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honestpuck writes "When reading the foreword of Rails Cookbook I felt a strong kinship with Zed Shaw, I too have fond memories of the first edition of Perl Cookbook and the way I relied on it once I'd taken the training wheels off. Since that one I have relied on several of the O'Reilly Cookbook series. It is only when I discard the early tutorial and dive in the deep end with a "cookbook" on my desk that I really start to learn proficiency." Read the rest of honestpuck's review. Rails Cookbook author Rob Orsini pages 514 publisher O'Reilly rating 7 reviewer honestpuck ISBN 0596527314 summary for programmers who know something about web development but are early in their use of Rails,

I felt timorous and unsure when I finished Agile Web Development with Rails, a marvelous tutorial that introduced me to my first real web development framework (I must have enjoyed it, I just bought the second edition). Since I have volunteered to develop a fairly large and complex web application in Rails I awaited the arrival of my copy of Rails Cookbook with hopeful anticipation and bated breath.

Rob Orsini, his fellow contributors (15 in all) and the team at O'Reilly have once again delivered. Compared to the previous titles in the series I've owned Rails Cookbook seems to have fewer recipes but as it is tackling an entire application framework and some serious issues, some of the solutions and discussions run a lot longer. The book is targeted at programmers who know something about web development but are early in their use of Rails, though it should be helpful to all Rails developers.

The book starts with tackling issues of installation and getting development tools installed in the first two chapters. Despite already deploying a couple of simple Rails apps I found that there was the odd useful tip in these chapters. The book then covers each of the three main sections of Rails; Active Record, Action View and Action Controller. The rest of the book goes on with large chapters on testing, Javascript, debugging, performance and hosting and deployment. Along the way it also covers REST, Action Mailer, security, plug-ins and graphics.

The extremely large section on Active Record was to me the most useful. I seem to spend an inordinate percentage of my Rails coding time with Active Record and it contains a large part of Rails power so I appreciated the size of this chapter. By contrast the chapter on graphics is almost entirely unread.

It seems obvious that this book should be compared to Pragmatic's Rails Recipes. The first point of difference is that Rails Cookbook covers installation and setup. The second point is that is 'Recipes' covers Rails 1.1 while 'Cookbook' targets the brand new Rails 1.2. As a project fairly new on the scene Rails is a fast moving target so the six months between the two books makes a difference. Both books have excellent coverage of the various aspects of Rails, with a great deal of overlap. 'Recipes' has more, shorter pieces while 'Cookbook' tends towards longer pieces with more discussion. 'Cookbook' is also more general, with more recipes more likely to be useful in every Rails project you write.

The style is different between the two. Here Cookbook comes off second best, it feels as though tightly edited by a number of hands and ends up lacking personality; functional but cold compared to Recipes. The writing, however, is good. It's easily read, at times it feels like a good textbook. The layout is clean, it is easy to find the information you need from each recipe when you want.

With almost all "cookbook" style books I seem to be left feeling that a number of the recipes are just a little too obvious and covered well in beginner tutorials. There is some of this in Rails Cookbook, most notably the first two chapters, but overall the book will be useful to any beginner to intermediate Rails programmer. Personally I had a couple of moments where I read a tip and wanted to scream as it demonstrated and explained in a few short sentences and half a page of code what had taken me hours to discover for myself.

The "Cookbook" series all seem to be books worth the price and shelf space. This one is no exception. I'd give it three out of five with an extra half for its timely information on Rails 1.2 and would recommend it for all Rails programmers from the absolute beginner through to all but the most experienced. If you already have a copy of 'Recipes' and are happy with it then you might want to stick with that till either volume is updated for the next major revision of Rails, otherwise you will almost certainly appreciate a copy of Rails Cookbook.

You can purchase Rails Cookbook from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

honestpuck (Tony Williams) writes "I have to admit that I can bristle at books that try to preach, so Perl Best Practices was on a hiding to nothing when I came to review it. I also have to admit to being torn about the author -- after all, he is one of those poor fools who insist on living in cold, unenlightened Melbourne, while I live in vastly superior Sydney. On the other hand, how can I dislike a man who manages to place a quote that involves my favourite character, Lady Bracknell. from my favourite comic play, 'The Importance of Being Earnest,' in the first few pages of his book?" Read on for Williams' review. Perl Best Practices author Damian Conway pages 492 publisher O'Reilly Media rating 8 reviewer Tony Williams ISBN 0596001738 summary Methods of coding to improve your Perl software

Many years ago I read a marvelous article that explained why so may early editors and word processors supported the keyboard commands of WordStar. When it's first born, a baby duck can be easily convinced that almost anything is its mother. The small bird imprints, and it takes a lot to shift its focus. "Baby Duck Syndrome" affects programmers in a number of ways, not just their choice of editor, and Conway is walking right into the middle and arguing with your imprinting on almost every page. A brave man; fortunately he has the street cred to make you at least listen.

So I carefully placed my bias and bigotry in the bottom drawer and prepared myself. I discovered a well-written, informed and engaging book that covers a number of methods (hey, 256 rules, come on Derrick, 2 ^ 8 rules can't be a coincidence!) for improving your Perl software when working in a team. That means all of us when you remember an adage a guru once told me: "Every piece of computer software, no matter how small, involves at least a team of two -- me, and me six months from now when I have to fix it." Conway puts it differently "Always code as if the guy who ends up maintaining your code will be a violent psychopath who knows where you live."

The first chapter outlines the why and where of the book. The why is to improve your code with three goals; robustness, efficiency and maintainability. The chapter finishes with a short exhortation to us to "rehabit." Don't like the word much but I applaud the aim.

Conway is far from timid. He jumps right in to the deep end of the wars, with formatting the appearance of your code. I thought the chapter was brilliantly written until he told me I shouldn't "cuddle else statements," at which point I realized what an ill-informed idiot he was. Oh, hang on. Hey, that almost makes sense. OK, that's a cogent argument for your point of view, Conway. I also have to admit that earlier you did say that your rules for this bit weren't gospel, that if you wanted a variation that was OK, just have a standard and make sure you can support it with a code prettier. Perhaps not a total idiot after all.

After successfully negotiating those shark infested waters, Conway -- obviously a man who knows no fear -- wades into naming conventions. Once again he gives coherent arguments, pointed examples and counterexamples. It all makes sense.

The book's page at O'Reilly has an example chapter and a good description, but no table of contents so here's a quick list of the headings:

1. Best Practices
2. Code Layout
3. Naming Conventions
4. Values and Expressions
5. Variables
6. Control Structures
7. Documentation
8. Built-in Functions
9. Subroutines
10. I/O
11. References
12. Regular Expressions
13. Error Handling
14. Command-Line Processing
15. Objects
16. Class Hierarchies
17. Modules
18. Testing and Debugging
19. Miscellanea

Suffice to say that Conway leaves no corner of Perl uncovered, offering well-reasoned and well-explained advice on improving your Perl code.

The book is also well-written and well-edited. The order of topics covered is a sensible one, and the book is appropriately structured. It reads and feels as if you are being given the wisdom from many a hard-won battle coding and maintaining Perl code.

My one complaint is that I found it dry: you are reading through pages of argument and examples without much relief. Perhaps this book might be best digested in a number of chunks, making the effort to use the ideas from each chunk for a while before moving on to the next.

Every so often I read a book from O'Reilly that makes me fear that they are slipping, then along comes a book like Perl Best Practices, and I'm reminded that when it comes to Perl, O'Reilly authors wrote the book. Once you've rushed through Larry's book and learnt the finer points with Schwartz and Phoenix's 'Learning' titles, you may well find that this is the perfect volume to complete your Perl education. If you believe your Perl education is complete, then buy this volume and I'm sure you'll find a lesson or two for yourself.

This book is not really aimed at the occasional Perl programmer (though many of us would probably benefit from its wisdom), but at the person who is professionally programming in Perl and wants to produce better quality, more easily maintained code. For this person Perl Best Practices is a 9/10. For the rest of us, the 'rehabiting' process might be a little too arduous; personally, I'm going to pick a few of the chapters and work on those for a while, maybe naming conventions and variables. For me I'll give it an 8.

You can purchase Perl Best Practices from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

honestpuck writes "With an increasing number of people disenchanted with the flaws, bugs and security holes in the world's most popular web browser (still) switching to the current open source champion, Firefox, it would seem timely to release a volume titled Don't Click on the Blue E. The number of books on Firefox is increasing by leaps and bounds - so far I've read three, fortunately all have their place. Don't Click on the Blue E is O'Reilly's latest entry into the market. It is targeted at the absolute beginner. I found it to have the usual O'Reilly quality: well-written, well-edited and well-designed." Read on for the rest of Williams' review. Don't Click on the Blue E author Scott Granneman pages 254 publisher O'Reilly rating 7 reviewer Tony Williams ISBN 0596009399 summary Good guide to Firefox for beginners with some minor flaws

That said, it is not without flaws. I hate most of the first chapter and see it as a waste of space. 35 pages mainly of history (some of the Net, and some of browsers) is almost self-indulgent. Certainly almost all buyers would not miss the information if it was reduced to two or three pages in the introduction or first chapter. There is some useful reasoning to justify the shift from Internet Explorer to Firefox at the end, but the rest needs a good going over with the red pencil.

