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My own personal bookshelf includes a multitude of Java textbooks and references (I'm a high school CS teacher), one of which is programming.java by Decker and Hirshfield which was my college textbook in CS 141 and 142 and good ole HamTech. I also have my other college texts: Structured Computer Organization by Tanenbaum, Fundamentals of Sequential and Parallel Algorithms by Berman and Paul, Programming Languages by Sethi, Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach by Russell and Norvig and a handful of reference materials (Learning GNU Emacs, Java in a Nutshell, C++ for Java Programmers, The Practice of Programming, and Learning the UNIX Operating System). But by far, the two books that I have in my collection that I would recommend are Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Persig and Soul of a New Machine by Kidder. Both were required reading in college CS courses, the profs in the dept thought that if we were to graduate with a CS degree, these were two books that we needed to read, they were right. Excellent books, and something more interesting as a gift than a reference book. The third book to suggest would be Just For Fun by Torvalds and Diamond. While I haven't read it myself yet, I thought it would be helpful to include two suggestions of books that I have read and one that is on my wish list...

My own personal bookshelf includes a multitude of Java textbooks and references (I'm a high school CS teacher), one of which is programming.java by Decker and Hirshfield which was my college textbook in CS 141 and 142 and good ole HamTech. I also have my other college texts: Structured Computer Organization by Tanenbaum, Fundamentals of Sequential and Parallel Algorithms by Berman and Paul, Programming Languages by Sethi, Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach by Russell and Norvig and a handful of reference materials (Learning GNU Emacs, Java in a Nutshell, C++ for Java Programmers, The Practice of Programming, and Learning the UNIX Operating System). But by far, the two books that I have in my collection that I would recommend are Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Persig and Soul of a New Machine by Kidder. Both were required reading in college CS courses, the profs in the dept thought that if we were to graduate with a CS degree, these were two books that we needed to read, they were right. Excellent books, and something more interesting as a gift than a reference book. The third book to suggest would be Just For Fun by Torvalds and Diamond. While I haven't read it myself yet, I thought it would be helpful to include two suggestions of books that I have read and one that is on my wish list...

My own personal bookshelf includes a multitude of Java textbooks and references (I'm a high school CS teacher), one of which is programming.java by Decker and Hirshfield which was my college textbook in CS 141 and 142 and good ole HamTech. I also have my other college texts: Structured Computer Organization by Tanenbaum, Fundamentals of Sequential and Parallel Algorithms by Berman and Paul, Programming Languages by Sethi, Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach by Russell and Norvig and a handful of reference materials (Learning GNU Emacs, Java in a Nutshell, C++ for Java Programmers, The Practice of Programming, and Learning the UNIX Operating System). But by far, the two books that I have in my collection that I would recommend are Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Persig and Soul of a New Machine by Kidder. Both were required reading in college CS courses, the profs in the dept thought that if we were to graduate with a CS degree, these were two books that we needed to read, they were right. Excellent books, and something more interesting as a gift than a reference book. The third book to suggest would be Just For Fun by Torvalds and Diamond. While I haven't read it myself yet, I thought it would be helpful to include two suggestions of books that I have read and one that is on my wish list...

My own personal bookshelf includes a multitude of Java textbooks and references (I'm a high school CS teacher), one of which is programming.java by Decker and Hirshfield which was my college textbook in CS 141 and 142 and good ole HamTech. I also have my other college texts: Structured Computer Organization by Tanenbaum, Fundamentals of Sequential and Parallel Algorithms by Berman and Paul, Programming Languages by Sethi, Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach by Russell and Norvig and a handful of reference materials (Learning GNU Emacs, Java in a Nutshell, C++ for Java Programmers, The Practice of Programming, and Learning the UNIX Operating System). But by far, the two books that I have in my collection that I would recommend are Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Persig and Soul of a New Machine by Kidder. Both were required reading in college CS courses, the profs in the dept thought that if we were to graduate with a CS degree, these were two books that we needed to read, they were right. Excellent books, and something more interesting as a gift than a reference book. The third book to suggest would be Just For Fun by Torvalds and Diamond. While I haven't read it myself yet, I thought it would be helpful to include two suggestions of books that I have read and one that is on my wish list...

