Slashdot Mirror

Modern Operating Systems

Linux Kernel Internals Unix Kernel Internals is better but I couldn't find a link

C Programming Language -- you gotta have the bible

These aren't nearly enoguh resources, but they're a good start. Of course if you just want your own UI it depends on what you want. You can write your own window managers ect for X or you can use
"Cracking Shells" in Unix Programming to give you a jump start on writing your own shell which is not a bad little project. Of course in order to build your own shell you'll probably want to have a scripting language tied to it so make sure to pick up the Dragon Book.

Modern Operating Systems

Linux Kernel Internals Unix Kernel Internals is better but I couldn't find a link

C Programming Language -- you gotta have the bible

These aren't nearly enoguh resources, but they're a good start. Of course if you just want your own UI it depends on what you want. You can write your own window managers ect for X or you can use
"Cracking Shells" in Unix Programming to give you a jump start on writing your own shell which is not a bad little project. Of course in order to build your own shell you'll probably want to have a scripting language tied to it so make sure to pick up the Dragon Book.

Modern Operating Systems

Linux Kernel Internals Unix Kernel Internals is better but I couldn't find a link

C Programming Language -- you gotta have the bible

These aren't nearly enoguh resources, but they're a good start. Of course if you just want your own UI it depends on what you want. You can write your own window managers ect for X or you can use
"Cracking Shells" in Unix Programming to give you a jump start on writing your own shell which is not a bad little project. Of course in order to build your own shell you'll probably want to have a scripting language tied to it so make sure to pick up the Dragon Book.

If you want to simplify things, I strongly suggest this book.

It's basically an outline of different strategies to cut down on unnecessary expenses, and still live life to the fullest.

Some of the strategies given might seem a little extreme (at least, if you don't compare them to this guy), but most of the suggestions are simple, make life more enjoyable, and the savings add up.

There is no easy answer to this question. It certainly depends on the alogorithms used. It depends on who implemented it, tamperfree devices, and much more. Here are a couple of links that might give the interested reader some points to start:

Peter Gutmann's excellent crypto tutorial
Some information on Blind Signatures
A very nice link page for privacy and encryption
Ron Rivest's (the R in RSA) homepage with an excellent link section
And a link to buy Applied Cryptography, even if the stories lack accuracy it is a good read

Happy reading!

In one of it's many plot points, some Linux-using anarchists gain control of the the Reuters (I think) newswire, and fake the deaths of both Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer.

A "Wall Street Asshole" who overheard the penguinistas at a party plays this for several billion dollars.

It's an enjoyable book, by the way. You could say it predicted the reality show fad, and is one of the few novels I know of with a realistic depiction of hacking and cracking.

Anybody else remember Aunt Hillary from Douglas Hofstadter's 1979 book? He uses an ant colony to demonstrate how collective intelligence arises from the interraction of lesser parts, which have no concept of the whole. Here's a passage I like:

Ant colonies have been subjected to the rigors of evolution for billions of years. A few mechanisms were selected for, and most were selected against. The end result was a set of mechanisms which make ant colonies work as we have been describing. If you could watch the whole process as a movie - running billions or so times faster than life, of course - the emergence of various mechanism would be seen as natural responses to external pressures, just as bubbles in boiling water are natural responses to an external heat source. I don't suppose you see "meaning" and "purpose" in boling water - or do you?

And then he goes on to make an amazing connection between the evolution of an ant colony to music!

Hofstadter wasn't speaking of the internet in his books, but often he might just as well have been.

I'm not convinced it's the perfect path to peace. It may be the easiest however. Obviously, though, the US culture is the same one that has incensed some group of people enough to carry out such horrifying attacks. These attacks were NOT carried out by uneducated fanatics that didn't and, more importantly, couldn't see what they were doing was wrong. They knew full well the implications and the horror. Yet it was still worth it.

For our culture to be so out of touch, so concerned with itself, so focused on all the trappings of everyday that we didn't realize the danger we were in... well that is a sick culture. Like the family and friends of individuals who go on a massacre of innocents, we missed the warning signs. Actually "missed" might be the wrong word. We didn't care, the suffering of others at our hands wasn't interesting enough to pull in the necessary ratings to the big media networks. Instead we have O.J. and Princess Diane. We see more minutes of advertisements and product placements than world news.

