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That book is available for FREE DOWNLOAD: Platform Embedded Security Technology Revealed -- Safeguarding the Future of Computing with Intel Embedded Security and Management Engine (PDF file)

Chapters:
Front Matter
Cyber Security in the Mobile Age
Intel's Embedded Solutions: from Management to Security
Building Blocks of the Security and Management Engine
The Engine: Safeguarding Itself before Safeguarding Others
Privacy at the Next Level: Intel's Enhanced Privacy Identification (EPID) Technology
Boot with Integrity, or Don't Boot
Trust Computing, Backed by the Intel Platform Trust Technology
Unleashing Premium Entertainment with Hardware-Based Content Protection Technology
Breaking the Boundaries with Dynamically Loaded Applications
Looking Ahead: Tomorrow's Innovations Built on Today's Foundation
Back Matter

Quote from page 2:

In August 2010, Intel announced the acquisition of security giant McAfee. Paul S. Otellini, Intel's president and CEO at the time, emphasized that "security has become the third pillar of computing" when commenting on the investment. (Page 2, PDF page 8)

To me, that is typical nonsense indicating the lack of social and technical ability I see in Intel's top management. Intel now owns 49% of McAfee because it sold 51%. McAfee was never a good purchase for Intel, and was never a good company from which to purchase security software; that is my understanding.

A Slashdot comment of mine from 11 1/2 years ago: More Intel employees should say in public what they have told me in private: Intel CEO Paul Otellini is not a competent leader. He lacks social ability. (June 09, 2006)

There is a lot of valuable information in the book for readers who want to understand how intel arrived at the present situation. However, to me, the book is also full of useless nonsense. The author, Xiaoyu Ruan, tries to convince people he has understanding by providing a lot of what is known as "corporate-speak", fake communication also known as "workplace jargon". There is little depth of understanding.

Intel's inclusion in its products of secret hardware and software controlled by hidden organizations will eventually mean either a major re-organization of Intel, or the end of Intel, in my opinion. Can you supply hardware to your customers that is known to be insecure, and to have methods of access that are not clearly explained?

APress does discounts annually for cyber-Monday as well ... 10 bucks per e-book, 12.50 for paper. Makes a fellow all gluttonous ...

BTW as a sidenote I actually really like Ubuntu Unity.

You don't, like, wear argyle golfing pants and a paisley polka-dot tie to work, do you?

I promise I'm not trying to be insulting, but I am curious now... :)

I'll just leave this here

No idea if British libraries have an ebook thingy or not mind you.

On the note of cost, I wouldn't mind paying £1-3 in addition to the paper book cost for a DRM free ebook copy. That probably covers the relative overheads of hosting, bandwidth and server admins (or something that does) without giving double profits to the publisher. I'm mostly against double dipping for a format change. Cover your overheads, yes, double your profits, ha no.

Quick example: book from Apress (random) http://www.apress.com/9781430230427 - Print: $40, Ebook $28. I understand niche books carry higher costs, but I'm not sure those two carry the same profit margins. In addition to this, Apress do "companion" ebooks for $10. Honestly, I think that's a bit high but the idea is welcome. I Think their ebooks are DRM free, but I can't find it on their site.

To be honest, if their ebooks carried the cost of Profit Margin of Paper Copy + Overhead Of Hosting etc = $Value and that was something closer to the cost set of a "companion" ebook, I'd probably just buy the lot (around a subject in question). Unfortunately they want close to the paper cost, so I'll just buy the odd paper one off Amazon instead.

Not too hard to go to the publisher's website and find it:

http://apress.com/ecommerce/cart?act=add&bid=1469

And I wouldn't be doing my job if I didn't point out "Practical Ext JS Projects with Gears" from Apress:

http://apress.com/book/search?searchterm=zammetti&act=search&submit.x=0&submit.y=0

Yes, I'm the author... I have kids to feed too :)

Another good book will be Beginning Scala Try it if you're Java programmer wanting to try Scala.

Good one.

Nope... It is ye good olde:

"All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means,
electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval
system, without the prior written permission of the copyright owner and the publisher."

Even the "downloadable sample chapter"

Incidentally - it is also interesting to point out that it is printed and bound in China.
By adequately payed and humanely treated Chinese workers. Probably. Maybe.