My own personal bookshelf includes a multitude of Java textbooks and references (I'm a high school CS teacher), one of which is programming.java by Decker and Hirshfield which was my college textbook in CS 141 and 142 and good ole HamTech. I also have my other college texts: Structured Computer Organization by Tanenbaum, Fundamentals of Sequential and Parallel Algorithms by Berman and Paul, Programming Languages by Sethi, Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach by Russell and Norvig and a handful of reference materials (Learning GNU Emacs, Java in a Nutshell, C++ for Java Programmers, The Practice of Programming, and Learning the UNIX Operating System). But by far, the two books that I have in my collection that I would recommend are Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Persig and Soul of a New Machine by Kidder. Both were required reading in college CS courses, the profs in the dept thought that if we were to graduate with a CS degree, these were two books that we needed to read, they were right. Excellent books, and something more interesting as a gift than a reference book. The third book to suggest would be Just For Fun by Torvalds and Diamond. While I haven't read it myself yet, I thought it would be helpful to include two suggestions of books that I have read and one that is on my wish list...

I know, it's incredible! Next, they'll be telling us that book publishers pay bookstores to prominently feature their books on "recommended" tables! Or that manufacturers pay grocery stores to display their wares at eye level! Shocking, I tell you, shocking!

Eric
(I wish my publisher would do that to my own book)

I agree, get them something recreational! I'm sure I'm not the only one hoping for The Complete Calvin and Hobbes

This thread made me think of my own book shelf. You know...if your house caught on fire, how you would try to grab your most precious possessions....like your main computer that has everything on it (not just a backup :)), your important papers, etc. But come to think of it, I would have to grab my "out of print" copy of Topics in C Programming by Kochan and Wood--the single greatest book ever written on C programming. IMVHO :)

I've read a few books by Dostoevsky, and they are not christmas books! Christmas should be about having fun, not getting a headache reading.

Try Notes from Underground. It's only ~150 pages, so it's lighter in that sense; it's still fairly tragic but is incredibly worthwhile reading.

As an aside my [older] translation begins with "I am a sick man... an angry man... an unattractive man. For whatever reason the newer translation substitutes wicked for angry. Perhaps someone who understands more Russian would know why.

PS I think you meant Also Sprach Zarathustra. :-) Try Beyond Good and Evil , too, if you like Nietzsche.

I really like Linux Administration Handbook by Nemeth, Snyder, and Hein. It is quite comprehensive and detailed, not to mention enjoyable to read. My copy is well-used, indeed. For any hobbyist who runs a linux box at home and is interested in the actual nuts and bolts of the system, rather than just the graphical configuration tools provided by (some) distros, it would be a welcome gift, I think. I used to just google around for online documentation until I came across this excellent reference, which is now the first place I turn.

I think that buying a programming reference for a person who programs for a living would not be such a good idea. But buying something related to a person's out-of-work (or out-of-school) computer interests is a nice gift.

In no particular order:

-1984 (one of the best dystopian novels ever written, and the Mac commercial inspired by it isn't bad either). This would also go great coupled with a copy of Beyond Good & Evil for whatever system your friend prefers to play on.

-House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski this is an avant garde horror novel that is both one of the most interesting, most challenging (not in terms of figuring out what's being said, but in terms of navigating through the multiple layers/plots of the story), and most enjoyable book I have read. (Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0375703764/002-60 09521-6775228?v=glance&n=283155). His sister is the musician Poe, who has an album out (Haunted) which features a few songs inspired by this book (5 1/2 minute hallway, for example). His father is a film maker, and I guess was a major inspriration for this book. This book was originally a hyperfiction available online (or so it says and so some rumors have said, but I have not found a copy of it online).

