Friday, features a "self-learning" behavioral engine designed to help brokerages spot and avoid pump and dump activity. The system works by weighing a number of factors, including stock risk, user behaviors, how trading compares to known fraudulent trades and the volume of trading for a particular stock. The notion that a broker has to be told what is a dodgy stock and what is a scam is a bit like telling a mafiosa what is a crime, or the pope what is a heathen. Meanwhile, over in Euro-coin-land: A one euro coin has turned up in Spain bearing the face of cartoon couch potato Homer Simpson instead of that of the country's king, a sweetshop owner told Reuters on Friday. Jose Martinez was counting the cash in his till in the city of Aviles, northern Spain, when he came across the coin where Homer's bald head, big eyes and big nose had replaced the serious features of King Juan Carlos. "The coin must have been done by a professional, the work is impressive," he told Reuters. In the old days, the punishment for forging money was to lose ones head, so we expect Homer to be arrested any day now. I'm guessing that some artist has done this, and only after they did it did they find out how many years of jail they are facing. Question is, does the artist's right override the right of the Seignor to collect his seigniorage? Given the record of central banks lately, the latter's right is looking increasingly dodgy. Thanks to Ray for spotting both Homers!...

Some reality to counter the hype. The Bottom Line While there has been much consternation and alarm-raising over the potential for widespread proliferation of biological weapons and the possible use of such weapons on a massive scale, there are significant constraints on such designs. The current dearth of substantial biological weapons programs and arsenals by governments worldwide, and the even...

The UK has made public its previously classified National Risk Register. The National Risk Register is intended to capture the range of emergencies that might have a major impact on all, or significant parts of, the UK. It provides a national picture of the risks we face, and is designed to complement Community Risk Registers, already produced and published locally...