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Craig Pfeifer wrote this review of Server-Based Java Programming, and in a world of books loaded with buzzwords, and sometimes volume at the expense of clarity, he claims that this volume suffers neither fault. (Even if you're sick of the word "Enterprise.")

Server-Based Java Programming author Ted Neward pages 556 publisher Manning rating 10 reviewer Craig Pfeifer ISBN 1884777716 summary From designing and building the nuts and bolts of your own java application server, to understanding and integrating common middleware technologies and patterns, this book covers it all.

The Scenario

Whether you're building your own Java application server, or evaluating your options when it comes to building an enterprise class application, there's an awful lot to consider. Everyone likes to throw around the adjective 'enterprise'; 'enterprise class,' 'enterprise information system,' 'enterprise solution' but what does this mean? What is an enterprise solution? And more importantly how do you build one? This book cuts through the J2EE hype and gives you the straight dope on desiging/implementing realistic java based distributed systems.

What's Bad?

If you are looking for a Java2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) overview (Enterprise Java Beans (EJB), Servlets, Java Server Pages (JSP)...) or an intro to Java fundamentals, this book is not for you. This book covers some fundamentals of threads, classloaders and sockets, but the bulk of the text is the application of these concepts. If you aren't already familliar with how these features are commonly used, you might find yourself doing a little prerequisite work to get the full value out of the material in these chapters.

Additionally, several code samples span multiple pages and it can be tough to keep this sample (along with all of the previous samples, as they build on each other) in your head when you read it in more than one sitting. This could be remedied by presenting a series of UML diagrams to show how the current example extends or interfaces with the previous examples, and the existing classes in the Java SDK.

What's Good?

This book goes from narrow to broad in it's coverage of different aspects of enterprise systems. Ted starts off chapter 1 with a wonderful overview of what characterizes 'enterprise development,' and 'enterprise systems.' According to Ted, enterprise development projects:

• get less QA time
• have shorted development cycles
• typically require expert administration
• must work within an existing architecture

From here, he goes into a discussion of key build vs. buy decision criteria and a justification/defense of using Java on the server side. This first chapter should be torn out and given to every development manager in every internal IT department in every company everywhere. Many managers feel that any project dealing with 'enterprise' and 'java' require a product like IBM's webSphere or BEA's webLogic, but this is simply not the case. These are excellent products, but for most of the projects out there, basing a solution around a full blown J2EE appserver only makes building, deploying and maintaining the system more far more complicated and expensive that it really needs to be.

Just as I started to worry that this book would be all talk and hand-waving, the next two chapters (approx 60 pages) were a gloves-off, down and dirty discussion of Java's classloader functionality. Many developers take the classloader for granted (including myself), and don't fully understand/exploit its power. Ted shows all of the rules that a Java classloader must follow, and the role it plays in the application lifecycle. He builds sample classloaders that can load classes from an HTTP server, an FTP server and even from an internal hashtable. The most impressive part of these two chapters is Ted's explanation of how the differences between the Java 1.1 and the Java2 classloader. This illustrates Ted's depth of the Java platform, and is just one example of the knowledge (not just information) that this book is chock full of. Ted's sample classloaders are the foundation of the Generic Java Application Server (GJAS) that you build as you progress through the book.

In the next few chapters Ted takes on his two other major topics for the book: threading, and sockets. These topics are worthy of entire books on their own, but Ted keeps it focused and talks primarily about how they are applied in the context of an enterprise application server. He doesn't just rehash the threading and sockets APIs, but provides common usage patterns for each and even provides implementations for useful new primitives. Some of these primitives include an implementation of a PollingThread, a ScheduledThread, an HTTPSocket and a SocketServer. For all of the examples in the book, Ted lets you in on his design process as the GJAS evolves. He lays out the alternatives, makes a selection, and then justifies it. When he applies design patterns from the Gang of Four (GoF), he tells you why he is applying that particular pattern, and how it solves the problem at hand. This is the core of this book, and it's strong point.

Interspersed in the threading and sockets chapters are about server configuration and control structures for services that get executed on the server. Ted discusses different implementations of user services running in their own thread (so as not to interrupt other processes on the server), and in doing so makes use of the thread primitives he laid out in a previous chapter.

The later chapters are typical server programming fare: business objects, business object models, persistance and middleware. However, Ted covers them in a style consistant with the rest of the book: copious code examples, design justifications, and years of valuable on the job experience communicated in a scant 160 pasges.

So What's In It For Me?

As a Sun Certified Java 2 Developer, I've read more than my fare share of bad java books. The good thing is that they are very easy to spot: they are typically extremely thick books with trivial examples and a huge API reference (that you can download from Sun's Java Developer Connection) for filler. This book is a voice of reason in Sun's flood of J2EE (especially EJB) hype. It's a wholly remarkable Java book. Ted Neward should be rewarded and congratualted for this book, it sets a new standard in content quality for Java books.

Based on this book, and the review of the Manning Swing Book, Manning now ranks right up there w/O'Reilly in my list of top-quality technical book publishers.

Table of Contents

1. Enterprise Java
2. ClassLoaders
3. Custom ClassLoaders
4. Extensions
5. Threads
6. Threading Issues
7. Control
8. Remote Control
9. Configuration
10. Sockets
11. Servlets
12. Persistance
13. Business Objects
14. Business Object Models
15. Middleware
16. Java Native Interface
17. Monitoring

You can purchase this book at Fatbrain.

We all know some Net obsessives -- people into gaming, IRC-yakking, trading, shopping, auctioning, coding, IM'ing, even moderating, just a bit too much. The problem isn't that the Net is dangerous, just that's it's so damned interesting compared to work or school. Sometimes it does interfere with life. Dr. David Greenfield has written a calm, useful non-phobic book for the people he calls "Netheads, cyberfreaks, and those who love them." He cops to being a bit addicted himself. (Read more).

Virtual Addiction author Dr. David N. Greenfield pages 227 publisher New Harbinger Publications rating 6/10 reviewer Jon Katz ISBN 1-57224-172-1 summary handy useful guide for the Net-obsessed we know and love

If the dangers of working, living and playing on the Net have been overstated by political moralists and the media, our dirty little secret is that this is a compulsive culture. Many people do have trouble from time to time balancing e-mail, IM, gaming, coding, IRC-chatting, arguing, shopping, trading, even moderating, with the demands and balance of real life.

The Net is a magnet for brainy, even addictive obsessives, an outlet for their curiousity and creativity that is often much more appealing than home, school or work. So Dr. David Greenfield's book maybe handy help for "Netheads, cyberfreaks, and those who love them," as he puts it.

Greenfield knows what he's talking about. He writes about the intrinsically compulsive elements of life online for shoppers, gamblers, sex-chatters, auctioneers, gamers and kids. He doesn't present the Net as a dangerous menace, just a place so diverse, challenging and compelling that many of the people who go online regularly sometimes struggle with finding the right balance between life online and off. The book is really about balance and perspective, always useful to think about. And there are few college kids or tech workers who don't know somebody who's dealing with this issue in one form or another, if they aren't themselves. The perils of cyberlife are real, if wildly overstated by a phobic society.

Greenfield wrote this book (out in paperback for $12 bucks) because he found his own time online was getting too intense. He describes himself as a "true cyberfreak with technophilic tendencies," and offers useful information about warning signs and remedies. He also believes the Net is going to become much more addictive as it becomes even more interesting and ubiquitous.

Greenfield believes that multimedia stimulation, ease of access, twenty-four-hour availability, lack of boundaries, loss of time, disinhibition, stimulating and creative content are all factors that can contribute to compulsive, even addictive Net use.

"The line from my perspective," he writes, "is when it interferes with your life significantly." If somebody enjoys being online six or eight hours a day and they still lead a healthy and balanced life, there's no problem. But, he says, he isn't certain that anybody can spend most or all of their spare time online and still have a truly balanced life.

This book is sensible. Greenfield's style is easy and straightforward, and the book could be valuable for employers, peers, colleagues and friends concerned about themselves and other people who sometimes struggle with balance and perspective in a culture that is compelling not because it's dangerous but because it's so damned interesting.

You can purchase this book at FatBrain.

SilenceKit writes "The New York Times has a cool story today on a sequel to Flatland, the classic geometry/social satire which "it may be no exaggeration to say has been read by every self-respecting physicist, mathematician and science fiction writer." The new one, by Ian Stewart, is called "Flatterland" and is a tour of a century of strange geometry -- from fractals to "Minkowski space," whatever that is. The story (free registration required) is at the Times" I was loaned Flatland: A Romance Of Many Dimensions by one of my college profs - it's a great book, and this come from someone who really hated geometry (What bad high school teachers can do). It's still available on fatbrain - pretty good for a 19th century text about geometry, to still be in print.

An Onymous Coward writes: "While looking for a few loop holes in the tax code, I ran across this interesting IRS Regulation. I was wondering, if using this if Open Source programming is tax deductable? Linked from here under Credit for Increasing Research Activities." It's an interesting-sounding twist in the tax maze, but probably better to get your certified tax accountant to sign off on it first. Note that the second link there goes to (allegedly) "Plain Language Regulations," but they remind me of the book Unbridled Power intead. Does anyone else have any good hindsight on how techies can / should approach their tax forms?

Reader bughunter contributed the review below of K.W. Jeter's Noir, which sounds like a good book to not read aloud to your small children, but otherwise intriguing: Dark, twisty speculation in the same vein as William Gibson and other pioneers.

Noir author K. W. Jeter pages 496 publisher Bantam Spectra rating 8 reviewer bughunter ISBN 0553576380 summary A dark-as-its-name novel in the tradition of cyberpunk but with even more cynical twists.

Mixing metaphors like cheap liquors, K. W. Jeter manages to meld an unlikely combination of fiction elements with the surprisingly palatable success of a Long Island Iced Tea. Add to that an almost gleefully cynical look at the future of copyright law, unrestrained capitalism, and the rocky bottom of our credit-driven economy's slippery slope. With a sometimes disorienting stream-of-consciousness style, stringing together metaphors like a psychedelic chain of pearls, Jeter introduces his audience to one brilliantly disturbing and fascinating concept after another, and in the end Jeter uses every one of them to wrap up the conflict. It's a nonstop freak show, a simultaneous dirty joke, horror tale, and social commentary. It's especially rewarding, coming from the author of the bestselling sequels to Blade Runner, Blade Runner 2: The Edge of Human and Blade Runner: Replicant Night.

On one level, Noir feels like cyberpunk: it is set in a postmodern dystopia recovering from collapse, populated by cybernetically enhanced misanthropes, with a plot that skirts the edge of a metaphorical landscape. But in this novel, there's no Cyberspace; just "The Wedge," a sexually deviant skid row ruled by a mysterious goddesslike figure. Those who dare can visit The Wedge in the flesh, but most visitors to the Wedge employ replicant avatars, "prowlers," which download their Wedge experiences to their owners, delivering accumulated memories served straight.

This brings me to a warning; Noir is not for the weak of stomach. Jeter wantonly and graphically sodomizes, decapitates, disembowels, dissolves and immolates his characters with intentional disregard for good taste, exploiting the same psychological niche as rotten.com, alt.tasteless and Hannibal. It has the attraction of a car wreck -- at first tolerable only in short doses, but ultimately irresistible. Part of this irresistibility is the intelligence, wit, and cynicism of Jeter's future vision.

Predictably enough, the protagonists are anti-heroes. But to Jeter's credit, their predictability ends there. John McNihil is an asp-head - a licensed bounty hunter of copyright violators, and a man who sold his wife into purgatory in favor of buying a set of optical implants that give him a film noir view of the world. Forget rose-colored glasses, he has smoke- and whiskey-colored contact lenses.

Self-employed heroine November is more likable, but a ruthless character nonetheless, with fingertip EMP implants that allow her to induce orgasmic epileptic fits in her stalkers-slash-victims, then casually ventilate their craniums with their own guns.

The story opens with the death of a mid-level corporate exec, Travelt. McNihil and November are hired by the antagonist, Harrisch, to track down his intellectual property lost in the Edge, somehow uploaded into Travelt's prowler. In contrast to the merely dislikable McNihil and November, Harrisch is revolting. He is the devious, manipulating and ruthless chief executive of DynaZauber, a megacorporation with interests in every aspect of society. Harrisch habitually murders his freelance operatives rather than paying them, and prefers to do the wetwork himself, rendered immune to prosecution by pre-emptory payoffs to local authorities, who themselves have been reduced to agents of corporate interest.

The first third of the story revolves around Harrisch's increasingly sadistic attempts to coerce McNihil into taking the job. November is Harrisch's insurance, the second-string operative, whom he also uses as a means to coerce McNihil. Be patient; Jeter uses these events to introduce concepts that foreshadow the climactic scene. And even after McNihil and November being their hunt for Travelt's lost prowler, we continue to be exposed to essential concepts that at the time appear to be mere gratuitous depravity and cynicism.

These ideas are what make Noir worthy of a Slashdot review, and I shall attempt to relate some of them without spoiling the plot, but in doing so, I cannot reproduce their sledgehammer impact on the story:

• The elevation of intellectual property to the ultimate standard of value.
• Violation of copyright becomes punishable by death, and later by the imprisonment of the violator's seat of intellect within "trophies" - such as toasters and audio equipment - delivered to the copyright holder.
• The rights of debt holders become supreme, outlasting even the death of the debtor. Those who die in debt are reanimated until they work off their debt, if they can.
• Corporate management philosophy becomes modelled after that of the street pimp; psychological destitution of the employee is embraced as the optimal strategy for human resource management.
• In the ultimate victory of marketing over content, TIAC, or Turd In A Can, becomes the overt ideal of capitalism: use marketing and packaging to sell the customer as little value as possible, for the maximum price.

And with many brilliantly unpredictable plot twists, these devices and many, many more are used to escalate and then resolve the story's conflict in a feat of literary genius. Just admitting that much to a potential reader is a spoiler -- Jeter pulls off what seems to be impossible, but foreknowledge of this feat also allows one to appreciate Jeter's skill on the first read, rather than only in retrospect. Noir is perhaps the only novel that can be simultaneously compared with Brave New World , The Name of the Rose, The Diamond Age, and Hannibal. It shines darkly like polished obsidian, complete with a razor edge.

You can purhase this book at Fatbrain.

Reiji Asakura's Revolutionaries at Sony: The Making of the Sony PlayStation and the Visionaries Who Conquered the World of Video Games is an authorized account of how some renegade Sony programmers and engineers battled one another and their own corporate hierarchy to create the PlayStation. The rest is history. This book is an interesting if worshipful yarn, and one of the few book-length accounts ever published about the corporate politics inside of the video-game arena. (Read more)

The Making of the Sony PlayStation author Reiji Asakura pages 230 publisher McGraw Hill rating 6/10 reviewer Jon Katz ISBN 0-07-135587-1 summary How gaming engineers convinced Sony to make the PlayStation

You can hardly overstate the success of the PlayStation home game machines, even though Asakura, a Japanese journalist who was granted unlimited access to Sony engineers and executives, comes close a few times.

The first PS had annual sales of more than $7 billion after only four years; total worldwide shipments as of September, l998 exceeded 40 million units. And that doesn't include the PS2, released last year.

Sony's engineers transformed gaming as well as cornered the market on one of the most lucrative technologies ever. In l999, Sony Computer Entertainment's contribution to Sony's consolidated profits reached 23%. The PlayStation, says Asakura, is at the heart of Sony's success and represents one of the most successful engineering, programming and marketing triumphs in business history.

The interesting part of this book is the look at the politics and strategizing that goes on inside a hi-tech global entertainment corporation. At first, Ken Kutaragi's plan -- Kutaragi is without doubt the hero of this story -- to engineer a revolutionary new type of gaming console was ignored or resisted. Sony, he was told, wasn't interested in the "toy" business. The decision-making processes of a corporation like this, and the tensions between corporate and technical people are pretty interesting. So is Asakura's account of the cultural and business differences between Japan and America that dogged the marketing and distribution of the PlayStation.

Be warned, though. This is an authorized and nearly worshipful biography of Kutaragi, and in many ways, of Sony itself. The politics and technical details of the making of the PS will be interesting to many, but this is hardly a detached, outsider look.

You can purchase this book at FatBrain.

Adventurous reader Duncan Lawie, throwing himself in the way of the books being hurled at you by well-meaning bookstores, wrote this review of Mission of Gravity. If your taste in Science Fiction runs to the adventurous and thoughtful, Duncan may just turn you on to a work he says is "elegant and simple."

Mission of Gravity author Hal Clement pages 200 publisher UK: Gollancz USA: NESFA Press rating 9.5 reviewer Duncan Lawie ISBN 1-886778-08-6 summary Summary: Low tech aliens on a high-pressure trek impossible for humans -- brilliantly simple, simply brilliant. Hal Clement is a writer of the golden age of science fiction, having been first published in Astounding SF in the early 1940s. As well as painting, he spent many years as a high school science teacher and his love of science is apparent in his writing. His ability to communicate this passion and the display of ideas in his work makes him one of the architects of hard science fiction. Mission of Gravity is the work which defined Clement's reputation, at least in part through the concurrent publication of an article in which he explained the world building behind the novel, which is included in a new NESFA Press publication.

The blueprint for Mission of Gravity is so simple that the tale might almost be expected to tell itself. It is a further grace of the book that it often feels as if this is exactly what is happening. A human exploration mission has lost a valuable probe on the planet Mesklin. This massive planet spins at such a rate that there is a extreme gravity gradient from the poles to the distorted equatorial bulge. The story opens near the equator where native "Mesklinites," exploring north, have made friends with the strange human visitors. Clement is not interested in the potential confusion of first contact so the lead alien -- Barlennan, captain of the trader ship Bree -- has already learned English and has agreed to undertake a further long journey to the polar regions to recover the probe. He and his crew are from a high gravity zone and professional travellers, so such an adventure holds the promise of profit for both human and Mesklinite.

The subsequent adventure is so absorbing because the planetary science is integral and integrated into both the setting and the mental characteristics of the alien protagonists. Barlennan -- alongside at least some of his shipmates -- has a raw intelligence equal to that of his human mentors, but it is informed by their wholly different environment. They are hard-shelled, many-legged crawlers, with eyes low to the ground and an almost irrational fear of anything falling; evolved for and adapted to living in over 700 gravities. The sail-powered ship in which they cross oceans is a series of flat rafts tied together, the concept of a "hollow boat" being wholly unknown to them. In common with many heroes of this era of science fiction, they display a love for knowledge and a wiry resilience. Though they change as they learn, these aliens retain a character and approach which ensures they are not mistaken for humans in disguise. The novel's transit of the planet is aided by radio contact with the human base on the planet's moon, allowing much interchange of information. As this territory is unknown to Barlennan's society, the reader can share the "newness" from the Mesklinite perspective as well as the human. The protagonists show a clear joy in learning about the world around them, both through exploration on their own world and through the new concepts of science they gain from their human confederates.

While Clement is clearly of the view that a rounded grounding in science is essential for the modern citizen, he doesn't grind this into either the reader or the players. Explanations are brief yet sufficient to intrigue those not already familiar with the underlying science, offering a trigger for independent research and a key with which to unlock the potentially dry tomes of pure science. The book is so deeply embedded in a positive scientific worldview that it can communicate the desirability of learning almost without noticing it is doing so. Mission of Gravity is elegant and simple, fun, filled with wonder and a joy to read.

You can purchase this book at Fatbrain

Years after the virtues of XML were first extolled (and plenty of uses both front-and-center and behind-the-scenes later), XML still isn't the do-all, be-all wonder we were led to believe. Book reviewing genius chromatic here dissects a book that sounds aimed at intermediate or advanced programmers (of other languages) who want extend their grasp with a greater understanding of the flexibility inherent to XML. How well it succeeds? Well, see what he's got to say about that.

Inside XML author Steven Holzner pages 1102 publisher New Riders rating 7 reviewer chromatic ISBN 0-7357-1020-1 summary A detailed but uneven treatment of XML and related topics.

The Scoop People love it, but XML won't save the world. If properly applied, it will improve the transfer of information between different individuals, platforms, and programs. A language that describes languages, XML in the real world has spawned hundreds of applications. In Inside XML, Steven Holzner attempts to make sense of the basic principles and more popular implementations as things stand right now. What's to Like? Holzner's caught platform independence fever, and he imparts a healthy sense of respect for W3C standards to his readers. While the current state of XML handling, especially in web browsers, is mediocre at best, he varies platforms when possible. Though most examples use IE on Windows, the author occasionally examines offerings from Mozilla and IBM.

The book's strength is describing a technology. The first five chapters explore XML's essential concepts, including DTDs and schemas, in as good an explanation as you'll find anywhere. Later chapters cover XSL (used to format and to transform documents), XHTML (the successor to HTML), CSS (governing the presentation of XML and XHTML documents) and RDF and CDF (to describe available resources) in sufficient detail. The explanations here are good, with accurate information and plenty of examples.

Java programmers will appreciate the extended descriptions of the DOM and SAX parsing styles. Though the examples themselves are in Java, most concepts translate fairly well to other languages. JavaScript also gets some attention, mostly in the confines of IE5.

What's to Consider? Though the cover blurb claims otherwise, most programming examples use Java. Perl earns a brief 13-page treatment, while ASP and Java Servlets share just eight pages in the same chapter. Exotic languages like C and C++ are conspicuously absent. A detailed description of the DOM and SAX approaches would benefit everyone, not just Java hackers.

This massive tome could have stood another round of editing. Many examples run up to a page and a half in length when only two to four lines have changed from the previous listing. Other material is arguably filler, such as four and a half pages of JavaScript events supported in IE, or fifteen pages detailing XML DOM objects and associated methods before giving a single example of DOM usage. The publisher could have cut between 100 and 200 pages, instead adding footnotes to authoritative sites.

Worse yet, the book's organization is questionable. After describing the basics of XML, it veers off into a 50-page JavaScript tutorial. Java soon suffers the same fate. These chapters break the flow of subjects, use no XML in their examples, and should be appendices. (They're decent, as far as tutorials go. They just don't belong in the middle of the book.) Readers will have difficulty finding useful reference material mixed in with tutorials.

English majors will also find Holzner's transitions awkward. Logical sections often conclude with a phrase such as "Now I will talk about the topic named in the heading immediately following this sentence." XML is not a serial radio cliffhanger, and most readers can find their way down the page by themselves. It occurs often enough to be distracting.

The Summary Besides the reservations above, most of the information is solid and usable. Inside XML is at its best when describing technologies instead of how to work with them. Uneven presentation hinders (not hobbles) the book, making it a better introduction than a definitive guide. Though falling short of its claims, cautious readers will learn plenty. Table of Contents

1. Essential XML
2. Creating Well-Formed XML Documents
3. Valid XML Documents: Creating Document Type Definitions
4. DTDs: Entities and Attributes
5. Creating XML Schemas
6. Understanding JavaScript
7. Handling XML Documents with JavaScript
8. XML and Data Binding
9. Cascading Style Sheets
10. Understanding Java
11. Java and the XML DOM
12. Java and SAX
13. XSL Transformations
14. XSL Formatting Objects
15. XLinks and XPointers
16. Essential XHTML
17. XHTML at Work
18. Resource Description Framework and Channel Definition Format
19. Vector Markup Language
20. WML, ASP, JSP, Servlets, and Perl

1. The XML 1.0 Specification

You can purchase this book at FatBrain.

Online Seductions could be the perfect Valentine's Day gift, a sane guide to the relatively new world of online romance. A few years ago, Net romances made the evening news, usually accompanied by considerable hysteria about porn and predators. Thanks to the Net, strangers are falling in love all the time; cyber-romances so common some shrinks -- like the author of this book -- devote much of their practices to dealing with the fallout from them. How can you tell if it's the real thing? What are some danger signs? This paperback is cheaper than flowers, maybe more fun. Online Seductions: Falling in love with Strangers on the Net author Dr. Esther Gwinnell pages 217 publisher Kodansha International rating 6/10 reviewer Jon Katz ISBN 1-56836-214-5 summary how to deal with online romance

Falling in love with strangers on the Net poses a whole set of special problems, says Dr. Esther Gwinnell, author of Online Seductions. Her book takes a shockingly businesslike and useful look at cyber-romance, the unheralded killer app of the World Wide Web.

When technology and romance mix, the result is explosive, many of the participants in need of a good shrink. Usually, the subject is treated phobically -- predators, stalkers, porno-peddlers, even cyber sexual assaults. But as more Americans go online, it follows that more are finding their ways into chat rooms, IM's and video-confs and trying to seduce each other, digitally and literally.

Gwinnel, an Oregon therapist, and other shrinks, report growing numbers of marriages in trouble because one or even both spouses are having online affairs. In her practice many patients are encountering some kind of problems with Net relationships.

For instance, they tend to falling in love with someone they meet online while other relationships flounder.

Or they fall in love with people who don't return their affection. Or think they're in love, but they're not sure.

Sometimes, of course, things get really ugly. An online romance turns into a frightening or pathological relationship. Or somebody has a pseud or doesn't tell you it's a same-sex relationship. Or that they're much younger or much older than you are. Or life outside the Net gradually shrivels and shrinks for the lovestruck.

People drawn to long distance romance used to fall in love via the post office or on the telephone. The Net obviously permits strangers to find one another more easily, get to know one another better and faster, and in a variety of ways, from chat rooms to IRC to video encounters.

A number of people in Gwinnel's practice have met online, fallen in love and been happy together for ages. It isn't rare any longer. Others get disappointed by flamers, fakers, and stalkers, or by role-players who aren't looking for real relationships. Seduction online lends itself both to experimentation and misunderstandings, and to the complications anonymity can breed.

Gwinnell gives advice on how to protect yourself online: how to spot trouble, to figure out when you've gone too far or when someone is going too far with you.

Where she scores highly with me is that Gwinnell brings a sensible, even historical approach to the topic of seduction. The Net may be new, she writes, but the issues she writes about are not. People have been meeting and falling in love in odd and unconventional ways ever since people have been falling in love.

Online relationships are still considered odd, despite their exploding numbers. Sex, as educators, parents and pols talk about it, is such a scary taboo that little useful information has emerged about how people meet online and conduct their seductions and affairs.

Gwinnell warns to be careful about taking too much advice from online therapists, and even though some of her patients suffer from Net addiction and obsession, she believes that for the majority of people the benefits of seeking romance on the Net outweigh the dangers. "And for those who are seeking a romantic companion, the Internet offers many opportunities to make emotional connections outside of those that hitherto have been available," she writes.

She also asks some interesting questions: is computer sex "adultery?" (Yup. Being unfaithful hurts relationships, no matter where it's done).

This perspective is quite different from the stream of alarms about perverts, predators and porn online.