So, sure, we can fight them culturally... we can make them just like us.

Perhaps ignorance is bliss.

Then again, maybe we need to change before we can help anyone else.

Sorry to reply to my own post, but elsewhere in the comments i was made aware that a second edition of this book exists, and can be found here.

there already is. its title is "Java and XML". It is an O'Reilly book. It can be found here at fatbrain.

there already is. its title is "Java and XML". It is an O'Reilly book. It can be found here at fatbrain.

You can purchase this book at Fatbrain.

The link:

http://www1.fatbrain.com/asp/bookinfo/bookinfo.a sp ?theisbn=0596000588&from=MJF138

Not a bad idea - using a slashdot posting to drive sales through a referral link. I'll be back later - I'm off to find some books to review...

For all kinds of great info on this topic, read The Hacker Crackdown, by Bruce Sterling. The entire text is available on the web all sorts of places. Like here, for instance. It's an excellent book.

• "Eller was in ACT, the advanced consumer technology group, which [Nathan] Myhrvold had recently set up. Gates had decided to make Microsoft the first software company with an internal division fully dedicated to advanced research. It would serve two purposes: to develop add-on products for Windows, and, as analysts have often speculated,
• to absorb some of the company's outrageously high profits, and thereby, ideally, lower the potential for further government scrutiny. Since 1988, prosecutors had kept Microsoft staked out as if they were the Gambino family, a trend that would only intensify as time went on." (rest of chapter one here)

The cited article doesn't say anything profound. (I got particularly worried when he said, "global variables and GOTO statements ... may be exactly what the software needs to marry form with function," and when his example of beautiful software turned out to be a fragment of Visual Basic. "It is practically impossible to teach good programming to students that have had a prior exposure to BASIC: as potential programmers they are mentally mutilated beyond hope of regeneration." --said, tongue at most partly in cheek, by Edsger W. Dijkstra, in "How do we tell truths that might hurt?")

Richard P. Gabriel (whose essay on "Mob Programming" was recently discussed on Slashdot) has a far more profound take on the subject. He has a summary of Christopher Alexander's work on architecture and "The Quality Without A Name," and how it relates to software; you can read the PDF version on his Web site, or Google's cached text version.

Excerpts: "there are programs we can look at and about which we say, 'no way I'm maintaining that kluge' ... and there are other programs about which we can say, 'wow, who wrote this!'" He suggests how you can recognize software with The Quality: "every part of the code is transparently clear -- there are no sections that are obscure to gain effciency; everything about it seems familiar; I can imagine changing it, adding some functionality; I am not afraid of it, I will remember it." There are even suggestions, not how to make more beautiful software, but how to learn to do so.

Gabriel helped start the "patterns movement" in the object-oriented community. Aside from the Design Patterns book, patterns (and especially generative pattern languages) have yet to make a significant inpact on software development. Maybe someday, maybe not.

How can something designed, programmed, and worked on hard by humans become better than the capacity of the human(s)' mind/intelligence that designed it?

There are quite a few examples of endeavours in which the human mind designed things that outsmarted it. Although it is controversial to do it, you simply can't say that Deep Blue does not play chess better than any human that designed it.

But the example I always like to give when such discussions are held is that of genetic programming. Genetic programming is an area of evolutionary computation that tries to achieve automatic programming. It basically uses GA techniques to evolve programs. There are reported cases of results in which the program outsmarted human beings quite nicely. One great book in the subject is Evolutionary Design by Computers, a collection of texts and papers in the subject, edited by Peter Bentley.

All in all, most AI criticisms seem to degenerate in anthropocentric pseudo-arguments. Another good book to be read is Dreyfus' What computers (still) can't do. Dreyfus gives good reasons for why AI may be far from the present, but does so without (for the most part, at least) resorting to the argument that "I'm human and want to be the only smart being here". It is interesting that AI criticism may be the last island of anthropocentrism. First, the Sun does not go around the earth, but otherwise. Then, me and that disgusting worm are made of the same genetic stuff. Now, a bunch of transistors beats me at chess and wants to think? Then again, this is just me.

The links are here for the paranoid:
http://www.genetic-programming.org
http://www1.fatbrain.com/asp/bookinfo/bookinfo.asp ?theisbn=155860605X&vm=
http://www1.fatbrain.com/asp/bookinfo/bookinfo.asp ?theisbn=0262540673&vm=

Carlos
Semper ubi sub ubi

How can something designed, programmed, and worked on hard by humans become better than the capacity of the human(s)' mind/intelligence that designed it?