-See Under: Love by David Grossman is another superb avant garde literary work. It's Holocaust fiction and tells the tale of a child of survivors trying to come to terms with his family's past (it starts out with him trying to find out what the "Nazi Beast" was and how it came into being; the second part explores trying to uncover the mystery of his grandfather; the third part is the telling of his grandfather's story who in turn is telling a story to a Nazi Commandant; and the final part is in encyclopedia format, alphebatized by the Hebrew alphabet, telling the ending of the story his grandfather had been telling to the Commandant).

If you're going to give somebody a dense book, give them a book that's dense to a tangled plot with multiple levels of interpretation rather than dense due to older forms of writing. Classics are great to read and own copies of, but unless your friend is a fanatic about the classics, try to find something less than 100 years old as he is more likely to read it and will be more likely to enjoy it. I also recommend a collection of Sherlock Holmes because geeks should like logically deducing stuff. Holmes goes well with a nice adventure game (many of which can be purchased for less than $10).

Enjoy!

But

In the spirit of the first post, the mention of Goedel/Escher/Bach, I've found that there's lots of math titles that are fun for us programming types to read. I don't mean the really seriously technical titles, the ones that come in plain covers where you can't comprehend the title and the first words are "Let x...". But there's lots of titles I've found to be fun that sort of skirt the periphery. A few that I've liked:
Knuth: things a computer scientist rarely talks about (not math, but lovely)
Surreal Numbers (also by knuth, does a sort of quasi-fictional walk through of "On numbers and games" (which I can't seem to get around to getting to far into)) Winning ways for your mathematical plays(combinatorial games, really amateur math. In a similar vein collections by Martin Gardner are also fun).
Conway s "The book of Numbers" really about numbers and their character, can't reccomend to highly (although a professional mathematician might get bored.
Mind Tools (Rudy Rucker)
There's also a few other books by Hofstader, there's an article collection that's very nice (Mathemagical Themas, I think? something like that, don't have the time to look it up). Also your avg. geek might like more general science writing, any of the collections of Stephen Jay Gould make good reading as well.

But

In the spirit of the first post, the mention of Goedel/Escher/Bach, I've found that there's lots of math titles that are fun for us programming types to read. I don't mean the really seriously technical titles, the ones that come in plain covers where you can't comprehend the title and the first words are "Let x...". But there's lots of titles I've found to be fun that sort of skirt the periphery. A few that I've liked:
Knuth: things a computer scientist rarely talks about (not math, but lovely)
Surreal Numbers (also by knuth, does a sort of quasi-fictional walk through of "On numbers and games" (which I can't seem to get around to getting to far into)) Winning ways for your mathematical plays(combinatorial games, really amateur math. In a similar vein collections by Martin Gardner are also fun).
Conway s "The book of Numbers" really about numbers and their character, can't reccomend to highly (although a professional mathematician might get bored.
Mind Tools (Rudy Rucker)
There's also a few other books by Hofstader, there's an article collection that's very nice (Mathemagical Themas, I think? something like that, don't have the time to look it up). Also your avg. geek might like more general science writing, any of the collections of Stephen Jay Gould make good reading as well.

But

In the spirit of the first post, the mention of Goedel/Escher/Bach, I've found that there's lots of math titles that are fun for us programming types to read. I don't mean the really seriously technical titles, the ones that come in plain covers where you can't comprehend the title and the first words are "Let x...". But there's lots of titles I've found to be fun that sort of skirt the periphery. A few that I've liked:
Knuth: things a computer scientist rarely talks about (not math, but lovely)
Surreal Numbers (also by knuth, does a sort of quasi-fictional walk through of "On numbers and games" (which I can't seem to get around to getting to far into)) Winning ways for your mathematical plays(combinatorial games, really amateur math. In a similar vein collections by Martin Gardner are also fun).
Conway s "The book of Numbers" really about numbers and their character, can't reccomend to highly (although a professional mathematician might get bored.
Mind Tools (Rudy Rucker)
There's also a few other books by Hofstader, there's an article collection that's very nice (Mathemagical Themas, I think? something like that, don't have the time to look it up). Also your avg. geek might like more general science writing, any of the collections of Stephen Jay Gould make good reading as well.

