Johnath's New Writeups

WSDL (idea)

2003-07-15T19:48:40Z

Web Services Description Language

So the hip thing in enterprise software development right now, be it J2EE, .NET, or miscellaneous is web services, and we can go on and on about what they actually are, and what purpose they actually have, but that is a discussion for another node. I hope no one will think me too off-base if I say that basically web services are an attempt to expose certain "interesting" computer operations to the world in a platform-independent way. The idea being that once you can do that, all sorts of neat things should be possible. An example of a web service operation might be amazon.com exposing an operation that lets you get info on a book in their database by supplying an ISBN.

Fine. Super. Everyone likes neat things. But that platform-independent part is tricky -- we don't just mean operating system independence here, we mean it shouldn't even matter what programming language you use. That's crazy talk, it's like the government…

JenniCam (thing)

2001-05-29T04:33:03Z

Jennicam (www.jennicam.com) is a phenomenon. The internet is full of one hit wonders, those quickly propagating, quickly disappearing memes like the hamster dance or the I kiss you guy, and when jennicam first took off, it probably looked that way too, but jenni has persisted.

Jennicam is a 24/7 webcam run by Jennifer Ringley who, assuming she doesn't make enough money off of subscriptions to her site, also works as a web design type person, unsurprisingly. The site is free, and updates every 15 minutes, but a subscription will get you updates every minute instead. Nothing remarkable here, there are a hundred like it, neh?

It's tough to say what makes jennicam different, but there are a couple things that probably contribute:

There is at least SOME form of free access
It's 24/7, never stops. You watch her sleep, you watch her eat lunch - if she goes out, you watch an empty house, or an empty computer chair, or the cats.
It's been on the web since 1996,

…

combinatorial explosion (idea)

2001-05-18T04:18:51Z

A combinatorial explosion is when the thing you're doing scales really really really poorly. Consider a game like chess, and imagine that you are a programmer trying to come up with the next big thing in AI research, by creating a perfect chess player. Setting aside for the moment the question of whether this is possible (something programmers are notorious for doing at the start of ambitious projects), you have decided that the best way to do that is to just have the computer look at the current board, think of every single possible board position that could come out of this one, and choose the best move sequence.

Before you scoff derisively, remember that this algorithm actually works perfectly well for some problems, like tic tac toe. However, don't put aside all your scoffing, because you're right to say that this is a very bad idea for a chess program. Why? Because, to a first approximation, the average chess game has roughly 40…

attack tree (idea)

2001-05-17T03:45:01Z

First introduced (at least under its current incarnation) by crypto- and computer security-guru Bruce Schneier, attack trees are a way to get smart about the anticipation of, and defense from, attack. Though he designed them primarily for modelling computer and network based threats, it should be clear that they serve equally well in almost any other situation.

The construction of an attack tree, at least on the surface, is simple. You place at the top of the tree the goal of an attack (in a case where your system may be subject to multiple attacks with entirely different motivations, you might need several trees). Branching off of this are all the ways you (and whenever possible, several other very smart people) can imagine someone might obtain this goal. If those methods would in turn require other intermediate steps, then under each of those subnodes, branch off as appropriate.

The example Bruce uses here, which I will borrow shamelessly, is that of opening a…

Salt (thing)

2001-05-16T04:56:18Z

In cooking, salt is hands-down the most often used additive, bar none. But there are actually a multitude of salts available, especially in gourmet cooking, and knowing the difference will help you sound interesting and knowledgeable and pretentious, so let's jump right in.

Salt for cooking generally comes from one of two sources: salt mines or the sea. Really, a salt mine is generally just a dried up sea bed, so I guess it all eventually comes from the same place, but if you were to read a salt industry magazine (and no doubt such things exist) they would tell you that the sources are different, so I will perpetuate the story. These days most salt comes from salt mines, simply because it's cheaper than evaporating or filtering large quantities of salt water, which is your other option.

Normal, everyday table salt, like almost all other salts used in cooking, is basically Sodium Chloride, NaCl, but is almost always iodized. This means iodine has…

a la carte (idea)

2001-05-15T02:08:15Z

Technically spelled "à la carte," this French term is used on restaurant menus to indicate that each item is priced seperately. Most menus, of course, have different prices for different dishes, but on an a la carte menu, prices are for individual components of a dish. An example may help:

"Regular" or, if you're pretentious, "Prix Fixe" menus have items like:

Shrimp platter with garlic fried shrimp, jumbo tiger shrimp, and fried butterfly shrimp, with a side order of baked potato.... $19.99

By contrast, an A La Carte menu would have a section like:

A La Carte Menu, Shrimp Section:

Garlic Fried Shrimp.........$2 for 4
Jumbo Tiger Shrimp..........$3 for 4
Butterfly Shrimp............$3 for 6
... et cetera ...

A la carte then, is like a choose your own adventure menu. You pick the components, they put them together. This may, to…