There are quite a few examples of endeavours in which the human mind designed things that outsmarted it. Although it is controversial to do it, you simply can't say that Deep Blue does not play chess better than any human that designed it.

But the example I always like to give when such discussions are held is that of genetic programming. Genetic programming is an area of evolutionary computation that tries to achieve automatic programming. It basically uses GA techniques to evolve programs. There are reported cases of results in which the program outsmarted human beings quite nicely. One great book in the subject is Evolutionary Design by Computers, a collection of texts and papers in the subject, edited by Peter Bentley.

All in all, most AI criticisms seem to degenerate in anthropocentric pseudo-arguments. Another good book to be read is Dreyfus' What computers (still) can't do. Dreyfus gives good reasons for why AI may be far from the present, but does so without (for the most part, at least) resorting to the argument that "I'm human and want to be the only smart being here". It is interesting that AI criticism may be the last island of anthropocentrism. First, the Sun does not go around the earth, but otherwise. Then, me and that disgusting worm are made of the same genetic stuff. Now, a bunch of transistors beats me at chess and wants to think? Then again, this is just me.

The links are here for the paranoid:
http://www.genetic-programming.org
http://www1.fatbrain.com/asp/bookinfo/bookinfo.asp ?theisbn=155860605X&vm=
http://www1.fatbrain.com/asp/bookinfo/bookinfo.asp ?theisbn=0262540673&vm=

Carlos
Semper ubi sub ubi

:) Actually, you can link to books.

(This bit here is to get around the stupid "postercomment compression filter" yet still post my insightful comment....)

http://www1.fatbrain.com/asp/bookinfo/bookinfo.asp ?theisbn=0618126996
It would be nice when you include links with affiliate codes (like the &from=MJF138 at the end of the URL) if you mention "oh by the way, I'm getting 20% (or whatever) when you buy this book through using this link"

There's a chapter in Kissinger's latest book Does America Need a Foreign Policy? that sets out the benefits and perils of Globalization (eventually coming down on the pro side). It would be a good read for anyone interested in the Globalization debate.

Worth reading:
The Victorian Internet: The Remarkable Story of the Telegraph and the Nineteenth Century's On-line Pioneers

Heh. Well if you're going to get technical, it's really OS X Server that is the 'true' decendant of Rhapsody.

Calling OS X "just NeXTSTEP with a face lift" really undermines all of the quality work that has gone into it, including Classic (the enviroment where all pre-OS X apps run), a full Java 2 implementation, and oh so much more (see Inside Mac OS X: System Overview for everything you ever wanted to know).

This is the essay that formed Dick Gabriel's OOPSLA 2000 invited talk.

It was a really thought-provoking talk, punctuated periodically with various musical interludes. Richard himself was wearing a rather interesting outfit -- if I recall, it's been almost a year so I might be off, it was a large leather shawl... I remember a few people in the audience whispering ("is this supposed to be zen or just wierd on purpose?")

But a lot of what Richard says also highlights some of what several others (Jim Coplien, David Ungar, etc.) were hitting on during the conference: that we really aren't creating *great* software. We've certainly tried to come up with movements to do so -- from Extreme Programming, to Design Patterns, to new high-level languages. But "design patterns" aren't quite the same things that Alexander had in mind (entire "pattern languages" to emerge "great software" was the hope), and that most design patterns could really be termed "fixes for existing languages".

We need new approaches to software design -- and we need to explore more of the consequences of abstraction. Humans use abstraction as a mental necessity... but is there a way to abstract without losing the importance of the details (when they are relevant and important)? How can we handle the tremendous complexity of software when that complexity is increasing at an alarming rate?

But most importantly -- How do we teach the next generation of programmers what we've learned, so they don't make the same mistakes?

So the point of the essay (that I took away) is this: if we're going to find new approaches for software, we're going to have to create a "new literature" to learn from, as we're running out of sources of "great literature" (many of which are becoming passe').

The way to create an evolving body of code literature is through A) people that are passionate about software, B) through software that is free, and C) through software that is openly collaborated on. Hence: Mob Software...