But

In the spirit of the first post, the mention of Goedel/Escher/Bach, I've found that there's lots of math titles that are fun for us programming types to read. I don't mean the really seriously technical titles, the ones that come in plain covers where you can't comprehend the title and the first words are "Let x...". But there's lots of titles I've found to be fun that sort of skirt the periphery. A few that I've liked:
Knuth: things a computer scientist rarely talks about (not math, but lovely)
Surreal Numbers (also by knuth, does a sort of quasi-fictional walk through of "On numbers and games" (which I can't seem to get around to getting to far into)) Winning ways for your mathematical plays(combinatorial games, really amateur math. In a similar vein collections by Martin Gardner are also fun).
Conway s "The book of Numbers" really about numbers and their character, can't reccomend to highly (although a professional mathematician might get bored.
Mind Tools (Rudy Rucker)
There's also a few other books by Hofstader, there's an article collection that's very nice (Mathemagical Themas, I think? something like that, don't have the time to look it up). Also your avg. geek might like more general science writing, any of the collections of Stephen Jay Gould make good reading as well.

But

In the spirit of the first post, the mention of Goedel/Escher/Bach, I've found that there's lots of math titles that are fun for us programming types to read. I don't mean the really seriously technical titles, the ones that come in plain covers where you can't comprehend the title and the first words are "Let x...". But there's lots of titles I've found to be fun that sort of skirt the periphery. A few that I've liked:
Knuth: things a computer scientist rarely talks about (not math, but lovely)
Surreal Numbers (also by knuth, does a sort of quasi-fictional walk through of "On numbers and games" (which I can't seem to get around to getting to far into)) Winning ways for your mathematical plays(combinatorial games, really amateur math. In a similar vein collections by Martin Gardner are also fun).
Conway s "The book of Numbers" really about numbers and their character, can't reccomend to highly (although a professional mathematician might get bored.
Mind Tools (Rudy Rucker)
There's also a few other books by Hofstader, there's an article collection that's very nice (Mathemagical Themas, I think? something like that, don't have the time to look it up). Also your avg. geek might like more general science writing, any of the collections of Stephen Jay Gould make good reading as well.

History of My Life (Volumes I & II)
U.S.S.
Body Language Secrets: A Guide During Courtship & Dating
The System: How to Get Laid Today!

Everything else can be looked up on the internet.

History of My Life (Volumes I & II)
U.S.S.
Body Language Secrets: A Guide During Courtship & Dating
The System: How to Get Laid Today!

Everything else can be looked up on the internet.

History of My Life (Volumes I & II)
U.S.S.
Body Language Secrets: A Guide During Courtship & Dating
The System: How to Get Laid Today!

Everything else can be looked up on the internet.

History of My Life (Volumes I & II)
U.S.S.
Body Language Secrets: A Guide During Courtship & Dating
The System: How to Get Laid Today!

Everything else can be looked up on the internet.

Neither of these I would recommend in general, but they are both excellent books if you are dealing with the subject matter they discuss. They are both enjoyable reads and extremely useful.

Inside the C++ Object Model by Stanley B. Lippman. Lippman is one of the original authors of CFront (along with Stroustrup), the original C++ compiler which worked by translating C++ into C. This book explains how every C++ feature is implmented by the compiler: virtual functions, multiple inheritence, in-memory object layout, etc. If you are working on projects where the overhead of a pointer de-reference or virtual function call may be too much, then this book is a must read. Even if that doesn't describe you, this is still a suprisingly enjoyable read and will almost certainly help you at any job interviews for C++ programming positions.

Hackers Delight by Henry S. Warren Jr. This deals entirely with efficient bit twiddling. It has chapters on counting the bits set in a word, finding the first set bit, quick integer square root approximations, etc. Unless you're working with embedded systems or otherwise need assembly-level optimizations, this book just serves to obfuscate your code. On the other hand, it's quite a fun challenge to try to figure out the algorithms without reading the explanations.

Neither of these I would recommend in general, but they are both excellent books if you are dealing with the subject matter they discuss. They are both enjoyable reads and extremely useful.

