Why do I get emails from people looking for the definition of an
eigenvalue?
http://www.cs.caltech.edu/~adam/local/faq-adam.html#eigenvalue
Or worse, wanting to know about the Big Mac Index?
http://www.cs.caltech.edu/~adam/local/faq-adam.html#bigmacindex
Or even worse, wanting to know about the Taco Conversion Principle?
http://www.cs.caltech.edu/~adam/local/faq-adam.html#taco
Or scarier yet, why do people ask MY opinions on Web security?
Or my opinions on where XML is going? Or... why do people want me to
post anything at all to FoRK anymore??????
> I host 6,000 FoRKPosts, and this is the ONLY one people > seem to feel
free to write me personally about.
I get written whenever I make a comment that is nasty, incorrect,
incomplete, having poor spelling or grammar (especially lack of parallel
structure), buzzwordy, brandnamey, or trivial. Which is like, every
FoRKpost I do, basically.
> As if my voided social life was nothing. And for waht? to FAKE their
> way into MICROSOFT. Sheesh.
Microsoft IS a difficult company for most people to get into, you know.
I would think they'd be flattered by someone who has the tenacity and
the chutzpah to ask a complete stranger such as yourself (no one's
stranger than Rohit!) for advice.
> At least I have enough respect for their interview process to believe
> that there are no stupid people on the inside and no trick gatekeeper
> questions on the outside, The key is something which elucidates the
> thought process. Sheesh.
Then again, you're right: flattery is a poor substitute for talent.
> No, Ed, I can't help you. No such giude exists, nor ever existed, and
> I don't know why folks continue to believe that I am the god of MS job
> offers.
Well, because you are.
In an unrelated note, holiday times are upon us. Why not stock up on a
nice book from Amazon -- they make great stocking stuffers:
Chronicles of Dissent
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0962883883/forkrecommendedrA/
Manufacturing Consent: the Video
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=6303295576/forkrecommendedrA/
A Peoples' History of the United States
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0060926430/forkrecommendedrA/
A History of the Jews
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0060915331/forkrecommendedrA/
The Simpsons: A Complete Guide to Our Favorite Family
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0060952520/forkrecommendedrA/
And, the inevitable suck.com spinoff book --- Suck : Worst-Case
Scenarios in Media, Culture, Advertising, and the Internet, by Joey
Anuff (Editor), Ana Marie Cox (Editor), Terry Colon (Illustrator)
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=1888869275/forkrecommendedrA/
Now, for those of you who managed to read this far and not fall asleep,
a little bonus: how I spent my FoRKposting break in 3 simple lessons.
1. THE ORIGIN OF (DOCUMENT) SPECIES (with Rohit)
-----------------------------------
http://www.cs.caltech.edu/~adam/papers/www/origin-of-species.html
The World Wide Web's extraordinary reach is based in part on its open
assimilation of document formats. Although Web transfer protocols and
addressing can accommodate any kinds of resources, the unique
application context of a truly global hypermedia system favors the
adoption of certain Web-adapted formats. In this paper we consider the
evolutionary record that has led to the ascent of the eXtensible Markup
Language (XML).
We present a taxonomy of document species in the Web according to their
syntax, style, structure, and semantics. We observe the preferential
adoption of SGML, CSS, HTML, and XML, respectively, which leverage a
parsimonious evolutionary strategy favoring declarative encodings over
Turing-complete languages; separable styles over inline formatting;
declarative markup over presentational markup; and well-defined
semantics over operational behavior.
The paper concludes with an evolutionary walkthrough of citation
formats. Ultimately, combined with the self-referential power of the
Web to document itself, we believe XML can catalyze a critical shift of
the Web from a global information space into a universal knowledge
network.
2. TRUST MANAGEMENT ON THE WORLD WIDE WEB (with Rohit)
-----------------------------------------
http://www.cs.caltech.edu/~adam/papers/www/trust-management.html
As once-proprietary mission-specific information systems migrate onto
the Web, traditional security analysis cannot sufficiently protect each
subsystem atomically. The Web encourages open, decentralized systems
that span multiple administrative domains. Trust Management is an
emerging framework for decentralizing security decisions that helps
developers and others in asking "why" trust is granted rather than
immediately focusing on "how" cryptography can enforce it.
In this paper, we recap the basic elements of Trust Management:
principles, principals, and policies. We present pragmatic details of
Web-based TM technology for identifying principals, labeling resources,
and enforcing policies. We sketch how TM might be integrated into Web
applications for document authoring and distribution, content filtering,
and mobile code security. Finally, we measure today's Web protocols,
servers, and clients against this model, culminating in a call for
stakeholders' support in bringing automatable TM to the Web.
3. COMPOSING ACTIVE PROXIES TO EXTEND THE WEB (with Rohit)
---------------------------------------------
http://www.cs.caltech.edu/~adam/papers/csa98b.html
Independent extensibility is a critical affordance of compositional
software architectures. To realize the full potential of concurrent
evolution of systems by all the system's stakeholders, architects should
be encouraged to support externalized, component-oriented hooks. In
particular, active proxies on the Web demonstrate the power of
independent evolution and the serendipitous synergy of orthogonal
services. Soon, HTTP in conjunction with PEP will systematize this power
and bring it to clients and servers as well.
4. CALTECH INFOSPHERES PROJECT MISSION STATEMENT (with Mani)
------------------------------------------------
http://www.cs.caltech.edu/~adam/papers/csa98.html
The Infospheres project researches compositional ways of obtaining high
confidence in dynamically-reconfigurable scalable distributed systems.
This paper provides a brief description of the four main attributes of
the distributed systems we are exploring: compositionality, scalability,
dynamic reconfigurability, and high confidence. We present some of the
issues we are considering in our research of such systems, and provide
links to our further explorations of these issues.
5. MAGIC CASTLE IN LOS ANGELES (with Michelle)
------------------------------
I love LA. We love it!
----
adam@cs.caltech.edu
There's a strong streak of good in you Superman, but then nobody's
perfect. ALMOST nobody.
-- Lex Luthor