 
It was written and printed to be sold for MONEY.
Not because someone woke up one morning and said to themselves "My-my... world could sure use a book about that free piece of software, and who better than me to write it - ME an Expert in writing such books.".

And if you want something sold for money, by people who sell such things - you go with the most common copyright.
If you want to sell the book yourself or let your friends sell it for you - you go with whichever license you like.

I like this one a lot:

Beginning Portable Shell Scripting: From Novice to Professional

My favorite feature is the way that, if enough people buy it, I get about a buck per copy!

Seriously, though, it's a book that exists in no small part to be the book I wished someone had written about shell programming. While I'm the only listed author, the tech reviewer (Gary V. Vaughan) made a HUGE difference, and caught a ton of stuff. What interests me is that we both ended up learning a huge amount about shell programming that we didn't previously know -- even though he was certainly an expert in the field before we started, and I had done enough shell programming to at least think myself competent.

Try the free sample chapter for the book Pro Perl Parsing from Apress. It provides a nice walk through of Regex usage and how Regexs work.

Personally, I found "Beginning Ubuntu Linux: From Novice to Professional" to be pretty good.

I know a book just came out on MythTV: Practical MythTV (http://www.apress.com/book/bookDisplay.html?bID=1 0245) Is it any good? Anybody read it?

Kevin,
Looking back at the review now I can see my abundance of deviations. I apologize for the interjections, and hope that you can look past that and still get some information from the review.

This helps me improve my writing of reviews - so I appreciate the feedback.

I haven't checked out the Head First book yet - but it does look like it would be a good starting point. I am at the point that with most of the CSS books I have read I start to see all of the overlapping. I like books that can bring something fresh and different to the table. This is why I liked this book - it examined real world scenarios and layout options.

CSS books come in many different flavors. Some are CSS specifications broken down. Some are just explanatory of the different selectors. Some, like this book, give real world examples. And still others such as Transcending CSS, challenge you to move forward in your designs.

Again, thanks for the critique.

I learned a lot from this book: Pro C# 2005 and the .NET 2.0 Platform. Since C# relies heavily on the .NET or MONO frameworks, I would also suggest downloading the MSDN Library. While you can read this all online, having it locally is very helpful when learning about .NET (also its free). Unless you have Visual Studio, I would also recommend downloading the C# Express IDE from Microsoft: http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/express/visualcs harp/

Echo the 1st reply..

Books are a waste of time.. The only time I'll buy a book is if the info is very difficult to source online.

If you can read C++, you can read C#. The class naming and hierarchy of their APIs are so verbose that you should be able to understand any sample code.

If you're not in any projects (open source or not), get in & hack hack hack away. C# is pretty widespread now so any issues, just Google it. If you don't like MSDN doco, learn to like it, because it's free and pretty good once you know how to navigate it. And there are a truckload of MSDN blogs as well.

Also look at: - http://msdn.microsoft.com/msdnmag/
- http://www.apress.com/free/ (Dissecting a C# Application on the bottom - is about SharpDevelop IDE, which is pretty good)

Who are you planning to be employed by? You might be better off learning .NET 3.0 (WPF, WCF and Workflow Foundation) since it's where Microsoft want to go... however corporates will probably give it a few years before it becomes more mainstream.

I got this book around when C# was first introduced. I started from the same languages you name, and I've quite possibly never read a better book about a programming language (and API of course).

http://www.apress.com/book/bookDisplay.html?bID=45 4

(Actually, A programmer's introduction to PHP is also very good.)