I also found that for a book titled Don't Click on the Blue E, there was not enough information of the "in IE you did it this way, and in Firefox you do it this way" type. The book is a good entry-level guide to Firefox but I would have hoped for more guidance for people switching from IE to Firefox.

I'm getting a little ahead of myself. First, it has to be said that O'Reilly have done away with their usual cover and given us a bright orange cover with a graphic of a fox about to bite a familiar icon composed of a blue 'e.' I like it, this is definitely an O'Reilly book targeted outside their usual technically savvy market and deserves a different cover style.

The book feels light, despite the 250 pages, and is split into only five chapters and two appendices. As you can imagine, each chapter is a huge chunk of information, but the light writing style combined with a look that is heavy on illustrations and sidebars make it an easy read. Once again, this is a departure from O'Reilly's usual style but well suited to the likely reader. I also thought that they had used a lower grade paper than usual, probably to keep the retail cost down. As this is not a reference book to be kept for years, I didn't see this as a flaw.

I've already mentioned the first chapter; the second is devoted to installing and configuring Firefox. This is full of useful information and good illustrations to explain how to set up the browser in detail. The third chapter is how to use and manage it, covering topics such as the toolbars, the search box and adding engines, the menus, tabbed browsing and pop up blocking. The fourth deals with the add ons - plugins, themes and extensions. The final chapter is a bit of a grab bag. Titled "Advanced Firefox," it covers such topics as Live Bookmarks and searching in pages. Each chapter has a well-researched and useful "Where to Learn More" section pointing to web sites with tools and information.

This is probably not a book for the average Slashdot reader. You may like to buy a copy so you can lend it to Uncle Bob or Aunt Susan after you spend another wasted afternoon cleaning the viruses and spyware out of their PC, but I doubt you'll want a copy for yourself. Taken as a whole this is a well-written, thorough book for the absolute beginner with one or two minor flaws. Despite the book's flaws I still find myself recommending it. If you would like a better look yourself, O'Reilly have their usual page of contents and two excerpts from the book.

I would recommend this book over Firefox and Thunderbird Garage for more serious readers. Garage has an occasional quirky tone that might annoy some -- for others it might be a benefit to learning. It also has a little more detail in some areas. Of course if you want a book that covers both applications, then Garage is the only book I've found. Don't Click on the Blue e is a good volume for a beginner who doesn't need the coverage of both Firefox and Thunderbird of the "Garage" book and would like a little more detail.

You can purchase Don't Click on the Blue e from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

honestpuck writes "It might seem a little strange to associate Cisco Press with a book for newcomers to home networking but Cisco are now the proud owners of Linksys and have a large place in this market. Therefore a book like this may not seem so out of place." Read on for the rest of honestpuck's review. Home Networking Simplified author Jim Doherty, Neil Anderson pages 416 publisher Cisco Press rating 7 reviewer Tony Williams ISBN 1587201364 summary Good book for an absolute beginner

When reviewing this book, the first argument you might have with the authors is exactly where to start. The authors have decided to start earlier than I feel necessary, with hooking your computer up with a dial-up ISP, something most ISPs already provide with more specific detail than can be given in this volume. There are strong arguments for having it all in one place, though, and I have to allow for that in this review.

That said, there are some simplifications and throwaway lines toward the book's beginning that I did feel were unnecessary. A good example is the discussion of bits, bytes, megabytes and gigabytes. Having defined a kilobyte as 1024 bytes, the authors then define a megabyte as 1000 kilobytes. They also claim not to understand why it is 1024 rather than 1000. Either our authors are lying, attempting a poor joke, or they are betraying an unforgivable ignorance of the binary number system. In any case it is a poor choice of throwaway line.

Once over that, there is a lot to like about this book. While it is entirely Windows-centered, so middle of the road it might well be the white line, and reliant on such routine applications as Outlook Express for its examples, it is incredibly detailed on not just what to do but why you do it.

It also has a huge number of screenshots, mainly showing the various dialog boxes and the options you need to set. Given the overabundance of dialogs in most Windows wizards, the screenshot barrage is probably overkill for many readers. Taken together with the highly approachable language and writing style, though, this makes for a book that is perfect for the absolute beginner to networking.

The drawback of the routine, middle-of-the-road approach is that the average person will quickly outgrow this book. Once you decide to use Firefox instead of Explorer and Eudora instead of Outlook, or perhaps integrate a Linux box or Mac into your home network, then this book is much less helpful.

Within its own limits though, it does cover all the bases in home networking, from connecting via dial-up or through broadband connections to building a wireless home network with shared files and printers. The authors do it in a slow, methodical manner with lots of screen shots and a great deal of explanation.

Part I covers the basics; terminology and connecting to the net. Part II covers a simple home network and file and printer sharing before finishing with broadband connections. Part III takes the network wireless. Part IV covers network security, before the final part covers more esoteric network issues such as IP telephony, media nets and gaming.

The book features frequent interjections from the computer help guys at Geek Squad. While most of these are simplistic, they often contain good advice for the uninitiated. This is a pretty good idea; it allows for some external expertise and works well quite a lot of the time, though some of the interjections came across as a little trite.

If you go to the book page at Cisco Press (which isn't, by the way, at the URL the authors give in the Introduction of the book) you can see a table of contents and an example chapter. The authors have also provided four appendices online; one devoted to binary and hexadecimal numbers, one on MAC address locking for wireless, a shameless plug for the Linksys product line, and a final one devoted to some fairly useless prognostication called "Future Stuff." All in all, I'm not sure they are a totally worthwhile addition to the book; the second on MAC address locking could have been easily added to the book if the editing had been a little tighter.

This is an almost perfect book on home networking for the person who has a Windows computer or two (and nothing else) and knows nothing. It pains me to admit that I have a number of friends who fall into this category and I would have no hesitation in lending them a copy of this book. Given the cost, I'm not sure I'd recommend this book to everyone, but I do feel that it is the perfect volume for the local library; borrowing it for two weeks while setting up the home net would be the ideal solution for people like my mate Tim, who (while a pediatric specialist) has trouble hooking up a router, or the neighbours downstairs who can't properly secure a wireless network.

I give this book a nine out of ten for its target audience, the absolute newcomer, but take off two points for the error in the URL given in the introduction and the middle-of-the-road outlook.

You can purchase Home Networking Simplified from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

honestpuck (Tony Williams) writes "If there is an application I run more often than my Web browser, particularly since I also use it as my email client, then I don't know what it might be. As a Firefox convert, that made the arrival of Firefox Hacks from O'Reilly a wonderful surprise." Read on for the rest of Williams' review. Firefox Hacks author Nigel McFarlane pages 368 publisher O'Reilly rating 7 reviewer Tony Williams ISBN 0596009283 summary A good, fairly technical examination of Firefox

The first of several books on the topic of Firefox hacking (two more are due from other publishers in the coming months) Firefox Hacks sets the bar quite high. The author, Nigel McFarlane, has already written a number of other books and articles on similar topics and knows his subject well. He has also enlisted the help of a number of other cognoscenti to cover the more distant corners covered in the book.

A Web browser is a much more complex piece of software than you may realize on first examination, and Firefox -- with the core Gecko engine surrounded by a large wrapper written in XUL and JavaScript -- provides a fertile ground for any number of changes and enhancements. Firefox Hacks does a good job of mapping out the boundaries of this space.

Over the course of the now-traditional 100 hacks found in the same series' other members, this book covers hacking with, on, and to almost all aspects of Firefox and the 'net. The book is broken up into nine chapters, most worth reading by almost everyone -- even the first, "Firefox Basics," taught me a couple of tricks for getting the best out of a slow (and expensive) GPRS connection. The others are "Security," "Installation," "Web Surfing Enhancements," "Power Tools for Web Developers," "Power XML for Web Pages," "Hack the Chrome Ugly," "Hack the Chrome Cleanly," and "Work More Closely With Firefox." I have to say I felt the chapter on Power XML (with 17 of the 100 hacks) was far too general on Web technologies and a little out of place; easily half the hacks in that chapter could have been dropped without any real loss to a reader's understanding of Firefox. I would have preferred more on the browser itself. No insult intended to Seth Dillingham, who wrote four of the hacks I'd throw out -- they are well written and do show how best to deal with Web technologies inside Firefox. I just felt that the space would have been better devoted to more "core" topics.

The first four chapters will be useful to everyone, covering mainly the use of Firefox. From that point, the hacks become increasingly complex as they cover Web development, then modifying the interface, before covering such arcana as creating extensions and custom builds.

