The Long Tail

Nice article on demassification in entertainment media titled The Long Tail in the October issue of Wired.¹

[1] The article won't be online until October 5th, othewise I would have linked to it.

Burn the disk packs!*

Buried in Adam Rifkin's post on the Google Labs Aptitude Test is a request that I answer the one of the test's questions:

5. What's broken with Unix?

  How would you fix it?

I think it was unwise of Adam to ask for my response to this question — after all, the name for this blog was originally supposed to have been Don't Get Me Started (turns out that had already been taken, several times). It's pretty difficult to take this question seriously, though, so the danger isn't all that great. And to be fair to the author of the GLAT, it's fairly clear that this question isn't meant any more seriously than the rest of the "test".

For Adam's pleasure I could try to answer the question, but to keep the answer's length reasonable I'd have to choose between Unix the thing and Unix the idea. Even that's not a clear distinction.

So, unless something else compels me, I won't answer, except with a parable. Uh, not actually a parable, but more like a rave. Not my rave but one I once heard. Uh not really the one that I heard, really my version of what I heard. At least I think I heard it. OK. Somebody (John Wharton?) explaining why he hated Intel's processor:

No, I won't use the freaking Pentium 4, 'cause inside a Pentium 4 is a Pentium III, and inside that is a Pentium II, and inside that is a freaking Pentium nothing, and it doesn't stop there. No, inside a Pentium is a 80486 which I won't use because inside that is a freaking 386, and inside that is a 80286. You know, of course, that inside the 286 is an 80186 and inside that is the freaked freaking 8086 which has an 8085 inside, and inside of that is an 8080, and as we all know, inside that is an 8008 and inside that is a 4040 and inside that is the freaking 4004 and inside that is a freaking japanese freaking calculator

Since I heard the original version in the mid-80's, the rave presumably started from the 386. And, of course, the speaker didn't actually say "freaking".

[*] Stoney again, I think; but Alan claims the slogan too.

Capitalist Pig

I've already posted about becoming an advertiser. Now I've discovered a new (to me) way to monetize my success in building Recondite's readership to its currently impressive levels.

I've already made the changes. This commercial activity is less visible than AdSense, though — can you figure out what it is?

Principia Securita

I found another book at Digital Guru: UC Davis Prof. Matt Bishop's Computer Security: Art and Science. Apparently, it's been out since early 2003, but this is the first copy I've seen. Bishop is well-known for the practical advice he's published on writing secure privileged programs.

I've only read the table of contents and dipped-in here and there, but it seems incredibly comprehensive. At a little less than 1100 pages, it's 58% the length of Russell and Whitehead.

It's got the obligatory chapter on Bell-LaPadula¹, and three chapters on crypto, but that's out of 35 chapters. Less usual, and more welcome, is the chapter on identity, and the four chapter-long section on assurance. There are five chapters in the "End Matter" section that seem like padding (I mean, a does a chapter on symbolic logic belong in the book?), but there may be requirements in textbook publishing I don't understand.

Unfortunately, it doesn't have any material on security and economics or human factors; of course, that's a fault shared by almost all other books on computer security.²

As I said, it's quite comprehensive and it looks like a great combination reference and textbook. I'm glad I bought it. Now I've got 900-odd pages to go...

[1] The Bell-LaPadula Model was developed in the mid-60's as a formal description of the necessary properties for computer systems supporting military-style classification of information. There's a hierarchy of classification labels (e.g., Unclassified ← Confidential ← Secret ← Top Secret) for data, and system users have clearance to corresponding levels. Sigh. Most thinking about computer security has started from this point — too bad it has nothing to do with the requirements of real systems.

[2] With the exception of Ross Anderson's Security Engineering: A Guide to Building Dependable Distributed Systems. But Anderson's book actually has surprisingly little material on economics and the book is far less comprehensive than Bishop's.

HAKMEM redux

While I was in the Bay Area last week I went browsing at Digital Guru bookstore in Sunnyvale, not far from where the old Computer Literacy used to be on Lawrence Expressway.

One of the books I found there was Hacker's Delight, a book very much in the spirit of the venerable MIT AI Labs memo HACKMEM.¹ Whereas HACKMEM touches on mathematics, circuits and even cosmology², Hacker's Delight pretty much sticks to (computer) mathematics.

The book has a nice website that goes along with it.

[1] Guy Steele's forward to the book also notes the resemblance.

[2] Check out Item 154, where Gosper proves that the Universe is two's-complement.