Date: Wed, 29 Jul 1998 17:03:25 -0700 (PDT) From: Sean Eric Fagan <sef@kithrup.com> To: chat@FreeBSD.ORG, hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Dr Dobb's Journal, September 1998 Message-ID: <199807300003.RAA10878@kithrup.com>
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Once again, there is a FreeBSD-related article in DDJ, this time about the design and implementation of select() and poll(). (The code in the article has not yet been checked in, because a slew of problems has conspired to prevent me from installing -current on a usable machine. Bah.) It's not, I think, as good as the first article (which was about adding truss to FreeBSD via procfs), but it is a follow-on. Anyone who finds it useful can thank Nate, who asked me, one day, just how select() worked and inspired me to spend a few hours digging around the code :). Now a rant, a challenge, and some bragging. DDJ paid me $850 for the article, same as the first one. However, with the first one, Walnut Creek CD-ROM provided me with matching funds, which meant that time I spent on the article was actually quite well-paid. It did, in fact, end up paying for my new server (minus tape drive, which was an unexpected expense anyway). But I was, Jordan says, the only person who took advantage of this -- and so it was discontinued (which I did not find out until after I asked when I'd be getting the money from WC 8-)). Had some of you other bright and verbose people (yes, Terry, I mean *you*) written down some of the diatribes (or short novels, in Terry's case), I would be able to buy a luxury this time, instead of simply paying off the credit card debt I acquired due to some emergency hardware purchases. (Yes, I can turn any issue into being about *me*. It's a gift. :)) Look, people: writing an article is not hard. The hard part is coming up with an idea in the first place; I was lucky in that I'd had this idea for a Usenix paper for about four years (truss via procfs), and, on seeing Jordan's matching offer announcement, decided to change the tone slightly, and sell it, instead of presenting it at a conference. For example, here are a few ideas that are probably sellable, to either DDJ or, say, The Linux Journal: Using the MBone Using PostgreSQL Web server design, optimization, and setup News server "" Security concerns with FreeBSD, including using it as a firewall in a predominantly Windows environment All of those, except for the PostgreSQL one, are just off the top of my head. Most of them don't even require a lot of code to be written, and the length of an article is fairly short -- the one in the current DDJ was 443 lines (not counting code) when I submitted it, and they edited it down a bit. And if anyone does want to write an article, I'll offer some help with it (including bouncing ideas off of me and reading the article and offering suggestions). To get that going... if you've got experience with SQL and any of the available databases that use it, the editor I deal with at DDJ is possibly interested in an article. And since there are always security concerns with Win95 and WinNT, that's *always* a good topic. For a few hours worth of work, it's a chance at a few hundred dollars, and the ability to get your name in print around the world. This, by the way, can be a very nice addition to a resume. Linux has enough people writing articles to devote an entire MAGAZINE to -- surely we can come up with a few articles a year? To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message
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