Inside the C++ Object Model by Stanley B. Lippman. Lippman is one of the original authors of CFront (along with Stroustrup), the original C++ compiler which worked by translating C++ into C. This book explains how every C++ feature is implmented by the compiler: virtual functions, multiple inheritence, in-memory object layout, etc. If you are working on projects where the overhead of a pointer de-reference or virtual function call may be too much, then this book is a must read. Even if that doesn't describe you, this is still a suprisingly enjoyable read and will almost certainly help you at any job interviews for C++ programming positions.

Hackers Delight by Henry S. Warren Jr. This deals entirely with efficient bit twiddling. It has chapters on counting the bits set in a word, finding the first set bit, quick integer square root approximations, etc. Unless you're working with embedded systems or otherwise need assembly-level optimizations, this book just serves to obfuscate your code. On the other hand, it's quite a fun challenge to try to figure out the algorithms without reading the explanations.

If you're going to do any OpenGL programming, get the OpenGL Red Book and the OpenGL Orange Book. These two are definitely the most heavily-used books on my shelf. Another great OpenGL book is Advanced Graphics Programming Using OpenGL by McReynolds and Blythe. Of course, if you don't do any graphics programming, these books will be useless.

If you're going to do any OpenGL programming, get the OpenGL Red Book and the OpenGL Orange Book. These two are definitely the most heavily-used books on my shelf. Another great OpenGL book is Advanced Graphics Programming Using OpenGL by McReynolds and Blythe. Of course, if you don't do any graphics programming, these books will be useless.

If you're going to do any OpenGL programming, get the OpenGL Red Book and the OpenGL Orange Book. These two are definitely the most heavily-used books on my shelf. Another great OpenGL book is Advanced Graphics Programming Using OpenGL by McReynolds and Blythe. Of course, if you don't do any graphics programming, these books will be useless.

The New Turing Omnibus : Sixty-Six Excursions in Computer Science?
A collection of essays about computer science, not programming. Very interesting and highly reccomended.

Elements of Programming Style
Code Complete
Software Project Survival Guide
Society of Mind

Elements of Programming Style
Code Complete
Software Project Survival Guide
Society of Mind

Elements of Programming Style
Code Complete
Software Project Survival Guide
Society of Mind

Elements of Programming Style
Code Complete
Software Project Survival Guide
Society of Mind

... I recommend The Prince.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0764570692/104-45 58507-7676721?v=glance&n=283155

Computer Organization and Design Second Edition : The Hardware/Software Interface
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1558604286/002-18 04655-7908000?v=glance&n=283155

A blast to read!

GEB is simply amazing and really makes you think. It is a large tome but it was well worth the read when I read it in high school. It influenced me musically, mathematically and gave me insight to become a computer programmer.

It's a very common book and can be acquired cheaply on amazon, ebay and the wiki.

I also heavily recommend getting to know this site if you're willing to search through lists of books for good deals.

Fads sells over-priced books. Go figure.

I liked your .sig. Is that a quote from someone?

I lifted it from a book by Richard Dawkins titled A Devil's Chaplain. Specifically, it comes from 'The Great Convergence'. There are about 30 pieces in there, from book reviews to lectures, published and unpublished essays, along with a couple of eulogies (including the one he gave for Douglas Adams). Highly recommended reading.

If you are old enough to remember this series, when MTV actually played music videos, then this is the only Aeon Flux series you want...

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000B8I9XQ/qid=11 34311210

Accept no live-action, wanna-be, bottom of barrel, low-rating imposter.

Clusty is very good at what they do, but the survey people don't know enough to include it. I also use clusty.com about half of the time. I don't think clusty was a choice, so if they asked me I would have to say Google. Google has a big advantage the default home page (USA download) http://www.google.com/firefox?client=firefox-a&rls =org.mozilla:en-US:official and toolbar for Firefox. If you vary the sites you go to often who cares what website(s) you default to, just make it one you are likely to find useful (on a Windows PC a default page for updates would be good/useful for IE browser). A few years back when I worked as a student in a campus computer lab I usually could point fellow students and others to websites for information they wanted without going to any search engine (used the web enough to know the good websites without having to look them up). Google used to be listed as being in clusty's meta-searches, but now isn't listed in the FAQ.