I am hard pressed to think of a corner of Firefox not at least touched, though it must be said that the later hacks only touch on the topics covered without really providing a lot of depth. If you get to the last two chapters in the book, performing and expanding on the hacks, you will probably need a great deal more information and assistance to branch out on your own. McFarlane, however, points out the possibilities and gets you started. I didn't feel this was a flaw, just that a line had been drawn, as it must unless the book was going to be three times the size and price.

The book is fairly well written. The quality of writing and editing fall into that middle ground of "fairly good" that one expects from the average O'Reilly book, though not the "excellent" they can sometimes hit. The structure and flow are excellent, making the book readable in large chunks -- enough sticks that when you are back in front of the computer using Firefox you can remember a few things. (Or, sometimes, I remembered that a hint existed and was able to easily find and use the information.)

For a closer look there is a decent page at O'Reilly with links to six example hacks, the table of contents (listing all 100 hacks) and the index.

To conclude, I'm not sure I could recommend this book to everyone; it spends a little too much time a fair way along the technology curve for those who aren't ready for some programming, though for anyone who wants to get their hands dirty and perform some hardcore hacking on their favourite browser, then this is an above-average volume. For someone who is happy as "just a user," this book may be too much: wait and see what else emerges into the Firefox book market -- including O'Reilly's other offering, the soon-to-be-released Don't Click on the Blue E, which they describe as giving "non-technical users a convenient roadmap for switching to a better web browser--Firefox."

Also watch soon for a review of Prentice Hall's Firefox & Thunderbird Garage. You can purchase Firefox Hacks from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

honestpuck (Tony Williams) writes "With Apple's iPods sitting under many Christmas trees come the morning of December 25th, the question arises as to what might sit well next to it. I'm suggesting one of these three books might be just the ticket." Read on for Williams' reviews of three iPod books. (See each) author (See each) pages (See each) publisher (See each) rating (See each) reviewer honestpuck ISBN (See each) summary Three different books on the iPod. The iPod Fan Book iPod Fan Book author Yasukuni Notumi pages 90 publisher O'Reilly Media rating 6 ISBN 0 596 00776 0

The first impression you get of O'Reillys iPod Fan Book is of the packaging. A small volume (about the same height as the iPod and twice the width) it comes with a half-height wrap that has the title and author on the front and the bar code, price and a short contents on the back. Take this off and you have a full-size cover with all the simple elegance of the white iPod itself. The front features the wheel of a 4G iPod and the back has just the Apple logo and "iPod" in Apple's distinctive typeface below it. Remove this second cover and you have a book with a simple design of grey with a white border, the back is blank and the front has the title and the subtitle "Go everywhere with iPod" in small type.

This concentration on design flows through the rest of the book. It is visually stunning; at the same time, effort has been made to make the design useful. The pages are visually tabbed to make it easy to navigate the seven chapters. Each chapter is tabbed in a different color reflected through use of that color within the chapter. Full color pictures and screen dumps add to the legibility and usability of the book.

This book is also full of useful information for the newcomer to the iPod. A small amount is covered in the documentation you get with the iPod, but a great deal is not. Apart from a useful chapter on accessories, the book focuses on methods of getting the best from an iPod and how to organise your music.

To sum up this book: it is a little more style than substance and falls short of being the ideal book for all newcomers to the iPod (and even less for experienced users). On the other hand, the style makes the information that is provided readily accessible for all. I'd say this is the perfect companion to an iPod for a teen-age girl and if my 12-year-old daughter was getting the mini she has been hinting for, a copy of this would be included. (I expect that anyone who spent more than ten minutes deciding on the colour of their mini would probably love the elegance and style of this thin volume.) The price of $14.95 retail makes it a great impulse buy or stocking stuffer.

Hacking iPod + iTunes and iPod & iTunes Hacks

The other two volumes I looked at might seem like two peas in a pod. Scott Knaster's Hacking iPod + iTunes and Hadley Stern's iPod & iTunes Hacks certainly have a similarity in their titles and have almost identical cover prices of a fraction less than $25. The content of about half of each of these volumes covers the same territory, too. There are, however, differences in both the style and content between them. So, how to decide?

Hacking iPod + iTunes author Scott Knaster pages 259 publisher Wiley Publishing rating 8 ISBN 0764569845

For one thing, it seems that Knaster concentrates more on iTunes than the iPod, while Stern seems a closer balance between the two but once again this is only a slight difference.

Both volumes are clearly, and both cover a range of information for users all the way from a relative newcomer (someone who has read the supplied documentation and played around with their iPod and iTunes for a few days) to users who want to push the envelope by installing Linux, hacking iTunes with AppleScript, or finding cheap ways to stream music, to name just a few of the more adventurous topics covered.

The first real difference between the two volumes I found was that Stern has a few more hardware hacks, including some of the surreal sort of hack that often makes these books so much fun -- who would have thought of making your own iPod case out of cardboard, for example? Stern's book is also much more a Macintosh user's book: fully twenty of the one hundred hacks, for example, are devoted to AppleScript. (Not that Knaster ignores AppleScript - he has a chapter almost entirely devoted to it.) Knaster goes into more detail about such "hacks" as podcasting, RSS feeds, email and the iTunes Music Store.

iPod & iTunes Hacks author Hadley Stern pages 417 publisher O'Reilly Media rating 8 ISBN 0596007787

The books also differ in their layout and style. Stern, like all of O'Reilly's "Hacks" book authors, has a slightly dry, informative style with a large number of references to other hacks in the book in the instructions. Knaster's style is a little more tongue-in-cheek, with far fewer references to other parts of the book. Somehow Knaster's style appealed to me a little more, though he seems at times to take a little longer to give you all the information you needed.

Stern's examples are also a little more self-contained, while Knaster tends to give you a start, point you in the right direction and tell you where to go to get all that you needed. The two different ways they approach running Linux on the iPod is typical: Stern uses the uClinux kernel and gives you detailed instructions on how to get that into your iPod using dd, while Knaster uses the Linux on iPod project and gives less detailed instructions. Stern also tells you about Podzilla and a small pointer on developing applications for the iPod while Knaster just leaves you with Linux installed.

Deciding between these two volumes comes down to personal taste, and happily both authors provide samples for you online. For Knaster's book you can go to the Wiley site for Hacking iPod + iTunes , where you can get a table of contents, the index and the first chapter. You can also visit Knaster's site for Hacking iPod + iTunes , where he has a blog on the iPod and pointers to more hacks from the book and some other cool and useful stuff.

For Stern's book you can go to O'Reilly's page for iPod & iTunes Hacks for the usual table of contents and index. It also has a link to a page with ten example hacks, there is also an article on O'Reilly's "Digital Media" website with a further five example hacks.

I'm not going to attempt to decide between these two volumes for you. If you think either might be useful, then have a look at the examples and decide which style suits you best.

You can purchase iPod Fan Book , iPod & iTunes Hacks and Hacking iPod + iTunes from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews. To see your own review here, carefully read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

honestpuck writes "As someone who lives on the wrong side of the world from the best sources of information and shopping I seem to spend a large amount of time online, and a large part of that in a search engine. Web Search Garage promises to let me 'Find it faster with less junk, less hassle.'" Read on for honestpuck's review of Web Search Garage. Web Search Garage author Tara Calishain pages 227 publisher Prentice Hall rating 8 reviewer Tony Williams ISBN 0131471481 summary An excellent guide to search engines and searching for beginner to moderate level

For experienced net researchers and the search-engine savvy among us, the book may well not live up to the promise, though for a large number of 'net users out there it may be just the thing. Where Calishain's previous book, Google Hacks , covered one search engine in great depth in a fairly technical way, this book covers the entire topic of web research in a more friendly manner and language, leaving out the more technical topics of APIs and programming interfaces to spend more time covering advanced search syntaxes and off-the-beaten path search engines and directories.

Calishain has for quite a while written well-researched, informative articles on search engines and research for her weekly newsletter and website ResearchBuzz and the time she has spent on the topic and writing experience have informed this volume. She starts out with the absolute basics, the difference between a search engine (Google) and a searchable subject index (Yahoo) before going on to cover how to get the best out of each.

The book also covers a wide range of search related topics such as finding jobs, local information, multimedia or information about people and Genealogy. Almanacs, dictionaries and encyclopedia get covered. It's hard to think of something missing. Calishain has also taken a great deal of care with her topics. In the section on searching for drugs and medical information, for example, she stresses checking the reliability of your sources.

If you visit Calishain's site for the book at Web Search Garage (which redirects to the book's page at her ResearchBuzz site) there is a link to the table of contents and an example chapter. She also has two 'freebie' articles, 'Four Things Yahoo Can Do that Google Can't' and 'Seven Ways to Save Time Searching' that are further good examples of her writing and the usefulness of the content. She also has an offer for a free six-month subscription to ResearchBuzzExtra, her paid extension to ResearchBuzz.