Falling in love with strangers isn't talked about in proper society much. But it may soon be one of the primary means by which people seeking romance meet for the first time.

You can purchase this book at Fatbrain.

The Complete FreeBSD, The Design and Implementation of 4.4BSD, and The FreeBSD Handbook are among the most notable books available for BSD, but recently it was my pleasure to review a new book about FreeBSD, The FreeBSD Corporate Networker's Guide by Ted Mittelstaedt.

TheFreeBSD Corporate Networker's Guide author Ted Mittelstaedt pages 401 publisher Addison Wesley rating 6.5 reviewer AilleCat ISBN 0201704811 summary A practical, security-conscious guide to connecting BSD machines with existing networks; has a bit of a Microsoft chip on its shoulder.

It seems that the main purpose of the book is to describe how FreeBSD can be integrated into current network structures that include Microsoft clients and servers -- a very useful idea. The author describes step by step how this can be done, and in which particular situations.

Mittelstaedt places an emphasis on using SSH instead of telnet between machines, security layout, using BSD for firewalling, print serving, and even file serving using Samba. Overall, this book makes a very good tutorial for all of the above. He spends a good deal of the first quarter of the book helping new users through the installation process in order to get a functional FreeBSD machine.

When the book originally came into my hands, it was on the last proof. Some of the things I pointed out couldn't be changed before the print date. Although some people might disagree with me, there were several things which I thought would either date the book and/or were unnecessary.

The first issue was the misnaming of PHP in the book. Ted called it the "Perl Hypertext Preprocessor," but PHP originally stood for "Personal Home Pages." It has since been renamed "PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor," in a "GNU's Not UNIX" fashion. The author conceded that neither Perl nor PHP advocates would be very happy with this, and agreed to include it in the book's errata on its Web site. As of this review, the change to the errata still hasn't been made.

The second issue is that the book may become quickly outdated. Because the book is so specific about technical issues such as installation, etc., it may become dated before the next revision. This means it will likely have little use to those who may want to install FreeBSD 5.0 next year.

The last issue, and probably the one of biggest contention, is the last part of the book: more specifically, the last five or so pages. The author does a good job throughout the book describing how one could implement FreeBSD in a corporate environment, coexisting rather peacefully with Microsoft software, only to go on what I call a five-page, well thought-out rant on Microsoft's bad consumer policies and the horrible quality of its software.

While we may all agree, I don't particularly think this is the way to win people over to the Good Side of the Source. Personally, I believe in the "you catch more flies with honey than vinegar" approach, and I feel that those last five pages tear down everything the author had worked for in the first 380. I believe this leads to rabid OS advocates who end up doing more harm than good. For more thoughts on this, Wes Peters makes a good case for temperate advocacy in the January 2001 issue of Daemon News.

Still, the book is good overall, and I would recommend it to those needing a quick primer on how to get FreeBSD working in an existing environment, with the caveats I've mentioned.

You can purchase this book at Fatbrain.

Every BSD article posted, trolls come out and post about BSD dying. Naysayers at every turn, mostly pro-Linux, say that BSD doesn't have the marketing and advocacy to succeed. Greg Lehey, author of The Complete FreeBSD and FreeBSD core team member, takes a look at naysayer's claims, the history of BSD, the root of the "quiet" BSD advocates, and the relationship of Linux to it all, in this month's Daemon's Advocate at Daemon News

Reader John Regehr contributed this review of O'Reilly's Understanding the Linux Kernel, which goes into greater depth than most people have ever seen of the kernel source itself. (I wonder what it costs to look at the Windows source.)

Understanding the Linux Kernel author Author: Bovet, Daniel P. / Cesati, Marco pages 684 publisher O'Reilly & Associates rating 8.5 reviewer John Regehr ISBN 0596000022 summary The guts of the kernel, labeled and explained.

Although isolated pieces of operating system internals are usually not difficult to understand, learning how a significant portion of a real OS works is a daunting task: there's a lot of code, some of it is complicated, and some of it operates under obscure assumptions that can be difficult to figure out by reading the sources. Two of the best existing books about OS internals have explained either a simplified but working OS (Tanenbaum's Minix book) or a real, but very small OS (Lions' book on Unix v6). Although these systems have the advantage of being easier to understand, there's an important reason why one might want to study Linux internals instead: Linux is currently relevant, it's likely to be around for a while, and any code you write can potentially be used by thousands of people the day after tomorrow. So, taking it as a given the a book about Linux internals is a good thing, how good is this one? Happily, it's very good - better than any previous such book that I've seen (Rubini's Linux Device Driver book is also excellent, but it has a limited scope).

Understanding the Linux Kernel is good for several reasons. First, the authors have included quite a bit of explanatory material that isn't specifically about Linux - it's the kind of thing one would find in a good undergraduate OS textbook. This helps the reader link explanations of pieces of code to the abstract OS functions that they implement. Second, the authors have chosen a good level of abstraction: core kernel algorithms are explained in text, supplemented with short code sequences (simplified to remove optimizations) for important routines. Flowcharts are used to explain components with complex control flow, and tables and other diagrams are used when appropriate. Finally, the book is well arranged and well written, and there's an auxiliary index at the end that maps symbols mentioned in the book to source code files.

There are a few things I don't like about this book. Most importantly, there is no discussion of the network stack. As the authors say, this is a subject for another book, but by leaving out one of the most interesting and relevant parts of the kernel they are limiting their audience. A second drawback of this book (and of any Linux kernel book) is that since it seems to take about as long to write a good book as it does to write a major version of the Linux kernel, as I write this review it's about to become obsolete - it describes Linux version 2.2. However, at the end of each chapter there's a short note about things that are done differently in version 2.4. This will help preserve the relevance of the book after 2.4 comes out and, maybe more importantly, it gives the reader a sense of what parts of the kernel are under active development and what parts have become mature and stable.

Although Linux is very much in the Unix tradition, many details have changed. For example, early Unix kernels used simple algorithms (such as linear searches) and fixed table sizes. Modern Linux kernels, on the other hand, avoid arbitrary limits on the numbers of many kinds of internal OS objects, do not use linear searches when the number of objects to be searched is potentially large, and use amortized algorithms in many places. In all parts of the kernel, any special knowledge about the way that OS services will be used is exploited in order to improve average-case performance. For example, the slab memory allocator makes use of the fact that kernels often allocate many objects of the same size in order to reduce memory fragmentation and to avoid creating hot spots in the data cache. These algorithmic optimizations are much more pervasive (and much more effective) than micro-optimizations such as tuning register allocation or packing flags into the bits of a memory word - they're what make Linux useful in large-scale server environments where high throughput is critical. However, they also make the kernel code quite a bit more difficult to understand.

Given this complexity, it seems reasonable to ask who needs to read this book and how well does it suit their needs. Three groups of people come to mind. First, potential kernel hackers will find this book to be a good overview of different parts of the kernel. Of course, for people like this a book is no substitute for lots of code reading, but it's a good start. Another potential audience is the group of people who need to understand the kernel in order to extract high performance from it; for example, authors of databases or network servers. This group's needs are well served by this book: the authors often point out why certain heuristics were chosen - this may help people whose applications have run afoul of a resource allocation policy that was designed to serve a different class of applications. Finally, computer science students interested in the internals of a real OS would do well to read this book. It would make a good supplement to a standard OS textbook in an introductory class on operating systems. However, Linux appears to be far too large to understand in its entirety in a single semester: classes that attempt to do this should use a teaching OS like Minix. To benefit from this book, readers should have knowledge equivalent to a couple of semesters of computer science: a basic understanding of programming, of the services an OS provides to user-level programs, and of the hardware mechanisms used by an OS.

This is a good book. The authors have cracked open a large collection of code that's currently very relevant. If they are in for the long haul and release revised books in a timely way, then this will likely become and remain the definitive explanation of Linux internals.

The web site for the book is here.

You can purchase this book at Fatbrain.

Michael JasonSmith (not his evil cousin Jason MichaelSmith, or the nefarious Smith MichaelJason) contributed this review of a book which treads the line between simple and complex by concentrating on that strangely simple little equation of Einstein's -- how it came to be uncovered, its history, and its ramifications.

E=mc² : A Biography of the World's Most Famous Equation author David Bodanis pages 324 publisher MacMillan rating 8 reviewer Michael JasonSmith ISBN 0802713521 summary A good discussion about the origins and impact of Einstein's famous famous equation, and a fun geek read for the lazy summer holidays.

Most people know of the equation E=mc, but how many know what it means? Sure, you know that energy equals mass times the square of the speed of light. Good for you. You may also know that it allows you to calculate the destructive capacity of the glass of Coke sitting next to you. But what many do not know is how Einstein came about the equation, how other scientists set the foundations for E=mc, and what the seemingly simple equation means in the big picture. This book sets out to rectify this in a way that does not get too bogged down with atomic weights and pictures of squashed up trains.

When I was given this book for Christmas (hi, Mum) I was a bit sceptical. I already knew what E=mc meant, and I'm not a big fan of biographies. But I was pleasantly surprised by this book. It cracks along explaining the origins of E=mc, such as how Faraday came up with the modern concept of energy, and the implications of the equation, such as the use of a German battleship to make the Galileo space probe. David Bodanis uses the conflict between young and old scientists as the main method of explaining science, so the stories are interesting even if you are aware of the formula behind them. The bigger picture is not forgotten and we are constantly reminded of modern European history, as the French Revolution and two world wars played a big part in influencing the development of science.

Those who are looking for a biography of Einstein will be disappointed as he does not play a big part in the book, despite the fact that he discovered the relationship between mass and energy. Instead the book lives up to its subtitle as a biography of the equation, from the early days of Antiube-Laurent Lavoiser in the 1700s to Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar in the 20th Century.

I have two niggles related to this book. Firstly is the use of Imperial measurements. I don't know how heavy 5,000 pounds is, so have to stop reading, find a conversion table (or log into the net), convert the 5,000 pounds to Kilograms, find where I was up to and continue reading for a couple of lines until I get up to the next measurement. Frustrating. For some reason temperature measurements are given in Metric and Imperial, but they are the only ones. Most of the books from the UK that I have read recently have provided measurements in Metric as well as Imperial, but for some reason Bodanis and his editor of did not see fit to follow the trend.

The other problem was the notes were at the end of the book instead of at the bottom of the relevant page or the end of each chapter. If the notes were just bibliographic references I would not have minded so much, but often they were very interesting stories that I would have liked to have read in context, such as why a slow moving neutron is needed to start a chain reaction. Because the notes were at the end of the book I often forgot that they were there.

Contents

1. Bern Patient Office, 1905
2. E is for Energy
3. =
4. m is for mass
5. c is for celeritas
6. Einstein and the Equation
7. Into the Atom
8. Quiet in the Midday Snow
9. Germany's Turn
10. Norway
11. America's Turn
12. 8:16am -- Over Japan
13. The Fires of the Sun
14. Creating the Earth
15. A Brahmin Lifts His Eyes Unto the Sky

You can purchase this book at Fatbrain.

This "dynamic content" thing doesn't seem to be going away, does it? Web sites need to get smarter to handle the types of content that at least some people want to see on them these days, and the coders and designers behind them need the tools to make them so. Accordingly, Gavin Bong crafted this review of Web Development with JSP, which may be one of the tools you need.

Web Development with JSP author Duane K. Fields and Mark A.Kolb pages 543 publisher Manning rating 8.5 reviewer Gavin Bong ISBN 1884777996 summary Comprehensive coverage of JSP1.1. Suitable for beginning to intermediate Java developers.

Prologue

Before I proceed with the review, I feel obligated to respond to Jayakrishnan's review of Core Servlets and JSP and Slashdot readers' comments.

I share the sentiments of most people that the use of JSP scriptlets (Model 1) is bad practice. The mantra, "Thou shalt not mix HTML and Java code," should be tattooed onto every JSP developer's forehead. And as the author and readers have suggested, either choose a Model 1.5 (JSP or custom tags with JavaBeans) or Model 2 (MVC) to implement moderate- to high-complexity Web applications.

However, I believe that the authors of this first generation of JSP books need to inform the populace of what JSP is fully capable of (warts and all) -- in order for developers to appreciate the other paradigms. And beyond that, these authors must then educate on how not to use JSP. And I believe that will be the difference between a complete JSP book and an incomplete one.

Secondly, JSP Model 1 has been often described as "servlets lite." It is a good paradigm for prototyping servlets. For example, SOAP4J (IBM's SOAP framework) was released using a JSP scriptlet to dispatch SOAP RPC invocations. The software has since been donated to the Apache group and in the latest public release; the aforementioned JSP scriptlet is now a servlet.

So on that note, let me begin the review.

Topics covered

The book starts with a survey of precursor technologies to JSP in Chapter 1 and quickly moves into the real subject matter. It is clear from the start, that this book is written with the Java programmer in mind. I'd say that only the first five chapters are useful reading for a JSP page designer. Concepts like "How to setup a JSP/Servlet engine?", "Incorporating applets with tag," JDBC, JNDI, and EJB are either relegated to the Annexes or lightly mentioned before detailed treatment follows. The authors only cite HTML and Java as prerequisites but it's more accurate to say that readers also need to have some knowledge of core J2EE services like servlets. Here's a tip: have the JSP v1.1 and Servlets v2.2 specifications within close reach when reading the book.

The book covers all the core JSP topics; here's a sampling:

1. JSP and JavaBeans
The book provides a very readable introduction to JavaBeans for those unfamiliar with it. This is required reading for those implementing the Model 1.5 architecture. However, features specific to visual-oriented beans are not covered. Page designers should specifically devour Chapter 5 on JSP bean tags. The two notable samples provided are:

• CachedRowSet Bean - An example of paging through results using the JDBC 2.0 RowSet interface.
• JDBC Transaction Processing - An example of maintaining a JDBC transaction across several JSP pages using a Database Connection Bean and JSP implicit objects.

2. JSP Performance/Scalability
Performance and scalability issues are discussed accross several chapters. The authors attribute JSP's performance to servlet performance, which is tied to JVM server memory. No rule of thumb on sizing JVM server memory is given, but a tip is offered on how to use the serializable interface to estimate the size of Java objects that will be placed in the session object.

Session migration over multiple load-balanced machines is touched upon lightly but no technical details were offered. I would have liked to see a practical example on session persistence coupled with a use case of load balancing a JSP website. It's unfortunate also that the authors didn't think that database connection pooling warrants a practical example.

3. Multithreading
Throughout the book, readers are reminded to be aware of thread safety issues when dealing with shared resources (e.g. JDBC Connections). This tip is offered: "Examine all static variables & objects whose scope is session or application."

4. Exception Handling
A comprehensive coverage on how to handle exceptions in a JSP web application is provided and covers these areas:

• Error pages in JSP
• Null properties in JavaBeans
• Undefined values in Database tables
• Handling exceptions in servlets (JSP Model 2)

5. JSP Web application architectures
In Chapter 8, the page centric architecture (Model 1) is compared to a servlet centric one (Model 2). A discussion on the servlet RequestDispatcher interface culminates with a sample, that demonstrates how a servlet dictates application flow; relegating JSP pages to provide only presentation services, when called upon. A more complicated sample using this architecture is developed in Chapter 9.

6. Deployment
The book provides complete information on WAR files and Deployment Descriptors.

7. Three chapters of code samples
One full chapter is dedicated to a sample implementation of a real world example of a faq-o-matic tool. Also provided are two chapters of code snippets for Web-based functionality like form handling, cookie management and JSP's marriage with Javascript.

8. Custom tags
The last two chapters are dedicated to this very unique feature of JSP and in it they provide sample custom tags for content substitution and translation, coverage on how to package taglibs and more advanced techniques incorporating Java reflection in custom tag helper classes.

Weaknesses

The book comes with eight pages of errata - mainly spelling/naming errors in the code. I think publishers need to ensure that code be proofread as diligently as the prose. Fortunately the book has a Web site (taglib.com) with a link to a Web-based public forum.

The JSP API in Annex E is presented in the same style as Oreilly's Java in a nutshell book. A UML diagram would have been nice.

And finally, just like in the Core Servlets and JSP book; there's no mention of i18n or security. But this is probably a moot point since you gain i18n features directly from the Java language itself and the "contentType" @page directive attribute. Security of a JSP application is largely dictated by the Servlet/JSP engine configuration (albeit you can plug in your own authentication/encryption schemes) and would be better covered in a book dedicated to system administration and other deployment issues.

Is it worth buying?

It is important to mention that this book covers JSP 1.1 and Servlet 2.2, the production release of each technology. Recently JSP 1.2 and Servlet 2.3 have both entered the Proposed Final Draft stage. So the question is: should you wait for a new edition? My suggestion is: go buy the ebook version (in PDF) from Manning's website. And at a price of $16.50, that's a steal.

In terms of content, the book offers good value in its coverage of deployment issues, different JSP architectures and not forgetting some really good material on custom tags/taglibs. And by advocating an MVC styled development architecture; everyone from your JSP page designers, JavaBean/servlet developers and DBAs will be less coupled - and your code more maintainable.

Table of contents

• Chapter 1: Introduction
• Chapter 2: Fundamentals
• Chapter 3: Programming JSP scripts
• Chapter 4: Actions and implicit objects
• Chapter 5: Using JSP Components
• Chapter 6: Developing JSP Components
• Chapter 7: Working with databases
• Chapter 8: Architecting JSP applications
• Chapter 9: An example JSP Project
• Chapter 10: Deploying JSP applications
• Chapter 11: Performing common JSP tasks
• Chapter 12: JSP by example
• Chapter 13: Creating custom tags
• Chapter 14: Implementing advanced custom tags
• Annex A: Running the reference implementation
• Annex B: Incorporating Java applets
• Annex C: JSP resources
• Annex D: JSP syntax reference
• Annex E: JSP API reference

Besides the PDF version, you can also purchase this book at Fatbrain.

Reader apsmith contributed this review of Gerard O'Neill's The High Frontier, a book now nearly a quarter century old. The author's dream of an upwardly mobile Earth population remains largely unrealized, though if O'Neill were alive today, he might be gladdened that there is at least one long-term orbiting home in place.

The High Frontier author Gerard K. O'Neill pages 326 publisher (1989 edition) Space Studies Institute Press rating 10 reviewer apsmith ISBN 0962237906 summary O'Neill outlines how to colonize near space with little more than boring 1970s materials and engineering know-how, with boot-strap colonies of thousands of peopleprocessing moon and asteroid dust in high-earth orbit. The Big Idea Continued growth in material well-being and freedom for humanity is only possible through colonization of space; O'Neill outlines how to do it with little more than boring 1970's materials and engineering know-how, via boot-strap colonies of thousands of people processing moon and asteroid dust in high-earth orbit. The only problem is the seed capital to get started; his initial $100 billion was clearly an over-estimate - a later estimate brought the startup costs closer to $7 billion. Even more important we really should now have the resources and motivation (global warming!) to make it happen. There is a new 2000 edition with additional material from other authors.

The Scenario: In 1969 Princeton physicist Gerard O'Neill organized a weekly seminar for the advanced students in his freshman physics class. It was Apollo's heyday, but also a time of deepening skepticism in the benefits and relevance of science and technology. Both the Cold War with the Soviets and the hot war in Vietnam were at their height; pollution seemed to be worsening everywhere; serious people were arguing that humankind was already overstepping Earth's carrying capacity, and it was time to retrench. In this climate O'Neill asked his students:

"Is a planetary surface the right place for an expanding technological civilization?"

And despite what Isaac Asimov called our "planetary chauvinism", O'Neill and his little group came up with strong arguments and designs for artificial colonies in high orbit or free space, well away from planetary surfaces. O'Neill was so taken with their enthusiasm for this that he committed a good deal of his spare time over the next several years to developing the ideas and trying to get them published. Along the way he enlisted a young MIT student named Eric Drexler, and colleague Freeman Dyson, among a small group of supporters. Worldwide publicity finally arrived in May 1974, when the NY Times sent a reporter to the small conference O'Neill had organized on this new topic of "space colonization".

Three years later came "The High Frontier", O'Neill's main publication for a popular audience on the subject. In his 1993 obituary Freeman Dyson said, "The High Frontier... established O'Neill as a spokesman for the people in many countries who believe that the settlement of space can bring tremendous benefits to humanity ...."

Repeated throughout the book is O'Neill's goal: "the humanization of space", by which he means in part the capacity to move the bulk of humanity off this planet and into colonies with resources vastly greater than what the Earth can provide. These colonies would be more than self-supporting; their first great contribution would be in construction of solar power satellites from lunar materials, allowing the nations of Earth to vastly expand their energy resources in the most environmentally sound fashion possible. Earth's surface captures only a tiny fraction of the solar energy available; something like 30 times what Earth receives comes through even the relatively narrow confines of geosynchronous orbit; another factor of 100 times as much energy is available inside the Moon's orbit where the "L5" or "high" orbits for the colonies are suggested.

O'Neill goes through in some detail what it would take, using the capacity of NASA's then-planned space shuttle, to first set up an initial mining station on the moon, which would then launch hundreds or thousands of times more mass to high orbit. The one new technology O'Neill relied on was his "mass driver", an electromagnetic acceleration system used both on the lunar surface to dump raw materials into space, and as a propulsion system somewhat similar to the electromagnetic "ion drive" NASA is now using on its Deep Space 1 mission, and of course related to the electromagnetic particle accelerators O'Neill worked with at his real job. O'Neill and colleagues even put together several "mass drivers" out of spare parts to test what accelerations were feasible -- even the first model achieved over 30 g's.

The centerpiece of the book is the design of the colonies themselves, constructed for the most part out of lunar material. These are the hollow spheres or cylinders, which O'Neill refers to as "Islands", rotated so as to provide a land area with artificial gravity. There's no fancy technology needed, despite what you might expect reading Clarke's Rama novels, or Greg Bear's Eon, or countless others. The magnitude of Island One, a colony designed for some 10,000 people, is well within the scale of many artifical structures we have built here on earth; O'Neill compares it to shipbuilding in particular. O'Neill's materials are aluminum alloys or even steel; no need for carbon fiber composites here (and the Moon is a little low on carbon anyway). The colonies provide comforts similar to home, with terraced apartments, rooftop gardens, forests and rivers and recreational areas. Lighting is provided through a somewhat complex system of mirrors, baffles, and ordinary glass windows - no need for a central "plasma tube"! Radiation shielding is the usual six feet of slag or lunar dirt.

The book is chock-full of great ideas that seem to make the whole scheme obviously practical. Did you know the space shuttle cargo bay has roughly the same capacity as a DC-9 airliner? In principle our current space shuttles could be used to ferry over a hundred passengers into space at a time; O'Neill estimates that even a limited shuttle fleet could get close to a hundred thousand people into low earth orbit every year (of course that was back when NASA thought it would be doing 60 shuttle missions a year). O'Neill was sure that other better ways of getting into low earth orbit would come along; the next few years should be very interesting in this regard with new launch systems from Kistler Aerospace, Rotary Rocket, etc. supposedly in the works. With O'Neill's reasonably optimistic scenario, we would have hundreds of millions of people in these colonies in 35-50 years. Sounds outrageous? A hundred years ago most people thought it was impossible to fly something heavier than air, but now airlines routinely handle hundreds of millions of passengers every year.

What's Good? Just about everything -- I'd heard about this book probably since I was in grade school, but never got around to reading it until now. It's the clear foundation for any logical expansion of humanity into space; all we need to do is get with the program! O'Neill founded the Space Studies Institute to gather private donations to spur further research into the whole scheme, which it has done very extensively. What's Bad? Why hasn't it all happened yet? The 1989 edition contains a newer appendix by O'Neill with the following quote that sums up at least part of the problem: "In 1973 the U.S. space program had been fifteen years ahead of all others. By 1988 that lead had been thrown away." But O'Neill's prophesying was somehow also at fault. With such huge untapped resources, why hasn't Exxon or Mobil, or General Electric, been leaping at the chance to invest some of their spare capital to make a killing? Maybe they're just too clueless about the possibilities here? Or maybe they've made a rational judgment to be second or third, not first on something as apparently risky as this? Somebody has to do it first, and O'Neill in his 1989 comments at least seems to have lost faith in NASA and its over-cautious contractors to get the thing started. So who will it be? What's in it for me? There seems a good chance space development will be "the next big thing" after the Internet has run its course through our lives. After all, we still need material resources to do the things we want to do. Earth's population is still increasing, and its resources really are limited. The threat of global warming traces almost entirely to our burning of fossil fuels for energy. If we don't get started on a long-term solution now, when will we? This book is still the clearest rational outline of why, and how, space development makes sense. Plus, who wouldn't want an apartment on one of those "islands in the sky"?"

You can purchase this book at Fatbrain.

John Schwartz and Michael Osterholm's new book Living Terrors paints a bleak picture of the preparedness of the United States -- and really the entire world -- for bioterrorism. Given the recent reports on the almost total lack of security in places like Russia's facility for holding the smallpox virus, their Cold War manufacturing of thousands of tons of the stuff, and the FBI sting operation of someone in Las Vegas trying to buy anthrax, the book's subject matter hits even closer to home.

Living Terrors author John Schwartz, Michael T. Osterholm pages 232 publisher Delacorte Press rating 8.5 reviewer Jeff "hemos" Bates ISBN 038533480x summary A reporter and a researcher pair up to tell us why bio-terrorism ought to scare us more than a raft of Dustin Hoffman films.

Unlike a nuclear assault, a biological attack can be even more insidious because of the time delay between deployment and effect. That delay means that even agents and diseases which may sound laughable could have a terrifying effect. Once a person has been infected with smallpox, for instance, he could interact with literally thousands of people before showing any symptoms, unknowingly furthering an epidemic. And with the eradication of it in the wild several decades ago, the vaccine hasn't been administered in years. Not suprisingly, there are very few doctors in the field who can actually diagnose a case of smallpox.

One of the book's interesting devices is the fictional story of someone who creates a smallpox 'bomb'and the effect it has. The story underlines how unready our government, our health care system, and we as citizens are for an attack of that nature. Explosive devices seem somehow OK and understood, while a biological attack, one that turns a person into a vector seems anathema to our understanding of war.

Living Terrors is far more then just fictional stories, however. Schwartz (reporter for the NY Times) and Osterholm (a bigwig in epidemology/public health) use a variety of data to highlight many of the holes and misunderstandings that both the public and the government share. One of the areas that I found most interesting is the shockingly slight degree of slack in our hospital system.

By slack, I don't mean how often the janitor steps outside to smoke a cigarette. It's the degree to which we have excess capacity to handle emergency events and situations outside of the norm. The last few decades of relentless financial pressure on the health care system has produced a system that can handle everyday events -- and little else. Even events like earthquakes in California, influenza outbreaks and other more "normal" disasters cannot be adequately handled by the hospital system. That's not to say that it is the hospital systems' fault: Funding for public health issues in general has dropped off in recent years, despite the continued rise of public health matters.