On Google's side they do come up with lots of results and some of the papers they use in their news section are ones I normally open when I read online papers and gives a pretty good versions of other websites that are the best. It you don't know about the better alternative(s) that already exist for areas Google moves into, like http://www.ipl.org/ or http://www.gutenberg.org/ then when it comes to reading out of copyright books then the Google book project sounds very well meaning and good. Go to Amazon.com to read inside copyright books http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/catalog-guide /guide/-/506469/104-8484589-7689549, before the Google book project they had free excerpts for most books that anyone could view without signing up. If you don't want to find the best and trust Google, then like the Microsoft supporters you we use them except when you need something better and usually Google does a very job. I have toolbar for both Google and Clusty.

Protect yourselves from new government throwabale WiFi camera technology with our new throwable anti-WiFi-Cam Shield!

This reminds me a bit of something I came across while online holiday-shopping the other day. Basically, it looks like Estes came out with a $80 rocket kit which has a built-in digital video camera. The idea is that you launch it up into the air, recover the rocket, plug a USB cable into it to download the video, and then watch a rocket's-eye-view of the flight. The camera is in the rocket's nose, so you presumably only see the ground on descent. The camera is just 320x240 with 9fps, but it still seems pretty neat.

Amazon has a web services API to get at their data. I've used it to get product data for a school project (online shop). And if by "pure XML API" you mean SOAP, then they have that too — although I prefer the REST request style (much more simple).

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B000 80VMLS/qid=1134200420/sr=8-2/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i1_xgl 21?v=glance&s=toys&n=507846

would be fun if it were available for this christmas.

It's probably Super 35 you're referring to, except that Super 35 is shot in 1.60:1. The Matrix movies were filmed with this process. The 4:3 versions of the films show more on the top and bottom, but slightly less on the sides.

This may result in a reaction of "Wow! I'm seeing more picture than was shown in theaters!", but really the theatrical image is what was intended to be seen. For Super35 films, 2.35:1 is still the original aspect ratio, because it is the aspect ratio that viewers were intended to see in the theater. Therefore, the widescreen version is still the preferred format. When shooting the film, the director has a TV monitor with a rectangular outline that represents the 2.35:1 image. This shows the director how he needs to frame his shots so that no essential information will be cut out of the frame. The shots are then composed for the 2.35:1 aspect ratio.

You can't even BUY this book from B&N! Why not save yourself some money by buying the book here: Building Intelligent .NET Applications. And if you use the "secret" A9.com discount, you can save an extra 1.57%!

You can't even BUY this book from B&N! Why not save yourself some money by buying the book here: Building Intelligent .NET Applications. And if you use the "secret" A9.com discount, you can save an extra 1.57%!

I suppose then a Game Boy Player would be useful for many of the GB and GBA games.

You should take a look at the Amazon wishlists. There are books and many other traditional toys to pick from. What you won't find is violent videogames.

Bell & Ross Fusion. What's that annoying commercial (for a different watchmaker) say? That "your watch tells more about you than anything else you wear"? How about that if you paid $2000 for a watch, you paid about $1990 more than necessary!?

i'm still thinking we "westerners" tend to be better than most at it...

there's just too much history to suggest otherwise...

Well I don't think Westerners are somehow born genetically greedier or better at exploitation. For an alternate explanation of why Westerners seem to come out on top, check out Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel . His general premise is that those cultures that succeeded tend to have done so due to natural resource concerns.
 
I haven't seen the book you mentioned, but I'll check it out if I get a chance.

i'm still thinking we "westerners" tend to be better than most at it...

there's just too much history to suggest otherwise...

Well I don't think Westerners are somehow born genetically greedier or better at exploitation. For an alternate explanation of why Westerners seem to come out on top, check out Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel . His general premise is that those cultures that succeeded tend to have done so due to natural resource concerns.
 
I haven't seen the book you mentioned, but I'll check it out if I get a chance.