NMAP 5.0 is out

NMAP 5.0 is out and zenmap is an interesting tool which gives a better view of how networks elements are interconnected. If you don't have it, get it at insecure.org. Their work is much appreciated and as they say "It is a powerful tool, use it responsibly." http://insecure.org

PmWiki is also a good tool,

Convex Optimization ( the book and course 364 , with professor Steven Boyd ) is great ( Stanford open course ware ). The book is free from Cambridge University Press and this is a wonderful thing for them to do. They also provide a utility in Python which is very useful.

As far as shell script, here is a new way I learned to use them. Notice that the first quotes are the special kind which imply execution of the enclosed element. The top leans left and at least on my QWERTY it is on the same key as ~ . Do not confuse this with weak quotes or strong quotes as it will execute.

cat `find ./ -iname '*py' `| grep what-to-find

From Wikipedia Backquote information

Many of the Unix shells and the programming languages Perl and PHP use pairs of this character—known as backquote or backtick—to indicate substitution of the standard output from one command into a line of text defining another command. For example, echo `date` might execute echo Sat Mar 1 09:43:00 GMT 2008 and print Sat Mar 1 09:43:00 GMT 2008.