This situation, of course, becomes even more critical in the outbreak of a major event, like a bioterrorism attack, or a major disease outbreak. One of the necessary remedies to help control an event like this would be more public health funding, something which would have beneficial effects far beyond our ability to respond to bioterrorism.

One of the disturbing areas is the sheer availibilty of both the equipment to produce the viruses or bacteria necessary for an attack. As chemical manufacturers have stretched out to new markets, and as biotech has grown as a sector, the equipment to grow the vectors has become much more commonly available. And as we've all heard about former Soviet nuclear scientists showing up in rogue nations, the same is true for many of their former bio and chem scientists. The book cites several examples of scientists formerly associated with the Soviet bio and chemical weapons programs being seen in unsavory nations.

Living Terrors is well written, well researched, and does a great job of overviewing both our deplorable present situation and possible remedies. I heartedly recommend it to anyone interested in biology, or simply the world around us.

You can purchase this book at Fatbrain.

Another chromatic review, this time of Disappearing Cryptography. It is a fortunate circumstance that even as governments -- and others -- are becoming more interested in peering over your shoulder, or at least at your data traffic, the exchange of large files suitable for hiding messages has become commonplace. Peter Wayner is also the author of Free For All , reviewed here on Slashdot a few months back.

Disappearing Cryptography author Peter Wayner pages 293 publisher AP Professional rating 7.5 reviewer chromatic ISBN 0-12-73867108 summary A study of steganography, making secret informationinvisible to prying eyes. A suitable, though dated, introduction.

The Scoop Cryptography, argues the author, has the potential to balance power relationships between individuals and governments. Forcing people to conduct all communications in publicly-readable forms allows the honest to be oppressed by tyrants, criminals, and pranksters. Why should the innocent suffer to help authories track stupid criminals?

Wayner mainly concentrates on steganography, hiding secret communications in plain sight. Instead of using ciphers and algorithms to generate a message mathematically indistinguishable from pure random noise, one might instead replace the lowest significant bits of a JPG image with the message. Only those who analyze the image may potentially reconstruct the text.

What's to Like? Each chapter has three sections, arranged by increasing complexity. The first contains a short anecdote to illustrate the point of the chapter. (Some make immediate sense, while others seem only tangentially related.) The second section discusses the theory. The final section gets into the guts, mathematics and algorithms, analysis and common problems. This division allows readers to go only as deeply as they prefer.

Early sections on information theory lay the framework for later chapters. While discussions of error correction and density don't have the cloak and dagger thrill of spy stuff, they're fundamental to serious analysis of techniques. Serious students would do well to use Wayner's extensive and excellent bibliography of books and papers to improve their knowledge.

The middle of the book is excellent. A lengthy discussion of text mimicry starts with analysis techniques, producing in a program hiding a secret message in an innocent-seeming baseball play-by-play. (It includes a dissertation on effective and reversible context-free grammars.) The next chapter, on Turing machines and reversable computing, is particularly interesting (especially after reading The Diamond Age).

More than just data hiding, the final section of the text covers privacy. Anonymous remailers can provide double-blind communication (but see the caveat below). The Dining Cryptographers algorithm of chapter 11 may be used to send a secret message without divulging the sender's identity. The final chapter adds a philosophical spin, explaining the author's biases and his reasoning for promoting secrecy. (He's Cypherpunk friendly.)

What's to Consider? This is not a book for beginners. Some of the initial theory throws around summations and other pre-calculus constructs as an integral (pardon the pun) explanation of entropy. One of the two large examples is written in Pascal. A second year computer science student should have no trouble understanding the text. A layman might not get past the second chapter (though he could safely skip most of the math.)

This book is also dated -- in fact, Hemos recommended it for review partly to prompt the author and publisher to produce a new version. The anonymous remailer chapter is seriously out of date, and it would be nice to have new information about distributed.net, secure peer-to-peer communications, and web stuff. In addition, some of the softwares described have been superceded by new versions and successors.

The Summary Aging but written with the future in the mind, Disappearing Cryptography favors theory and principles, for the most part. It makes a good introduction to steganography and the study of patterns in digital communications, leading naturally to more detailed works. It may also serve as a starting point to new ideas and discussions. Perhaps 2001 will bring us a new version. Table of Contents

1. Framing Information
2. Encryption
3. Error Correction
4. Secret Sharing
5. Compression
6. Basic Mimicry
7. Grammars and Mimicry
8. Turing and Reverse
9. Life in the Noise
10. Anonymous Remailers
11. Secret Broadcasts
12. Coda

1. Mimic Code
2. Baseball CFG
3. Reversable Grammar Generator

You can purchase this book at Fatbrain.

JChris writes: "We see a lot of news about outer space on Slashdot, but not so much about inner space, specifically, the oceans. This article about a newly discovered hydrothermal vent system, "reminds us that the ocean still has much to reveal," to steal a quote. I'd also recommend The Universe Below. A fascinating overview of the history and modern status of deep-sea-related research and environmentalism."

Unstoppable reviewer Duncan Lawie is back through the gate this time with his review of a legitimate science fiction classic (though one that may be hard to find at your local MegaStore), Brian Aldiss' Non-Stop. I wonder my local oddball bookstore has a used copy in stock ...

Non-Stop author Brian Aldiss pages 260 publisher USA: Carrol & Graf; UK: Millennium rating 7.5 reviewer Duncan Lawie ISBN 0881844926 summary One of the Old Books of Power in science fiction - still in print

Brian Aldiss started writing in the 1950s and is still going strong. His publications include several autobiographical works and a number of mainstream novels from which he is quoted in the Oxford English Dictionary over 100 times. Nevertheless, he is most widely known as an author of science fiction. In this field, he was an important contributor to the British New Wave of the late 1960s and has written influential works on the history of SF -- being credited with originating the now widely held view that Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is one of the progenitors of the genre. Despite the quantity and quality of his science fiction, his genre-crossing approach and an aversion to repeating himself make it difficult to view his work as a cohesive body.

Non-Stop was Aldiss' first science fiction novel. Like much 1950s SF it was first published as a magazine serial. The partwork structure shapes the novel and the exploration of the world which the characters inhabit. The first section describes life in the Greene Tribe, a society which has decayed from our own with a religion derived from Freud and Jung. The primary viewpoint character is a typical disaffected youth who runs away yet finds himself forced to take on great responsibility. He is one of a mismatched group which escapes the tribe's territory in search of fame and power in mythical places far from the corridors of their birth. Such a template has been a part of story telling since at least the time of Homer, yet here the central characters are far from heroic and learn almost everything the hard way. Each subsequent section broadens the scope and adjusts the focus of the story, gradually revealing the true nature and effect of the claustrophobic environs.

One potential problem with the book is the way in which much of the back story is recounted. The central characters find a diary and the reader is simply given a huge data dump. Many questions of history are answered, explaining for the reader's benefit how this world came to be, as the diary's author has a viewpoint much like our own. Rather than offering closure, the additional historical perspective generates new resonances in the plot. The information cannot be easily digested by the novel's protagonists. Neither can it solve the crises of the present; the satisfaction of intellectual understanding does not end mortal danger. The final portion of the book demonstrates the the use of this rediscovered knowledge but shows a world about to be remade as much by fire as order.

Non-Stop has a fearsome reputation and the setting must be familiar to many with a passing knowledge of science fiction. Some of the ideas within it have been reused in so many different ways that it is difficult to imagine in advance that this ancient text could be worth reading for any reason other than genre archaeology. However, it retains its place in many lists of great SF novels for better reason than nostalgia for the youth of the genre or author -- or reader. It is the extent to which the occupants have lost their context and the effects of regaining awareness of their history which gives this novel its lasting power. The book's revelations are not dulled by their apparent familiarity. There is much more to it than the clever use of what was then an original setting. The lasting strengths of Non-Stop are its awareness of the universal themes of human nature and its sharp writing.

You can purchase this book at Fatbrain.

Way back in October we solicited ideas for Christmas presents for geeks. This was done with Wired, and the results appear in the current issue (the lime-green colored one: unless you're blind, you can't miss it. You'll only be able to find the first copy, tho). The authors' money will be a nice Christmas present to the EFF. Thanks go to Paul, who did all the really hard work compiling the final list from all your ideas. Now read on to see the list.

1. PlayStation2 - Sony list price $299.99; winning bids on eBay $550-1,375. Supplies are extremely limited. CowboyNeal has been waiting for his for months.
2. Beowulf parallel computing cluster; 3 nodes for $1,305.95. A build-your-own supercomputer: three bargain PCs with Ethernet cards ($415 each), one four-port network hub ($16), and one Building Linux Clusters book from O'Reilly and Associates ($44.95), which includes Red Hat Linux and cluster software on CD. Perfect for trolls who lack a single iota of creativity, or that guy you know who always wants to simulate weather patterns.
3. Car MP3 player - empeg $1,199 (and it even runs Linux, if you're into that sort of thing).
4. IC-R3 handheld wideband radio/TV receiver - Icom America $599. 500-kHz to 2.4-GHz spybox tunes in to everything but cell phones. Voyeurism isn't just for breakfast anymore.
5. iPAQ H3600 Linux-compatible handheld - Compaq $499, but good luck finding one. Apparently there is quite the shortage.
6. Nomad Jukebox - Creative Labs $499. Give this, instead of a CD player, to your loved one in the Napster T-shirt ...
7. Matrix- and Blade Runner-styled trench coats - TrenchCo. $375-482.
8. CD-RW drive, $150-350. No drive fits all machines, so verify compatibility before you buy. Many popular drives have to be back-ordered, but others are always in stock.
9. Voodoo5 5500 AGP or PCI graphics card - 3dfx Interactive $299.99. Better graphics than PlayStation2, on your computer instead of your TV.
10. Klein Bottle - Acme $25-250. Designed by astronomer-author Cliff Stoll.
11. MindStorms - Lego MindStorms $50-200. Classic Lego building blocks, updated with motors and microchips.
12. GlobalMap 100 GPS - Lowrance Electronics $199.95. I get lost in my backyard. I wonder if this thing has a map of my back yard.
13. TiNi Pocket PowerPlier - SOG Specialty Knives and Tools $84.95. Just keep those fingers free of extra holes.
14. Broadband Internet access $39-50 per month (plus installation charges). Check for availability in your area. Consider moving. I know I do almost every day.
15. Interactive Yoda - Tiger $39.99. A Jedi craves not these things. But if he gets one for Christmas, that's different.
16. Non-computer games - Looney Labs $5-35. Card games that modify their own rules, and board games for the brainy.
17. EverQuest - Sony $29.95 (plus $9.89 monthly service fee). Addictive multiplayer game lets you collaborate with others on the Net. Suitable even for a 200-MHz PC with a 28K connection. And the graphics look like ass. But I have many friends who've lost countless productive hours all for the lucrative reward of being able to take a bear by yourself in a virtual world.
18. Tech-book gift certificate - Fatbrain.com $10-25. Let her choose her own robot-building manual.
19. Klein Bottle knit cap or Mobius ear band - Math Hatter $12-22.
20. Penguin Caffeinated Peppermints - ifive brands $12 (four-pack). Essential fuel for all-night hacking: sugar and caffeine wrapped in a handy breath mint. I'll never forget the time Trae ate a whole tin at ALS and traveled forward through time.

Sure, you know that Netcraft tests have for a while provided empirical evidence of Apache's usefulness and ubiquity. But if you're called upon to use Apache in your workplace (or if you care to serve pages for fun off your home box), you might need more to go on. Chromatic took some busy time out of his life to write this review of Administering Apache, which he says takes a "calculated, strategic approach" to what has become one of the world's most important pieces of software.

Administering Apache author Mark Arnold, Jeff Almeida, & Clint Miller pages 513 publisher McGraw Hill rating 8 reviewer chromatic ISBN 0-07-212291-9 summary This task-oriented guide presents a comprehensive overview of Apache's features, suitable for the small homepage provider and the huge virtual-domain farm.

The Scoop It's hard to know where to begin using something as powerful and flexible as Apache. Serving basic pages is easy, but how do you keep track of visitors? How do you provide unique and appropriate content? What happens when you need more than just a static server?

Adminstering Apache takes a calculated, strategic approach. Dedicating the first chapter to the needs of various entities (corporation, small business, large ISP, small ISP), it discusses the Apache features that will come into play. While the book can be read from start to finish as a tutorial, following one of the roadmaps is the quickest way to get things up and running.

What's to Like? People who love details will appreciate many sections, like the comprehensive configuration information. The book passes the usefulness test, having served as an authoritative reference on multiple occasions. For example, the installing/compiling chapter has an excellent list of modules and configuration suggestions that came in handy with a recent project. (The index alone fills 19 full pages of two-column, small print text.)

Instead of grouping all of the possible httpd.conf directives in one section, the authors cover them by topic. Localisation information can be found in the content chapter, while logging directives live in chapter 5. This division of information fits the topical philosophy, increasing the work's reference value.

While by no means essential data or a comprehensive reference, the chapter on creating new Apache modules was very interesting. The authors write a sample module in C to implement a new MIME type handler. The program's evolution and refinement demonstrates Apache's design and API, as well as good module programming practices.

The scope of the book covers more than just Apache. Aside from obvious topics of security and networking issues, the text includes firewall and proxy information, pages of related Internet sites, and even sample bash scripts to create new homepage users and directories for ISPs. Other sections discuss HTTP and CGI from protocol and implementation standpoints. (Besides, any other book dedicated to Apache business use that doesn't have a section on paid referrer logs is incomplete.)

What's to Consider? As with Apache itself, there is a strong Unix flavor to the text. The single Windows NT chapter is only five pages long, focusing on a few important differences from the Unix version. The other chapters are reasonably cross-platform (though most of the CGI examples are shell scripts, not Perl or PHP).

While a definitive guide would easily double the size of the book, precious little space covers common modules. Besides brief descriptions of distributed modules, the only real discussion involves mod_ssl, though a few have links provided. Also, the book concentrates on Apache in a commercial environment. Perhaps the corporate intranet server best approximates the single-user, small-site setup common for developers' personal pages.

From a writing standpoint, some sections are best left as references. The authors deserve sympathy for writing two pages describing log format string substitutions -- let alone testing and editing them. Though filled, in places, with almost too much information, the writing never becomes muddied. Still, you won't stay awake nights reading some chapters.

The Summary While not the most exciting book to grace your shelf, Administering Apache is a detailed and useful guide to the Apache web server. More than an introduction, it will be a good reference, not just for the mechanics of the software, but for the technique and mindset necessary to maintain an installation in a business environment. Table of Contents

1. Planning Ahead
2. Creating the Web Server
3. Creating the Web Site
4. Manipulating Content
5. Using Logs
6. Securing the Server, the Content, and the Connection
7. Creating Homepage Web Sites
8. Creating Virtual Domain Web Sites
9. Proxying with Apache
10. Troubleshooting
11. Using Apache on Windows NT
12. Programming the Apache Server

Appendix

You can purchase this book at Fatbrain.

Joel Kotkin's new book (The New Geography: How the Digital Revolution is Reshaping the American Landscape) is so bad it will make you pine for all those volumes on hackers and online sexual predators. Normally, there's no point to trashing a silly book, but this one cries out for it. Written in cyber-jabberwocky, it argues that the digital revolution is creating a troubling new geography in which rich technies and companies have more choices about where to be than poor industrial workers. Oh yeah, and something should be done about it. Duh.

The New Geography author Joel Kotkin pages 243 publisher Random House rating 3/10 reviewer Jon Katz ISBN 0-375-50199-1 summary The Net is creating a new geography

Books like this one make one nostalgic for the days when publishing ignored the Net or published urgent tomes about addicted children, hackers and online predators.

This book is a mess. The only way to describe it is cyber-BS. It's not at all clear what it's even about, but Kotkin seems to be making the point that the digital economy is creating a new kind of social geography in which place has become important. (Wasn't it important before?) Individuals and businesses can scan the country to find places most desirable to them, freed from old ties to materials and cheap labor. This, says Plotkin, has triggered a vast upheaval, good news for communities that excel at creativity, education, trade and culture, bad news for everybody else.

"In geographic terms," writes Kotkin, a fellow at Pepperdine University, "the impact of the new economy has been devastating to a broad array of places. As commodity prices have dried up, rural communities that depend on ranching, lumbering, fishing and farming have continued to lose population. Similiarily, in urban areas the decline of traditional bulwarks of the economy such as ship-building, auto manufacturing, and textiles, as well as the relocation of large corporations, has afflicted once-robust urban districts with the equivalent of a wasting disease that gains strength as it weakens its victim."

The new economy promotes class as well as geographic divisions, he writes, and suggest the possibility of a growing geographic separation, with rich and poor, educated and noneducated increasingly segregated within particular areas. The growing threat of technologically-sparked "locational choice," warns Kotkin, is a Balkanization of populations. "Valhallas and nerdistans grow largely on the basis of migration of the skilled and well educated, while the cities and increasingly the midopolises absorb the flotsam and jetsam of the emerging postindustrial society."

Bring back the online-predator books! Yes, for sure, hi-tech environments are growing more rapidly than industrial ones, as the information-based new economy spreads rapidly throughout the U.S. and other parts of the world. And it's true that government and political systems seems to take little responsibility for making sure this prosperity is equitably distributed. But this isn't even remotely new, nor is it uniquely tied to the Digital Age. It's the Darwinian core of capitalism, which works beautifuly for lots of people, and badly for others. One could as easily (and foolishly) argue that the digital revolution will definitely empower poor individuals and communities to join in the booming new economy, no matter where they are located.

Kotkin's prescription for troubled or declining places: "Communities that wish to avoid this fate will be those that commit themselves to facing these problems with imagination and a sense of commitment." He adds: "Whether in the reform of education or the encouragement of enterprise or the creation of new public infrastructures, healthy twenty-first-century communities will be those that can develop a sense of common purpose."

Whew. Now that we all know what to do, it should be simple to manage the Digital Revolution more equitably. All we need is a common purpose. You have to wonder of Kotkin has ever been to a local school board meeting, let alone an online discussion group.

In his notion, communities that want to do well will band together in common purpose. But what of those that don't bother? Or whose leadership is too corrupt, short-sighted or apathetic? Economic booms have always been spread unevenly, since people ultimately are free to move and live where they want, those with more money and opportunity freer than those with neither. And people who can will always gravitate towards opportunity, leaving behind those who can't. Grapes of Wrath told this story a lot better.

Kotkin argues that as people and advanced industries hunt the globe for locations, they will not necessarily seek out those places that are the biggest, the cheapest, or the most well favored by location. Instead, they will seek out a new kind of geography, one that appeals to their sense of values and to their hearts, "and it is there that the successful communities of the digital age will be found." This is cyber-jabberwocky. People and industries would be insane to do otherwise. But this book's geography is pretty muddled. It takes you nowhere. Kotkin's new geography is not digital, but is instead made of gas and vapors.

Usually, it seems foolish to criticize a book, a waste of everybody's time. If it's no good, why bother to review it at all? But New Geography is so self-importan,t ponderous and opaque that it suggests that publishing has simply lurched from one silly extreme to another. Here's to the new geography of the middle ground.

You can purchase this book at Fatbrain.

Properties of Light is a dark and beautiful novel (set in a school suspiciously like Princeton) about three physicists whose lives unravel as they struggle to reconcile quantum mechanics with relativity. Rebecca Goldstein really pulled off a hat trick, turning physics into first-rate fiction.

Properties Of Light author Rebecca Goldstein pages 244 publisher Houghton Mifflin rating 8/10 reviewer Jon Katz ISBN 0-395-98659-1 summary Physicists seek truth and find tragedy.

So the formidable problem is this: reconciling quantum physics with relativity theory still awaits a solution.

You might be surprised that a writer could build a dark, cold, strikingly imaginative novel out of that dilemma. Or a bitter love story right out of the darkside of academe. But Rebecca Goldstein, an author of four novels (The Mind-Body Problem among them) and the winner of a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, manages to turn physics into first-rate fiction.

It isn't surprising that physicists have captured creative imaginations for years, from Jeanette Winterson to Michael Frayn's shockingly successful Broadway play "Copenhagen," about the famed World War II Bohr-Heisenberg encounter (the two devoted ex-colleagues could never agree on what did or didn't take take place), the purpose of which has had physicists and historians buzzing for decades.

After all, physicists are seeking nothing less than the meaning, nature and source of life.

The book doesn't waste the mystery and importance of its subject -- it's part thriller, part tragedy, both lyrical and surreal. The story, set in a college that is obviously inspired by Princeton, revolves around two physicists, Samuel Mallach and his young colleague Justin Childs. The two scientists, in the tradition of physicist friendships, have devoted their lives to trying to reconcile the contradictory claims of quantum mechanics and relativity, but in this almost-eerie tale, their well-meaning collaboration is doomed. This, also, is a deep strain in the history of physics: oddball, brilliant seekers ignored, celebrated, obsessed, consumed by their determination to unlock some of the biggest secrets in the universe. No field of scientific inquiry has higher stakes, or greater or more complex minds trying to grapple with them.

Appropriately, this story plays around with time, and narrative, as signalled by Goldstein: "whereby particles, having once been subjected to quantum entanglement, will forever after continue to assert, even when widely separated, instantaneous influences over one another ..." This book has a brooding, knowing, almost poetic tone, even as the lives of the characters begin to unravel, and the writing about physics is both remarkable and accessible.

"In the beginning," says one academic in the novel, "there was the big bang, a moment of infinite singularity, into which we cannot probe. Our knowledge begins at ten to the minus thirteen seconds after ground zero; only then can we lift the heavy veil and take a peek. All moments before that one are cloaked from our scientific view, and it remains to others to imagine what lies behind the cognitive curtain: whether it is there that God's hand may be invisibly moving."

There's another point where the Olympian chair of the physics department, whose daughter was playing Mozart on a miniature cello when she was four, tears into Justin:

"You can't really say what it's all about, now can you?", he had demanded of Justin, staring at Schrodinger's equation for the evolution of the wave function, symbolized by psi. Erwin Schrodinger, who had won his Nobel in 1933, had demonstrated that the wave function, a precisely defined mathematical object, completely specifies the state of any quantum mechanical system. So perhaps the most likely answer to Professor Kreb's querulously put question "What's it all about?" is that quantum mechanics is about the behavior of wave functions.

Ultimately, Properties of Light is about the gripping power of physics to capture the interest and imagination of everyone, even those who will never come close to understanding it's mystical, surreal properties. This is a sad story, many of the characters destroyed by mistrust, betrayal and hatred. Despite what happens to their relationships with one another-- the third major character is Mallach's daughter Dana, who Justin falls in love with -- the three are all mesmerized by the special beauty of seeking some big truth.

You can purchase this book at fatbrain.

If your life is an acronym soup of protocols like IPX and CLNP, and you sometimes feel like you need a cot in the wiring closet, you probably ought to keep reading -- more so if finding a fount of information neither too abstruse nor too patronizing is important. For the networking professional, inveterate reader and reviewer Danny Yee here briefly takes on a book called Interconnections: Bridges, Routers, Switches, and Internetworking, which could be that fount.

Interconnections author Radia Perlman pages 537 publisher Addison-Wesley rating 8.5 reviewer Danny Yee ISBN 0-201-63448-1 summary Well-grounded introduction for the technically astute to the hardware which carries your data and how to communicate with it. Interconnections is aimed at computer science students studying networking: it covers fundamental concepts and basic theory, and includes a set of "homework" problems with each chapter. But it is solidly grounded in real-life experience -- Perlman has spent years designing and implementing network protocols and algorithms (most notably the spanning tree algorithm used in most bridges) and uses that experience to provide practical illustrations of the theory. She is also fun to read, being prepared to laugh at things that deserve it and to offer personal opinions, sometimes quite bluntly.

"I find BGP scary. It is configuration-intensive. Routes can be permanently unstable. It solves only whatever it happens to solve rather than providing a general-purpose solution. But we're stuck with it."

Perlman roughly follows the protocol stack upwards. Four chapters cover general data-link layer issues, transparent and source-routing bridges, the various categories of hub/switch/bridge, and VLANs. Five chapters cover the network layer cover connection-oriented protocols (X25 and ATM) and general issues, addressing, and packet formats in connectionless networks, with examples from a range of protocols including IP, IPX, IPv6, CLNP, Appletalk, and DECnet. A single chapter covers autoconfiguration and endnode issues (protocols such as ARP). And there are five chapters on routing, covering general routing concepts (distance vector and link state algorithms, link costs and types of service), implementation (algorithms for fast packet forwarding), and specific routing protocols (from RIP to BGP), as well as the more specialised topics of WAN multicast and "sabotage-proof routing."

The bulk of Interconnections may be too detailed for most network administrators or programmers, but those without an interest in the theory may want to track down a copy just for the last two chapters. "To Route, Bridge, or Switch: Is That the Question?" is a good overview of networking terminology and its connection with reality, while "Protocol Design Folklore" attempts

"to capture the tricks and 'gotchas' in protocol design learned from years of layer 2 and layer 3 protocols. Interspersed among the text are boxes containing 'real-world bad protocols.' They share with you the warped way I look at the world, which is to notice and be distracted by suboptimal protocols in everyday life."

Interconnections will do much to improve understanding of networks and network protocols: as well as being an excellent textbook, it should command a general audience among computing professionals.

Purchase this book from Fatbrain. You can read more of Danny Yee's reviews at his site.

Now chromatic has stepped through another couple of books, in addition to the nine in the previous parts of this series on books for the Linux newbie-to-semi-newbie. Actually, the selections this time go on the assumption that you've taken a few weeks (or some very intense days) to absorb the information you need to accomplish some basic tasks, and they take on the challenge of going beyond the basics. Note: here are links to part one, part two, and part three of this series.

(See below) author (Various) pages - publisher (Various) rating (vary) reviewer chromatic ISBN (varies) summary Books to take you beyond newbiehood comfortably.

As this series comes to a close, we move up a notch on the complexity scale to install Linux as a network client. Where some previous books have discussed how to make your new OS play nicely with others, here are two dedicated to helping you replace an existing box or setup a new server from scratch.

The eleven books we've featured barely scratch the surface of the printed documentation available for new Linux users. For example, O'Reilly has two particularly good choices, Learning Debian GNU/Linux, available through their Open Books Project, and Running Linux, reviewed last year.