I found and learned from a good book called Pro PHP Security by Chris Snyder and Michael Southwell. It is publisheshed by apress. http://www.apress.com/

1. Introduction
2. First Movers, First Mistakes: IBM, Digital Research, Apple, and Microsoft
3. A Rather Nutty Tale: IBM and the PC Junior
4. Positioning Puzzlers: MicroPro and Microsoft
5. We Hate You, We Really Hate You: Ed Esber, Ashton-Tate, and Siebel Systems
6. The Idiot Piper: OS/2 and IBM
7. Frenchman Eats Frog, Chokes to Death: Borland and Philippe Kahn
8. Brands for the Burning: Intel, Motorola, and Google
9. From Godzilla to Gecko: The Long, Slow Decline of Novell
10. Ripping PR Yarns: Microsoft and Netscape
11. Purple Haze All Through My Brain: The Internet and ASP Busts
12. The Strange Case of Dr. Open and Mr. Proprietary
13. On Avoiding Stupidity
14. Stupid Analyses

1. Introduction
2. First Movers, First Mistakes: IBM, Digital Research, Apple, and Microsoft
3. A Rather Nutty Tale: IBM and the PC Junior
4. Positioning Puzzlers: MicroPro and Microsoft
5. We Hate You, We Really Hate You: Ed Esber, Ashton-Tate, and Siebel Systems
6. The Idiot Piper: OS/2 and IBM
7. Frenchman Eats Frog, Chokes to Death: Borland and Philippe Kahn
8. Brands for the Burning: Intel, Motorola, and Google
9. From Godzilla to Gecko: The Long, Slow Decline of Novell
10. Ripping PR Yarns: Microsoft and Netscape
11. Purple Haze All Through My Brain: The Internet and ASP Busts
12. The Strange Case of Dr. Open and Mr. Proprietary
13. On Avoiding Stupidity
14. Stupid Analyses

Try Beginning Ubuntu Linux http://www.apress.com/book/bookDisplay.html?bID=10 086. It does cover installation, but also GIMP, OpenOffice, basic shell scripting, bluetooth, etc.

PostgreSQL doesn't have as many built-in types as MySQL, but its types are IMHO more consistent, and extending the database with your own types really isn't a pain.

I've been happy with its speed, and am given to understand that an intelligent DBA can make it extremely fast.

Take a look--I think that you'll be pleasantly surprised. And you'll never have to worry about duplicated primary keys again!

The correct title is Beginning PHP and MySQL 5: From Novice to Professional, Second Edition. See the publishers page: http://www.apress.com/book/bookDisplay.html?bID=10 017

There's a pdf of the contents pages @ apress.com

Interestingly enough Jason Gilmore has also written a book about MySQL entitled: Beginning PHP 5 and MySQL 5: From Novice to Professional.

And if you seriously believe that Mr. Gilmore's reasons were strawmen then you have never tried to convince management to use PostgreSQL over a commercial database. Heck, if you are trying to sell using PostgreSQL to folks who have used MySQL I would add #6 PostgreSQL is slow to the list of arguments that commonly get raised. That assumption is not true either, at least it isn't true in situations where you actually need consistent data. In fact, I have yet to see a case where PostgreSQL doesn't perform better under load than MySQL and I have switched several real applications.

Does the eBook version have color images? http://www.apress.com/book/bookDisplay.html?bID=10 052

If you're looking for a system-wide approach to PHP Security, one that covers everything from shell commands and service tuning up through application-level security policy implementation, you should check out Apress' Pro PHP Security.

Cheers!

Not only is this a good book, it is also one of only few that cover Python 2.4. The author Magnus Lie Hetland has a free python tutorial ("minimal crash course) (Instant python) on his homepage. He was also involved (as author, editor etc.) in several other book projects:

• Practical Python (Author) [Beginning Python is based on this one]
• Python Cookbook (Coauthor)
• Python in a nutshell (Editor)
• Foundations of Python network programming (Editor)

So we can assume he has a clue what he is writing about.

His homepage uses PHP, btw.

Chriss

--
memomo.net - brush up your German, French, Spanish or Italian - online and free

There is allegedly at least a 50% discount for the ebook as against the printed version, although the price of $22.50 means there is a nad less than a 50% discount from the full $44.99.

I guess publishers don't have to know maths, or they are just tight. That whole half cent makes their statement a lie..

Maybe they meant up to 50% discount.

I just picked up Foundations of Ajax, and its a good, focused 273 pages, of which nearly half is resources and tools for implementing. I haven't had a chance to download and try out the examples, but the reference links all look like great resources. While I wish they'd skipped the usual Chapter 1 "Here's the history of the web" that any reader of the subject matter already knows, all in all, its a great way to cut thru the BS and get rolling with the AJAX concepts.