This volume has gone for breadth instead of depth. That, and the low starting point should make it an ideal beginners book. Since I had on hand my daughter Jessica (a slightly tech-savvy twelve-year-old with a brand-new broadband connection), I lent her my review copy of the book. The response:

"This book is absolutely fantastic and I love it to death! I loved how Tara writes about Google and Yahoo and also about smaller search engines. By reading this book you find out how to find the exact information that you want. Also there are many websites in this book that are very helpful. To make the most of them I wrote them down then later checked them out on the internet. There are heaps of helpful sites for kids and heaps for all ages. Sites for fun and sites for information. I love that it is written as if Tara is talking to you and you are just reading instead of listening. It's a really cool book but if you are going to read it you need to know a little about searching the internet first. A really great book."

Jessica is correct about the language. Tara has written in a light, conversational style that lends itself to quick reading. At the same time either the writing or the editing has been quite tight, the information is packed in. This is a book that needs, indeed deserves, a second read.

The perfect book for the average web user who wants to improve his research skills. I'd put this one in the Christmas stocking for all those people who are getting a new computer or a new broadband connection. That's not to say that the more technical savvy will find nothing in this book, so if you give a copy to someone, either read it first or borrow it back -- you may find it worth enough to get your own copy.

You can purchase Web Search Garage from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

honestpuck writes "Paul Graham has delivered final proof that he is a marvelous essayist with his volume of fairly diverse writings, Hackers & Painters. I first came across his writing with his article, "A Plan For Spam," on using Bayesian filtering to block spam and found it a well written and informative technical article. I next came across him some time later when he wrote an essay on his web site entitled "Hackers & Painters," and once again it was well written, informative and (more importantly for an essayist) thought provoking. I was excited to hear he had published a volume of writing and pleased when O'Reilly sent me a copy, despite my pleas that I did not have time to review it." He found time, to your benefit; read on for honestpuck's review. Hackers & Painters author Paul Graham pages 271 publisher O'Reilly Media rating 8 - May not interest absolutely everyone reviewer Tony Williams ISBN 0596006624 summary Interesting collection of essays, mainly concerned with software

Literature has a long history of the essayist; since those famous theses on the church door at Wittgenstein a well written and thought provoking essay on a topic has provided power and focus for important discussions. Graham has either learnt or discovered the important points in writing a good essay; brevity, quality writing and thought.

In this volume Graham covers a range of topics, though all are, understandably, centered on computers. Why nerds are unpopular at school, and what this demonstrates about our eduction system; why program in Lisp; the importance of "startups", programming languages and web development are all touched on. At the same time he covers topics less techno-centric such as heretical thinking and speech. wealth creation and unequal income distribution.

I found myself disagreeing with him often while reading the book, though every time I did I found his argument compelling. I agree with Andy Hertzfeld, quoted on the back cover of the book, "He may even make you want to start programming in Lisp." Graham is politically more conservative and right wing than me, he is also a fervent supporter of Lisp, while I'm a C and Perl advocate. It is telling that at no time did I find myself railing at his views, rather I was reading his arguments and giving them meme space. A good sign of a writer that does not indulge in unnecessary or extreme polemic.

Graham also tends to concentrate on a single point in each essay, allowing for both good coverage and a brief essay. Where he covers a larger context, such as high school education in "Why Nerds Are Unpopular" that opens the book, he seems to focus on just one or two good points of discussion.

The title essay is the second in the collection and provides an interesting look at hacking and some lessons we can learn by analogy to the work and life of Rennaissance painters, particularly in how it is done and how it can be funded. The third, "What You Can't Say" is social commentary on heretical thinking. Four, "Good Bad Attitude" is on the benefits of breaking rules, both in life and hacking. Five, "The Other Road Ahead", is an excellent look at web based software and why it offers benefits to both user and developer with Graham examining some lessons he learnt while building ViaWeb. Six, "How To Make Wealth", is a look at becoming wealthy and how a 'startup' might be the best way to do it. The seventh, "Mind The Gap", is an argument that we should not worry so much about 'unequal wealth distribution' and why it might actually be a good thing. From this list, and a look at the table of contents (available as a PDF on the O'Reilly page for the book), you can see that Graham covers a wide spectrum while never straying from topics he knows.

If I was forced to identify a weakness in this book it may well be that Graham does not evince doubt or uncertainty in his arguments, on a few occasions he may admit to a narrow view or knowledge but doubt or uncertainty don't seem to enter his field of vision while he writes. This coupled with a single viewpoint makes the book less than all-encompassing in discussion. However, I must admit that it is almost impossible to be anything more with a single author and Graham may well be more honest than others who pick and choose the alternatives they present.

Most of the essays are available at Graham's website, but frankly I am a fan of dead trees and appreciated that this book could be read on the bus or in bed. If you would prefer something you cna read on the bus then a PDF of the second chapter, "Hackers & Painters" is available from the O'Reilly page linked above.

I would recommend this book to anyone who wants to think about a number of topics important to the culture of our tiny corner of the world, computers and the net, while not ignoring the rest.

You can purchase Hackers & Painters from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, carefully read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

Craig Maloney and honestpuck contribute two reviews for your almost-the-weekend reading pleasure: read below for their respective impressions of two dead-tree compendiums of online humor: Bride of the Bastard Operator From Hell and The Best of The Joy of Tech. Bride of the Bastard Operator From Hell, The Best of The Joy of Tech author (see each) pages (see each) publisher (see each) rating (see each) reviewer (see each) ISBN (see each) summary Tech-oriented humor in strip-cartoon form; your mileage and laughter may vary.

Bride of the Bastard Operator From Hell author Simon Travaglia pages 160 publisher Plan 9 rating 8 reviewer Craig Maloney publisher Plan 9 rating 8 reviewer Craig Maloney ISBN 1929462484

> DUMMY MODE ON < If you've been around computers for a while, you've probably read the adventures of The Bastard Operator from Hell (or BOFH). Throughout the years, Simon Travaglia's version of the BOFH has become the canonical version with it's witty and humorously sadistic vignettes. Bride of the Bastard is the third print compilation of the tales of treachery from The Register. (Note: a fourth, Dummy Mode is Forever is now available as well.)

When we last left our heroes...

The Bride of the Bastard Operator From Hell picks up right where The Son of the Bastard Operator from Hell leaves off. The higher-ups of the corporation want this new-fangled video conferencing, and the Bastard is only happy to oblige, with his usual underhanded tricks, and wanting to dabble in his movie making abilities. What follows is 35 hilarious tales which would get anyone outside of a complete bastard from hell fired or sent to prison. Similar to Son of the Bastard, the stories in Bride of the Bastard Operator From Hell are only a few pages apiece, so the casual reader can take in a few without much trouble. The truly voracious reader will look at this book as merely an appetizer. What it lacks in quantity it more than makes up for in quality. There are some real laugh-out-loud moments in this book which have to be read in context in order to appreciate them. Suffice to say, readers of this book won't be disappointed.

Judge this book by its cover

This edition of The Bastard Operator from Hell is expertly illustrated by Jeffrey Darlington, creator of the web-comic "General Protection Fault." Unlike The Son of the Bastard Operator from Hell, Jeffrey illustrated every single story with an illustration that matches the story. It's a welcome change to have a matching illustration to look forward to rather than the handful of sight gags penned in the previous volume by J.D. "Illiad" Frazer.

Plan Nine Publishing does fantastic work laying out their books, and this book is no exception. My only complaint remains from the previous book: no table of contents. Locating a story in this book to come back to is downright difficult, and a table of contents would help out greatly.

So what's in it for me?

If you're a fan of the series, you've probably already read this book. If you're on the fence about this book, get the heck off of it and pick it up before someone applies current to it. If you've never heard of the BOFH, this book would be a fine place to get acquainted with him. Just make sure you watch your step. And don't take the lift.

The Best of The Joy of Tech authors Nitrozac and Snaggy pages 192 publisher O'Reilly rating 7 reviewer honestpuck (Tony Williams) ISBN 0596005784

I must be crazy, I was flamed so badly after my last review of a cartoon book that I had to replace my asbestos review suit. The Best of The Joy of Tech may be worth the risk.

Of course it's easy to enjoy a cartoon book by a pair of cartoonists that share your prejudices. It is obvious from the cartoons that Nitrozac and Snaggy are Macintosh-loving, Linux-leaning, Microsoft-loathing geeks. Hmmm, sounds like me.

Not that Nitrozac and Snaggy are totally one-eyed. They still have a dig at Apple and Macintosh owners along the way. Unlike quite a lot of cartoons about tech, these two also see the more human side, just as likely to make a joke about your cat's relationship to you and the computer as poke fun at LARTing end-users or pointy-headed bosses. Their cartoons are more about living with technology than working with it.

The book reproduces a couple of hundred of 'The Joy of Tech' cartoons from their website, in improved colour and resolution. There are also a small number that are original for the book and some funny marginalia in a couple of spots. It also has the matching JoyPoll and a short comment about the cartoon in a 'JoyWorld' section at the back of the book.