We've obviously overlooked other worthy titles. For the sake of completeness, what else may come in handy? Which books have you found most useful?

title Linux Administration: A Beginner's Guide publisher Osborne Included Stuff RedHat 6.1 CD-ROM (Publishers Edition) Intended Audience NT Administrators new to Linux. Scope Installation, introduction to Linux, networking setup, Internet and intranet applications. Technical Correctness Good. Writing style Easy to read and informative. Other

Though this book comes with a RedHat CD, nearly everything can apply to other distributions.

Here's a book aimed squarely at the ranks of NT administrators. Not only does it point out (fairly) the differences between NT and Linux, but it explains the Linux method in relation to the NT method. (For example, compare NT file sharing via Network Neighborhood and SMB to NFS shares.) From a practical standpoint, professional experience is almost necessary to understand the initial concepts -- but it's certainly understandable without too much prior knowledge.

Shah starts with some background, then steps lightly through a RedHat 6.1 Server installation. X, KDE, and GNOME get basic treatment, mostly related to configuration. Software installation comes next, in both RPM and tarball (.tar.gz file) formats.

Section two covers basic administration. Users come first, with command line and Linuxconf tools presented. A good chapter introduces the shell and basic commands for file manipulation, processes, and permissions. Next up is the boot process, detailing LILO and the rc scripts. Basic file system theory, tools, partitioning schemes, mounting, and quotas get their due. The core system services chapter covers important daemons like the parent process, the Internet super daemon, system logging, and the cron scheduler. Shah rounds out this section by discussing kernel building, patching, and installing, and includes a good chapter on individual system security. (While brief, it's good and useful, including plenty of links to sites with much more information).

Internet Services looks at DNS, ftp, web, SMTP, POP, and SSH services. While there's theory given, it's accompanied by practical examples of setting up the appropriate software. BIND (for DNS) and wu-ftpd (for FTP) get excellent treatment, while the sendmail section is pared down (compared to Shah's chapter in the previously reviewed Red Hat Linux 6 Unleashed) and the Apache chapter is slim. That's not a problem with sendmail, as there's plenty of information provided to use the m4 macros, but a serious Apache configuration would require additional research. The section ends with a chapter on QPopper (providing POP3 access to users) and another discussing security and cryptography as related to SSH. Versions one and two of the protocol are covered, with information on running both.

Part four details intranet services. Here's how to make your Linux server speak eloquently on a larger network. NFS server and client setup takes up one chapter, and NIS server and client setup the next. The author sagely includes suggestions for different network configurations. Samba has a similar treatment, though the configuration section concentrates mostly on the SWAT web-configuration tool. A short chapter on printing includes accessing remote printers via SMB shares, while a quick DHCP chapter packs in a lot of information. Rounding things out is a quick look at backups, concentrating on command line tools like dump and tar.

The final section, entitled "Advanced Linux Networking", covers NIC configuration and routing, as well as TCP/IP theory. It's short, but effective. Somewhat longer is the chapter on packet filtering, ipchains, and IP Masquerading. There's plenty of information to build an effective firewall, and pointers to additional resources won't leave you hanging. Shah concludes with an interesting tour of the /proc virtual file system. Two appendixes discuss, very briefly, popular Linux programming languages and popular programs for certain tasks -- mostly desktop software.

This book is likable and readable, while providing good information. While the treatment of some subjects is short, the author always provides references to more information. Administrators familiar with NT who are willing to see what the Linux fuss is all about will have no difficulty learning from this book.

title Linux Network Administrators Guide publisher O'Reilly & Associates Included Stuff Complete text online. Intended Audience New and moderately experienced administrators already somewhat familiar with Linux. Scope Network setup and configuration, some programs. Technical Correctness Complete. Writing style Readable, while aimed at the technically proficient. Other Wide scope of network types discussed.

The Linux Documentation Project has produced some excellent work. This book is no exception. O'Reilly has updated the dead tree version with a new edition while providing the complete text at the link above.

Topics included cover what you'd expect, along with some features you might not have considered. Early on, the authors put forth an example network connecting a small brewery to an affiliated small pub. Subsequent chapters build on this simple Ethernet setup serving as a commented example.

This book is strong on theory, while not skimping on actual usage information. Detailed data about IP routing and address resolution, for example, contributes to understanding the tools, though the knowledge isn't a requirement to setting up BIND or gated. As you might expect, what's covered is covered comprehensively -- protocols like TCP, UDP, ICMP, and UUCP, dedicated Ethernet hardware, parallel port networking, and serial port-driven communications.

The first few chapters cover theory and configuration. There's plenty of information to get a single Linux box on an existing network, but read on! DNS server and client setup comes next. SLIP and PPP get their own chapters, of course. The firewalling chapter explains both ipfwadm (from the 2.0 series of kernels) and ipchains (2.2 series), clearly explaining the slightly different approaches to reach the same goal, in a long and excellent discussion. IP Accounting comes next, with IP Masquerading close behind. The discussions take a similar approach.

Network services take up the next few chapters. First up is the Internet daemon (inetd) and tcpwrappers. Next comes the NIS chapter, with good information about configuration and security. NFS follows suit. Rather unique to this book is a chapter on Novell's IPX protocol and the NCP filesystem, packing in some history, lots of theory, and information on managing bindery objects, printing to remote printers, and routing IPX packets. Following that is a discussion of Taylor UUCP, both as a client and a server.

E-mail and Netnews discussions end the book. Each gets a chapter describing the service from a basic standpoint, then a technical approach. Next, there are two or three chapters describing popular packages providing that service. For e-mail, these cover sendmail and exim (quite well). For news, it features C news, nntpd, and INN. As you'd expect, these chapters are quite detailed and easy enough to follow. Appendixes include copyright information, cable configurations, diagrams of the example network, and a quick blurb about SAGE (the System Adminstrators Guild).

While other books cover a wide range of topics in a scattershot fashion, the coverage here is highly focused. There's a good balance of history, theory, and applicability, making this book a very good starting point or a refresher for someone looking to fill in some gaps.

Taking space to explain the fundamentals of a topic instead of diving right into configuration files is very helpful. Knowing the theory of mail transport is more likely to help you configure any MTA than just knowing what's in sendmail.cf. Be aware that this isn't a one-stop shopping spot for every service you'll want to configure on your network. Instead, it's an overview of networking issues; narrow in scope, and detailed.

See the earlier Slashdot review by Christopher Thompson, for more on this book.

You can purchase Linux Administration: A Beginner's Guide or the Linux Network Administrator's Guide at Fatbrain.

Now chromatic has stepped through another couple of books, in addition to the nine in the previous parts of this series on books for the Linux newbie-to-semi-newbie. Actually, the selections this time go on the assumption that you've taken a few weeks (or some very intense days) to absorb the information you need to accomplish some basic tasks, and they take on the challenge of going beyond the basics. Note: here are links to part one, part two, and part three of this series.

(See below) author (Various) pages - publisher (Various) rating (vary) reviewer chromatic ISBN (varies) summary Books to take you beyond newbiehood comfortably.

As this series comes to a close, we move up a notch on the complexity scale to install Linux as a network client. Where some previous books have discussed how to make your new OS play nicely with others, here are two dedicated to helping you replace an existing box or setup a new server from scratch.

The eleven books we've featured barely scratch the surface of the printed documentation available for new Linux users. For example, O'Reilly has two particularly good choices, Learning Debian GNU/Linux, available through their Open Books Project, and Running Linux, reviewed last year.

We've obviously overlooked other worthy titles. For the sake of completeness, what else may come in handy? Which books have you found most useful?

title Linux Administration: A Beginner's Guide publisher Osborne Included Stuff RedHat 6.1 CD-ROM (Publishers Edition) Intended Audience NT Administrators new to Linux. Scope Installation, introduction to Linux, networking setup, Internet and intranet applications. Technical Correctness Good. Writing style Easy to read and informative. Other

Though this book comes with a RedHat CD, nearly everything can apply to other distributions.

Here's a book aimed squarely at the ranks of NT administrators. Not only does it point out (fairly) the differences between NT and Linux, but it explains the Linux method in relation to the NT method. (For example, compare NT file sharing via Network Neighborhood and SMB to NFS shares.) From a practical standpoint, professional experience is almost necessary to understand the initial concepts -- but it's certainly understandable without too much prior knowledge.

Shah starts with some background, then steps lightly through a RedHat 6.1 Server installation. X, KDE, and GNOME get basic treatment, mostly related to configuration. Software installation comes next, in both RPM and tarball (.tar.gz file) formats.

Section two covers basic administration. Users come first, with command line and Linuxconf tools presented. A good chapter introduces the shell and basic commands for file manipulation, processes, and permissions. Next up is the boot process, detailing LILO and the rc scripts. Basic file system theory, tools, partitioning schemes, mounting, and quotas get their due. The core system services chapter covers important daemons like the parent process, the Internet super daemon, system logging, and the cron scheduler. Shah rounds out this section by discussing kernel building, patching, and installing, and includes a good chapter on individual system security. (While brief, it's good and useful, including plenty of links to sites with much more information).

Internet Services looks at DNS, ftp, web, SMTP, POP, and SSH services. While there's theory given, it's accompanied by practical examples of setting up the appropriate software. BIND (for DNS) and wu-ftpd (for FTP) get excellent treatment, while the sendmail section is pared down (compared to Shah's chapter in the previously reviewed Red Hat Linux 6 Unleashed) and the Apache chapter is slim. That's not a problem with sendmail, as there's plenty of information provided to use the m4 macros, but a serious Apache configuration would require additional research. The section ends with a chapter on QPopper (providing POP3 access to users) and another discussing security and cryptography as related to SSH. Versions one and two of the protocol are covered, with information on running both.

Part four details intranet services. Here's how to make your Linux server speak eloquently on a larger network. NFS server and client setup takes up one chapter, and NIS server and client setup the next. The author sagely includes suggestions for different network configurations. Samba has a similar treatment, though the configuration section concentrates mostly on the SWAT web-configuration tool. A short chapter on printing includes accessing remote printers via SMB shares, while a quick DHCP chapter packs in a lot of information. Rounding things out is a quick look at backups, concentrating on command line tools like dump and tar.

The final section, entitled "Advanced Linux Networking", covers NIC configuration and routing, as well as TCP/IP theory. It's short, but effective. Somewhat longer is the chapter on packet filtering, ipchains, and IP Masquerading. There's plenty of information to build an effective firewall, and pointers to additional resources won't leave you hanging. Shah concludes with an interesting tour of the /proc virtual file system. Two appendixes discuss, very briefly, popular Linux programming languages and popular programs for certain tasks -- mostly desktop software.

This book is likable and readable, while providing good information. While the treatment of some subjects is short, the author always provides references to more information. Administrators familiar with NT who are willing to see what the Linux fuss is all about will have no difficulty learning from this book.

title Linux Network Administrators Guide publisher O'Reilly & Associates Included Stuff Complete text online. Intended Audience New and moderately experienced administrators already somewhat familiar with Linux. Scope Network setup and configuration, some programs. Technical Correctness Complete. Writing style Readable, while aimed at the technically proficient. Other Wide scope of network types discussed.

The Linux Documentation Project has produced some excellent work. This book is no exception. O'Reilly has updated the dead tree version with a new edition while providing the complete text at the link above.

Topics included cover what you'd expect, along with some features you might not have considered. Early on, the authors put forth an example network connecting a small brewery to an affiliated small pub. Subsequent chapters build on this simple Ethernet setup serving as a commented example.

This book is strong on theory, while not skimping on actual usage information. Detailed data about IP routing and address resolution, for example, contributes to understanding the tools, though the knowledge isn't a requirement to setting up BIND or gated. As you might expect, what's covered is covered comprehensively -- protocols like TCP, UDP, ICMP, and UUCP, dedicated Ethernet hardware, parallel port networking, and serial port-driven communications.

The first few chapters cover theory and configuration. There's plenty of information to get a single Linux box on an existing network, but read on! DNS server and client setup comes next. SLIP and PPP get their own chapters, of course. The firewalling chapter explains both ipfwadm (from the 2.0 series of kernels) and ipchains (2.2 series), clearly explaining the slightly different approaches to reach the same goal, in a long and excellent discussion. IP Accounting comes next, with IP Masquerading close behind. The discussions take a similar approach.

Network services take up the next few chapters. First up is the Internet daemon (inetd) and tcpwrappers. Next comes the NIS chapter, with good information about configuration and security. NFS follows suit. Rather unique to this book is a chapter on Novell's IPX protocol and the NCP filesystem, packing in some history, lots of theory, and information on managing bindery objects, printing to remote printers, and routing IPX packets. Following that is a discussion of Taylor UUCP, both as a client and a server.

E-mail and Netnews discussions end the book. Each gets a chapter describing the service from a basic standpoint, then a technical approach. Next, there are two or three chapters describing popular packages providing that service. For e-mail, these cover sendmail and exim (quite well). For news, it features C news, nntpd, and INN. As you'd expect, these chapters are quite detailed and easy enough to follow. Appendixes include copyright information, cable configurations, diagrams of the example network, and a quick blurb about SAGE (the System Adminstrators Guild).

While other books cover a wide range of topics in a scattershot fashion, the coverage here is highly focused. There's a good balance of history, theory, and applicability, making this book a very good starting point or a refresher for someone looking to fill in some gaps.

Taking space to explain the fundamentals of a topic instead of diving right into configuration files is very helpful. Knowing the theory of mail transport is more likely to help you configure any MTA than just knowing what's in sendmail.cf. Be aware that this isn't a one-stop shopping spot for every service you'll want to configure on your network. Instead, it's an overview of networking issues; narrow in scope, and detailed.

See the earlier Slashdot review by Christopher Thompson, for more on this book.

You can purchase Linux Administration: A Beginner's Guide or the Linux Network Administrator's Guide at Fatbrain.

The ever illuminating Cliff Lampe returns, this time with a book and topic which continue to hover in the background. What sort of a life has information taken on in our brave new world? It sounds like a balanced account with a wide-ranging approach.

The Evolution Of Wired Life author Charles Jonscher pages 279 publisher John Wiley & Sons, Inc. rating 8.5 reviewer Cliff Lampe ISBN 0471357596 summary My analog dad could beat up your analog dad.

The Scenario There are actually two subtitles to this book, which is why we are not including them in the above summary. Both subtitles initially made us nervous about bringing this book to the attention of all. The first subtitle is "From the alphabet to the soul catcher chip" and the second is "How information technologies change our world." Both titles make one nervous. Cries of "Sweet melting pogo sticks, not another book about how technology is changing the way we live." This reviewer, in particular, was dreading this book after a summer chock full of such heady titles. It seemed from the titles above that the reader was being offered a watered down version of The Age of Spiritual Machines. Suprisingly, pleasantly, nothing could be further from the truth.

The suprising part is that the answer to "How information technologies change our world" is "Not as much as you may think", and the pleasant part is that the treatment of "From the alphabet to the soul catcher chip" is as pleasing a description of the basic blocks of information theory that one could hope for. Far from an echo paean to Ray Kurzweil, Jonscher offers what most biologists could already tell us, that it is harder than one thinks to replicate a neuron. For example, the chemical signals between axons and dendrites are not as binary as most would lead you to believe. Neurotransmitters are of different flavors and varieties, and very analog. The author points out that each neuron itself is hugely sophisticated, more complex than most single celled organism, which are able to do many things on their own that computers are not able to.

This book points out that rather than analog being worse than digital, in many cases it is actually better, and no, not just for vinyl freaks either. After all, how much effort is spent trying to make the digital look or sound more analog? Consider when you sample a wave of sound denoting music to try and put it onto a CD, or into an MP3 format. Even with 44,100 samples of a single curve, the simple fact remains, you are not getting the entire thing. You are letting things go, because as it happens our ears aren't very good at detecting that difference anyway. The book takes a tour of those sensory limitations, and how it has affected a range of instruments we have developed to store and transmit information, literally starting at 8,000 B.C. with the start of the first crude alphabets and going to the idea of placing a chip behind the retina to record all of the events of a life and reconstruct that life from them. Which is a terrifically bad idea, but we'll not go into that now.

Jonscher cuts a wide swath through information science. He himself is an old time computer user, and affiliated with Harvard University's Program on Information Resources Policy. In other words, this is no Luddite. Chapters on the history of information, development of the chip, the difference between analog and digital and information economics are tight, with some notable exceptions mentioned below.

What's Good? Particularly, the chapter on information economics, entitled "Computers and Economic Progress" is very good. Jonscher's current position as president of the investment firm Central Europe Trust Company lends him a particularly strong voice here. For instance, we've accepted we've moved past the Industrial Age, but think of the wonders our grandparents saw. Consider the progress between 1900 and 1950 compared to 1950 and now. As an example, most places in the world in 1900 still relied on horses for transport, whereas in 1950 the jetliner had been invented and transcontinental air travel was established. Those same jets have not really changed significantly in the past 50 years. The point being, that the Information Age has not changed our world nearly as much as did the age that came before it. If you read any chapter of this book make it this one.

Which is not to say that there is not a lot of other great material here. Very rarely has a book delved as thoroughly, yet concisely, into some of the core principles of information science that we so take for granted today. The descriptions, whether they be mathematical, biological or organizational, are all quite clear and followed well with cogent examples and analysis.

Check out also the author's Further Reading section, which has some very good material in it, some of which has been reviewed here in the past. While some of these "sociology of information technology" books can be a pain in the fundament, this is as good a list as any for looking at this issue, with recommendations from those the author both agrees with, and those with whom he does not.

What's Bad? Frankly put, the chapter on "Multimedia and the Internet." Take a Sharpie and just cross out the pages, it will be kinder than accidentally catching a phrase as you skip to the next chapter. If you do read this chapter, and want to unleash some whoop-ass because we recommended this book, please see either Hemos or Timothy c/o Slashdot.org.

It really points to a question of audience for this book. This is a solid overview of the history, present and future of information technology taken from a solid, unapologetic stance, but for whom is it written? The terrible Internet chapter seems to indicate it was not meant for those already Net savvy, but it is hard to imagine Ma Kettle picking up this book and enjoying it. Like so many books these days, it mistakenly seems meant for that juicy middle demographic, people who have to use computers, but may not necessarily be thrilled about it. Ignore that though, and read this book.

So What's In It For Me? If you've used computers for a good long time but have never stopped to consider how they did not appear out of thin air one day, then you should probably read this book. This book definitely has a place on the shelf between The Age of Spiritual Machines and The Social Life of Information as a good pointer to the way information technology works in a larger framework than the oft opened box sitting on your desk.

It's also well written enough to be an easy, quicker read than some other books in the same genre. This look at technology and the overinflated opinion it has of itself is more thorough and complex than the recent articles by Bill Joy, while approaching the subject from a thoughtful, well informed perspective that you are sure to enjoy.

You can purchase this book at Fatbrain.

Fabian Pascal has written this work on issues that come up in database administration and recommendations for solving them. It's not really a practical guide, despite the title, but probably many administrators would benefit from reading the book and keeping it handy somewhere. Yes, I mean you, the one who's got a copy of Filemaker Pro at home and thinks he knows it all.

Practical Issues in Database Management author Fabian Pascal pages 256 publisher Addison-Wesley rating 7.5 reviewer Michael Sims ISBN 0-201-48555-9 summary Not a practical, hands-on book at all; contains high-level database problems and theoretical solutions

Most of the time, when a computer book has the word "practical" in the title, it means one thing: examples. Lots and lots of real-world, cut-and-paste examples intended to solve the exact problem you're facing. This book departs from that stereotype by containing little in the way of practical examples. I don't think it even mentions any specific database products. Instead, it mainly discusses the platonic ideal of a database from a scholarly standpoint, and never touches actual examples of database products. As such, it is a relatively timeless book, but it is not what I would describe as "practical".

Essentially, it is a scholarly overview of the whole concept of databases, some common pitfalls that database administrators (DBA's) run into, and where actual database systems fall short of the platonic ideal. It would be a good book for an "Intro to Databases" class (and I don't mean a How to Use Excel course, I mean a CompSci course).

Let's skim through the chapters. I'll try to make this review accessible to all readers, even those who don't know much about databases.

Chapter 1 discusses datatypes (how data is stored in the database), and suggests that DBA's should not fall into the trap of using complex, proprietary datatypes over standard character and numeric fields. Chapter 1 also includes the oddest section of the book: 20 pages of Webpage print-outs whose sole unifying theme seems to be "Look what weird stuff people want to put in databases - and here's a ZDNet printout to prove it!". This section almost turned me off the book entirely, but thankfully it wasn't repeated. I don't know what they were thinking...

Chapter 2 discusses integrity rules. Integrity constraints are rules that your data should obey - enforcing the rules is the problem. For instance, no two employees should have the same employee number. Essentially, the author's advice boils down to implementing integrity in the database itself rather than via triggers or external logic.

Chapter 3 discusses keys. A key is a field in a record with data that you plan to use to pull that record from the table - for instance, if you were getting information about employees, you might use that employee number as a key, because one employee number should correspond to one record and one employee. The author discusses the various types of keys and makes obvious recommendations.

Chapter 4 talks about duplicate rows. It's actually an insightful discussion about a serious flaw in many databases designed by amateurs, and the author provides a few possible paths for how to do something that is surprisingly difficult in large tables: getting rid of duplicate rows. A valuable chapter.

Chapter 5 discusses normalization. Good overview, good recommendations.

Chapter 6 discusses entity subtypes and supertypes - essentially, what do you do when you have items to store in a database that have some traits in common but some not in common. The nomenclature was a little confusing. He discusses some oddities in the most recent SQL standard, which mostly went over my head.

Chapter 7 discusses data heirarchies and trees. In a nutshell: there are no trees in SQL. The author is distressed by this.

Chapter 8 covers redundancy, more or less an extension of chapter 4. Good coverage, mostly seems to be common-sense, but then I've seen plenty of databases that lacked this common sense, so perhaps it isn't as common as one would hope.

Chapter 9 is about quota queries, a common task in any database project, and one that usually seems to have exactly one example in any set of documentation. (Not enough!) Some good tips are hidden in here, and it should be helpful to many DBA's.

Chapter 10 covers missing information, the difference in database-land between a field with (say) Yes, No, an empty string, or a null value, which has given everyone who does any sort of database programming problems at one time or another. The author's analysis is sound and useful.

To sum up, it's a decent book covering a wide range of areas pertaining to databases from a scholarly viewpoint. Perhaps it could be compared to Sun Tzu's Art of War - it doesn't really discuss YOUR situation, but it gives a lot of tips, and if you pay attention, you'll probably find something in there that will help you in your present crisis. The author is more of a scholar than a hands-on instructor, but he obviously knows what he's talking about. The book title should probably be "The Zen of Databases" or something like that, though, rather than implying it will be some sort of practical guide to administering SQL Server 7 or anything along those lines. Probably the people who will get the most benefit from it will be DBA's who have learned database administration from the school of hard knocks - learn by doing - but find themselves doing it more often than they would like, and want to get a little book-learning in to help them past the problems they are encountering. Novices won't get a lot out of it because they won't have hit the problems he describes. Experts will already know the solutions he recommends, although they'll probably get something out of it nonetheless.

The author has a website, Database Debunking, which has a similar tone to the book. There is also online errata for the book.

Purchase this book at Fatbrain.

For Slashdotters lucky enough to have kids, small siblings, cousins, or the occasional need to babysit for those who do, NVH Engr's review of Graeme Base's Worst Band In the Universe might be helpful. Finding kids' books interesting enough to read out loud without destroying the reader's brain cells is a tough job, but it sounds like it might be just slightly easier now.

The Worst Band In the Universe author Graeme Base pages 44 publisher Harry N. Abrams, Inc. rating 9.9 reviewer NVH Engr ISBN 0810939983 summary Sprocc Innovates new music and is exiled by the Musical Inquisitor. A small group of fellow exiles group together to fight the Status Quo. How they possibly succeed?

The Scenario On Planet Blipp, the world is ruled by music, however only the Traditional Songs are allowed; innovation is a horrible crime. (Sounds like one of my previous employers!) I found this book at Thinker Toys in Akron around the middle of 1999 and was immediately enthralled. My wife thinks I bought it for Caitlin, our then-2-year-old daughter, and I still read it to her every chance I get (to keep up the facade...).

This is the story of a young alien that just cannot stop innovating. Like all Blippians, he loves to sing and play music but he constantly finds himself Improvising when he should not be. This book chronicles his escape from Blipp just ahead of the law and his adventures surrounding an underground band contest, "The Worst Band In The Universe" where the best and most innovative --and illegal-- music would be rewarded. To me, this is a story of Innovation versus Status Quo and, yes, my blood boils as I am reminded how easy it is for Status Quo to beat down Innovation.

Of course, this is a children's book, so I dare not give away the ending.

To my daughter Caitlin this is a brightly illustrated poem that is incredibly easy and fun to listen to. It opens up a whole new set of experiences; aliens, conflict, petty authority, adventure, loud music, and new words. The art work is truly astounding. Find a copy in the nearest library, if only to look at the art work (Read the book, too, while you are there.)

What's Bad? Alpha-10 --one of the songs on the enclosed CD. The full title is "Alpha 10 (semi-instr. version 57.7)," performed by The Amazing Centrifugal Blortcrooners of Alpha 10. Do not let your children hear this song --they may very well prefer it over Barney. Okay, maybe I am exaggerating a little here ...

On the bright side, it is only 1:30 long and causes loud squeals of delight from my child. ;-)

Seriously, though, this book depicts authority figures as being potentially arbitrary and self-serving. Those who do not wish to expose their children to these kinds of concepts would be advised to hide their copy until the kids are old enough to understand.

What's Good? Splingtwangers and a Power Axe -- these are the musical instruments du jour. Blipp is a planet that loves to rock!

Inside the back cover is a CD containing nine of the songs from the contest, "The 18th Annual Worst Band in the Universe Competition." That CD now has a permanent home in my CD jukebox so my daughter and I can dance to it whenever we want. The music is surprisingly high quality and fun to listen to. Her favorite song is "Alpha 10" but I am hoping she will grow out of it. In addition, the lyrics are printed inside the back cover, which makes some songs a little easier to understand. The songs parallel the story and add another level to the experience, much like the filk songs of science fiction conventions. For example, Ancient Melody #42 (performed anonymously, as per tradition) is a haunting instrumental that simultaneously speaks to the grandeur and elegance of times past as well as to the stifling of times present. Other songs have a faster, more upbeat rhythm, with lyrics about space travel and the exciting-though-vagabond existence of an Innovator. There is a joy in this music that is hard to quantify.

The storytelling is riveting. The plot makes several surprising turns. At a particularly bleak point, a band technician (Button Pusher) steps in and nervously saves the day.

So What's In It For Me? A book with color pictures, an engaging storyline, a real plot, a cool CD with 8 excellent songs (and then some). Gosh, what else could you want?