In summary:

• If you want to learn UML, buy a UML book
• If you want to learn Design Patterns, buy the GangofFour book.
• If you already know how to put together a webpage, write some Javascript, and maybe a little CSS, and just want to understand how it all to hangs together in AJAX, then Foundations of Ajax is probably a better choice than "Ajax in Action".

I just picked up Foundations of Ajax, and its a good, focused 273 pages, of which nearly half is resources and tools for implementing. I haven't had a chance to download and try out the examples, but the reference links all look like great resources. While I wish they'd skipped the usual Chapter 1 "Here's the history of the web" that any reader of the subject matter already knows, all in all, its a great way to cut thru the BS and get rolling with the AJAX concepts.

In summary:

• If you want to learn UML, buy a UML book
• If you want to learn Design Patterns, buy the GangofFour book.
• If you already know how to put together a webpage, write some Javascript, and maybe a little CSS, and just want to understand how it all to hangs together in AJAX, then Foundations of Ajax is probably a better choice than "Ajax in Action".

MS has only produced a small handful of the languages you can code in .Net with. C#, VB, C++, and J#. The rest were written by third party comanies like MicroFocus (Cobol.Net, an answer to a question that was never asked).

While MS's platform isn't open, it's open enough that you could write your own PHP interpretor for .Net. Here is a book to get you started. Also, here is a list of some of the languages already available.

Brought to mind this link (which I originally saw on the front page of Joel on Software):

http://blogs.apress.com/archives/000449.php?author =gary_cornell/

This(8) chapter alone might make the book worth its price if readers are involved with any projects needing substantial database development.
Ah, but that chapter can be had for free from Apress website. That chapter indeed is a good read. I had looked for good solution to this problem a month ago and found none close to my satisfaction.

You can also grab this in PDF ("eBook") from Apress directly at half-price. Look to the "purchase as eBook" link on the right.

Apress made a really nice book you can put into the better part of your bookshelf.

Yes, I have noticed that the docs are pretty cryptic. Agreed.

Get The Definitive Guide to Plone from Apress (Jun 2004).

A Programmer's Introduction to PHP 4.0 from Apress

Practical PHP Programming online book

I'd recommend the advice in The Career Programmer: Guerilla Tactics For An Imperfect World. If you do this (and help the members of your team to do the same), you'll avoid many of the problems that typical programmers have dealing with the realities of a corporate environment.

they do a flash one too! Learn Programming with Flash MX

looks interesting.

The one called Practical Python. It's on the page that was linked from the original Slash article.

Incidentally, maybe it's just my browser (IE, I'm at work, I don't get a choice) but there's some creepy code breakage on the new releases page.

Full details, including sample chapter, here.

I see the /.gods have already got to this thread: "Duh, it's easy, just use cron/telnet/syslog!" Do any of you people have more than a home PC to maintain? Come to that, would anyone trust you with more than that?

Ade_
/

Ron Jeffries wrote a good review of this book last month; his review avoids most of the flaws the comments here find in this review.

I've only read one chapter, the one up on the web, but it's quite silly. The author repeatedly describes how one team or another did some dumb stuff and it didn't work; many of these anecdotes are parodic fiction, and obviously so, but some of them are presumably real. Then he explains that that dumb stuff didn't work. The trouble is that a reader with no XP experience might be fooled into thinking that XP advocates doing that dumb stuff.

The trouble with liberals listening to Rush Limbaugh, as one poster suggested, is that Rush makes up a lot of lies and passes them off as truth. (See Al Franken's earlier book for details.) If you don't spend ten minutes investigating facts for every minute you spend listening to Rush, you're likely to come away believing a lot of nonsense. The same problem applies to this book: it's largely fiction, and the line between fiction and reality is unclear.

I've been working on an XP team for a year, and I really like it, but it certainly has its disadvantages. I'm very impressed with the people I'm working with, and I'm really happy with our product. The process we use has almost nothing in common with the processes the book criticizes. Still, sometimes it has its drawbacks, and I think you should definitely be aware of them before you jump into XP. But this book is a good source for information on the drawbacks of doing things XP prohibits, not on the drawbacks of XP. See Questioning Extreme Programming for that. (Briefly, XP requires a small team, significant buy-in and resource commitments from the customer, easy deployment, testing support, and flexible underlying technology.) And, you know, myself, I'd be a lot happier with an ATC system developed with Cleanroom than with XP.