A lot of the the themes aluded into in this essay: poetry, abstraction, software, patterns, etc. are all discussed in great detail in his book "Patterns of Software: Tales from the Community".

Cheers

Okay, blatant plug for a friend of mine. Try Ventus by Karl Schroeder. It's his first novel, has been getting great reviews and sales, and the paperback is due out in October.

Solaris Internals
The SPARC Architecture Manual, Vol 9

As far as building applications for the Ultra Enterprise 10000, I don't believe you need to do much special, other than ensuring your program is multi-thread safe, or at least multi-processor safe (safe from deadlocks, and so on...) You can check http://docs.sun.com/ for information.

To answer your question about the kernel. From what I've read thus far, there is a single kernel running on the domain, and since the kernel itself is multi-threaded, it can run on all of the processors in the domain. There is a much better description in the book, and I can't serve it justice here. (That and I don't have it with me at the moment.)

Solaris Internals
The SPARC Architecture Manual, Vol 9

As far as building applications for the Ultra Enterprise 10000, I don't believe you need to do much special, other than ensuring your program is multi-thread safe, or at least multi-processor safe (safe from deadlocks, and so on...) You can check http://docs.sun.com/ for information.

To answer your question about the kernel. From what I've read thus far, there is a single kernel running on the domain, and since the kernel itself is multi-threaded, it can run on all of the processors in the domain. There is a much better description in the book, and I can't serve it justice here. (That and I don't have it with me at the moment.)

I think the goal of libraries should be to drum up interest for the topic in question, not necessarilty provide hardcore reference books. Extrapolating to physics Six Easy Pieces and the two Feynman pseudoautobiographies do a fantastic job at getting people interested in science, while his berkley lectures have a lot less appeal, even though they're probably better for your local physics majors.

Consider this. Say you're interested in physics. Would you want to read Six not so easy pieces , a relatively easy book that deals with relativity, or the chapter on relativity in Classical dynamics of particles and systems , which i can barely understand, even after using it in class for a year?

This is exactly what we're doing when we recommend things like Halabi or most random O'Reilly books. Why do we like O'Reilly? because when i need to know the name of the object that controls blabla, then I can look it up. Quickly. Having a book that tells you that ListCellRenderer has 1 method called getListCellRendererComponent really has limited value to most people.

Learning Perl is great, because it's an introductory book (but even that is a lot easier to read if you already know C). O'Reilly does have a lot of good books that cover introductory topics (incidentally, i own none of them), but just because it's on your bookshelf and probably is the most kickass book on it's topic, that doesn't mean it's entirely suitable for your public library.

I think the goal of libraries should be to drum up interest for the topic in question, not necessarilty provide hardcore reference books. Extrapolating to physics Six Easy Pieces and the two Feynman pseudoautobiographies do a fantastic job at getting people interested in science, while his berkley lectures have a lot less appeal, even though they're probably better for your local physics majors.

Consider this. Say you're interested in physics. Would you want to read Six not so easy pieces , a relatively easy book that deals with relativity, or the chapter on relativity in Classical dynamics of particles and systems , which i can barely understand, even after using it in class for a year?

This is exactly what we're doing when we recommend things like Halabi or most random O'Reilly books. Why do we like O'Reilly? because when i need to know the name of the object that controls blabla, then I can look it up. Quickly. Having a book that tells you that ListCellRenderer has 1 method called getListCellRendererComponent really has limited value to most people.

Learning Perl is great, because it's an introductory book (but even that is a lot easier to read if you already know C). O'Reilly does have a lot of good books that cover introductory topics (incidentally, i own none of them), but just because it's on your bookshelf and probably is the most kickass book on it's topic, that doesn't mean it's entirely suitable for your public library.

I think the goal of libraries should be to drum up interest for the topic in question, not necessarilty provide hardcore reference books. Extrapolating to physics Six Easy Pieces and the two Feynman pseudoautobiographies do a fantastic job at getting people interested in science, while his berkley lectures have a lot less appeal, even though they're probably better for your local physics majors.

Consider this. Say you're interested in physics. Would you want to read Six not so easy pieces , a relatively easy book that deals with relativity, or the chapter on relativity in Classical dynamics of particles and systems , which i can barely understand, even after using it in class for a year?

