A Feast for Crows

I let a week go by before writing about “A Feast for Crows“. I have mixed feelings about the book. With all that went on in “A Strom of Swords” one is left expecting what more has G.R.R. Martin has thought and how is this all going to end? Maybe this is why he was forced to split the continuation of the Storm into two books (three volumes actually) but I cannot help thinking that he has turned this into a cash cow. I quote from the Wikipedia page of the book:

In May 2005 Martin announced that the “sheer size” of his still-unfinished manuscript for A Feast for Crows had led him and his publishers to split the narrative into two books. Rather than divide the text in half chronologically, Martin opted to instead split the material by character and location, resulting in “two novels taking place simultaneously” with different casts of characters. A Feast for Crows was published months later, and the concurrent novel A Dance with Dragons was released on July 12, 2011. Martin also noted that the A Song of Ice and Fire series would now likely total seven novels.

At least it is not like what Brian Herbert did to the Dune saga.

Maybe after I read the two volumes of “A Dance with Dragons” I will look into this book more fondly.

(A Storm of Swords) (A Dance with Dragons)

On Abstraction

A twitter conversation I followed minutes ago sparked this memory:

“the purpose of abstracting is not to be vague, but to create a new semantic level in which one can be absolutely precise.”

I think the first time I used the above argument from Dijkstra was when huku and @_argp made their excellent presentation about memory allocators back in OWASP AppSecEU 2012.

[EWD340]

remote power-on

From my INBOX:

Back in the days with no remotely-controlled power we had a server with another computer set face-to-face, such that the CD tray was hitting the power reset button of the neighbor. Unfortunately, this one has the power button on top, and you have to hold it in order for the box to shut down.

Catastrophe is always just around the corner

This is something System Administrators aquire as knowledge along the way (as the homeostasis provider that they are). This is something that developers always ignore for they do not operate the systems that they build either on scale or for long enough to understand how what they built works. This is something that every DevOp and their managers should be prepared for:

“Complex systems possess potential for catastrophic failure. Human practitioners are nearly always in close physical and temporal proximity to these potential failures – disaster can occur at any time and in nearly any place. The potential for catastrophic outcome is a hallmark of complex systems. It is impossible to eliminate the potential for such catastrophic failure; the potential for such failure is always present by the system’s own nature.” — How Complex Systems Fail

If people expect that the software intensive systems that they use are like bridges, they should be prepared for Tacoma Narrows.

Being a spammer for 40 minutes

When Martijn Grooten told me that he would spend a few days in Greece, I immediately grabbed the opportunity and asked him to give us a presentation. He gladly accepted and with great assistance from the Athens ISACA and Greek OWASP chapters, the presentation was given yesterday at 18:30 at PwC’s building:

Photo courtsey of @kpapapan
Photo courtesy of @kpapapan

The title of the presentation is “Being a spammer for 40 minutes” and you can grab the PDF version of the slides. For those who missed it (and it was a full house) an outline of what Martijn intended to say was posted some days earlier.

Thank you Martijn for letting us share and thank you for giving an illuminating talk for a diverse audience. Indeed the interesting things in mail happen after filtering.

A Storm of Swords – Book 1

It took me longer than I expected to finish the first part of “A Storm of Swords“, but it was definitely worth the effort. And I say effort because after thousands of pages that I mostly read through the night, the multitude of names starts makes it hard to follow the chain of events and alliances without taking notes and running back to consult them. And that is why I am thankful for the Wiki of Ice and Fire.

(A Clash of Kings) (A Storm of Swords – Book 2)