I liked this book, mainly because there is a real story here. This is not just cutesy drivel with good marketing and hype. It speaks to a fundamental conflict between "new ideas" and "the way things currently are". This story chronicles that conflict from the innovator's view which makes it a must-read for the other people in your life. But it also confronts the reader with the fear and uncertainty felt by the non-innovators and the innocent bystanders. This is a view point I often need to be reminded of.

And it is fun to read to children.

You can purchase this book from Fatbrain.

Duncan Lawie wrote this review of Candle, which portrays a frightening but not-so-unbelieveable future, when today's notion of a digital divide is turned precisely on its head: it's a world where not being connected is not only unheard of, but criminal. Read this summary to decide whether it belongs on your "to-read" list, but it's just landed on mine. Candle author John Barnes pages 230 publisher Tor Books rating 7 reviewer Duncan Lawie ISBN 031289077 summary An original approach to the augmentation of human nature with technology, thoughtfully told.

John Barnes has written 11 novels and 2 trilogies since his first publication in the mid 1980s, often delving into the political science (in which he earned his MA) and themes of social engineering, whether set on alien planets or our own. These "soft" ideas are combined with hard science fiction to realise credible environments and compelling stories. The variety of narrative style and subject matter across his career has kept his work fresh while his inventiveness and the quality of his writing continues to draw in readers.

The framing story of Candle opens with the narrator, Currie, being called out of retirement. He lives in a world where those who do not run the client software of the omnipresent meme are unacceptable outlaws. Currie, whose final career was to hunt down such renegades, is reactivated to capture what might be the last "cowboy" and is soon tramping and skiing in the Rocky Mountains. The calm, glowing descriptions of the mountains in winter provide a spectacular vision of a world in the process of renewal. At the same time, the unemphasised detail of how Currie lives his life and the high-tech tools and equipment which he uses shows that the human world has changed. Having piqued the readers curiosity, the story maintains the gentle flow of the narrator's voice as he pursues his search. Despite the potential danger, this almost slips into longeur before the story changes pace. With an adjustment to the narrative focus, Barnes uses the Arabian Nights technique to reveal the underpinnings of Currie's world. The book is subsequently woven around the tales of two old soldiers who ended up on opposite sides in the Meme Wars, generating a patina of inevitability in the world changing events and softening the horror which permeated their early lives.

Barnes' concept of the Memes originates with the computer viruses of our own time, combined with the idea that ideas have an existence of their own. In Candle, Memes have jumped the sentience gap from hardware to wetware, allowing them to run within the human brain, placing beliefs directly and absolutely in the mind, incontrovertible except by the destruction or replacement of the meme itself.

The grim days of the early 21st century decay into the horror of the Meme Wars as the competing belief systems make a promiscuous advance across the minds of the planet until they come into open conflict, using humans as puppets or mercenaries. Beyond human life and death, the memes themselves evolve, becoming their own entity. The mind-viruses, the unfolding war and the effects of final victory on Earth for a single meme are all well developed and ably related.

Even so, Candle is more a novel of ideas. Perhaps it is inevitable that humanity will inflict itself with pain and horror; it may be that an ultimately rational overseer can lead each individual life to cause less pain and align fully to the greater good of humanity and the natural world. The book suggests that a governor inside the mind which could override and overwrite, "clearing" the psyche of its stains might allow us to be the best we can be. Such a position calls into question the value of free will and the meaning of human nature. The resulting debate between the logical and the visceral in which rational propositions are countered with emotional responses, produces an unbalanced and incomplete discussion. Nevertheless, Barnes is a good enough author that he shows the final outcomes of the arguments through their effect on society.

Candle has sufficient structure and purpose to carry the weight of its reflective elements, displaying originality in its approach to ideas as old as philosophy itself.

Purchase this book at FatBrain. It's out of stock at the moment, but they have been able to obtain out-of-stock books before, given enough interest.

Duncan Lawie wrote this review of Candle, which portrays a frightening but not-so-unbelieveable future, when today's notion of a digital divide is turned precisely on its head: it's a world where not being connected is not only unheard of, but criminal. Read this summary to decide whether it belongs on your "to-read" list, but it's just landed on mine. Candle author John Barnes pages 230 publisher Tor Books rating 7 reviewer Duncan Lawie ISBN 031289077 summary An original approach to the augmentation of human nature with technology, thoughtfully told.

John Barnes has written 11 novels and 2 trilogies since his first publication in the mid 1980s, often delving into the political science (in which he earned his MA) and themes of social engineering, whether set on alien planets or our own. These "soft" ideas are combined with hard science fiction to realise credible environments and compelling stories. The variety of narrative style and subject matter across his career has kept his work fresh while his inventiveness and the quality of his writing continues to draw in readers.

The framing story of Candle opens with the narrator, Currie, being called out of retirement. He lives in a world where those who do not run the client software of the omnipresent meme are unacceptable outlaws. Currie, whose final career was to hunt down such renegades, is reactivated to capture what might be the last "cowboy" and is soon tramping and skiing in the Rocky Mountains. The calm, glowing descriptions of the mountains in winter provide a spectacular vision of a world in the process of renewal. At the same time, the unemphasised detail of how Currie lives his life and the high-tech tools and equipment which he uses shows that the human world has changed. Having piqued the readers curiosity, the story maintains the gentle flow of the narrator's voice as he pursues his search. Despite the potential danger, this almost slips into longeur before the story changes pace. With an adjustment to the narrative focus, Barnes uses the Arabian Nights technique to reveal the underpinnings of Currie's world. The book is subsequently woven around the tales of two old soldiers who ended up on opposite sides in the Meme Wars, generating a patina of inevitability in the world changing events and softening the horror which permeated their early lives.

Barnes' concept of the Memes originates with the computer viruses of our own time, combined with the idea that ideas have an existence of their own. In Candle, Memes have jumped the sentience gap from hardware to wetware, allowing them to run within the human brain, placing beliefs directly and absolutely in the mind, incontrovertible except by the destruction or replacement of the meme itself.

The grim days of the early 21st century decay into the horror of the Meme Wars as the competing belief systems make a promiscuous advance across the minds of the planet until they come into open conflict, using humans as puppets or mercenaries. Beyond human life and death, the memes themselves evolve, becoming their own entity. The mind-viruses, the unfolding war and the effects of final victory on Earth for a single meme are all well developed and ably related.

Even so, Candle is more a novel of ideas. Perhaps it is inevitable that humanity will inflict itself with pain and horror; it may be that an ultimately rational overseer can lead each individual life to cause less pain and align fully to the greater good of humanity and the natural world. The book suggests that a governor inside the mind which could override and overwrite, "clearing" the psyche of its stains might allow us to be the best we can be. Such a position calls into question the value of free will and the meaning of human nature. The resulting debate between the logical and the visceral in which rational propositions are countered with emotional responses, produces an unbalanced and incomplete discussion. Nevertheless, Barnes is a good enough author that he shows the final outcomes of the arguments through their effect on society.

Candle has sufficient structure and purpose to carry the weight of its reflective elements, displaying originality in its approach to ideas as old as philosophy itself.

Purchase this book at FatBrain. It's out of stock at the moment, but they have been able to obtain out-of-stock books before, given enough interest.

Jason Bennett contributed this review of the depressingly named Death March : The Complete Software Developer's Guide to Surviving " Mission Impossible" Projects. But if you're ever part of a software project which seems to be going nowhere fast, and over very rocky roads, perhaps the words he's written will point you to a source of solace. This book seems to have some decent strategies for dealing with impossible demands and even more impossible deadlines. And while no book will give you a better boss or timetable, at least you'll know you're not the only one.

Death March author Edward Yourdon pages 218 publisher Prentice Hall rating 8 reviewer Jason Bennett ISBN 0-13-014659-5 summary Another excellent effort by Yourdon that gives insight into the "doomed to fail" project.

Background Ed Yourdon has a long and storied publishing history, most notably for his books on structured design and his duology (is that a two book series?) Decline and Fall of the American Programmer and The Rise and Resurrection of the American Programmer. Of course, he's better known recently for his (somewhat apocalyptic) Y2K books. This one, of course, is a couple of years old, but like most of the books I tend to gravitate to, addresses themes that endure. In this case, the desire to do more with less. The Scenario

Death March: [A project] whose "project parameters" exceed the norm by at least 50%. [The metaphor is used to suggest] a "forced march" imposed upon relatively innocent victims, the outcome of which is usually a high casualty rate. (2)

Yourdon's definition, as related above, does not necessarily imply a long-term project (although long-term death marches are worse than short-term ones), but instead describes a project with a low rate of success and a high personal impact. The project is either underfunded, underscheduled, understaffed, overfeatured, or some combination of the above. The introduction deals with the reasons DM projects happen, and why people actually agree to work on them. Having been on one myself, I can say that "ego" is one of the major reasons.

The subsequent chapters deal with various facets of the death march project, and how those facets are unique in such a project. Chapter 2, politics, has an especially interesting section on identifying what type of DM project one is on, and the chances of success for such a project. Yourdon rates projects on a four-quadrant scale: low and high likelihood of success, and low and high happiness factor (giving four combinations). Suffice to say, there are good combinations, bad combinations, and worse combinations. :-)

Chapter 3 deals with an important part of any project, but one that is hypercritical for any death march project: negotiation. Needless to say, good negotiation can turn a DM project into an almost-normal project, while bad negotiation can turn a bad situation into a nightmare. Yourdon provides some excellent tips on how to deal with upper management in these situations, which should be useful even if you've negotiated for a standard project before. Clearly, management is going to be much less forgiving in a DM situation.

Chapter 4 deals with "peopleware" issues in death march projects. As with negotiation, nothing really changes from a standard project to a DM project, but everything is emphasized. If you have poor workspace when you're on a normal deadline, consider how that workspace will affect you when you're under extreme time pressure. Overtime, and the limits of such, are another important issue Yourdon deals with.

Chapter 5 deals with an issue I've addressed many times in my reviews: process. I greatly appreciate Yourdon's take on process in a DM project. Simply put, while the Methodology Police will make any DM project worse, the lack of process will completely destroy one. Don't try to do all the paperwork while you're cramming to get the software out the door, but abandoning process will insure your failure. Things like requirements management and configuration management are all the more critical on a likely-to-fail project. If you lose only a week to a requirements change, that might be a quarter of your schedule!

Chapter 6, tools, simply reminds us that technology will not solve the human problem of programming. No CASE tool or supercompiler is going to come along to write your DM software for you. Use what you are most comfortable with, and you'll be the most productive.

The concluding chapter 7 proposes an interesting scenario: what if death march projects were to become normal? That is, how do you live and work rationally in an environment that is irrational? Suffice to say, this impacts everything about a software team, including the people who are hired and how careers advance within the company.

Throughout the book, Yourdon includes some excellent footnotes taken from correspondence with various software practitioners. These email excepts, gleaned from a questionnaire Yourdon sent out about the book's subject, give excellent insight into the nature of a death march project.

Although few people actually want to be sucked into a death march project, it will likely happen to most developers at some point in time or another. Being prepared for the occurrence might well mean your survival of such a project.

What's Bad/Good I found very little to dislike about this book. The text is concise yet thorough. The presentation is excellent. The ideas are reasonable and well-stated. I find Yourdon to be quite moderate in his position, neither justifying death marches nor railing against them overly. The advice on this book could easily be applied to any sort of project, and in fact is fairly standard in the literature, only ramped up for an intense, death march experience. Very little has changed in the industry since this book was initially published, and I doubt its timeliness will cease anytime soon. So What's In It For Me? If you write software, or work on any knowledge team, you will likely face a death march project at some point in your career. This book will help prepare you to deal with, and triumph over, such an experience. Table of Contents Preface

1. Introduction
2. Politics
3. Negotiations
4. People in Death March Projects
5. Processes
6. Tools and Technology
7. Death March as a Way of Life

Puchase this book from Fatbrain.com.

Reader stern contributed this review of Sizing Up a Start-Up: Decoding the New Frontier of Career Opportunities, and it could just save you a few seconds worth of the exorbitant IPO salary you hope starts flowing soon. Or thought of another way, it could save you several days worth if you're working on campus through the student employment office.

Sizing Up a Startup author Daniel Rippy, Matt Kursh pages 275 publisher Perseus Books rating (2,7)/10 reviewer stern ISBN 073820353X summary How to tell if that dotcom is a dog; may be interesting and useful to the completely uninitiated -- otherwise, skim at the bookstore (hence the 2/7 rating, for experts and novices respectively.).

Michael Wolff founded Wolff New Media; it cratered; he wrote Burn Rate. Jerry Kaplan founded Go Corp.; it cratered; he wrote Startup. Adam Osborne founded Osborne Computer Company; it cratered; he wrote Hypergrowth. You know the old story: "If you can, do. If you crater, write a book."

You can understand their motivation. The book gives you the chance to make a few bucks off a failed venture, occupies some time while your emotions cool, and gives you a chance to blame the failure on somebody else. I have to guess that some rudimentary form of this effect drove Daniel Rippy to write Sizing Up a Start-Up. He tells us only a little about his own professional background, except that he was a product manager for a "software start-up" in Seattle that burned through $25 million in investor cash and "had little to show for it."

Rippy's employer seems to have fallen apart with less drama than the almost tectonic failures engineered by Osborne, Kaplan and friends, and his book is somewhat more modest as well. He attempts to explain the rudiments of evaluating startups for others who might want to work in one but who lack the ability to identify a good one. He also provides basic advice on stock options, startup lifestyles, and other topics of interest to anybody contemplating joining an early-stage company.

Though Rippy's advice applies to any young company, he concentrates on technology start-ups, especially software and dotcom. As such, he talks a lot more about identifying a good venture capitalist (which a nice dotcom will have), as opposed to measuring positive net margins (which no dotcom has). High tech startups also provide most of his examples and quotes. Rippy quotes executives of a number of technology companies on topics ranging from sizing up a management team to evaluating your own tolerance for risk.

Most of his advice is quite general. He explains that earlier stage companies are riskier, and that you'll probably work long hours. In a few places, he becomes quite specific, for example, analyzing the strengths of different venture capitalists. He missed a trick, I think, in failing to discuss some of the specific data most valuable to people who have adopted a start-up lifestyle. Where's the table of startup filled neighborhoods in New York City, San Francisco, and Austin, cross referenced by nearby all-night restaurants and gyms?

What's Good?

The best things in this book are also the most basic and practical. If you don't know how to value a stock option, you should figure it out before starting at a dotcom. If your potential employer hasn't actually shipped a product yet, you should probably remember to ask how many months of cash they have in the bank. Of course, these topics are more obvious to most people now than they were in the giddy days before April's collapse in NASDAQ.

The quotes from other people were generally insightful, though Rippy's stable of experts is smaller than it looks at first. He returns to the same people over and over again for more quotes.

What's Silly?

Rippy presents a spreadsheet for calculating your "tolerance for career risk". It's a bit like a spreadsheet designed to determine, in strict mathematical terms, precisely how much prettier you think Boston is than Springfield. The question is fuzzy; the inputs are fuzzy; the output is fuzzy; don't pretend it's physics.

Worst Bad?

His half-baked theories of organizational evolution and some of the space-filling material. Rippy spends chapters on the difference between "organizational infancy" and "adolescence," etc. The filler is quite obvious, and sometimes laughable. To bulk out what is essentially a brief comendium of common sense, he includes lines like "Your base salary must be at some acceptable level because you need to cover your living expenses on a day-to-day basis." (Really!?!? Oh no!)

Is it for you?

Are you thinking about maybe joining a startup? Do you know the difference between qualified and nonqualified stock options? If not, buy the book.

Stern is the president of Information Markets Corp. You can purchase this book at FatBrain.

University of Texas Professor Allucquere Rosanne Stone has delivered an exotic and surprising look at the interface of desire and technology. "The War of Desire and Technology..." (this is the book's third paperback printing) is brave, smart and, well...sexy. Stone looks at virtual cross-dressers, busy cyber-labs and phone sex to capture that strange but undeniably real point where the boundaries between our technologies and ourselves continue to implode. Not your typical academic writing about cyberspace. The War of Desire and Technology at the Close Of The Mechanical author Allucquere Rosanne Stone pages 210 publisher MIT Press rating 8/10 reviewer Jon Katz ISBN 0-262-69189-2 summary where cyberspace becomes exotic

Lots of terms are used in connection cyberspace, but "sexy" and "desire" are not usually among them. Allucquerre Roseanne Stone, an assistant professor and director of the Interactive Multimedia Laboratory (ACTlab) at the University of Texas in Austin has changed that in her exotic, surprising, and well..sexy..new book: "The War of Desire and Technology at the Close of the Mechanical Age."

This provocative volume isn't quite what we've come to expect from academic writing about the Net and the Web. But it's haunting and long overdue. It's also brave, lunging past the blarney about porn and getting right at the erotic nature of techno-desire in cyberspace, which often has nothing to do with sex. Stone's premise is that there's a lot of desire involved with the interface of technology and individuals.

She writes about phone sex; the atmosphere and rituals of busy cyberlabs; the electronic isolation of browsing and the trial of a man accused of having raped a women by seducing one of her multiple personalities online. She couples the electronic voice-box that the astrophysicist Stephen Hawkins uses to communicate and the voice-only techniques of sex workers to wonder precisely where the body ends these days and software and hardware begins. This is a mesmerizing report from one of the unexplored fringes of the cyber-experience.

Stone writes engagingly about the high adventure of going online -- of uttering the vision and owning it. This adventure, she writes, "is our future, as we immerse ourselves ever more deeply in our own technologies; as the boundaries between our technologies and ourselves continue to implode; as we inexorably become creatures that we cannot even now imagine. It is a moment which simultaneously holds immense threat and immense promise. I don't want to lose sight of either, because we need to guide ourselves -- remember 'cyber' means steer -- in all our assembled forms and multiple selves right between the two towers of promise and danger, of desire and technology. In the space between them lies the path to our adventure at the dawn of the virtual age, the adventure which belongs to our time and which is ours alone."

Stone has definitely hit on something. Without question, there is something exotic about the intersection of the individual and cyberspace, and longings and desire, sexual and otherwise, that these often amazing and wondrous encounters evoke. Going online can be profoundly spiritual as well as erotic, but neither is explored very often or well amidst the culture's obession with pornography, gee-whiz gadgetry and dot.com hype.

From her enchanging introduction: "Sex, Death and Machinery, or How I Fell in Love with My Prothesis" Stone captures the imagination and delivers an intelligent and exotic romp through cyberspace and the imagination.

Purchase this book at Fatbrain.

In "Spirit Of The Web," Canadian technology and science writer Wade Rowland has written a surprisingly readable book that puts the Information Age in some historical context and traces the human and spiritual origins of the Web, from smoke signals to the computer. Spirit Of The Web author Wade Rowland pages 420 publisher Somerville House Publisher rating 7/10 reviewer Jon Katz ISBN 1-895897-98-X summary History of the Information Age, from telegraph to NeT

Lots of people are unhappy about the information explosion. Academics and social critics argue that modern communications technologies are triggering a deluge of junk data we don't need, that overwhelms most people, and makes intelligent discourse nearly impossible.

Canadian science and technology writer Wade Rowland has more balanced overview. Information technologies like the Net, he argues, have enormous promise. But, he writes, "it is important...to recognize that it is as true when dealing with the opportunities offered by technology as it is with political institutions, that eternal vigilance is the price of liberty." Technological processes are amenable to management, he says, but in the absence of continuous monitoring and intervention at appropriate decision points, they will manage themselves in ways that might might not be to our collective advantage.

The Net, in particular, warns Rowland in his new book "Spirit Of The Web", was developed as an open and democratic institution because it was deliberately designed that way and it will remain so only as long as each of us respects these virtues and works to preserve."

This isn't a message most techies want to hear. The flaw in Rowland's otherwise smart and timely argument is that hardly anyone involved with the Internet is working particularly hard to respect these virtues. The Net is stuffed with chaos and hostility as well as information, and is being gobbled up nearly whole by restrictive new government regulations, lawyers and laws, copyright and patent fights, and greedy companies.

The inherently arrogant and increasingly elitist tech culture is myopically convinced that whatever happens to the masses, their salvation is just some new software away, and that programming skills will insulate them from the world beyond.

Rowland's book puts the information age in context. He traces the history of the human urge to communicate -- which he calls one of the most basic of human impulses -- from the drum to the smoke signal to the radio to the Net.

What's unusual about this book is its business-like, professional tone, and that it's so clearly written and intelligently organized. Rowland starts off looking at the real meaning of the Information Age, tracing exactly what impulses made the Web inevitable, and what its real "spirit" might be.

For better or worse, he writes, these are fascinating times, information-wise. "Already, we see a smudging of the boundary between human and machine by the notion of the brain as an elaborate, biological computing device and intelligence as an emergent, perhaps generic quality of complexity in natural systems, and we have the Internet, a network of digital computers, proliferating like an organic creature. Whether in the end substantial or illusory, this strange convergence between the animate and inanimate, the organic and inorganic, seems likely to mark humanity as profoundly as did Copernicus's momentous observation that the earth orbits the sun."

Information is driving much of the growth of the Net and the Web. "Spirit of the Web" is as good and interesting a history of human communications as you're likely to come across,especially if you want to know what the roots of the digital culture really are. There's plenty of research and scholarship in "Spirit of the Web" but it doesn't have the ham-handed obtuseness of many technology books. And it reads nothing like the textbook it could very well be. "Spirit of the Web" is a very good read for anybody who cares about information and how it moves and has moved from one person to another.

Purchase this book at FatBrain.

Duncan Lawie, our resident science fiction book reviewer takes a look at John Brunner's The Shockwave Rider this week. The book centers on a near future world where access to data means power - sounds like it's taken from today's headlines. The Shockwave Rider author John Brunner pages 280 publisher USA: Ballentine Del Ray UK: Methuen (1975) rating 8.5 reviewer Duncan Lawie ISBN 0345324315 summary A near future dystopia centred on information technology where access to hidden data is the means to power

John Brunner is one of the great names of science fiction with a writing career stretching from the 1950s to the 1990s. Whilst he wrote close to 70 novels, his near future dystopias of the 1960s and 1970s were his most successful - including Stand on Zanzibar, for which he won a Hugo award. It is ironic that much which he had warned of came to pass within his own lifetime, robbing him of an audience for his later works.

The Shockwave Rider is the culmination of Brunner's near future prescience. Written in the early seventies, he explicitly acknowledges Alvin Toffler's Future Shock - an influential discussion of the change brought on by technology - though Brunner had already published a number of novels on the catastrophic effects of humanity's approach to the world and each other. The difference with this work is the far closer focus on North America and the decision to drive the plot through a single central character. The book continues to use the cut-up style Brunner had developed, with a variety of techniques used to offer other viewpoints, but this is essentially the story of Nicky Haflinger, a brilliant individual attempting to transform the "plug-in society".

The social etiquette of American society in this book expects everyone to move from one job to another and across the country once or twice a year.The rapid, repeated changes result in disconnection from any sense of genuine community and a tendency to make belongings and relationships interchangeable - a plug-in society. The inability of the average person to cope with this rate of change and the resulting loss of loyalty, commitment and real relation is solved by the use of drugs - primarily prescription tranquillisers which ameliorate the continual shocks of life. A comprehensive communications network, which started as a corollary to this mobile society has become central to its continuance, storing vast detail of each individual in the databanks. Such use of and reliance on computer data leads to the central paranoia of this world - a fear of what the records might contain and what might be used to your detriment by someone who has better access to data. In a world where no one is more than the sum of their computer records, Haflinger's ability to re-engineer his persona through reprogramming the data banks allows him to escape the government agencies and sample lifestyles at many levels of society. However, much of the story is framed as an interrogation so it is clear that his capture is inevitable. The extant powers fear his skill and the potential it has to give him great power. Yet, Haflinger's journey is not a search for power but for wisdom.

The book is set about forty years after it was written, placing it little more than ten years in our own future. This kind of near future writing tends to date very badly but Brunner has done such an excellent job that The Shockwave Rider seems to be in the process of moving genres from science fiction to social realist or techno thriller. The plug-in society which he describes has much in common with modern life in the Western world whilst the technology is generally kept sufficiently vague that it fits in easily with a present-day mental picture. The terminology for the data net seems a little dated, but what Haflinger programs into the system sounds terribly familiar: Brunner describes worms which make their way through the system, reading and transforming data; and phages, more dangerous constructs, some of which are reputedly capable of comprehensively shutting down the whole network if activated. Haflinger has made a life for himself by perverting the data on which the continued functioning of North America relies. Almost a decade before Neuromancer, the "hacker" with a mission was already well defined.

The writing is occasionally rather indifferent, particularly early in the book, but there are also passages of incandescent writing. The author's passion shines through when describing the depths of despondency and paranoia descending from such a dehumanised system and when discussing the alternative possibilities. He is no Luddite - the solutions proposed require a similar technological baseline but result from placing the tools in the hands of the most capable, making them the means to a humane society. However, his agenda is rarely allowed to get in the way of the story, which develops rapidly, making the book seem much shorter than it is. In addition, his characters are as rounded and believable as the society they exist in. Brunner dedicated much of his best writing to warning of the dangerous direction our society is heading and developing ideas for a technologically literate future which still has room for people to be people. That he does this whilst writing accurately and entertainingly is a mark of true excellence - and The Shockwave Rider is a remarkable example.

Purchase this book at Fatbrain.

Bruce Schneier, well-known security and encryption expert, and author of Applied Cryptography has recently had his newest book published, entitled Secrets & Lies: Digital Security in a Networked World, which explores the world of security as a system. Read the entire review below. Secrets & Lies: Digital Security in a Networked World author Bruce Schneier pages 412 publisher Johy Wiley & Sons, 09/2000 rating 10 reviewer Jeff "hemos" Bates ISBN 0471253111 summary A well written, well researched exploration of digital security as a system.

I've recently had the pleasure of reading Bruce Schneier's latest writing effort Secrets and Lies: Digital Security in a Networked World. A number of our readers may remember his prior book Applied Cryptography , which discussed the use of cryptography in our brave new digital world, and how the use of crytography would make things secure.

This time around, Schneier is much more cicumspect about the uses and application of cryptography. As he states in the introduction and throughout the book, when writing AC, he thought that the use of cryptography would make things more secure. He was correct - but the lesson he learned while working with companies and individuals, that we can't just add cryptography into a system and make it secure, but that systems must be designed from the bottom-up with security in mind. S&L draws upon a huge amount of experience working in the security field, making one central point: Any system, no matter how good the cryptography is, is only as strong as the weakest link. Yes, that's an old cliche, but it's one that bears repeating.