This is exactly what we're doing when we recommend things like Halabi or most random O'Reilly books. Why do we like O'Reilly? because when i need to know the name of the object that controls blabla, then I can look it up. Quickly. Having a book that tells you that ListCellRenderer has 1 method called getListCellRendererComponent really has limited value to most people.

Learning Perl is great, because it's an introductory book (but even that is a lot easier to read if you already know C). O'Reilly does have a lot of good books that cover introductory topics (incidentally, i own none of them), but just because it's on your bookshelf and probably is the most kickass book on it's topic, that doesn't mean it's entirely suitable for your public library.

I think the goal of libraries should be to drum up interest for the topic in question, not necessarilty provide hardcore reference books. Extrapolating to physics Six Easy Pieces and the two Feynman pseudoautobiographies do a fantastic job at getting people interested in science, while his berkley lectures have a lot less appeal, even though they're probably better for your local physics majors.

Consider this. Say you're interested in physics. Would you want to read Six not so easy pieces , a relatively easy book that deals with relativity, or the chapter on relativity in Classical dynamics of particles and systems , which i can barely understand, even after using it in class for a year?

This is exactly what we're doing when we recommend things like Halabi or most random O'Reilly books. Why do we like O'Reilly? because when i need to know the name of the object that controls blabla, then I can look it up. Quickly. Having a book that tells you that ListCellRenderer has 1 method called getListCellRendererComponent really has limited value to most people.

Learning Perl is great, because it's an introductory book (but even that is a lot easier to read if you already know C). O'Reilly does have a lot of good books that cover introductory topics (incidentally, i own none of them), but just because it's on your bookshelf and probably is the most kickass book on it's topic, that doesn't mean it's entirely suitable for your public library.

I think the goal of libraries should be to drum up interest for the topic in question, not necessarilty provide hardcore reference books. Extrapolating to physics Six Easy Pieces and the two Feynman pseudoautobiographies do a fantastic job at getting people interested in science, while his berkley lectures have a lot less appeal, even though they're probably better for your local physics majors.

Consider this. Say you're interested in physics. Would you want to read Six not so easy pieces , a relatively easy book that deals with relativity, or the chapter on relativity in Classical dynamics of particles and systems , which i can barely understand, even after using it in class for a year?

This is exactly what we're doing when we recommend things like Halabi or most random O'Reilly books. Why do we like O'Reilly? because when i need to know the name of the object that controls blabla, then I can look it up. Quickly. Having a book that tells you that ListCellRenderer has 1 method called getListCellRendererComponent really has limited value to most people.

Learning Perl is great, because it's an introductory book (but even that is a lot easier to read if you already know C). O'Reilly does have a lot of good books that cover introductory topics (incidentally, i own none of them), but just because it's on your bookshelf and probably is the most kickass book on it's topic, that doesn't mean it's entirely suitable for your public library.

I think the goal of libraries should be to drum up interest for the topic in question, not necessarilty provide hardcore reference books. Extrapolating to physics Six Easy Pieces and the two Feynman pseudoautobiographies do a fantastic job at getting people interested in science, while his berkley lectures have a lot less appeal, even though they're probably better for your local physics majors.

Consider this. Say you're interested in physics. Would you want to read Six not so easy pieces , a relatively easy book that deals with relativity, or the chapter on relativity in Classical dynamics of particles and systems , which i can barely understand, even after using it in class for a year?

This is exactly what we're doing when we recommend things like Halabi or most random O'Reilly books. Why do we like O'Reilly? because when i need to know the name of the object that controls blabla, then I can look it up. Quickly. Having a book that tells you that ListCellRenderer has 1 method called getListCellRendererComponent really has limited value to most people.

Learning Perl is great, because it's an introductory book (but even that is a lot easier to read if you already know C). O'Reilly does have a lot of good books that cover introductory topics (incidentally, i own none of them), but just because it's on your bookshelf and probably is the most kickass book on it's topic, that doesn't mean it's entirely suitable for your public library.

I think the goal of libraries should be to drum up interest for the topic in question, not necessarilty provide hardcore reference books. Extrapolating to physics Six Easy Pieces and the two Feynman pseudoautobiographies do a fantastic job at getting people interested in science, while his berkley lectures have a lot less appeal, even though they're probably better for your local physics majors.

