One of my many daughters (as with Joyce's Finnegan, I'm a proud HCE, Haveth Childers Everywhere, with reports still coming in) once asked "If you're so bleeding clever, why aren't you rich?"
Since then, I have acquired three German cars, four columns, and lost two spendthrift wives, yet the challenge still niggles. I'm far less well off than hundreds of my dumb peers who bought Amazon, Yahoo, and Red Hat stock before the IPO explosions.
I'm tired of explaining to my anxious next-of-kin probate vultures that the "market" is a zero-sum game as defined by von Neumann et al. — with a touch of Las Vegas chaos.
I've been happy enough to comply with the Zermolo set-theoretic axioms, balancing my bank bottom line with reasonable arithmetical ins and outs. But, there's always a remote in-law, no doubt, who will challenge these laws?
I have therefore, vaguely, been investigating the subtle nuances of e-investment. We have the professional predatory VCs — Venture Capitalists — not to be confused with holders of the Victoria Cross. They take untold risks pouring money into promising e-ventures (the e-prefix being the e-promise), on the widespread agenda that some, with controlling shares, will succeed.
Then, we meet cautious upstarts who resist the VC "51%-choke," and seek "angels." (Cynically: investors who'll risk 49%?)
I first encountered this term as a lad, extra-biblically, when a Christmas bazaar in Liverpool advertised "Life-sized Angels."
My subsequent classical studies distinguished "angelos" (a neutral but potentially beneficent messenger) and "apostolos" (one sent proclaiming a message).
Ponder awhile: there's no end of well-intentioned projects lurking out in cyberland — so many apostles but a dearth of angels.
Who defined guarantor as "an idiot with a fountain pen?"
Yet, and yet again, I ignored Paul Caniff's email about this crazy plan to sell books on the Web.
Visit www.dloo.com for example — a promising attempt to extend the Open Source Software revolution. Why shouldn't Open Software run openly, equally on Linux and the predominantly closed MS and Mac platforms? There's medieval room here on the needle's point for few more dancing angels.
Finally, inevitably: the surfeit of e-commerce hype from B2C and B2B has generated satirical nostalgia for real shopping.
The New Business-to-Consumer Retail Craze
"S-Commerce" or "Shops" are the hottest thing in B2C commerce right now and are being rolled out in cities and towns nationwide. "It's a real revelation," according to Malcolm Fosbury, a Middleware engineer from Hillingdon. "You just walk into one of these shops and they have all sorts of things for sale." [Author, alas, anon — 'fess up for overdue acks]
Book Nook
Highly toutable, the ultimate book on Linux Security from Prentice Hall PTR: Bob Toxen's Real World Linux Security — Intrusion Prevention, Detection and Recovery, including a CD-ROM of vital programs to reduce your "vulnerabilities." Look out, too, for Accelerated C++ by Andrew Koenig and Barbara E. Moo (Addison-Wesley, August 2000), a team close to Bjarne's Mother Church that guarantees the latest and best in OO pedagogy. The gist is to dip soon and deeply into the powerful ISO C++ template and library abstractions without all those early C distractions.
And for my Netherlands fans: when you've stopped gloating over the Euro2000 soccer 6-1 result versus Yugoslavia, look out for Fred Butzen's Linux Network now available in Dutch (Addison Wesley).
Stan Kelly-Bootle has been computing on and off since 1953 when he graduated from Cambridge University in Pure Mathematics and hacked on EDSAC I (the first true stored-program computer). He is a contributing editor for Linux Journal and a Jolt Judge for Software Development Magazine. With the demise of UNIX Review/Performance Computing, his 16-year-old Devil's Advocate column has moved online to www.sarcheck.com. His many books include 680x0 Programming by Example, Mastering Turbo C, Lern Yerself Scouse, The Devil's DP Dictionary, The Computer Contradictory, and Unix Complete. Under his nom-de-folk, Stan Kelly, his songs have been recorded by Cilla Black, Judy Collins, the Dubliners, and himself. Stan welcomes email via [email protected] and his website http://www.feniks.com/skb/. Stan's ramblings can also be found at www.unixreview.com.