What makes it even more imperative to design system to be secure is the sheer amount of systems that aren't secure, and what the means for us. Some of the examples Schneier uses in S&L are simply frightening to consider were they to occur. And some of his ideas about what will come, and the tools we have will make you want to keep a good stash of gold kruggerands under your mattress.

Indeed, as he talks about in the introduction, part of the reason this book too so long to write was because he was depressed at the world of security around him. Looking at what companies were doing, at what people were doing, and the sheer amount of systems holes out there must be depressing - but it only drives home the point even moreso that we must design *systems* not just adding cryptography and thinking that's the magic pixie dust that can make everything better.

The book does an exceptional job of wending its way through various security measures, how they work, and how they fail. IMHO, one of the real strengths of this book is that it's something that a cryptography novice could read, as well as an expert. Certain sections of the book are dedicated to the nitty gritty behind systems, but there are also sections that are dedicated to simply laying out the process by which one should approach the systems. Indeed, the support blurb on the dust jacket is written by Jay S. Walk, the founder of priceline.com. This adds to the strength of the claim that the book can be for everyone.

Schneier is intimately involved with the security community - besides being the creater of the [Blowfish] and [Twofish] encryption algorithms and a frequent speaker at technical conferences, his company deals with this day in and day out. More to the point for a book, he can also write. It makes reading about Product Testing and Verification (Chapter 22) rather than a snooze, a treat. The book is one of those rare cross-overs - something to give your geek friends, and your [PHB], all of whom will appreciate it. The breadth of the book is revealed in the contents (Duh) and it's a good mixture of all the necessary elements. You'll learn about entropy in a system as well as Attack Trees, Threat Modeling and what all of this stuff means in day-to-day life.

I wholeheartedly recommend this book.

The Table of Contents and the preface are available on Counterpane's site; S&L's Chapter Three is on Amazon.

Purchase this book at ThinkGeek.

In Technoromanticism, a University of Edinburgh architect agrees that the computer may represent the pinnacle of scientific and technological acheivement, but, he argues, some of the most revolutionary ideas surrounding cyberspace are grounded in old movements like the Enlightenment, something techies tend to forget. Warning: This is heavy-handed academic writing but with a fascinating premise.

Technoromanticism: digital narrative, holism and the romance of author Richard Coyne pages 399 publisher MIT Press rating 6/10 reviewer Jon Katz ISBN 0-262-03260-0 summary ploddingly written but important premise

Increasingly, pundits and scholars are putting the computer, and all of its promises -- of interconnectivity, interactivity, the erosion of hierarchies, of sweeping changes in business practices, the potential revitalism of individualism and democracy -- at the pinnacle of scientific and technological accomplishment, well before those promises are well delivered on.

A new book by a Richard Coyne, professor of Architectural Computing and head of the Department of Architecture at the University of Edinburgh agrees that the computer is revolutionary but he argues in Technoromanticism: digital narrative, holism, and the romance of the real (MIT University Press) that these narratives aren't brand new, but grounded in the Enlightenment and, especially, in the romantic traditions, from Marshall McLuhan's utopian vision of social reintegration by electronic communication to claims that cyberspace is literally redefining what reality is.

McLuhan, says author Marshall Coyne, identified the era of preliterate culture as a golden age in which humankind was at one with itself and nature. Speaking and listening in the absence of both writing and technology involved intensely interactive exchanges that come close to directly sharing thoughts. Then, says Coyne, we entered the age of literacy in which we write, lay things out in order and divide the world. Society in this era is urban, global and fragmented rather than local, integrated and whole.

Now, says the author, we are entering a third age in which the hyperactive environment of electronic communications is returning us to a tribal state once again, but this time the whole world is the tribe.

The romanticism of urban narratives represents one of two very different threads of the Enlightenment: rationalism and romanticism.

Coyne links virtual fantasies to other strains in creative history, like surrealism. "To search the web is to explore a vast 'city' within which one stumbles across strange objects and encounters surprise -- the net surfer is a flaneur (an idler, and a loafer)."

The surrealists, says Coyne were excited by this aspect of cities hundreds of years ago. Surrealist writers reported going to flea markets where they could search for objects "that can be found nowhere else: old fashioned, broken, useless, almost incomprehensible, even perverse ... "

This is an academic work published by a university press, and as such, is riddled with some dense jargon about representation, space, time, interpretation, structuralism and identity.

But Coyne is right about technoromanticism. Even if the technology is new, the ideas behind it don't spring suddenly from the earth, something the tech culture tends to forget. They have roots and precedents dating back hundreds of years, and are even more interesting when taken in context. That alone makes Technromanticism a worthwhile, if not particularly entertaining or universally accessible book.

Purchase this book at purchase this book at fatbrain.

Thanks to Jason Bennett, who wrote this review of The Limits of Software. Robert N. Britcher explores in this book what software is and where software is going -- and what it really means.

The Limits of Software author Robert N. Britcher pages 214 publisher Addison Wesley rating 7 reviewer Jason Bennett ISBN 0-201-43323-0 summary Where we've been, where we're going, and the implications therein

Background

Before I launch into my latest review, I'd just like to say thanks to Hemos and Slashdot on the occasion of my twentieth review posted here. It's been 25 months since the first one (August, '98), and I've really appreciated the opportunity they've given me. Nice excuse to do something I should do anyway! :-)

The Scenario

"But it is not the practitioners alone who are so moved. A thousand years in the making, the religion of technology has become the common enchantment, not only of the designers of technology but also those caught up in, and undone by, their godly designs. The expectation of ultimate salvation through technology, whatever the immediate human and social costs, has become the unspoken orthodoxy, reinforced by a market-induced enthusiasm for novelty and sanctioned by a millenarian yearning for new beginnings. This popular faith, subliminally indulged and intensified by corporate, government, and media pitchmen, inspires an awed deference to the practitioners and their promises of deliverance while diverting attention from more urgent concerns. Thus, unrestrained technological development is allowed to proceed apace, without serious scrutiny or oversight -- without reason. Pleas for some rationality, for reflection about pace and purpose, for sober assessment of costs and benefits -- for evidence even of economic value, much less larger social gains -- are dismissed as irrational. From within the faith, any and all criticism appears irrelevant, and irreverent." (TLOS, xxiii)

-- David F. Noble, The Religion of Technology, as quoted in The Limits of Software

I had the privilege of spending a few weeks with a good friend of mine in Eastern Europe back in July. Of course, to go anywhere on a budget in Europe requires a lot of train travel. Alas, there are no bullet trains in Slovenia, which gave me plenty of time to take in some reading when I wasn't chatting with my fellow passengers ...

The Limits of Software is a unique book in many ways, not the least of which is that it reads more like a collection of life stories than a lecturing textbook. Most computer books simply give you data, or even information, in a straightforward manner, hopefully punctuated by some interesting anecdotes. Britcher, instead, has packaged with words slices of time which illustrate various points about where computer programming has been, and where software development is going (note the terminology change). I certainly won't try to describe them all, but theme which runs through the book is illustrated in the opening quotation: software is not our savior. There is no "one great system" that will be able to handle things. The FAA's botched air traffic control system is used as one illustration in the book, but the point is made about all software: we cannot and must not worship it.

There's one point that I find simultaneously funny and sad: It's in the chapter on testing, and the inherent futility of such an activity on complex programs. Britcher discusses the Y2K bug, and mentions the survivalist movement.

"Just as regular folks built bomb shelters in the 1950s and 1960s to add life time to a planet white with nuclear snow, regular folks are now storing large caches of food, water, toilet paper, clothing, and, of course, the American twinship: sacred literature and ammo. One man who agreed to be interviewed for the piece was quoted: 'When you first hear about it, most people are in total denial. They can't believe that Bill Gates won't come up with a magic bullet.' (That the general population believes that Bill Gates has the answers to our programming problems is more frightening than the rollover of the millennium.)" (TLOS, 59)

I quote this not as a shot at Bill (although, this being Slashdot, I'm sure some will take it that way), but to point out the inherent risks in the statement, which illustrate Britcher's point. Software is dangerous, because it does so much yet is so fragile. We (even we programmers at times) view it as a holy grail. We cannot understand how our mechanical saviors could possibly fail us. Yet, software failures are rampant, in every facet of our society (see the Risks Digest if you need examples). Software cannot solve our problems. Our problems are inherent within ourselves. As we continue to rely more and more on machines to live for us, we must remember that they, like their creators, are fallible. What's Bad? / What's Good?

When I finished TLOS, my first reaction was to think of the old saw about the life of a fighter pilot: "hours and hours of sheer boredom, punctuated by moments of sheer terror." Britchner's stories seemed to drone on at points. The FAA story was left to the end. Why did he have to go on and on about all this random stuff?

In retrospect, though, I think I have a better grasp of what Britcher was trying to convey. This is not a disaster movie told in the guise of software engineering; this is a story about one man's journey through software, and the conclusions he's come to. Read this as an technological autobiography, and I think you'll appreciate the points being made. As I said earlier, it's different, but rewarding in the end.

So What's In It For Me?

A reminder that the Tower of Babel still lives in the hearts and minds of men.

You can purchase this book at Fatbrain.

Table of Contents

• Foreware by Robert L. Glass
• Prologue
• Part I
  1. Early Systems
  2. Theories of Programming
  3. The Human Element
  4. Designing
  5. Code: The Stuff of Programs
  6. Testing Computer Systems
  7. The Impossible Profession
  8. Life on the Project
• Part II
  1. Supervision Through Language
  2. How Technology Changes Methods
  3. Size and Intellectual Gravity
  4. The Marketing of Science
  5. Errors
  6. The One Great System
  7. The Government of Programming
  8. The System to End All
  9. The End-All of Programming
• Afterward
• Reading List

In their book Sovereign Individual: Mastering the Transition To the Information Age, authors James Davidson and Lord William Rees-Mogg predict the inevitable rise of merchant republics in cyberspace, functioning largely beyond the control or taxing powers of nation-states. A few years ago, this might have seemed loopy; today it seems almost inevitable. (Note: Second in a series.)

In the Middle Ages, when the reach of kings and laws sometimes grew weak, no single group could regulate or dominate another, or regulate commerce and collect taxes. Throughout Europe, there were frontier or "march" regions where sovereignties blended -- Celtic and English, Christian and Muslim. These sometimes violent borders persisted for centuries; despite continuing conflicts, they often served as spawning grounds for commerce and trade.

These regions developed distinct institutional and legal forms, the type of cultural evolution we're likely to see again soon in a different type of march region -- cyberspace -- according to Davidson and Rees-Mogg.

Their idea is that cyberspace will generate free zones apart from traditional government laws on speech or other control, policing or taxation. Like the residents of the march regions, residents and businesspeople in these new cyber-zones will go largely untaxed, because taxes will be almost impossible to tabulate and collect. Their freedom to speak and act freely and gather information would be unprecedented, and their sense of individual sovereignty enormous.

The authors make the provocative argument that cyberspace will transcend nationality. "Before the nation-state, it was difficult to enumerate precisely the number of sovereignties that existed in the world because they overlapped in complex ways and many varied forms of organization exercised power." In the information age, they claim, the same will be true. Sovereignty will become increasingly fragmented, with new entities emerging which will exhibit some but not all the characteristics we've come to associate with nation-stages.

Like the Knights Templar of the Middle Ages, these new cyber-republics will organize around principles that bear ltitle relation to nationality, at least geographic nationality.

"Market forces, not political majorities, will compel societies to reconfigure themselves in ways that public opinion will neither comprehend nor welcome," Davidson and Rees-Mogg maintain. "It will therefore be crucial that you see the world anew. If you fail to transcend conventional thinking at a time when conventional thinking is losing touch with reality, then you will be more likely to fall prey to an epidemic of disorientation that lies ahead."

Many of us (including myself, I think) aren't quite ready to write off the nation-state, still the most powerful and coherent entity on earth. But the disorientation Rees-Mogg and Davidson warn of is already obvious. Note the mad scrambling of businesses in publishing and entertainment, and other institutions like education and politics, to respond to the Internet, often lashing out in legal desperation or moral outrage at the rise of the new digital culture.

"Disorientation" is the perfect term for the way that groups as different as the U.S. Congress and most journailsts respond to cyberspace. Lawyers and doctors and advertising pros are scrambling to contend with the open-model distribution of once-proprietary information.

It's also a credible idea that some of the traditional functions of the nation-state -- raising armies to protect against attack -- seem increasingly dubious. Most wars were started by nationalists seeking political or economic expansion. But if cultural and influence and economic power is increasingly tied to cyberspace, and the ballooning business moving onto the Net and the Web, the rationale for most wars would evaporate. So would the idea of physical defense, one of the mainstays of the nation-state.

So the idea of merchant republics in cyberspace doesn't seem particularly far-fetched. A number of corporations -- Microsoft, AOL/Time-Warner, Disney, Intel -- are already larger and more prosperous than many countries. They will soon be as powerful as some, if they aren't already. So it doesn't seem much of a stretch to imagine companies or their components declaring themselve merchants of a new and virtual realm. Microsoft could buy an island somewhere and declare the company independent (something that's probably already occurred to Bill Gates, for whom secession might seem the logical next step if the courts continue to rule against him).

Smaller entrepeneurs could use encryption and other security tools to simply put their cyber-operations beyond the reach of governments. There's no real international law governing the global implications of the Net and the Web. Even if there were, a number of countries would surely be found to ignore any new conventions.

These kinds of republics wouldn't need traditional police forces or defense industries or tax-collection mechanisms. Just as the Net has no means of policing speech, such republics could defy regulation, especially if they became numerous.

In fact, many corners of the Net already offer virtual equivalents of the "march" state, entities that fall between the cracks of regulation and control. Wander around AIM or ICQ for awhile and you'll find thousands. We're in one now.

A couple of years ago, merchant republics in cyberspace might have seemed a wacky, even utopian, prediction. No more.

Watch for Part Three, The Return of the Luddites. this book is available at Fatbrain.

A few years ago, knowing just a few html tags and tricks could probably have gotten you a job as a full-fledged Web designer, or at least Web coder. As things get more complicated and Web sites more dynamic, the tools you need to create that all-singing, all-dancing user-interactive content have gotten more complex than carets and single letter tags. Danny Yee wrote these reviews of two of the many available books on PHP programming; to see Danny's hundreds of other reviews, check out the links provided at the bottom.

Web Application Development with PHP 4.0; The PHP Pocket Refere author see each pages see publisher see each rating 8;6 reviewer Danny Yee ISBN see each summary Both of these books are intended to serve as references for PHP programmers, but take different approaches in doing to.

Web Application Development with PHP 4.0 is a book one can actually read: it contains no undigestible slabs of reference material or code (these are relegated to the accompanying CD). Coverage of a wide range of largely independent topics also makes it a great volume for browsing in. And as a system administrator who does only a little bit of programming, in a variety of languages, I appreciated its "broad overview" approach.

The opening chapter of Web Application Development is a very brief look at some general programming issues - code formatting, documentation, APIs - that are all too rarely mentioned in programming language books. The second chapter covers PHP "advanced syntax": lists and arrays, object-oriented programming, and a bit on polymorphism and self-modifying code. (I finally got a handle on PHP's slightly odd handling of lists from this.) And chapter three presents a development example, coding an IRC interface in PHP.

Chapters four through seven cover a large selection of topics: sessions and session-handling, security, usability, validating form data, CVS, COM and Java interfaces, database integration, authentication, templates, XML, and WDDX. Much of this is not at all PHP-specific. Of the thirty-two pages on XML, for example, the first twelve are a general introduction that is not at all language-specific (the remainder describe how to use the Expat and LibXML parsers built into PHP, with examples). And the material on CVS presents some PHP scripts for automating notifications, but is otherwise completely generic.

I found the last two chapters less interesting. Chapter eight contains three case studies of organisations using PHP, but these are more sales pitch than substance (I really don't think it makes sense to be "marketing" PHP three hundred pages into a book on the language). The final chapter of Web Application Development is about modifying the C code at PHP's core. I skipped quickly over this and suspect the vast majority of readers will do the same.

Title; Authors Web Application Development with PHP 4.0; Tobias Ratschiller, Till Gerken Publisher, ISBN New Riders, 0-7357-0997-1 Other 384 pages, includes CD

(Order Web Application Development with PHP 4.0 from Fatbrain.)

The PHP Pocket Reference is right at the other end of the readable/reference continuum. It has two tiny discursive examples (of form handling and database integration) but otherwise is pretty solid: thirty pages introducing PHP syntax are followed by eighty pages of function prototypes with one sentence descriptions. And yes, it will fit into a (large) pocket. I have used the Pocket Reference occasionally, but I suspect only because it has been sitting next to my computer while I write this review -- once it goes onto more distant shelves, using the online documentation will probably be faster.

Title; Authors The PHP Pocket Reference; Rasmus Lerdorf Publisher, ISBN O'Reilly & Associates, 1-56592-769-9 Other 114 pages

(Order The PHP Pocket Reference from Fatbrain.)

Danny Yee's Book Reviews
Home | Subjects | Titles | Authors | Publishers | Latest A book review by Danny Yee <editor@dannyreviews.com>, Copyright © 2000

A few years ago, knowing just a few html tags and tricks could probably have gotten you a job as a full-fledged Web designer, or at least Web coder. As things get more complicated and Web sites more dynamic, the tools you need to create that all-singing, all-dancing user-interactive content have gotten more complex than carets and single letter tags. Danny Yee wrote these reviews of two of the many available books on PHP programming; to see Danny's hundreds of other reviews, check out the links provided at the bottom.

Web Application Development with PHP 4.0; The PHP Pocket Refere author see each pages see publisher see each rating 8;6 reviewer Danny Yee ISBN see each summary Both of these books are intended to serve as references for PHP programmers, but take different approaches in doing to.

Web Application Development with PHP 4.0 is a book one can actually read: it contains no undigestible slabs of reference material or code (these are relegated to the accompanying CD). Coverage of a wide range of largely independent topics also makes it a great volume for browsing in. And as a system administrator who does only a little bit of programming, in a variety of languages, I appreciated its "broad overview" approach.

The opening chapter of Web Application Development is a very brief look at some general programming issues - code formatting, documentation, APIs - that are all too rarely mentioned in programming language books. The second chapter covers PHP "advanced syntax": lists and arrays, object-oriented programming, and a bit on polymorphism and self-modifying code. (I finally got a handle on PHP's slightly odd handling of lists from this.) And chapter three presents a development example, coding an IRC interface in PHP.

Chapters four through seven cover a large selection of topics: sessions and session-handling, security, usability, validating form data, CVS, COM and Java interfaces, database integration, authentication, templates, XML, and WDDX. Much of this is not at all PHP-specific. Of the thirty-two pages on XML, for example, the first twelve are a general introduction that is not at all language-specific (the remainder describe how to use the Expat and LibXML parsers built into PHP, with examples). And the material on CVS presents some PHP scripts for automating notifications, but is otherwise completely generic.

I found the last two chapters less interesting. Chapter eight contains three case studies of organisations using PHP, but these are more sales pitch than substance (I really don't think it makes sense to be "marketing" PHP three hundred pages into a book on the language). The final chapter of Web Application Development is about modifying the C code at PHP's core. I skipped quickly over this and suspect the vast majority of readers will do the same.

Title; Authors Web Application Development with PHP 4.0; Tobias Ratschiller, Till Gerken Publisher, ISBN New Riders, 0-7357-0997-1 Other 384 pages, includes CD

(Order Web Application Development with PHP 4.0 from Fatbrain.)

The PHP Pocket Reference is right at the other end of the readable/reference continuum. It has two tiny discursive examples (of form handling and database integration) but otherwise is pretty solid: thirty pages introducing PHP syntax are followed by eighty pages of function prototypes with one sentence descriptions. And yes, it will fit into a (large) pocket. I have used the Pocket Reference occasionally, but I suspect only because it has been sitting next to my computer while I write this review -- once it goes onto more distant shelves, using the online documentation will probably be faster.

Title; Authors The PHP Pocket Reference; Rasmus Lerdorf Publisher, ISBN O'Reilly & Associates, 1-56592-769-9 Other 114 pages

(Order The PHP Pocket Reference from Fatbrain.)

Danny Yee's Book Reviews
Home | Subjects | Titles | Authors | Publishers | Latest A book review by Danny Yee <editor@dannyreviews.com>, Copyright © 2000

chromatic's wide-ranging series of instructional and reference books for the Linux administrator continues here with three more titles, this time covering two books which sound aimed at fairly experienced uers, and one more suited to Windows crossover users. (Check out Part One and Part Two of this four-part series if you missed those, especially if you're looking for some more novice-oriented books.)

Don't carry all of these books at once, unless it's the only exercise you're getting. At this many total pages, you're likely to find something you don't know well enough -- unless you've written chunks of the software under discussion.

title Linux Clearly Explained publisher Morgan Kaufmann Included Stuff RedHat Linux 6.0, Corel WordPerfect 8.0 Intended Audience New users interested in Linux for the desktop. Scope Desktop usage with GNOME. Technical Correctness Good. Writing style Easy to read -- informs without intimidating new users. Other I was able to read 300 pages while waiting for a plane. It's quite easy to read while still useful.

Linux Clearly Explained aims squarely at a growing population -- people fed up with Windows, ready to try out the newfangled Linux desktop environments. Author Bryan Pfaffenberger explains the concepts of Linux in the context of the GNOME system, intending to help his readers become productive users. Rather than walking people through wizards (as one might expect from a typical Windows book, for example), he demonstrates how the peculiarities and design decisions of Linux flavor GNOME.

Pfaffenberger starts out with an 80 page history discussion. First, there was Unix. Then came RMS, GNU, and Linus. The advantages and shortcomings of Linux culminate in GNOME's raison d'etre -- and the reason this book exists. The author provides plenty of links to more information, even sneaking in a few pages on Internet support for Linux. Armed with this background, readers can tackle installation.

This part covers the Linux filesystem, lists supported hardware, talks about partitioning schemes, and dual booting. It walks through the RedHat 6.0 installation, briefly describing important packages. If your hardware is supported, you'll have no trouble here.

By far the largest, Running GNOME is the critical section. Use GNOME tools to create a normal user, then start exploring. Learn about GNOME conventions, help, and the file manager. Customize your desktop appearance, behavior, available programs, sounds, and window manager. Tour GNOME, KDE, and X productivity applications, then the basics of managing disks and installing new applications.

Part four helps you set up PPP (through various means) and discusses using Netscape and ftp for common Internet tasks. Finally, part five introduces the command line. It's a quick tour of files, basic shell usage, and permissions, with little on shell scripts. The administration section discusses disk maintenance, backups (a good section), and manually working with user accounts. Finally, an exploration of Midnight Commander demonstrates the powerful utility. The only chapter missing is one on security -- there's much more to learn.

Does it work? Can a new user really learn how to use Linux via GNOME? Pfaffenberger has produced an easy to read and informative book. It's not glaringly cutesy, as some books tend to be, but genuine. Linux's heritage comes through early, helping to explain things that aren't immediately obvious. If readers are inspired to explore things on their own (and the book equips them to do so), they'll do fine. Each chapter has plenty of references -- take the time to explore. (Order "Linux Clearly Explained" from Fatbrain.)

title Red Hat Linux Bible publisher IDG Books Included Stuff RedHat Linux 6.1 CD, with additional source disc. Intended Audience New Linux types, especially those interested in configuring, using, and providing network services. Scope Introduction, installation, some desktop use, administration, and networking. Technical Correctness Too many typos and inaccuracies not to mention. Writing style Technical, but readable. Other If you have enough experience to know when this book is wrong, you might not need it. Still, there's a wealth of information, especially for new Linux networkadministrators.

All books have typos. Most people read over them. When describing Unix command lines to beginners, there's little room for error. This book confuses the shell redirection/concatenation operator (>>) with a pipe, while writing the operator as '>' multiple times. (See page 87.) That's not all, either. IDG needs to provide an errata list for data-clobbering mistakes. Granted, the number of errors I caught (around a dozen) considering the amount of information presented isn't huge, but it makes me question the book's accuracy. (See page 579, which confuses printer stair-stepping with font anti-aliasing.) That's a pity, because the book has a lot going for it.

Physically, the book divides material into the same sections you'd expect. The ubiquitious history and installation sections do their jobs, and the command line introduction is good. GNOME and popular Window Managers get some treatment, as well as generic X configuration. Desktop users will learn how to install applications from RPM and source, run applications remotely with the X protocol, and use DOS, Windows, and Mac emulators. There are plenty of other applications covered, like games, publishing utilities (from groff to StarOffice), to ubiquitous Internet apps. The breadth of programs covered is good.

System administration gets a few chapters, too. Not only is RedHat's Linuxconf tool brought to center stage, there's plenty of distribution-neutral command-line advice. Everything from managing user accounts (including an early taste of NFS home directories) to monitoring system status comes up. Shell programming and init levels are explained in the context of automating repetitive tasks, as well as at and cron. Finally, the backup and security chapters are quite good (very informative!), with a good mix of theory and practicality. Presenting multiple approaches with associated benefits and tradeoffs is valuable.

For those aching to demonstrate Linux's server strengths, part five aims to make you a good intranet member. A brief networking refresher tackles TCP/IP Ethernet setup (even over PLIP), and you'll soon be on the Internet if that's your thing. There's even information on using your Linux box as a router and proxy server.

Of course, Samba and NFS get their due. Surprisingly, so does the mars_nwe NetWare Emulator. The mail server chapter makes a valiant attempt at discussing sendmail's configuration file before admitting that the m4 macros make things much easier and devotes a few pages to majordomo mailing list software. There's a great section on ftp services, detailed configuration information for Apache, and good INN news server instructions. Rounding it all out is a brief NIS chapter, followed by an Appendix giving a brief description of the RPM packages included on the CD-ROM.

With another technical reviewer poring through the manuscript before it went to press, this book would have been better. As it stands, it's good, with plenty of detail about plenty of useful programs, marred by the fact that you're never quite sure that what you've just read is correct. If you're willing to play the part of editor and put up an errata page, you'll have done your good deed for the year.

(Order the "Red Hat Linux Bible" from Fatbrain.)

title Red Hat Linux 6 Unleashed publisher SAMS Included Stuff RedHat Linux 6 CD with installation tutorial videos. Intended Audience Users and administrators already comfortable with the command line. Scope At 1100+ pages, there's plenty of space to cover everything from installation to configuration and programming. Technical Correctness Good. Writing style Varies, depending on author. Most chapters are good, some are excellent. Other This massive tome has plenty of information for configuring Linux as a server.

While Linux continues to attract desktop users, it remains an excellent server platform. Administrators familiar with Unix commands and techniques who want to deploy Linux servers might find this voluminous tome handy. (It makes a hefty LART.) While covering installation and configuration, the book intentionally skips over basic usage -- if you're not already comfortable with editing configuration files or reading man pages, you'll have some catching up to do.