Consider this. Say you're interested in physics. Would you want to read Six not so easy pieces , a relatively easy book that deals with relativity, or the chapter on relativity in Classical dynamics of particles and systems , which i can barely understand, even after using it in class for a year?

This is exactly what we're doing when we recommend things like Halabi or most random O'Reilly books. Why do we like O'Reilly? because when i need to know the name of the object that controls blabla, then I can look it up. Quickly. Having a book that tells you that ListCellRenderer has 1 method called getListCellRendererComponent really has limited value to most people.

Learning Perl is great, because it's an introductory book (but even that is a lot easier to read if you already know C). O'Reilly does have a lot of good books that cover introductory topics (incidentally, i own none of them), but just because it's on your bookshelf and probably is the most kickass book on it's topic, that doesn't mean it's entirely suitable for your public library.

I think the goal of libraries should be to drum up interest for the topic in question, not necessarilty provide hardcore reference books. Extrapolating to physics Six Easy Pieces and the two Feynman pseudoautobiographies do a fantastic job at getting people interested in science, while his berkley lectures have a lot less appeal, even though they're probably better for your local physics majors.

Consider this. Say you're interested in physics. Would you want to read Six not so easy pieces , a relatively easy book that deals with relativity, or the chapter on relativity in Classical dynamics of particles and systems , which i can barely understand, even after using it in class for a year?

This is exactly what we're doing when we recommend things like Halabi or most random O'Reilly books. Why do we like O'Reilly? because when i need to know the name of the object that controls blabla, then I can look it up. Quickly. Having a book that tells you that ListCellRenderer has 1 method called getListCellRendererComponent really has limited value to most people.

Learning Perl is great, because it's an introductory book (but even that is a lot easier to read if you already know C). O'Reilly does have a lot of good books that cover introductory topics (incidentally, i own none of them), but just because it's on your bookshelf and probably is the most kickass book on it's topic, that doesn't mean it's entirely suitable for your public library.

I think the goal of libraries should be to drum up interest for the topic in question, not necessarilty provide hardcore reference books. Extrapolating to physics Six Easy Pieces and the two Feynman pseudoautobiographies do a fantastic job at getting people interested in science, while his berkley lectures have a lot less appeal, even though they're probably better for your local physics majors.

Consider this. Say you're interested in physics. Would you want to read Six not so easy pieces , a relatively easy book that deals with relativity, or the chapter on relativity in Classical dynamics of particles and systems , which i can barely understand, even after using it in class for a year?

This is exactly what we're doing when we recommend things like Halabi or most random O'Reilly books. Why do we like O'Reilly? because when i need to know the name of the object that controls blabla, then I can look it up. Quickly. Having a book that tells you that ListCellRenderer has 1 method called getListCellRendererComponent really has limited value to most people.

Learning Perl is great, because it's an introductory book (but even that is a lot easier to read if you already know C). O'Reilly does have a lot of good books that cover introductory topics (incidentally, i own none of them), but just because it's on your bookshelf and probably is the most kickass book on it's topic, that doesn't mean it's entirely suitable for your public library.

I think the goal of libraries should be to drum up interest for the topic in question, not necessarilty provide hardcore reference books. Extrapolating to physics Six Easy Pieces and the two Feynman pseudoautobiographies do a fantastic job at getting people interested in science, while his berkley lectures have a lot less appeal, even though they're probably better for your local physics majors.

Consider this. Say you're interested in physics. Would you want to read Six not so easy pieces , a relatively easy book that deals with relativity, or the chapter on relativity in Classical dynamics of particles and systems , which i can barely understand, even after using it in class for a year?

This is exactly what we're doing when we recommend things like Halabi or most random O'Reilly books. Why do we like O'Reilly? because when i need to know the name of the object that controls blabla, then I can look it up. Quickly. Having a book that tells you that ListCellRenderer has 1 method called getListCellRendererComponent really has limited value to most people.

Learning Perl is great, because it's an introductory book (but even that is a lot easier to read if you already know C). O'Reilly does have a lot of good books that cover introductory topics (incidentally, i own none of them), but just because it's on your bookshelf and probably is the most kickass book on it's topic, that doesn't mean it's entirely suitable for your public library.

Yes. But imho, that's exactly what we want for libraries. I think the idea should be to drum up interest for different things, and the "For dummies" books do these things quite well. They are (or at least try to be) mildly entertaining (in contrast you cannot read Java in a Nutshell as evening reading material.

