A couple of days ago I read an article posted on Slashdot about the
origins(and differences) of the *BSD Unix OS's. I found an interesting note
in the article about how Dr. Dobb's(my most favorite computer magazine in
the whole world) printed a series of articles by William Frederick and Lynne
Greer Jolitz on the porting of the BSD system to the 386. Now, I may have my
facts wrong here, but I find this to be particularly significant
because(again-correct me if I'm wrong here) their work probably helped
contribute in some way or another to the Linux project. If anything at all,
maybe it was just the first(or at least one of the first) porting projects
made.

Anyways, I thought that was very interesting so I went and bought the CD
from the ddj.com website containing all articles from 1988 to 2000. Not only
did I get that collection of articles(which I am going to read over the
course of the next few days) but I got a TON of real programming gems here.
This CD is priceless - one of my first assumptions is that a majority of the
articles written over 10 years ago are still relevant and useful today. I
present to you a list of goodies that I found:

Designing a write-once File System
Assembly Language Tricks of the Trade
OOP with Assembly Language
Object Swapping
C++ File Objects

Granted, there are some articles that are dated, but that's also a good
thing too, in the sense that you can get a great look back on the last 12
years of SW and get a feel for how far we've come. 

I got this disk for 20 bones; the website lists it for $99. I think I got it
on sale for being a subscriber, but I'd almost say it's even worth the 99.
Their Programming Resources CD's are cheaper, as are their Essential Book
Collections too. The point I'd like to convey to anyone who has stuck ith me
this far into this message is: I really love this journal and I think you
should go buy this CD. (If I weren't so tired right now I might state a more
elaborate case).

Hope this was interesting to someone...  :)

-------------------------------------------
Lucas Vogel, Software Developer
Exponent Failure Analysis Associates, Inc.
lvogel@exponent.com
(623)587-6739