After your system is installed, the first things to set up are mail, ftp, web, and news services. The SMTP and FTP chapters are excellent, with easily the best discussion of sendmail so far in this series. (Steve Shaw, author of both chapters, has his own book, reviewed in the last article of this series.) Beyond simple configuration or a light skimming of the man pages, these chapters give some theory and additional options. DNS and bind receive similarly good treatment. NIS and NFS get a few pages, but more attention is devoted to Samba -- serving both Linux and Windows clients.

The system administration section is also good. Of particular note is the TCP/IP chapter, spanning theory to firewalls. Also covered is basic system administration, PPP setup, backups, and security (good, but short). There's a chapter devoted to RedHat's graphical administration tools -- more than just Linuxconf, to be sure. Of this section, standouts include the basic administration chapter. It's packed with more details than any book so far, and focuses on a networked installation. The GNU utilities chapter describes common programs that might come in handy, if you didn't already know about them.

The last big section is an introduction to the smorgasbord of Linux programming. While thirty pages apiece isn't often enough to get into the real guts of a language or toolkit, it does suffice to help a careful reader begin to understand code she may have to confront one day. Shells (bash/pdksh, tcsh) and gawk get the best treatment, being comparatively simple. A kernel configuration chapter will guide you through kernel modules, recompilation and (hopefully short) troubleshooting. The chapter on automating common tasks can help you keep your workload manageable. Perl examples illustrate network programming, in an informative introduction.

Of course, heavy hitters -- C, C++, Perl, Tcl/Tk, Python, and Java each merit attention. Compiling, makefiles, RCS and CVS are covered in the C/C++ section. It's not the K&R book, but it's a decent overview. Perl fares better, with an introduction to the CPAN, one-liners, and shell access. Motif and LessTif get a chapter, and Tcl/Tk have a nice chapter. Python and Java each have plenty of space, but the former spends more time on actual code while the latter discusses Java technologies and libraries.

This book contains a lot of information (at 1252 pages, it ought to), and most of it is useful. Be aware, though, that many different authors contributed to it, so the writing style varies between chapters. For the most part, they're good, with David Pitts and Shaw standing out. If you want a comprehensive, everything-in-one-spot overview of technologies available for Linux in one spot, and are already familiar with Linux as a user, this book is good. (Order "Red Hat Linux 6 Unleashed" from Fatbrain.)

chromatic's wide-ranging series of instructional and reference books for the Linux administrator continues here with three more titles, this time covering two books which sound aimed at fairly experienced uers, and one more suited to Windows crossover users. (Check out Part One and Part Two of this four-part series if you missed those, especially if you're looking for some more novice-oriented books.)

Don't carry all of these books at once, unless it's the only exercise you're getting. At this many total pages, you're likely to find something you don't know well enough -- unless you've written chunks of the software under discussion.

title Linux Clearly Explained publisher Morgan Kaufmann Included Stuff RedHat Linux 6.0, Corel WordPerfect 8.0 Intended Audience New users interested in Linux for the desktop. Scope Desktop usage with GNOME. Technical Correctness Good. Writing style Easy to read -- informs without intimidating new users. Other I was able to read 300 pages while waiting for a plane. It's quite easy to read while still useful.

Linux Clearly Explained aims squarely at a growing population -- people fed up with Windows, ready to try out the newfangled Linux desktop environments. Author Bryan Pfaffenberger explains the concepts of Linux in the context of the GNOME system, intending to help his readers become productive users. Rather than walking people through wizards (as one might expect from a typical Windows book, for example), he demonstrates how the peculiarities and design decisions of Linux flavor GNOME.

Pfaffenberger starts out with an 80 page history discussion. First, there was Unix. Then came RMS, GNU, and Linus. The advantages and shortcomings of Linux culminate in GNOME's raison d'etre -- and the reason this book exists. The author provides plenty of links to more information, even sneaking in a few pages on Internet support for Linux. Armed with this background, readers can tackle installation.

This part covers the Linux filesystem, lists supported hardware, talks about partitioning schemes, and dual booting. It walks through the RedHat 6.0 installation, briefly describing important packages. If your hardware is supported, you'll have no trouble here.

By far the largest, Running GNOME is the critical section. Use GNOME tools to create a normal user, then start exploring. Learn about GNOME conventions, help, and the file manager. Customize your desktop appearance, behavior, available programs, sounds, and window manager. Tour GNOME, KDE, and X productivity applications, then the basics of managing disks and installing new applications.

Part four helps you set up PPP (through various means) and discusses using Netscape and ftp for common Internet tasks. Finally, part five introduces the command line. It's a quick tour of files, basic shell usage, and permissions, with little on shell scripts. The administration section discusses disk maintenance, backups (a good section), and manually working with user accounts. Finally, an exploration of Midnight Commander demonstrates the powerful utility. The only chapter missing is one on security -- there's much more to learn.

Does it work? Can a new user really learn how to use Linux via GNOME? Pfaffenberger has produced an easy to read and informative book. It's not glaringly cutesy, as some books tend to be, but genuine. Linux's heritage comes through early, helping to explain things that aren't immediately obvious. If readers are inspired to explore things on their own (and the book equips them to do so), they'll do fine. Each chapter has plenty of references -- take the time to explore. (Order "Linux Clearly Explained" from Fatbrain.)

title Red Hat Linux Bible publisher IDG Books Included Stuff RedHat Linux 6.1 CD, with additional source disc. Intended Audience New Linux types, especially those interested in configuring, using, and providing network services. Scope Introduction, installation, some desktop use, administration, and networking. Technical Correctness Too many typos and inaccuracies not to mention. Writing style Technical, but readable. Other If you have enough experience to know when this book is wrong, you might not need it. Still, there's a wealth of information, especially for new Linux networkadministrators.

All books have typos. Most people read over them. When describing Unix command lines to beginners, there's little room for error. This book confuses the shell redirection/concatenation operator (>>) with a pipe, while writing the operator as '>' multiple times. (See page 87.) That's not all, either. IDG needs to provide an errata list for data-clobbering mistakes. Granted, the number of errors I caught (around a dozen) considering the amount of information presented isn't huge, but it makes me question the book's accuracy. (See page 579, which confuses printer stair-stepping with font anti-aliasing.) That's a pity, because the book has a lot going for it.

Physically, the book divides material into the same sections you'd expect. The ubiquitious history and installation sections do their jobs, and the command line introduction is good. GNOME and popular Window Managers get some treatment, as well as generic X configuration. Desktop users will learn how to install applications from RPM and source, run applications remotely with the X protocol, and use DOS, Windows, and Mac emulators. There are plenty of other applications covered, like games, publishing utilities (from groff to StarOffice), to ubiquitous Internet apps. The breadth of programs covered is good.

System administration gets a few chapters, too. Not only is RedHat's Linuxconf tool brought to center stage, there's plenty of distribution-neutral command-line advice. Everything from managing user accounts (including an early taste of NFS home directories) to monitoring system status comes up. Shell programming and init levels are explained in the context of automating repetitive tasks, as well as at and cron. Finally, the backup and security chapters are quite good (very informative!), with a good mix of theory and practicality. Presenting multiple approaches with associated benefits and tradeoffs is valuable.

For those aching to demonstrate Linux's server strengths, part five aims to make you a good intranet member. A brief networking refresher tackles TCP/IP Ethernet setup (even over PLIP), and you'll soon be on the Internet if that's your thing. There's even information on using your Linux box as a router and proxy server.

Of course, Samba and NFS get their due. Surprisingly, so does the mars_nwe NetWare Emulator. The mail server chapter makes a valiant attempt at discussing sendmail's configuration file before admitting that the m4 macros make things much easier and devotes a few pages to majordomo mailing list software. There's a great section on ftp services, detailed configuration information for Apache, and good INN news server instructions. Rounding it all out is a brief NIS chapter, followed by an Appendix giving a brief description of the RPM packages included on the CD-ROM.

With another technical reviewer poring through the manuscript before it went to press, this book would have been better. As it stands, it's good, with plenty of detail about plenty of useful programs, marred by the fact that you're never quite sure that what you've just read is correct. If you're willing to play the part of editor and put up an errata page, you'll have done your good deed for the year.

(Order the "Red Hat Linux Bible" from Fatbrain.)

title Red Hat Linux 6 Unleashed publisher SAMS Included Stuff RedHat Linux 6 CD with installation tutorial videos. Intended Audience Users and administrators already comfortable with the command line. Scope At 1100+ pages, there's plenty of space to cover everything from installation to configuration and programming. Technical Correctness Good. Writing style Varies, depending on author. Most chapters are good, some are excellent. Other This massive tome has plenty of information for configuring Linux as a server.

While Linux continues to attract desktop users, it remains an excellent server platform. Administrators familiar with Unix commands and techniques who want to deploy Linux servers might find this voluminous tome handy. (It makes a hefty LART.) While covering installation and configuration, the book intentionally skips over basic usage -- if you're not already comfortable with editing configuration files or reading man pages, you'll have some catching up to do.

After your system is installed, the first things to set up are mail, ftp, web, and news services. The SMTP and FTP chapters are excellent, with easily the best discussion of sendmail so far in this series. (Steve Shaw, author of both chapters, has his own book, reviewed in the last article of this series.) Beyond simple configuration or a light skimming of the man pages, these chapters give some theory and additional options. DNS and bind receive similarly good treatment. NIS and NFS get a few pages, but more attention is devoted to Samba -- serving both Linux and Windows clients.

The system administration section is also good. Of particular note is the TCP/IP chapter, spanning theory to firewalls. Also covered is basic system administration, PPP setup, backups, and security (good, but short). There's a chapter devoted to RedHat's graphical administration tools -- more than just Linuxconf, to be sure. Of this section, standouts include the basic administration chapter. It's packed with more details than any book so far, and focuses on a networked installation. The GNU utilities chapter describes common programs that might come in handy, if you didn't already know about them.

The last big section is an introduction to the smorgasbord of Linux programming. While thirty pages apiece isn't often enough to get into the real guts of a language or toolkit, it does suffice to help a careful reader begin to understand code she may have to confront one day. Shells (bash/pdksh, tcsh) and gawk get the best treatment, being comparatively simple. A kernel configuration chapter will guide you through kernel modules, recompilation and (hopefully short) troubleshooting. The chapter on automating common tasks can help you keep your workload manageable. Perl examples illustrate network programming, in an informative introduction.

Of course, heavy hitters -- C, C++, Perl, Tcl/Tk, Python, and Java each merit attention. Compiling, makefiles, RCS and CVS are covered in the C/C++ section. It's not the K&R book, but it's a decent overview. Perl fares better, with an introduction to the CPAN, one-liners, and shell access. Motif and LessTif get a chapter, and Tcl/Tk have a nice chapter. Python and Java each have plenty of space, but the former spends more time on actual code while the latter discusses Java technologies and libraries.

This book contains a lot of information (at 1252 pages, it ought to), and most of it is useful. Be aware, though, that many different authors contributed to it, so the writing style varies between chapters. For the most part, they're good, with David Pitts and Shaw standing out. If you want a comprehensive, everything-in-one-spot overview of technologies available for Linux in one spot, and are already familiar with Linux as a user, this book is good. (Order "Red Hat Linux 6 Unleashed" from Fatbrain.)

chromatic's wide-ranging series of instructional and reference books for the Linux administrator continues here with three more titles, this time covering two books which sound aimed at fairly experienced uers, and one more suited to Windows crossover users. (Check out Part One and Part Two of this four-part series if you missed those, especially if you're looking for some more novice-oriented books.)

Don't carry all of these books at once, unless it's the only exercise you're getting. At this many total pages, you're likely to find something you don't know well enough -- unless you've written chunks of the software under discussion.

title Linux Clearly Explained publisher Morgan Kaufmann Included Stuff RedHat Linux 6.0, Corel WordPerfect 8.0 Intended Audience New users interested in Linux for the desktop. Scope Desktop usage with GNOME. Technical Correctness Good. Writing style Easy to read -- informs without intimidating new users. Other I was able to read 300 pages while waiting for a plane. It's quite easy to read while still useful.

Linux Clearly Explained aims squarely at a growing population -- people fed up with Windows, ready to try out the newfangled Linux desktop environments. Author Bryan Pfaffenberger explains the concepts of Linux in the context of the GNOME system, intending to help his readers become productive users. Rather than walking people through wizards (as one might expect from a typical Windows book, for example), he demonstrates how the peculiarities and design decisions of Linux flavor GNOME.

Pfaffenberger starts out with an 80 page history discussion. First, there was Unix. Then came RMS, GNU, and Linus. The advantages and shortcomings of Linux culminate in GNOME's raison d'etre -- and the reason this book exists. The author provides plenty of links to more information, even sneaking in a few pages on Internet support for Linux. Armed with this background, readers can tackle installation.

This part covers the Linux filesystem, lists supported hardware, talks about partitioning schemes, and dual booting. It walks through the RedHat 6.0 installation, briefly describing important packages. If your hardware is supported, you'll have no trouble here.

By far the largest, Running GNOME is the critical section. Use GNOME tools to create a normal user, then start exploring. Learn about GNOME conventions, help, and the file manager. Customize your desktop appearance, behavior, available programs, sounds, and window manager. Tour GNOME, KDE, and X productivity applications, then the basics of managing disks and installing new applications.

Part four helps you set up PPP (through various means) and discusses using Netscape and ftp for common Internet tasks. Finally, part five introduces the command line. It's a quick tour of files, basic shell usage, and permissions, with little on shell scripts. The administration section discusses disk maintenance, backups (a good section), and manually working with user accounts. Finally, an exploration of Midnight Commander demonstrates the powerful utility. The only chapter missing is one on security -- there's much more to learn.

Does it work? Can a new user really learn how to use Linux via GNOME? Pfaffenberger has produced an easy to read and informative book. It's not glaringly cutesy, as some books tend to be, but genuine. Linux's heritage comes through early, helping to explain things that aren't immediately obvious. If readers are inspired to explore things on their own (and the book equips them to do so), they'll do fine. Each chapter has plenty of references -- take the time to explore. (Order "Linux Clearly Explained" from Fatbrain.)

title Red Hat Linux Bible publisher IDG Books Included Stuff RedHat Linux 6.1 CD, with additional source disc. Intended Audience New Linux types, especially those interested in configuring, using, and providing network services. Scope Introduction, installation, some desktop use, administration, and networking. Technical Correctness Too many typos and inaccuracies not to mention. Writing style Technical, but readable. Other If you have enough experience to know when this book is wrong, you might not need it. Still, there's a wealth of information, especially for new Linux networkadministrators.

All books have typos. Most people read over them. When describing Unix command lines to beginners, there's little room for error. This book confuses the shell redirection/concatenation operator (>>) with a pipe, while writing the operator as '>' multiple times. (See page 87.) That's not all, either. IDG needs to provide an errata list for data-clobbering mistakes. Granted, the number of errors I caught (around a dozen) considering the amount of information presented isn't huge, but it makes me question the book's accuracy. (See page 579, which confuses printer stair-stepping with font anti-aliasing.) That's a pity, because the book has a lot going for it.

Physically, the book divides material into the same sections you'd expect. The ubiquitious history and installation sections do their jobs, and the command line introduction is good. GNOME and popular Window Managers get some treatment, as well as generic X configuration. Desktop users will learn how to install applications from RPM and source, run applications remotely with the X protocol, and use DOS, Windows, and Mac emulators. There are plenty of other applications covered, like games, publishing utilities (from groff to StarOffice), to ubiquitous Internet apps. The breadth of programs covered is good.

System administration gets a few chapters, too. Not only is RedHat's Linuxconf tool brought to center stage, there's plenty of distribution-neutral command-line advice. Everything from managing user accounts (including an early taste of NFS home directories) to monitoring system status comes up. Shell programming and init levels are explained in the context of automating repetitive tasks, as well as at and cron. Finally, the backup and security chapters are quite good (very informative!), with a good mix of theory and practicality. Presenting multiple approaches with associated benefits and tradeoffs is valuable.

For those aching to demonstrate Linux's server strengths, part five aims to make you a good intranet member. A brief networking refresher tackles TCP/IP Ethernet setup (even over PLIP), and you'll soon be on the Internet if that's your thing. There's even information on using your Linux box as a router and proxy server.

Of course, Samba and NFS get their due. Surprisingly, so does the mars_nwe NetWare Emulator. The mail server chapter makes a valiant attempt at discussing sendmail's configuration file before admitting that the m4 macros make things much easier and devotes a few pages to majordomo mailing list software. There's a great section on ftp services, detailed configuration information for Apache, and good INN news server instructions. Rounding it all out is a brief NIS chapter, followed by an Appendix giving a brief description of the RPM packages included on the CD-ROM.

With another technical reviewer poring through the manuscript before it went to press, this book would have been better. As it stands, it's good, with plenty of detail about plenty of useful programs, marred by the fact that you're never quite sure that what you've just read is correct. If you're willing to play the part of editor and put up an errata page, you'll have done your good deed for the year.

(Order the "Red Hat Linux Bible" from Fatbrain.)

title Red Hat Linux 6 Unleashed publisher SAMS Included Stuff RedHat Linux 6 CD with installation tutorial videos. Intended Audience Users and administrators already comfortable with the command line. Scope At 1100+ pages, there's plenty of space to cover everything from installation to configuration and programming. Technical Correctness Good. Writing style Varies, depending on author. Most chapters are good, some are excellent. Other This massive tome has plenty of information for configuring Linux as a server.

While Linux continues to attract desktop users, it remains an excellent server platform. Administrators familiar with Unix commands and techniques who want to deploy Linux servers might find this voluminous tome handy. (It makes a hefty LART.) While covering installation and configuration, the book intentionally skips over basic usage -- if you're not already comfortable with editing configuration files or reading man pages, you'll have some catching up to do.

After your system is installed, the first things to set up are mail, ftp, web, and news services. The SMTP and FTP chapters are excellent, with easily the best discussion of sendmail so far in this series. (Steve Shaw, author of both chapters, has his own book, reviewed in the last article of this series.) Beyond simple configuration or a light skimming of the man pages, these chapters give some theory and additional options. DNS and bind receive similarly good treatment. NIS and NFS get a few pages, but more attention is devoted to Samba -- serving both Linux and Windows clients.

The system administration section is also good. Of particular note is the TCP/IP chapter, spanning theory to firewalls. Also covered is basic system administration, PPP setup, backups, and security (good, but short). There's a chapter devoted to RedHat's graphical administration tools -- more than just Linuxconf, to be sure. Of this section, standouts include the basic administration chapter. It's packed with more details than any book so far, and focuses on a networked installation. The GNU utilities chapter describes common programs that might come in handy, if you didn't already know about them.

The last big section is an introduction to the smorgasbord of Linux programming. While thirty pages apiece isn't often enough to get into the real guts of a language or toolkit, it does suffice to help a careful reader begin to understand code she may have to confront one day. Shells (bash/pdksh, tcsh) and gawk get the best treatment, being comparatively simple. A kernel configuration chapter will guide you through kernel modules, recompilation and (hopefully short) troubleshooting. The chapter on automating common tasks can help you keep your workload manageable. Perl examples illustrate network programming, in an informative introduction.

Of course, heavy hitters -- C, C++, Perl, Tcl/Tk, Python, and Java each merit attention. Compiling, makefiles, RCS and CVS are covered in the C/C++ section. It's not the K&R book, but it's a decent overview. Perl fares better, with an introduction to the CPAN, one-liners, and shell access. Motif and LessTif get a chapter, and Tcl/Tk have a nice chapter. Python and Java each have plenty of space, but the former spends more time on actual code while the latter discusses Java technologies and libraries.

This book contains a lot of information (at 1252 pages, it ought to), and most of it is useful. Be aware, though, that many different authors contributed to it, so the writing style varies between chapters. For the most part, they're good, with David Pitts and Shaw standing out. If you want a comprehensive, everything-in-one-spot overview of technologies available for Linux in one spot, and are already familiar with Linux as a user, this book is good. (Order "Red Hat Linux 6 Unleashed" from Fatbrain.)

You've all probably heard the great scientific folktale about Einstein's brain, removed mysteriously during the great man's autopsy and hidden away for four decades? It's almost all true, and Michael Paterniti not only tracked the brain down, but drove across country with it (in a Tupperware jar) and the odd octogenarian pathologist who took it. This is a great cosmic road trip. You cannot spend a more entertaining few hours this summer than with this book. Driving Mr. Albert: A Trip Across America With Einstein's Brain author Michael Paterniti pages 211 publisher The Dial Press rating 8/10 reviewer Jon Katz ISBN 0-385-33300-5 summary Solving one of the great scientific folktales

You've all heard the scientific folktale about Einstein's brain, right? In l955, during an autopsy after the great man's death, Einsten's brain was removed from his body, ostensibly to be studied for clues to his genius. The tale varies and gets murky after that, but most versions have it that the brain supposedly disappeared and was languishing in some file cabinet or basement.

Some rumors had it that the brain had been cut up and parts resided in various attics and garages around the United States and Canada. Other parts were said to be in the posession of the controversial doctor who performed the autopsy, an odd old man who had vanished from public view. Einstein's family, went the tales, wanted no part of his brain, or of the notion that anything could be learned from it.

Freelance writer Michael Paterniti heard the rumor, along with almost everyone else in America who is interested in science and/or technology, and was fascinated by it. He happened to mention it to his landlord in New Mexico, who didn't even blink. "Yeah," said the landlord, "the guy with the brain lives next to William (Burroughs, the writer) in Kansas. He used to be a pathologist."

So it turns out a shocking percentage of the rumor was true and soon thereafter, Paterniti tracked down the pathologist and the brain (which was stored in formaldehyde-filled Tupperware jars in New Jersey, and offered to drive him to California, where the doctor wanted to take it to Einstein's grand-daughter. Soon the two were barrelling across America in Paterniti's Buick Skylark headed for California, munching donuts, staying in cheap motels, the brain bouncing along in the trunk.

One of the amazing thing about this story is that it could have been any one of us who heard the rumor, checked it out and ended up with the brain in the trunks of our cars. But not all of us could have written so terrific and haunting a book. "Driving Mr. Albert: A Trip Across America with Einstein's Brain," details the journey of Paterniti and the bizarre octogenarian Dr. Thomas Harvey, the pathologist who impulsively separated Einstein and his brain during the latter's autopsy and hid it in various garages and basements for four decades while lawyers and ethicists fought over what to do about it, then essentially forgot that it existed.

Dr. Harvey, it turns out, is a man of few words, hardly any of them lucid or revealing. Most of them are phrases like "Way-ell, it sure has been a wonderful specimen."

Harvey, no longer a physician, bounced around the country, ending up working in a plastics factory, and can't really give a lucid accounting of why he took the brain or what he really intended to do with it. One gets the sense though that the act -- branded by some as ghoulish thievery -- ended up ruining his life in some way that even he couldn't describe. But those details don't really matter. In the hands of Paterniti, this is a surreal yarn about myth, genius, desire science and the great rewards of curiousity. There's a wonderful hacker quality to Paterniti, a mystery-solver who can't rest until he figures out the puzzle of what happened to the brain bouncing around in the Tupperware jars, the only remaining physical legacy of the century's greatest thinker.

Although nothing all that dramatic happens on the trek across America -- the odd couple stops and visits with the writer Burroughs and Paterniti can't help exclaiming to incredulous strangers all along the way what's in the trunk of the car -- the writing more than carries the yarn, as when Paterniti describes his first encounter with the loopy Dr. Harvey:

"Harvey appeared from the darkness with a big cardboard box in his hands. Then he set it down and, one at a time, pulled out two large glass cookie jars full of what looked to be very chunky chicken soup in a golden broth: Einstein's brain chopped into pieces ranging from the size of a turkey to a dime...And then he noticed me, noticing. Perhaps he saw my fascination, too, or maybe he was mad at himself for revealing so much, after all. Dr. Thomas Harvey had spent these last decades invisible to most of the world. He immediately gathered the cookie jars back up, returned them to the box, and Quasimodoed from the room, leaving me nothing but the after-vision. Flashes of bright light, the chill of a visitation."

As great as the writing, and as funny as Paterniti can be, he also knows he has a poignant tale to tell, about the boundless fascination the world holds for one of its most amazing minds. In what other country in the world could this possibly have happened? And what would Einstein himself have made of the spectacle of his brain tissue being carted all over the country for decades in plastic jars? Harvey, Paterniti comes to believe, just couldn't bear to put the great mind into the ground and hoped that somebody somewhere might unlock the key to Einstein's genius. And the hapless pathologist paid for his impulse, spending the rest of his life in controversy, then obscurity. Paterniti is always conscious of Einstein, his sorry personal life and his eerie presence every step of the way.

"Driving Mr. Albert" was initially published as a magazine piece, and in a narrative sense, it comes up a bit short as a full-fledged book. But it's a great magazine piece, and a surprisingly powerful and entertaining story. Paterniti is a very fine writer, and he showed amazing, almost inspirational, enterprise in getting to Einstein's brain. The story of the brain's final trek -- it does find a home, Harvey's untimately revealed purpose in letting Paterniti into his life -- is a brilliant rendering of one of the most bizarre folktales in modern science. You cannot spend a better afternoon or evening this summer than in reading this book (soon to be a major motion picture, by the way).

purchase this book at fatbrain.

Madman Chromatic (coder, writer, thinker) sheds even more light on the books lurking on store shelves designed to lure, and then snare, new or uncertain users into trying out -- and actually enjoying! -- this wacky "Linux thing." This time around, the texts he's chosen cover the topics of installation and day-to-day operation of a Linux system in greater depth than the Dummies series dares to, but they're still aimed squarely at competent, literate users rather than only at technical gurus. Read on for his insights into Using Linux, Linux Configuration & Installation, and the Linux Essential Reference.

Various Introductory and Reference Books author (Varies by title) pages n/a publisher (Varies by title) rating n/a reviewer chromatic ISBN (Varies by title) summary Three books intended to provide clear guidance and reference to the Linux sysadmin

This week's edition takes a look at three very different books. We have tutorials, theory and techniques, and thick juicy slabs of opts. Step through instructions and stay on the sidewalk, get your hands dirty on your own if you're the trailblazing type, or read up on what you always thought someone should code, if you're stuck at your desk.

Title (Author) Using Linux (Jack Tackett, Jr / Steven Burnett) Publisher, ISBN QUE, 0789717468 Included Stuff none Intended Audience RedHat users. Scope Installation and basic introduction to Linux. Technical Correctness Occasional weird advice. (In one spot, the authors describe a very insecure PATH setting without explaining that it's dangerous.) Writing style Varies with chapter author. Other Two-thirds of the way through the book, there are a number of mildly annoying typesetting errors. Unfortunately, they tend to appear near literal command-lines. Hopefully this will be corrected in a second edition.