While we shouldn't just limit ourselves to shallow books, we do not need the most expert books either. Someone earlier suggested Halabi (which i treat as my bible), but it really has limited use in a public library, anyone who needs the book will purchase it because they need it 24/7. A more reasonable book would be TCP/IP Network Adminstration which allows people to learn the basics, and points them in the right direction if they desire to learn more. I even think the Cricket book is inappropriate because although it really explains dns well, it also explains why you cannot point an MX to a CNAME (and if i didn't administer a couple DNS servers, i wouldn't care in the least why this was), when a book on how the general internet works could supply so much more pertinent information for the money.

> In a couple of years they will be out of date,
> and you'll have to buy a new set.

Probably true, but i don't think they go out of date any faster than any other programming book (especially html/javascript variants). Also "For dummies" books are comparitively cheap. Last I checked Dummies books went for $20, now they're going for anywhere from $25~40. With the notable exception of O'rielly, most books now go for ~$50~60, so you are able to get a broader scope of things with the Dummies books.

My personal library is almost exclusively O'Rielly and Cisco Press, i don't think there is very much of a debate that these are probably the best reference books out there, but imho it's not what my local public library needs.

Yes. But imho, that's exactly what we want for libraries. I think the idea should be to drum up interest for different things, and the "For dummies" books do these things quite well. They are (or at least try to be) mildly entertaining (in contrast you cannot read Java in a Nutshell as evening reading material.

While we shouldn't just limit ourselves to shallow books, we do not need the most expert books either. Someone earlier suggested Halabi (which i treat as my bible), but it really has limited use in a public library, anyone who needs the book will purchase it because they need it 24/7. A more reasonable book would be TCP/IP Network Adminstration which allows people to learn the basics, and points them in the right direction if they desire to learn more. I even think the Cricket book is inappropriate because although it really explains dns well, it also explains why you cannot point an MX to a CNAME (and if i didn't administer a couple DNS servers, i wouldn't care in the least why this was), when a book on how the general internet works could supply so much more pertinent information for the money.

> In a couple of years they will be out of date,
> and you'll have to buy a new set.

Probably true, but i don't think they go out of date any faster than any other programming book (especially html/javascript variants). Also "For dummies" books are comparitively cheap. Last I checked Dummies books went for $20, now they're going for anywhere from $25~40. With the notable exception of O'rielly, most books now go for ~$50~60, so you are able to get a broader scope of things with the Dummies books.

My personal library is almost exclusively O'Rielly and Cisco Press, i don't think there is very much of a debate that these are probably the best reference books out there, but imho it's not what my local public library needs.

Yes. But imho, that's exactly what we want for libraries. I think the idea should be to drum up interest for different things, and the "For dummies" books do these things quite well. They are (or at least try to be) mildly entertaining (in contrast you cannot read Java in a Nutshell as evening reading material.

While we shouldn't just limit ourselves to shallow books, we do not need the most expert books either. Someone earlier suggested Halabi (which i treat as my bible), but it really has limited use in a public library, anyone who needs the book will purchase it because they need it 24/7. A more reasonable book would be TCP/IP Network Adminstration which allows people to learn the basics, and points them in the right direction if they desire to learn more. I even think the Cricket book is inappropriate because although it really explains dns well, it also explains why you cannot point an MX to a CNAME (and if i didn't administer a couple DNS servers, i wouldn't care in the least why this was), when a book on how the general internet works could supply so much more pertinent information for the money.

> In a couple of years they will be out of date,
> and you'll have to buy a new set.

Probably true, but i don't think they go out of date any faster than any other programming book (especially html/javascript variants). Also "For dummies" books are comparitively cheap. Last I checked Dummies books went for $20, now they're going for anywhere from $25~40. With the notable exception of O'rielly, most books now go for ~$50~60, so you are able to get a broader scope of things with the Dummies books.

My personal library is almost exclusively O'Rielly and Cisco Press, i don't think there is very much of a debate that these are probably the best reference books out there, but imho it's not what my local public library needs.

Yes. But imho, that's exactly what we want for libraries. I think the idea should be to drum up interest for different things, and the "For dummies" books do these things quite well. They are (or at least try to be) mildly entertaining (in contrast you cannot read Java in a Nutshell as evening reading material.