I think it's unfortunate that XP has become so fashionable, because now we have programming fashionistas embracing and pushing it, and any technique or technology they embrace gets badly abused. Just look at Java, XML, and C++!

As the author of Tuning and Customizing a Linux System, I can assure you that people are not going to be making "hella" money on a book. So far I have made roughly $5,000 in royalties on my book (which is amittedly below average due to releasing it in a rotten economy) and don't expect to make much more -- and I am the sole author. In the collaborative works, the royalties are divided.

So, no one is going to be getting filthy stinking rich off of your contributions. You only get filthy stinking rich off a single book if you are Stephen King or Danielle Steel. If you want to make a living writing technical books, you have to put out several a year and do it full-time.

Just my perspective...

Two things:

1. I never wrote for Wrox.

2. My book has been out in a second edition since February:

http://www.apress.com/book/bookDisplay.html?bID=13 8

This is great. So many "NO WAY! .NET IS TOO SLOW!" reminds me of assembly programmers saying "C++? Its slow and a memory hog! Games will NEVER be programmed in C++!!"

Well, you can read some books on using DirectX9 for .Net, or even play some games that were made with directX and .net.

While computers gain more powerful hardware (faster CPUs, bigger memory, etc...) the coding for games will go forward to the newer languages that makes coding easier. You may not like it, but don't worry. There's always jobs for those with assembly knowledge.

And, for what its worth, I think game coding in Java will start becoming a reality in the next five years (and not just on PDAs and mobile phones)...

It uses old-style C++ (#include , for example), ignores valuable contributions to C++ such as the STL and the standard string class, and generally provides nothing a decent C++ programmer should not already know.

Now read that "1999" bit again. How, exactly, did "standard" C++ look back about 3.5 years ago?!

What did you expect? Hell, many modern C++ features weren't even implemented by most available compilers in 1999.

• Designing SVG Web Graphics (amazon.com)
• Teach Yourself Svg in 24 Hours (site, amazon.com)
• SVG Essentials (amazon.com)
• SVG Unleashed (amazon.com)
• Svg Programming (amazon.com)
• SVG For Designers

Some online demos from SVG Unleashed

I honestly will not buy a technical book in the 1,000+ page range, especially if the title:

• Includes the words "bible", "unleashed", or "secrets"
• Is entitled Learn x in y days/hours

Why? Because I know I'm unlikely digest the contents of 1000+ pages of text on one subject, if I manage to finish it. I also generally suspect large books of rehashing FAQs or other widely-available docs just to fill pages.

I don't consider myself an O'Reilly bigot, though I do lean towards their books since they tend to publish smaller, focused books. If a book is pure reference, I may consider buying it if it's 1000+ pages. Following are examples of some great books I've bought that I found very useful and readable due to their small size:

• Mastering Regular Expressions, 484 pages
• Linux Routing, 350 pages
• A Programmer's Introduction to PHP 4.0, 453 pages

The Internet already offers me an overwhelming, disorganized pile of information on any subject--and at least it's searchable via Google. Dead tree books have use when they're usable and organized, and I've found that generally translates into a smaller book.

I just wanted to point that out b/c I have learned more than I ever wanted to know about email in an attempt to migrate my email servers from Exchange/Winblows to Qmail/Linux. I would have tried BSD (since that is what it was developed on) but I have more experience with Linux.

Since I really DIDNT want to be an open relay I tested and tried a load of configurations. Sadly I was open for about 1/2 of a day (and of course some jackass sent about 20 messages through my server).

I've found the best way to setup QMail is to combine 3 sources (Life with Qmail, his book (which contains significantly more info and is DEFINATELY worth the price), and reading EVERY PROGRAMS file/man page to see how they are implemented (uscpi, daemontools, checkpassword, qmail, relay-ctrl, ...). If you take it slow the first time it works quite well.

Now just to get Courier/Horde/IMP installed.

My former university is using QMail for their Sooner Information Network On-line Mail. It seems pretty cool.