Using Linux is a cross between a reference-book and a tutorial. Each chapter takes a different subject (Networking, Working with Hard Drives) and breaks it up into common tasks -- each listed in the copious table of contents and the large index. For example, if you're interested in setting up a file system, you can flip right to page 495 and choose between the RedHat tool or editing /etc/fstab yourself. Though RedHat tools receive a lot of attention, they're not presented as the only way to get things done. In a pinch, you'll find command line equivalents for common tasks given near the graphical description.

Accompanying the chapter text are occasional sidebars. These label figures, give a bit of historical perspective, and dish out useful tidbits of information that don't fit into the normal flow. This is less distracting than the usual approach of goofy icons and inset boxes often found in other books.

What's nice about this book is that it covers more subjects than most of the others. It's thick, but not unreasonably so. It's easy to read, but packed with details. Instead of covering only the handful of things every (home) user will need, the authors add information about removable drives, fax configuration, and file system cleanup, to name a few topics. Also nice is a brief chapter on building installations from source code (both make and Imake style systems) -- there's another world out there beyond RPM.

The task-oriented approach doesn't spend much time on theory, preferring a gentle overview and usage specifics. Obviously, there's more to learn than what's presented, but people more interested in results will prefer this decision. The system administration section really stands out, for an introductory book, and the appendix listing common Linux commands and glossary of terms will come in handy.

All things considered, this is a solid book. The breadth of information is good, and the flow of topics means it's readable from start to finish. Occasional flaws detract slightly, but they're not fatal.

[You can purchase this book at FatBrain.]

Title (Author) Linux Configuration & Installation (Patrick Volkerding, Kevin Reichard, Eric Foster-Johnson) Publisher, ISBN M&T Press, 0764570056 Included Stuff Slackware 3.5 CD-ROM, with extra disk full of additional programs. Intended Audience The do-it-yourself type. No prior Unix knowledge is necessary, though some experience with the command line will come in handy. Scope Installation and introduction to Slackware. Very good overview of the general Linux way to do things. Technical Correctness Quite good. Writing style Easy to read, though still technical. Other The version reviewed is the 4th edition -- somewhat dated (1998), but not out of touch. If there's a newer edition, get it! If not, you won't go astray with this one.

With help from Patrick Volkerding (Slackware creator) himself, this book teaches the do-it-yourself distribution. Expect a tremendous amount of detail -- in the first chapter alone, there are dozens of links to a Web site for more information about Linux and particular hardware. Fully half the book falls under installation and initial configuration issues, though this includes tinkering with your window manager, setting up networking, and recompiling your kernel (topics usually saved for later in other books). The fourth edition added a section on Slackware and portable computing, with pages of links to information on particular laptop models and information on synchronizing your Palm Pilot.

Chapter seven introduces the command line (though people following along will have used it -- with gentle prodding). It's a whirlwind, 50-page tour that explains a bevy of tools and tricks both concisely and thoroughly enough for day to day work. Following that are applications -- text editors, text formatters, graphics viewers, and the like. A short section on system administration covers scheduling, managing accounts, checking performance, but relatively little about security. Finally, chapter ten delves in to Linux programming -- toolkits, languages, tools, and scripts. Maybe the hors d'ouvres will whet your appetite to learn more, or at least help you with the magic "./configure; make; make install;" incantations.

The appendices list additional sources of information and the contents of the CD-ROM. Don't overlook the supplemental information, either -- including 30 pages of extra package description. (If you're going to install Slackware yourself, you ought to know what you need and what additional options there are.)

The only reason to overlook this book is its age, which is a shame. Things haven't changed so much that the knowlege presented is obsolete -- considering that the hands-on Slackware approach often leads to true and deep understanding. Unless you're too intimidated to experiment, you can learn a great deal, even from a two-year-old text.

This book is eminently readable. Readers with some technical background will appreciate the slightly geeky, no nonsense approach, while users new to Unix in general will benefit from the quality explanations. When the publishers see fit to release a 5th edition of this book, it deserves very serious consideration.

[You can purchase this book at FatBrain.]

Title (Author) Linux Essential Reference (Ed Petron) Publisher, ISBN New Riders, Included Stuff none Intended Audience Users and administrators already comfortable with the command line. Scope Common and uncommon commands and switches. If you can imagine a task, it's likely listed here in glorious detail. Technical Correctness Good. Writing style Reference style -- very concise, little prose. Not something you'd read straight through. Trust me. Other The organization by topic here is nice. I've used it a few times already, just to look up something I knew had a command option somewhere.

For the user already familiar with shell basics, running programs, and using 'shutdown' instead of flipping the switch, a reference of commands and options might come in handy. That's the idea behind Linux Essential Reference. If you already know what you want to do but not how to do it, flip to the appropriate section and discover all of the little timesavers and niceties you've always wanted but never knew existed.

What sets this book apart from other works, including the man and info pages, is the excellent organization. Not only are commands grouped by category, the sections are (roughly) arranged according to complexity. (Although if you're not familiar with cd, mv, cp, and at least pico before looking something up, get thee to a tutorial!) For example, the Kernel chapter subsections are, in order, 'Installing New Kernels', 'Using Modules', 'Device Files', 'The /proc Filesystem', and 'Kernel Message Logs.'

Rather than reformatting man pages, the author has gone to quite a bit of work, rewriting often terse descriptions into longer examples. This is helpful with the lesser-known options (ls -T 4). The amount of detail, more than in any other work, makes this a good reference. (If you do read it all the way through, you'll have something to put on your technical reviewing resume.)

As seems to be usual, this book is divided into a user section and an administrator section. Administration gets a stronger treatment here, with information on LAN-specific tools. It's not limited to the home user's point of view, which makes it more useful to system administrator-types. The security chapter, including tcpwrappers and ipchains configuration, stands out as informative, though brief.

This book answers the question, "Okay, now what?" If you're feeling experimentative after polishing off one of the others, but you want a little more direction than the command prompt usually provides, having this book on your desk will prove valuable.

[You can purchase this book from ThinkGeek.]

Madman Chromatic (coder, writer, thinker) sheds even more light on the books lurking on store shelves designed to lure, and then snare, new or uncertain users into trying out -- and actually enjoying! -- this wacky "Linux thing." This time around, the texts he's chosen cover the topics of installation and day-to-day operation of a Linux system in greater depth than the Dummies series dares to, but they're still aimed squarely at competent, literate users rather than only at technical gurus. Read on for his insights into Using Linux, Linux Configuration & Installation, and the Linux Essential Reference.

Various Introductory and Reference Books author (Varies by title) pages n/a publisher (Varies by title) rating n/a reviewer chromatic ISBN (Varies by title) summary Three books intended to provide clear guidance and reference to the Linux sysadmin

This week's edition takes a look at three very different books. We have tutorials, theory and techniques, and thick juicy slabs of opts. Step through instructions and stay on the sidewalk, get your hands dirty on your own if you're the trailblazing type, or read up on what you always thought someone should code, if you're stuck at your desk.

Title (Author) Using Linux (Jack Tackett, Jr / Steven Burnett) Publisher, ISBN QUE, 0789717468 Included Stuff none Intended Audience RedHat users. Scope Installation and basic introduction to Linux. Technical Correctness Occasional weird advice. (In one spot, the authors describe a very insecure PATH setting without explaining that it's dangerous.) Writing style Varies with chapter author. Other Two-thirds of the way through the book, there are a number of mildly annoying typesetting errors. Unfortunately, they tend to appear near literal command-lines. Hopefully this will be corrected in a second edition.

Using Linux is a cross between a reference-book and a tutorial. Each chapter takes a different subject (Networking, Working with Hard Drives) and breaks it up into common tasks -- each listed in the copious table of contents and the large index. For example, if you're interested in setting up a file system, you can flip right to page 495 and choose between the RedHat tool or editing /etc/fstab yourself. Though RedHat tools receive a lot of attention, they're not presented as the only way to get things done. In a pinch, you'll find command line equivalents for common tasks given near the graphical description.

Accompanying the chapter text are occasional sidebars. These label figures, give a bit of historical perspective, and dish out useful tidbits of information that don't fit into the normal flow. This is less distracting than the usual approach of goofy icons and inset boxes often found in other books.

What's nice about this book is that it covers more subjects than most of the others. It's thick, but not unreasonably so. It's easy to read, but packed with details. Instead of covering only the handful of things every (home) user will need, the authors add information about removable drives, fax configuration, and file system cleanup, to name a few topics. Also nice is a brief chapter on building installations from source code (both make and Imake style systems) -- there's another world out there beyond RPM.

The task-oriented approach doesn't spend much time on theory, preferring a gentle overview and usage specifics. Obviously, there's more to learn than what's presented, but people more interested in results will prefer this decision. The system administration section really stands out, for an introductory book, and the appendix listing common Linux commands and glossary of terms will come in handy.

All things considered, this is a solid book. The breadth of information is good, and the flow of topics means it's readable from start to finish. Occasional flaws detract slightly, but they're not fatal.

[You can purchase this book at FatBrain.]

Title (Author) Linux Configuration & Installation (Patrick Volkerding, Kevin Reichard, Eric Foster-Johnson) Publisher, ISBN M&T Press, 0764570056 Included Stuff Slackware 3.5 CD-ROM, with extra disk full of additional programs. Intended Audience The do-it-yourself type. No prior Unix knowledge is necessary, though some experience with the command line will come in handy. Scope Installation and introduction to Slackware. Very good overview of the general Linux way to do things. Technical Correctness Quite good. Writing style Easy to read, though still technical. Other The version reviewed is the 4th edition -- somewhat dated (1998), but not out of touch. If there's a newer edition, get it! If not, you won't go astray with this one.

With help from Patrick Volkerding (Slackware creator) himself, this book teaches the do-it-yourself distribution. Expect a tremendous amount of detail -- in the first chapter alone, there are dozens of links to a Web site for more information about Linux and particular hardware. Fully half the book falls under installation and initial configuration issues, though this includes tinkering with your window manager, setting up networking, and recompiling your kernel (topics usually saved for later in other books). The fourth edition added a section on Slackware and portable computing, with pages of links to information on particular laptop models and information on synchronizing your Palm Pilot.

Chapter seven introduces the command line (though people following along will have used it -- with gentle prodding). It's a whirlwind, 50-page tour that explains a bevy of tools and tricks both concisely and thoroughly enough for day to day work. Following that are applications -- text editors, text formatters, graphics viewers, and the like. A short section on system administration covers scheduling, managing accounts, checking performance, but relatively little about security. Finally, chapter ten delves in to Linux programming -- toolkits, languages, tools, and scripts. Maybe the hors d'ouvres will whet your appetite to learn more, or at least help you with the magic "./configure; make; make install;" incantations.

The appendices list additional sources of information and the contents of the CD-ROM. Don't overlook the supplemental information, either -- including 30 pages of extra package description. (If you're going to install Slackware yourself, you ought to know what you need and what additional options there are.)

The only reason to overlook this book is its age, which is a shame. Things haven't changed so much that the knowlege presented is obsolete -- considering that the hands-on Slackware approach often leads to true and deep understanding. Unless you're too intimidated to experiment, you can learn a great deal, even from a two-year-old text.

This book is eminently readable. Readers with some technical background will appreciate the slightly geeky, no nonsense approach, while users new to Unix in general will benefit from the quality explanations. When the publishers see fit to release a 5th edition of this book, it deserves very serious consideration.

[You can purchase this book at FatBrain.]

Title (Author) Linux Essential Reference (Ed Petron) Publisher, ISBN New Riders, Included Stuff none Intended Audience Users and administrators already comfortable with the command line. Scope Common and uncommon commands and switches. If you can imagine a task, it's likely listed here in glorious detail. Technical Correctness Good. Writing style Reference style -- very concise, little prose. Not something you'd read straight through. Trust me. Other The organization by topic here is nice. I've used it a few times already, just to look up something I knew had a command option somewhere.

For the user already familiar with shell basics, running programs, and using 'shutdown' instead of flipping the switch, a reference of commands and options might come in handy. That's the idea behind Linux Essential Reference. If you already know what you want to do but not how to do it, flip to the appropriate section and discover all of the little timesavers and niceties you've always wanted but never knew existed.

What sets this book apart from other works, including the man and info pages, is the excellent organization. Not only are commands grouped by category, the sections are (roughly) arranged according to complexity. (Although if you're not familiar with cd, mv, cp, and at least pico before looking something up, get thee to a tutorial!) For example, the Kernel chapter subsections are, in order, 'Installing New Kernels', 'Using Modules', 'Device Files', 'The /proc Filesystem', and 'Kernel Message Logs.'

Rather than reformatting man pages, the author has gone to quite a bit of work, rewriting often terse descriptions into longer examples. This is helpful with the lesser-known options (ls -T 4). The amount of detail, more than in any other work, makes this a good reference. (If you do read it all the way through, you'll have something to put on your technical reviewing resume.)

As seems to be usual, this book is divided into a user section and an administrator section. Administration gets a stronger treatment here, with information on LAN-specific tools. It's not limited to the home user's point of view, which makes it more useful to system administrator-types. The security chapter, including tcpwrappers and ipchains configuration, stands out as informative, though brief.

This book answers the question, "Okay, now what?" If you're feeling experimentative after polishing off one of the others, but you want a little more direction than the command prompt usually provides, having this book on your desk will prove valuable.

[You can purchase this book from ThinkGeek.]

Madman Chromatic (coder, writer, thinker) sheds even more light on the books lurking on store shelves designed to lure, and then snare, new or uncertain users into trying out -- and actually enjoying! -- this wacky "Linux thing." This time around, the texts he's chosen cover the topics of installation and day-to-day operation of a Linux system in greater depth than the Dummies series dares to, but they're still aimed squarely at competent, literate users rather than only at technical gurus. Read on for his insights into Using Linux, Linux Configuration & Installation, and the Linux Essential Reference.

Various Introductory and Reference Books author (Varies by title) pages n/a publisher (Varies by title) rating n/a reviewer chromatic ISBN (Varies by title) summary Three books intended to provide clear guidance and reference to the Linux sysadmin

This week's edition takes a look at three very different books. We have tutorials, theory and techniques, and thick juicy slabs of opts. Step through instructions and stay on the sidewalk, get your hands dirty on your own if you're the trailblazing type, or read up on what you always thought someone should code, if you're stuck at your desk.

Title (Author) Using Linux (Jack Tackett, Jr / Steven Burnett) Publisher, ISBN QUE, 0789717468 Included Stuff none Intended Audience RedHat users. Scope Installation and basic introduction to Linux. Technical Correctness Occasional weird advice. (In one spot, the authors describe a very insecure PATH setting without explaining that it's dangerous.) Writing style Varies with chapter author. Other Two-thirds of the way through the book, there are a number of mildly annoying typesetting errors. Unfortunately, they tend to appear near literal command-lines. Hopefully this will be corrected in a second edition.

Using Linux is a cross between a reference-book and a tutorial. Each chapter takes a different subject (Networking, Working with Hard Drives) and breaks it up into common tasks -- each listed in the copious table of contents and the large index. For example, if you're interested in setting up a file system, you can flip right to page 495 and choose between the RedHat tool or editing /etc/fstab yourself. Though RedHat tools receive a lot of attention, they're not presented as the only way to get things done. In a pinch, you'll find command line equivalents for common tasks given near the graphical description.

Accompanying the chapter text are occasional sidebars. These label figures, give a bit of historical perspective, and dish out useful tidbits of information that don't fit into the normal flow. This is less distracting than the usual approach of goofy icons and inset boxes often found in other books.

What's nice about this book is that it covers more subjects than most of the others. It's thick, but not unreasonably so. It's easy to read, but packed with details. Instead of covering only the handful of things every (home) user will need, the authors add information about removable drives, fax configuration, and file system cleanup, to name a few topics. Also nice is a brief chapter on building installations from source code (both make and Imake style systems) -- there's another world out there beyond RPM.

The task-oriented approach doesn't spend much time on theory, preferring a gentle overview and usage specifics. Obviously, there's more to learn than what's presented, but people more interested in results will prefer this decision. The system administration section really stands out, for an introductory book, and the appendix listing common Linux commands and glossary of terms will come in handy.

All things considered, this is a solid book. The breadth of information is good, and the flow of topics means it's readable from start to finish. Occasional flaws detract slightly, but they're not fatal.

[You can purchase this book at FatBrain.]

Title (Author) Linux Configuration & Installation (Patrick Volkerding, Kevin Reichard, Eric Foster-Johnson) Publisher, ISBN M&T Press, 0764570056 Included Stuff Slackware 3.5 CD-ROM, with extra disk full of additional programs. Intended Audience The do-it-yourself type. No prior Unix knowledge is necessary, though some experience with the command line will come in handy. Scope Installation and introduction to Slackware. Very good overview of the general Linux way to do things. Technical Correctness Quite good. Writing style Easy to read, though still technical. Other The version reviewed is the 4th edition -- somewhat dated (1998), but not out of touch. If there's a newer edition, get it! If not, you won't go astray with this one.

With help from Patrick Volkerding (Slackware creator) himself, this book teaches the do-it-yourself distribution. Expect a tremendous amount of detail -- in the first chapter alone, there are dozens of links to a Web site for more information about Linux and particular hardware. Fully half the book falls under installation and initial configuration issues, though this includes tinkering with your window manager, setting up networking, and recompiling your kernel (topics usually saved for later in other books). The fourth edition added a section on Slackware and portable computing, with pages of links to information on particular laptop models and information on synchronizing your Palm Pilot.

Chapter seven introduces the command line (though people following along will have used it -- with gentle prodding). It's a whirlwind, 50-page tour that explains a bevy of tools and tricks both concisely and thoroughly enough for day to day work. Following that are applications -- text editors, text formatters, graphics viewers, and the like. A short section on system administration covers scheduling, managing accounts, checking performance, but relatively little about security. Finally, chapter ten delves in to Linux programming -- toolkits, languages, tools, and scripts. Maybe the hors d'ouvres will whet your appetite to learn more, or at least help you with the magic "./configure; make; make install;" incantations.

The appendices list additional sources of information and the contents of the CD-ROM. Don't overlook the supplemental information, either -- including 30 pages of extra package description. (If you're going to install Slackware yourself, you ought to know what you need and what additional options there are.)

The only reason to overlook this book is its age, which is a shame. Things haven't changed so much that the knowlege presented is obsolete -- considering that the hands-on Slackware approach often leads to true and deep understanding. Unless you're too intimidated to experiment, you can learn a great deal, even from a two-year-old text.

This book is eminently readable. Readers with some technical background will appreciate the slightly geeky, no nonsense approach, while users new to Unix in general will benefit from the quality explanations. When the publishers see fit to release a 5th edition of this book, it deserves very serious consideration.

[You can purchase this book at FatBrain.]

Title (Author) Linux Essential Reference (Ed Petron) Publisher, ISBN New Riders, Included Stuff none Intended Audience Users and administrators already comfortable with the command line. Scope Common and uncommon commands and switches. If you can imagine a task, it's likely listed here in glorious detail. Technical Correctness Good. Writing style Reference style -- very concise, little prose. Not something you'd read straight through. Trust me. Other The organization by topic here is nice. I've used it a few times already, just to look up something I knew had a command option somewhere.

For the user already familiar with shell basics, running programs, and using 'shutdown' instead of flipping the switch, a reference of commands and options might come in handy. That's the idea behind Linux Essential Reference. If you already know what you want to do but not how to do it, flip to the appropriate section and discover all of the little timesavers and niceties you've always wanted but never knew existed.

What sets this book apart from other works, including the man and info pages, is the excellent organization. Not only are commands grouped by category, the sections are (roughly) arranged according to complexity. (Although if you're not familiar with cd, mv, cp, and at least pico before looking something up, get thee to a tutorial!) For example, the Kernel chapter subsections are, in order, 'Installing New Kernels', 'Using Modules', 'Device Files', 'The /proc Filesystem', and 'Kernel Message Logs.'

Rather than reformatting man pages, the author has gone to quite a bit of work, rewriting often terse descriptions into longer examples. This is helpful with the lesser-known options (ls -T 4). The amount of detail, more than in any other work, makes this a good reference. (If you do read it all the way through, you'll have something to put on your technical reviewing resume.)

As seems to be usual, this book is divided into a user section and an administrator section. Administration gets a stronger treatment here, with information on LAN-specific tools. It's not limited to the home user's point of view, which makes it more useful to system administrator-types. The security chapter, including tcpwrappers and ipchains configuration, stands out as informative, though brief.

This book answers the question, "Okay, now what?" If you're feeling experimentative after polishing off one of the others, but you want a little more direction than the command prompt usually provides, having this book on your desk will prove valuable.

[You can purchase this book from ThinkGeek.]

Some writers on the Free software movement speak as if the kernel hackers, security experts and fanatical sysadmins who drive Linux and other Free operating systems are martyrs -- folks who may code out of love, but who ultimately are on what could be seen as a suicide mission rather than a milk run. The typical free software guy (and in fact, the typical software guy, period ) gets treated as a one-dimensional character, with the projects they work on reduced to meaningless blurbs. Peter Wayner knows better -- he takes to heart the notion that history is written by the winners, and proceeds to write history. Read on to see why I'm recommending his new book Free For All to my father. A correction: Theo de Raadt (whose name I had originally mispelled, sorry Theo) pointed out that I'd slipped in "Open" where I should have said "Net." Apologies to all involved in each.

Free For All author Peter Wayner pages 340 publisher Harper Business rating 8.2 reviewer timothy ISBN 0066620503 summary From-the-trenches history in the making, a survey course on how, why and when Free software took over.

Future Perfect Free For All's subtitle ("How Linux and the Free software movement undercut the high-tech titans") well expresses the attitude that Wayner lets filter through every page of this book. Wayner writes as if from the perspective of a computer historian 10 or 20 years from now, mentioning casually the tools and methods which allowed (past tense) the Free software movement to flourish as if dismissing in many cases the overwhelming dominance of closed software today. Most desktops, it's true, are running some version of Windows, and despite the popularity of Linux and the BSDs, there are still chickens left to hatch before the count. But in the 1920s and 30s, there were still plenty of horsecarts, too: Wayner proclaims that the internal combustion engine of the day is the virtual engine under the hood of our computers.

It's a forgiveable act of hubris, though, considering that Wayner also points out the plentiful high ground that Free software has newly gained, recently regained, or never lost claim to, and it's a convincing list. Slashdot readers, for instance, may know that Apache serves the majority of today's Web sites, but does the average Barnes and Noble browser, even in the computer section, know just what Apache is? This book wastes few opportunities to point out areas where Free software is the obvious best choice, not just a grin-and-bear-it low-cost alternative to something better.

Historical perspective Wayner sets most of this book in the 1990s -- the reference to Linux in the title makes that a clear and sensible decision -- but makes frequent and welcome trips back in time to temporal locations from the age of Big Iron in the 1960s to Richard Stallman's 1984 GNU Manifesto. To those of us born in the 1970s or later, these episodes serve as welcome reminders of all the history we can learn of only through such means.

To that end, the book offers details and anecdotes about the creation of the Unix and Unixlike operating systems that are on the rise now, from the post-breakup copyright battles over the original source code of AT&T Unix to the serendipitous ignorance of Finnish student Linus Torvalds, who didn't know that there already was all-but-the-polish of a free Unix system already available.

It's not the case, though, that the entire Free software community is presented as one big happily family. More like an extended family with skeletons in several closets and some bickering both around the dinner table and otherwise, but for all that a generally harmonious bunch. The issue of licensing, and of hotly debated terms which might seem to an outsider hopelessly semantic, are raised at several points. Wayner contrasts Richard M. Stallman's vision of Free software (whether you see it as humble or grandiose) with the viewpoints of Eric Raymond, Bruce Perens and others. Stallman and the GNU project seem to get the lion's share of attention, with the obvious justification that without the GNU tools, a free Unix workalike would seem like a quixotic dream.

The time-shuttling approach that he takes with each chapter brings a benefit that makes this book an easy one to put down (for a few minutes, at least) -- it means that each chapter stands as an interesting monologue on some aspect of the Free software movement, and can be read as an enjoyable short essay. Taken together though, the chapters don't just entertain and milk nostalgia from silicon: they make a good case for the premise of the title. Ironically (if you see it this way) this means undercutting some of the arguments that Microsoft is a monopoly. Perhaps Microsoft was a monopoly, but the cut is made and the tree is toppling.

Interestingly, among the copious information about the origins and present state of the various BSD projects (Net, Free, Open), Wayner speaks a good deal about the whispered-about (and shouted-about) animosity between OpenBSD project leader Theo de Raadt and the developers of the other BSD varieties. While de Raadt spoke openly with Wayner, and the NetBSD developers seemingly did not, what ermerges is a slightly more interesting picture than I've seen before about this, and it confirms some positive things I've heard about the whole OpenBSD project. (A project which I think has caused improvement in many other software projects with its unyielding security focus.)

Minor Gripes Wayner's writing is informal -- no stiff upper lip here. That's not a bad thing, but the prose slips regularly into casualisms and jargon, parts of which work better than others, but none so distracting to detract greatly from the story being told. (As if I'm one to complain about that!)

The other problem I have with the storytelling in Free For All is the litany of rhetorical descriptions of hackers which are introduced in order to refute them for no clear reason. No, not all hackers have long scruffy beards; Yes, RMS and Alan Cox do. No, not all hackers are pale and anti-social; Yes, some of them are. Maybe its just that I've heard these things said before so many times that it just doens't seem relevant any more. Perhaps many of these "human interest" elements really will fascinate readers who'd not considered them before.

Recommended Reading Who should read this book? I mentioned that I'm recommending it to my father, for the simple reason that this is one of the few books I've seen which are down-to-earth readable but still meaty enough to walk away from with a satisfied feeling, not like you've just been Dummied.

In fact, it reminds me of Stephen Levy's Hackers, in part because it shares a sense of exhiliration and admiration for the people involved, as well as a freewheeling, back-to-the-story-in-progress story telling style. The hackers who make the BSD projects run, and the Linux kernel expand and shrink as code is cultivated and reined in, may be inspired software geniuses. But they share in the unglamorous, painstaking dogwork as well as the glory, and beam a kind of virulent enthuiasm for the cool stuff they're constantly on the cusp of. Wayner gives an over-the-shoulder peek at what that means which doesn't require a C.S. degree, and serves as its own character glossary.

Add this book to the pile that includes Hackers, The Secret Guide to Computers and Open Sources for readable, fascinating, fun computer history that's also relevant for your pointy headed boss.

You can purchase Free for All at Fatbrain.