While we shouldn't just limit ourselves to shallow books, we do not need the most expert books either. Someone earlier suggested Halabi (which i treat as my bible), but it really has limited use in a public library, anyone who needs the book will purchase it because they need it 24/7. A more reasonable book would be TCP/IP Network Adminstration which allows people to learn the basics, and points them in the right direction if they desire to learn more. I even think the Cricket book is inappropriate because although it really explains dns well, it also explains why you cannot point an MX to a CNAME (and if i didn't administer a couple DNS servers, i wouldn't care in the least why this was), when a book on how the general internet works could supply so much more pertinent information for the money.

> In a couple of years they will be out of date,
> and you'll have to buy a new set.

Probably true, but i don't think they go out of date any faster than any other programming book (especially html/javascript variants). Also "For dummies" books are comparitively cheap. Last I checked Dummies books went for $20, now they're going for anywhere from $25~40. With the notable exception of O'rielly, most books now go for ~$50~60, so you are able to get a broader scope of things with the Dummies books.

My personal library is almost exclusively O'Rielly and Cisco Press, i don't think there is very much of a debate that these are probably the best reference books out there, but imho it's not what my local public library needs.

Numerical Recipes in C: The Art of Scientific Computing, by William H. Press,Brian P. Flannery,Saul A. Teukolsky,William T. Vetterling.

To paraphrase the Planet of the Apes star: Anyone who wants my copy can pry it out of my cold, dead hands.

-Renard

"The Art of Programming Vol. 1-3" by Donald Knuth. The definitive guide to theoretical and practical Computer Science. Check it out.

'Nuff said.
--
PaxTech

1.According to Rapid Development (which every DEV manager, director and executive needs to read), one of the classic mistakes of development is to add a new developer in the middle of the project in the hopes that it will speed development time, and

C'mon, that's called "Brooks's Law", and was written more than 25 years ago in Frederick Brooks's book "The Mythical Man-Month". It's a classic that still is a "must read", and your comment shows you have not done so. Do yourself a big favour: Read it.

From Fatbrain:

The added chapters contain a crisp condensation of all the propositions asserted in the original book, including Brooks central argument in The Mythical Man-Month:

1. that large programming projects suffer management problems different from small ones due to the division of labor;
2. that the conceptual integrity of the product is therefore critical;
3. and that it is difficult but possible to achieve this unity;
4. Brooks view of these propositions a generation later;
5. a reprint of his classic 1986 paper "No Silver Bullet"; and
6. todays thoughts on the 1986 assertion, "There will be no silver bullet within ten years."

Maybe someday we'll see RFCs in HTML - that way we there can be links instead of footnotes. Now that would be progress.

I'm sure that it would be straightforward to write a filter program in a text processing language such as Ruby, Python, or Perl to translate the plain text format of RFCs into HTML markup. However, it would be a little tougher to resolve bibliographic references to a printed work into links to the book's BN Fatbrain page.

Because the issues are complex and have so much financial consequence, Congress feels it's best if the affected parties (the various businesses who have a financial interest in copyright law) work out the law themselves. Congress just rubber stamps whatever they come up with. The current copyright law (the DMCA) is over 150 pages of lawyer-speak, far too much for everyone in Congress to read, comprehend and have an opinion on - just the way the media companies want it. The media companies understand it (or their lawyers do) because they wrote it. To hell with the people.

Read this -c

No really, I'm Mark.

This book is almost 2 years old. It's nice to see Slashdot reviewing it, but it is a bit out of date. So please be gentle about how "old" it appears. On the good side, a lot of the concepts are still current.

If you want something more up to date, please check out the Computer Based Training CD that I did. It's only about a year old, but don't worry, that will get updated too :)

One more reason to buy from Barnes and Noble.com.

Contrary to popular belief there are other booksellers out there. Some of which may not have sold their soul to the devil.

Barnes and Noble also bought up Fatbrain.com so their selection for /.'ers should be pretty good.

The have fixed the link since this morning, so I flip-flop: If you want a link to Loki's book, look here. As they say, it's not yet released. I suppose that losing the clickthrough revenue is important enough to get them to fix an article, but blatant factual errors aren't!

You can find out -- the fatbrain link he gives is actually to the Loki book. Here is a fatbrain link to the book he actually reviewed.