I find a fairly large number of the cartoons repeatedly funny and most of the rest worth a chuckle. These two have a good eye for the whimsical, ironic and downright funny side to a wired in, geek life. They even manage to get in a sly reference to Slashdot with a fake O'Reilly book, "Trolling In a Nutshell" with a troll wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with "FIRST POST" on the cover and an Introduction by 'Anonymous Coward.' There's even a couple of margin cartoons of CmdrTaco and CowboyNeal, just for the Slashdot readers who'd like to know what those two should look like.

Oh, that reminds me. The book has a very Wozniak foreword (by Steve himself) and an introduction by David Pogue that is nowhere near as good as the book (I'm sorry David, but any self-respecting geek [male or female] would rather do almost anything than edit the Windows registry, starting with install a decent operating system and working all the way through to changing jobs -- heck, I'd rather sleep with Jobs.)

The book is broken up into various sections, each with a theme. It starts with "Boot-Up" and continues with "4nim4l cr4ck3rs" (most about cats), the whimsical "Geek Love", "Hacks and Cracks" (I loved the couple who want to buy a house within 50 metres of a war-chalked wall), "Techie-daze," "How about them *nix" (featuring the luscious 'Linux Lass'), "The Joy of Mac," "Who do you want to poke fun at today?" (you'll enjoy the 'Stress Relief Dartboard'), "Sci-Fi The Comic Frontier," and "Do You think I'm Xexy" before finishing with "The World According to Geek" (with 'The Lord of The Root - One Geek To Rule Them All', the two good-looking woman who don't shy away from maths and the Barbie 'DotCom Rescue' CD-ROM game).

If you go to Joy Of Tech you can grab a copy from the authors that has been signed (you even get a chance to ask for a custom inscription) and for an extra fee Nitrozac will even bless your book and attach a lucky sticker. You could go to the O'Reilly page, but since they don't have example cartoons and I don't imagine a cartoon book will ever have errata there isn't much point.

It's not easy to review a cartoon book. Suffice to say that I found the 'toons in this book to be a good variety from amusing through to funny with some that are just a little too true to make me do more than groan. If you've never come across this pair (and they've been slashdotted at least once) then check out the site and if you like the last few examples then the book will not disappoint. Hang on a second, just let me do up my collar - OK, flame away.

You can purchase The Best of the Joy of Tech (and just maybe a used copy of Bride of the Bastard Operator from Hell) from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, carefully read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

honestpuck (Tony Williams) writes "Many years ago I bought a second hand Ford Cortina in dubious condition. I kept it running with the assistance of a marvelous volume purchased at a specialist bookstore that was referred to as "the shop manual." It wasn't much help teaching you how to drive or how to park but if you needed to know how to perform an oil change, flush the radiator or bleed the brakes it told you all the details. Now James Duncan Davidson has given me a shop manual for Macintosh OS X Panther." Read on for Williams' review of the O'Reilly published Running Mac OS X Panther. (And for the curious, here's what google has to say about "Ford Cortina.") Running Mac OS X Panther author James Duncan Davidson pages 292 publisher O'Reilly and Associates rating 8/10 - Excellent book, a little thin on details in a few places reviewer Tony Williams ISBN 0596005008 summary A good shop manual for those running Panther

This volume assumes you know how to use your Mac, how to perform all the routine changes that are easily accomplished with the GUI. Davidson also assumes you don't want to know how to get a movie running as your desktop, or get an Exposé blob floating on the screen or any of the usual sort of 'hacks' or 'hints.' What he gives is a good guide to lifting the hood and performing serious mechanical work or tweaking the performance of your Mac with enough background information so that you can feel confident taking your own steps.

It was good after a few near misses to read an O'Reilly book that was once again well written, well edited, tight and crammed full of information pitched at just the right level. Davidson has done an excellent job with this book.

Davidson starts with a little history, and from the viewpoint he presents, this is not a waste of space; he spends his time explaining exactly how we arrived at the current version of the Mac OS.

Then we have a chapter titled "Lay of the Land" that explores the file system, including both the Finder view and the view you get from the command line. It also explains the four file system domains and the 'Library' directory. The third chapter is a quick (20 pages) look at the Terminal and shell.

Then we get 'Part II: Essentials,' which is the 120-page core of the book. This starts off, logically, with system startup and the login (and log out and shutdown). This is followed by short chapters on users and groups, files and permissions, monitoring, scheduling and preferences and defaults before a marvelous long chapter on the file system. Davidson goes into great detail and closely covers each of the topics, making sure that you get all the details not just 'recipes.'

Part III ("Advanced Topics") starts with a chapter on Open Directory that I found particularly useful. It includes coverage on Kerberos and single sign-on that explains it well, as well as the command-line Open Directory tools. The chapter on printing could have had a bit more guts. It covers the obvious but leaves out such joys as CUPS apart from a half-page sidebar; since sharing printers has caused me more than a little grief I would have appreciated more detail here. The final chapter on networking is better, and provides more useful detail.

It must be said that this section concentrates more on user level detail and leaves out real information on server level software and options. Given the target group for this book, and that a book has to draw a line somewhere, this is quite fair.

Davidson has picked his topics well, almost everyone will find all of Part II useful and educational. Part III is perfect for people wanting to run Panther in a corporate environment. He has balanced the command line and GUI well, pointing out where you can do a job with both and explaining the details.

Oreilly's page for the book has a table of contents and index but no example chapter. If you go to Davidson's page at O'Reilly there is a link to a short excerpt on scheduling tasks as well as several earlier articles Davidson has written for MacDevCenter.

I would recommend this book to any Panther user with a moderate amount of experience. It is not for the newcomer to the Mac, perhaps, but everyone else will benefit from this book.

You can purchase Running Mac OS X Panther from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page

honestpuck writes with his review of Getting Started with Lego Trains from No Starch Press. "I have a confession to make. There is one small part of my childhood that is constantly returning; every few years it breaks out and I find my apartment covered in small pieces of brightly coloured plastic: Yes, the Lego addiction strikes. One of those recent episodes involved a train set (perhaps I indulged in a few pieces of track and an extra car or two - but that's all, I swear) so I was pleased to see this book." Read on for the rest of his review. Note that the Bricks on the Brain site is down at the moment; you might want to try the google cache instead. Getting Started with Lego Trains author Jacob H. McKee pages 101 publisher No Starch Press rating 7 reviewer Tony Williams ISBN 1593270062 summary Good book on building Lego trains. Not terribly large.

Getting Started with Lego Trains is a fairly good guide to designing and building Lego trains. The writing is a clear, simple style that should be understood by anyone, the layout is clear.

Jacob McKee, the author, is webmaster at Bricks On The Brain, a good site which acts as a portal to build instructions. He also has a section devoted to the book which has three example pages and some links to other sites useful to Lego train builders. Both the book and the site itself promise at least a couple of articles by McKee but these are still "to come." I hope they come soon as McKee promises (in the book and on the site) an article on using decals and I'd like to know his sources and methods.

The book starts with two chapters that are absolutely basic; most of the information here is included in the Lego documentation you get with the train kits, such as how to hook up the electrical power and the different train and carriage sets available. There are still some useful nuggets such as the 'Studs Not On Top' technique for getting bricks pointing away from the vertical and interesting trivia such as a short history of Lego trains. McKee also adds some details that may be hard to glean from the Lego manuals such as how an active passing line can cause a short circuit in your track.

The third chapter is only two pages, which once again detail some fairly obvious information such as the various parts of the train couplings and bogies. From that point on, the book gets interesting. The real core of the book consists of the three chapters that McKee has devoted to three different train models. Instead of just giving you the plans to build the locomotive and two carriages, McKee has shared the design process itself and gives some useful design and building tips before showing you the instructions.

The first model is a glorious model of a GP-38 locomotive (if you want to see the finished models then you can get decent-sized pictures on McKee's site). It might have been better to have had this model last of the three, as it is the most complex and I found it the hardest to make with my Lego collection - there are more specialized parts in this model and I to change the design in a couple of spots. Given the great look of the finished model, this isn't too much of a complaint.

The second example is a refrigerated car (or "reefer car" in train yard slang). I found that I couldn't build this car in the all-green of the book design but had the parts to build it in red. Since, as McKee points out, these sorts of cars are to be found in dozens of different paint jobs I don't feel this was a problem. There are considerably fewer specialized parts in this model.

The third example is a container car (with containers), which is the easiest to build and uses few specialized pieces you are unlikely to have if you own a train set already. Once again my only real problem was one of having exactly the same colour as the book -- one of my containers has red doors instead of white, for example.

I hope from my descriptions of the chapter you can see why I think the model order is wrong -- I'd completely reverse the order of these three chapters.

For an early teen (or older) reader, the strength of this book is the tips and encouragement McKee gives in these three chapters for designing your own locomotives and carriages. There are dozens of little tips and tricks on creating a visually pleasing and playable model design. Younger readers may not appreciate McKee's excellent advice on creating your own designs as much as older readers, but they will enjoy building the models all the same.

