Psionicist - Slashdot User

Comment Here are two suggestions (Score 1) 517

by Psionicist on Tuesday December 23, 2008 @03:25PM (#26214875) Attached to: Your Favorite Tech / Eng. / CS Books?

Introduction to the Theory of Computation by Sipser. This is my favorite computer science textbook together with SICP. It deals with theoretical computer science, mainly automata, computability and complexity theory. It's just 400 pages or so, but covers lots of ground.

Types and Programming Languages by Pierce. This is a very accessible introduction to the theory of programming languages and types.

Enterprise Software Sales Dried Up In September 173

Posted by kdawson on Monday October 06, 2008 @07:25PM from the surprise-surprise dept.

CurtMonash writes "As I predicted a week ago, it looks as if the third quarter was ugly for software vendors, due to the economic crisis. SAP said 'The market developments of the past several weeks have been dramatic and worrying to many businesses. These concerns triggered a very sudden and unexpected drop in business activity at the end of the quarter.' My old acquaintance John Treadway, who used to work in Sybase's financial services vertical unit, reports that things are even worse than that in the financial services industry, Wall Street and retail banks alike. So now what? Well, IT is a huge part of capital spending, and at enterprises that have to cut back capital spending, IT is going to get hurt. On the other hand, high-growth companies — Web businesses, analytic services providers, etc. — may try to power through the downturn. And the more directly an IT project affects near-term profits, the more likely it is to survive."

Comment There are some ways to minimize the problem (Score 5, Interesting) 113

by Psionicist on Sunday July 20, 2008 @01:45PM (#24263979) Attached to: Cold Boot Attack Utilities Released At HOPE Conference

The way I see this, you should simply not store keys in memory (that is have your encrypted file system mounted) when you not need access to the files. A correct program will overwrite the keys when the file system is dismounted.

The purpose of full disk encryption (or system encryption in TrueCrypt is), in my opinion, not meant as a "one password to protect everything". It's just an extra measure to secure temporary files, the swap file and other tracks the OS and applications may spread around. You should still encrypt your really secret files separately, and use basic precautions such as secure file erasure when you've used them.

That said, I still don't think this attack is so important. If you have the file system mounted, and an attacker gains access to your computer, the files are already there!

Origin of Quake3's Fast InvSqrt() 402

Posted by Zonk on Friday December 01, 2006 @03:20PM from the i-know-you-were-dying-inside-without-this dept.

geo writes "Beyond3D.com's Ryszard Sommefeldt dons his seersucker hunting jacket and meerschaum pipe to take on his secret identity as graphics code sleuth extraordinaire. In today's thrilling installment, the origins of one of the more famous snippets of graphics code in recent years is under the microscope — Quake3's Fast InvSqrt(), which has been known to cause strong geeks to go wobbly in the knees while contemplating its simple beauty and power." From the article: ""

Symantec Sues Microsoft, May Delay Vista 303

Posted by CowboyNeal on Thursday May 18, 2006 @10:42PM from the delays-other-than-tom dept.

AuMatar writes "Symantec filed a lawsuit against Microsoft over patents on the volume management technology in Vista. They're seeking an injunction to stop Vista from being sold until the suit is completed. Given the recent Supreme Court ruling it should be interesting to see if the injunction is granted, since Symantec does produce software which uses the patent. If it is granted, expect MS to settle to prevent another Vista delay."

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