There is a final chapter on building track layouts, including some useful tips on building track inclines, and finally two short appendices, one on where to buy Lego and a glossary (McKee labels it "terminology").

Originally (before publication, that is), this book was advertised at $24.95. The actual cover price is $19.95, though, and No Starch have dropped the price again. At the new price of $14.95, it becomes much more attractive and I recommend it to anyone who is interested in designing and building their own Lego train locomotives and carriages. The readable, simple style and clear build instructions make it enjoyable for quite young readers and older, more dedicated builders will appreciate the design tips. Lego have train sets that they advise are for 8 years old or older, and I believe the average seven-year-old would have no problem understanding the build instructions in this book.

You can purchase Getting Started with Lego Trains from bn.com. (They're asking the full cover price for now, but that may change.) Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

honestpuck writes "As titles go "Google, Amazon, and Beyond" sounds to me like Buzz Lightyear's latest slogan, but it's actually quite a good book about writing software to consume and provide web services." Read on for honestpuck's review of the book -- it sounds useful for developers on both sides of a web-service transaction, but honestpuck cautions that its value varies with your attachment to Java. Google, Amazon, and Beyond author Alexander Nakhimovsky and Tom Myers pages 314 publisher Apress rating 6 for most, 8 for Java programmers reviewer Tony Williams ISBN 1590591313 summary Good guide to web services for Java programmers

The first two chapters are introductory material, though the authors quickly introduce some code with JavaScript routines to talk to both Google and Amazon. The second of them does a good job explaining the intricacies of DOM and how you use it to build a web page in Java. Then the authors get down to some serious work at using Java, including stand-alone applications and applets, to access web services.

They move fast throughout the book; this is not one to read quickly or without ready access to a computer. That said, the writing is good; the text is understandable and all the code is well explained.

The book covers a wide gamut of techniques and technologies, including SOAP and REST on the query side, and XSLT and XPath on the output side.

Then the book moves on to instructions for offering your own services. This part of the book starts off with WebDAV using Tomcat, though there is a short digression into Java Server Pages before really getting down to the nitty gritty. Finally the book shows how to use WSDL and Axis to easily create full web applications.

You can see that this volume covers a lot of territory. This breadth may well be the book's largest flaw; its wide reach means no topic gets a really deep coverage and a number of topics do not get the coverage they deserve. Indeed I would have to say that only a much better Java programmer than I would get full value from this volume -- there were parts where the authors lost me entirely and it took an effort to get back my understanding, occasionally resorting to a Java manual.

The publishers have a page for the book that has an example chapter, table of contents, index and source code. The example chapter, 4, details how to build a SOAP server using Java and provides an excellent example for the book. If you're a little unsure of your Java skills, take a look at this chapter and see if you can easily understand the code and explanation. If you can, then this volume should have no surprises for you.

It should be said that nothing about the book's cover tells you how much of it relies on Java, though a good read of the table of contents makes it obvious. I would have personally preferred a book that was more general in the programming language it used, covering more of the tactics and methods rather than examining specific code. If, on the other hand, you are an experienced Java programmer looking for a book on programming web services in that language, then this is an excellent volume.

You can purchase Google, Amazon, and Beyond from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

honestpuck writes "After many years bashing my head against sendmail in all it's gory details I had amassed a fair amount of knowledge and documentation on handling the Mail Transfer Agent (MTA) in Linux and Mac OS X. This caused a fair amount of teeth gnashing when I discovered it had gone the way of all flesh in OS X Panther to be replaced with Postfix." To un-gnash his teeth, honestpuck used Kyle D. Dent's Postfix: The Definitive Guide (published by O'Reilly); read on for his review of the book. Postfix: The Definitive Guide author Kyle D. Dent pages 260 publisher O'Reilly and Associates rating 8/10 - Excellent book, a little thin on details in a few places reviewer Tony Williams ISBN 0596002122 summary An excellent guide to installing, configuring and running Postfix

Fortunately, my first needs were simple and I came to realise that Postfix was a much easier system to install and maintain. Now that my needs are more complex, I was glad when this book hit my desk at exactly the same time as I started upgrading the corporate servers from Mac OS 9 to OS X Server.

Postfix: The Definitive Guide seems to fit the bill. It is a well-written and well-constructed guide to mail systems in general and Postfix in particular. (Oh, and speaking of definitive, could someone at O'Reilly provide a definitive answer to both reviewers and their own editors as to that colon? This is the second 'Definitive Guide' I've reviewed in as many months, and they are sprinkled with instances of each book's title, sometimes including that colon, sometimes leaving it out.)

The book starts with a good overview of the underlying technology in Chapters 1 and 2. I can't blame Dent for my slight confusion in the section on addresses and headers - having RFC822 superseded by RFC2822 was just a little too much coincidence for this particular "bear of little brain." He then follows it with a chapter discussing Postfix's architecture, important since Postfix uses a much more modular approach than the sendmail monolith, with each part of the mail handling process a different executable and the single queue turned into five.

Once the background is well covered, Dent then gets onto the nitty-gritty of configuring and administering Postfix. He has certainly covered everything I needed, including spam handling, multiple domains, relaying, SASL authentication and using LDAP. Once I'd finished grokking all that, and getting it integrated into my servers, I had a corporate email system up in three sites that replaced and improved upon a couple of thousand dollars worth of proprietary dreck. Happy is an understatement.

Dent's writing is sometimes a little patchy, though never bad. The technical detail does seem overpowering in places, though, and I occasionally found myself reading a section through more than once with a configuration file open in front of me. There are certainly spots where a little more hand holding and care with the writing would have been appreciated. (If you are a little more cognizant of the interstices of mail systems then you may not have the same problem.)

I did, however, appreciate the appendices enormously. The four appendices cover configuration parameters, Postfix commands, installation, and an FAQ. My system came with Postfix compiled and installed just as I required it so I didn't get a chance to thoroughly test out Dent's installation procedure (though it looks good); the other three continue to be useful.

If you want to have a look for yourself, then the usual O'Reilly page is complete with a table of contents and index, but this time no example chapter is provided (how come, O'Reilly?). You can also get an expanded version of the FAQ in Appendix 4 from Dent's website. A better example of Dent's writing style is an excellent article on troubleshooting with Postfix logs at O'Reilly's Onlamp.com.

This is an excellent book, Dent has explained the underlying methodology and use of Postfix well, taken the reader through all aspects of this MTA system and explained both the why and the how. I would recommend this book (and, as a result Postfix) to anyone looking for an MTA and a guide to configuring and running it.

You can purchase Postfix: The Definitive Guide from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

honestpuck writes "Harold Davis has started with a marvelous idea, teaching programming using a language available on all platforms, JavaScript, and an interface familiar to everyone, the web browser. Learn How to Program Using Any Web Browser is written for absolute beginners to learn the basic principles of programming -- or at least that's what the cover would have you believe." Read on for honestpuck's evaluation of that claim. Learn How to Program Using Any Web Browser author Harold Davis pages 396 publisher Apress rating 5 reviewer Tony Williams ISBN 1590591135 summary Not much programming, but well written

The language is suitably light and simple, the book well-structured and broken down into easily digested chunks. The order in which concepts are introduced is fairly traditional for a language tutorial: first we get types, variables and statements, before moving on to conditionals, loops, and functions, followed by arrays and objects before finishing with event-driven programming. Davis' decision to leave string handling till last seems a little perverse and personally I would have introduced functions earlier.

My real complaints about this book centre on the abstract nature of the discussion. There are very few real world examples that could be useful to anyone. The best you get is a version of "Rock, Paper, Scissors" in Chapter 3, and an 'auction' application. The book would have been improved dramatically if the end result of your study was a few things you could actually point to.

I also have a complaint about the target audience for this book. The web page for the book at the publishers states that "The target reader is likely a twelve- or thirteen-year-old, who is just starting to get curious about what makes a computer work -- or an office worker who has been using computer applications for years, and would like to spend some time delving deeper into what makes them tick." Most adults and even teenagers don't want to 'learn how to program' as much as they want to learn how to use a tool to perform a task. If your tool is JavaScript, then it's almost certain your task is related to building web pages, but this gets little real attention from Davis. For even younger students, this book totally lacks anything to hold their attention -- the lack of real-world examples hurts here.

I also take issue with the title: this book doesn't really teach 'programming' much at all. It certainly teaches you to write JavaScript, but where are the sections about the real lessons of programming, such as top-down vs. bottom-up design, or breaking a task up into chunks? Even debugging has little coverage -- a single thirty-page chapter, half of which is specific to JavaScript or the throwing and handling of exceptions. Since the work of Papert and others at MIT twenty-five years ago, we've learned a great deal about how to teach programming concepts in a simple manner, but Davis appears to have ignored all this and given us a language tutorial. The publisher's web page for the book says "very emphatically, this is not a book about programming JavaScript." If that's so then I'd argue that it isn't a book about learning the principles of programming either.

It is obvious from this book that Davis is an excellent writer; if he had tried to write a book to teach JavaScript and had focused on the tasks for which it is often used this, volume may have been superb. As it is, he has shot for a higher goal and fallen far too short.

If you would like to check it out for yourself, you can go to the web page for the book where there is sample chapter, the Table of Contents (though they call it a "Detailed TOC" as distinct from the 'Table of Contents,' which is just a list of 11 chapter titles) and index, all in PDF format.

I went looking for a book that I could give to my 11-year-old daughter now that she has become interested in "what Daddy does." I'm still looking, I'm certain that this one isn't it.

You can purchase Learn How to Program Using Any Web Browser from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

honestpuck writes "It is refreshing to find a book that is totally honest about the drawbacks of the language it hopes to teach. AppleScript: the Definitive Guide is one such volume. Matt Neuburg delves into all the flaws inherent in this language." Read on for the rest of honestpuck's review. AppleScript - the Definitive Guide author Matt Neuburg pages 476 publisher O'Reilly and Associates rating 8 - Well written, good topic coverage, some flaws reviewer Tony Williams ISBN 0596005571 summary Excellent guide

AppleScript as a language and development environment has some terrible problems, and I applaud Neuburg for not trying to hide them away. Personally I love the power the language can provide, while loathing it for it's "English-like" syntax and the problems inherent in having most of the language defined in differing ways in different applications.

One of Applescript's problems is that it is difficult to teach, as you almost have to understand everything before you can know anything. Unfortunately that problem is reflected in this book. Neuburg constantly finds himself having to resort to the "believe me for now, I'll explain later" strategy throughout the book.

The book is broken up into four sections: "AppleScript Overview," "The AppleScript Language," "AppleScript In Action," and several appendices.

"AppleScript Overview" is a well written look at what AppleScript is, what it is good for and how to use it. Chapter 3, "The AppleScript Experience" is an impressive warts-and-all walk-through of the author developing an AppleScript to solve the problem of renaming files to conform to a particular standard using FrameMaker and the Finder. It is here that the reader will first see the problems inherent with AppleScript as Neuburg battles with incomprehensible dictionaries, unknown object models and uncommunicative error messages to build his script.

Part II, "The Applescript Language," is the 200-page core of this book. Neuburg provides a detailed and comprehensive look at every detail of AppleScript's syntax and semantics. The first chapter of this section, "Introducing AppleScript" contains a marvelous section entitled 'The "English-likeness" Monster' that is a short, sharp (and entirely justified) attack on the problem of AppleScript's attempt to be English-like in syntax.

In the rest of this section Neuburg provides an exceptional survey of the language. I personally appreciated his examination of the intricacies of type coercion and the exotic scoping rules. He has also taken the time to write and elaborate a large number of small pieces of code to demonstrate gotchas and tricks throughout the language.

It is this section that truly separates this book from every other AppleScript book I have previously read -- it is a masterful guide to the language.

Part III is a concrete path towards writing your own scripts. Neuburg starts by examining application dictionaries in depth. The real power of AppleScript lies not in the language itself but in the ability to use language extensions built in to other applications. This also becomes a huge flaw when the only documentation you get is in the application dictionary. As Neuburg puts it "One purpose of the dictionary is to show the human user how to speak AppleScript to a scriptable application in order to drive that application. But a dictionary, by its very nature, is not completely adequate to this task." He then goes on to explain the flaws.

The first appendix is a dump of the AppleScript Suite from AppleScript's 'aeut' resource. This is the core of the language usable everywhere. The second Appendix is a good, useful guide to tools and resources for the AppleScript programmer.

Taken as whole, this is a great book for the AppleScript programmer, both beginner and expert. It has a good writing style, has been well edited and well constructed. Neuburg may be putting in too many forward references, though. Other reviewers, particularly those newer to AppleScript, have called the book frustrating and confusing. I think this may be due to both the high information density in this book and Neuburg's fast introduction to topics that are better explained later in the book. If you are a newcomer to programming and AppleScript then this may be daunting.

If you are new, however, this is still an excellent volume but you may have to force yourself to finish it and then go over at least Part I and II again to truly understand the language. It would probably be a good idea to start trying to build your own scripts after the first read through. I must say, that after taking a good hard look at the way the book has been constructed and ordered I couldn't really come up with a better way that wouldn't have doubled the size of the book.

Visit the O'Reilly web page for the book if you would like to see the Table of Contents or grab an example chapter.

Neuburg has said "My approach is not to rely on documentation, ... but to bang away at the language itself, testing and experimenting, trying to deduce the underlying rules" and this approach has certainly borne fruit in this volume. For all it's minor flaws you cannot say, as may be true of many other tech books, that it is a rewrite of the documentation. He has approached the problem from a different direction and given us a book that offers an excellent guide to the language.

I would recommend it to all Macintosh owners as the perfect way to unleash another powerful aspect of your system. For people who have no AppleScript or programming experience who want to be totally spoon fed this book is probably only a 5, for people with a little AppleScript experience, a fair amount of programming experience and a willingness to stick through to the end this book is probably a 9. It is certainly the best book on AppleScript I have seen.

You can purchase AppleScript - the Definitive Guide from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

honestpuck writes "Computer magazines come and go at an unrelenting pace. The Perl Journal was one of the better ones before Jon Orwant, the editor and publisher, passed it to CMP. It is therefore pleasing to find he has taken all the articles published over the five year period, removed the chaff and published the rest in three volumes." Read on for honestpuck's lowdown on what you can expect in this set. Computer Science & Perl Programming author Jon Orwant (Editor) pages 710 publisher O'Reilly and Associates rating 8 (7 and 6 for other vols) - Well written, some flaws reviewer Tony Williams ISBN 0596003102 (0596003110 and 0596003129 for other vols) summary Well edited compendium of magazine articles on Perl

All three volumes reveal a good hand at choosing articles and editing the contributions; after spending three years as a magazine editor I know that not all the contributors could have written this well. The writing is consistently good, tight, well edited and readable.

Across them all you will find articles by almost every major contributor to Perl and a great many of the people who have contributed major modules to CPAN. It's good to feel that perhaps a few cents from your book purchase is flowing into each of these pockets and repaying their work.

Viewing the 3 books as a whole my one real concern is that perhaps a little tighter restrictions on the article choice may have been better -- some of the articles are really only of historical interest, discussing methods overtaken by further development in Perl or the modules available. You may also find only one or two of the volumes contain articles of particular interest to you, I discovered that my favourites were spread across all three and bemoaned the semi-arbitrary division of topics as I only closely read about two books worth from the three volumes -- of course your milage may vary.

The first and largest volume, Computer Science & Perl Programming, is the one volume where I read and enjoyed almost every one of the seventy articles (by 41 different authors) included. The topics covered vary widely, from an essential trilogy of articles about regular expressions by Jeffrey Friedl to some esoteric discussion of Perl internals by Chip Salzenburg.

The second volume, Web, Graphics and Perl/Tk, contains 39 articles, around half of which are devoted to topics such as mod_perl, spidering, and other web stuff. Here is where you can find yourself reading an article about topics now made redundant by changes to Perl and its modules. The graphics section is an eclectic mix while the Perl/Tk section adds up to a fairly good tutorial on the topic.

The third volume, Games, Diversions and Perl Culture, collects 47 articles on a broad range of topics: 15 of them are about various sorts of language processing in Perl that I found extremely interesting. It also includes the Obfuscated Perl Contests, the Poetry Contest and a bunch of other "silliness." An article on how the magazine's covers were photographed seemed particularly pointless.

I'd recommend the first volume for almost anyone interested in Perl. The second might be worth purchasing if you wanted the web coverage. The third is worth it if you want the coverage of language processing or have an interest in the culture that surrounds Perl. Check the O'Reilly pages for one, two and three to see the tables of contents, index, grab the code examples and download a sample chapter (the third volume has two example chapters.) I've given the first volume an 8 but the other two get 7 and 6 respectively as the article choices make them less useful, though the quality of writing and editing is as good.

I think all three would be a marvelous addition to any decent tech library - they seem perfect for a library as they have all the benefits of a five year collection of TPJ without the problems of magazine storage, cataloging and conservation. For everyone else, grab the first one and then decide based on the content for the other two.

You can purchase Best of the Perl Journal (Volume 1, Volume 2, Volume 3) from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

honestpuck writes "While Apache is possibly the most popular and ubiquitous open source project it is certainly not the most simple. One module alone, mod_rewrite, causes me almost more problems and regex wrestling matches than all other products combined. The 'httpd.conf' file is a long and critical one. In these circumstances the Apache Cookbook from O'Reilly might be a godsend. It is certainly a well-written, well-researched volume. Ken Coar has spent many years working on Apache and Rich Bowen has long laboured on the Apache documentation. They both know their stuff -- and if this is an example, both know how to write." Read on for the rest of honestpuck's review. Apache Cookbook author Ken Coar & Rich Bowen pages 223 publisher O'Reilly rating 8 reviewer Tony Williams ISBN 0596001916 summary A broad range of Apache admin topics covered well

The book has twelve chapters, covering everything from installation and adding modules through to proxies and performance. The chapter on security is the largest, it covers the topics well. By contrast I thought the chapter 'Aliases, Redirection and Rewriting' too short and could have benefited from some more 'recipes', but that may be due to my own bias - mod_rewrite is not an easy topic, and as I've said it causes me a great deal of grief.

It is laid out in a similar way to the Perl Cookbook: each recipe has a 'Problem' section followed by a 'Solution' and then 'Discussion.' In almost all the 'recipes' the 'Discussion' is longer than the 'Solution,' and I often found it far more useful and informative than the problem and its solution.

The Apache Cookbook covers almost all aspects and all parts of the learning curve for Apache. That will either be a strength or a weakness of this volume for you; with such a large and complex piece of software as Apache a single book cannot hope to cover it in a great deal of depth. For me this book was not really a cookbook, more a good source of well documented examples from which to create my own recipes,

My biggest problem reviewing a book like this is that after several years building and configuring Apache (even on an infrequent basis) quite a lot of this volume seems simple. You may also find it the same if you are the sort of person who is not afraid to pore over the documentation, get your hands dirty and make a few mistakes. If you like some hand holding and are just starting with Apache you may benefit from all of it.

That's not to say that I didn't personally find large chunks of this volume useful. Certainly I've gone over several of the recipes and their excellent explanatory text to shed some light on previously dark corners of Apache, particularly as the authors cover both Apache 1.3 and 2.0.

O'Reilly have the usual web page with a Table of Contents and example chapter. The example chapter, on error handling is well chosen as it is typical of the others and useful but not the most useful chapter.

I have recently been thinking that tech books fall into various sorts and there is one sort I'd call 'library books' - books you may not need to own, but will want to read every so often and would be good to have in your local or company library. Apache Cookbook is one of these, a book I'd recommend everyone coming to grips with Apache has close to hand, but it is not going to be constantly on your desk in the same way that Perl Cookbook might be for Perl programmers: to start off with, it's half the size and doesn't cover nearly as many topics. This one falls short of essential due to it's concentration on breadth. rather than depth. So my recommendation for this book is not that all Apache administrators should buy it, but you should have a copy close at hand.

You can purchase the Apache Cookbook from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

honestpuck writes "One of my key concerns when reviewing a good book is the pull between information density and a light, easily read style. I believe that as we get further along the learning curve we can sacrifice some readability for density -- we want more facts and less explanation." Read on for honestpuck's take on the third edition of Core PHP Programming to see how well it achieves that balance. Core PHP Programming (3rd Edition) author Leon Atkinson with Zeev Juraski pages 1041 publisher Prentice Hall PTR rating 9 reviewer Tony Williams ISBN 0130463469 summary Good comprehensive guide for beginner to expert

The authors of Core PHP Programming have found a marvelous middle ground. Toward the beginning of the book they have a great deal of light, explanatory material as they cover the basics of PHP. As they move towards more advanced topics there is less explanation and a tighter packing of information. At the same time the book has a large number of small code examples throughout, making sure that you know how to use the functions under discussion.

This is the third edition and I must admit that I had not come across it in either the first or second editions, so I have no great way of comparing them in this review. It has certainly been revised to take into account the changes for PHP 5 and examining the table of contents for the second edition on Safari I can see the that the basic structure has remained the same while the book has grown about 300 pages. The addition of Zeev Suraski as co-author can only be to the benefit of the quality of the information, particularly regarding PHP 5.

The book starts with the absolute rock bottom of PHP, the basic data types and operators through to efficiency, debugging and design patterns. Along the way it covers almost all aspects of PHP 5 with a readable reference style. The 'Core' in the title of this book is a key to understanding it. If you're looking for a book with all the code required to handle session management, or user logins and security (to mention two possibilities) then this isn't the book for you. If, however, you are after a book that more than adequately explains the power and nuances of PHP and programming in the language then this is a marvelous volume.

It's broken up into 5 sections: "Programming PHP," which covers the basics of data, control flow and I/O; "Functional Reference," which is 600 odd pages broken up into 12 chapters that seems to cover every PHP function (a check of three sub chapters showed every function mentioned on the topic at PHP.net was also in the book) and does it well with good explanation and code examples; "Algorithms," which details a number of methods of performing routine tasks such as sorting, parsing and generating graphics; and "Software Engineering," devoted to design, efficiency and design patterns; and finally, there are a seven excellent appendices.

Taken as a whole it does a good job of covering the whole language and the ways of using it.

I can imagine it would make a good companion volume to my other favourite PHP volume, PHP and MySQL Web Development, which tends more towards recipes and leaves out the encyclopedic coverage of this book.

Leon Atkinson has a good page for the book that includes a link to download all the code and examples, a link to the Prentice Hall page for those wanting an example chapter or a look at the Table of Contents and some other reviews. His site also has a page for the inevitable errata, currently blank. While I did find only one typo (not in example code) I can't claim to have read every page or run all the code examples.

I'd recommend this volume to anyone who wanted a comprehensive guide to PHP 5. It is probably useful at almost all levels.

You can purchase Core PHP Programming, 3rd Ed. from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

honestpuck writes "Back when dinosaurs roamed the earth and NCR made Unix computers I first started to program for a living. Back then when someone said 'script' they meant a shell script, generally for a Bourne shell." Even if the definition of "scripting" has grown somewhat, honestpuck argues, the old meaning still has merit and use. Read on for his review of the latest edition of Unix Shell Programming. Unix Shell Programming, Third Edition author Stephen G. Kochan and Patrick Wood pages 406 publisher SAMS rating 8 - Well written, good topic coverage, some small flaws reviewer Tony Williams ISBN 0672324903 summary Good introduction to shell programming and using the shell

Now that we have languages such as Perl and Python, much of shell scripting has been forgotten. The need still arises for the times and places where running Perl would be just that little bit too much overhead; cron jobs, process start and stop scripts, even machine start and stop scripts. For these we could best go back to the old ways. Combining the power of the common Unix tools, pipes and scripts in a fairly obscure and slightly arcane syntax is not easy to pick up, though the language's simplicity does, in some ways, make it easier than more complex ones such as Perl. This book does a good job at introducing shell programming and I found it an excellent book when I needed a refresher.

I don't want to sell this volume short: you won't just learn about shell programming. The first ninety or so pages provide an excellent guide to getting the best out of the shell, and the last chapter is devoted to the features specific to an interactive shell such as command-line editing and using the history.

The authors have chosen to use the POSIX standard Bourne shell ('bash', available on many *nix systems, is a superset of the POSIX standard). That seems the right decision, given that it is so universally available and usually the default shell.

The book is well structured, starting out with a brief look at *nix operating systems before introducing the shell followed by some basic tools; cut, paste, sed, tr, grep, sort and uniq. One minor quibble, the book explains how to redirect STDOUT to a file and STDERR to a file, but not how to redirect both to the same file. That aside, these few chapters provide a good introduction to the shell.

The text goes on to systematically explore shell programming starting with variables and arithmetic. The chapters are kept short, in a good order and have a number of exercises at the end of each. The structure of the book and the order each new concept is introduced is well thought out; at each stage small examples are given that only use material already introduced and are complete in performing a task. In early chapters they are fairly trivial but by the end there is a fairly complete rolodex program written in shell script that would be a good model for anything you wished to do.

There is also a good summary of the shell syntax and common commands in Appendix A and good 'Further Information' in Appendix B. Kudos must go to the authors for a list of books for further reading that is not ashamed of mentioning other publishers, indeed they say "One of the best sources of books on Unix-related topics is O'Reilly and Associates" and list volumes from them before mentioning their own publishers.

There are some small typographic errors in the text but I did not find any in the script examples I tried. I found it to be well written and readable throughout, perhaps an advantage of a third edition in a slow moving technology.

You can visit the Sams web page devoted to the book which has the Table of Contents and the third chapter available for download. It has no errata or source code, I looked to see if the authors maintained a site for the book but could not find one.

I would recommend everyone read this book once or twice, it provides a comprehensive, well written tutorial on one of the most basic (and often overlooked) tools at your disposal. Even Windows users could install Cygwin and gain the benefit of a good POSIX compliant shell and this book. It also has the advantage that once purchased it will be useful for many, many years to come - the language has not changed noticeably in twenty five years and should not change in another twenty five.

You can purchase Unix Shell Programming, Third Edition from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to submit a review for consideration, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

honestpuck writes "Back before the advent of Mac OS X, my favourite (and for many years, only) development environment was one variety of Unix or another. The nicest thing about Unix was that the development environment stayed pretty much the same regardless of the variety; this stayed the same with the introduction of Linux." Honestpuck examines how true this still is (as well how accurate the chosen title is) in his review of Prentice Hall's The Linux Development Platform, below. The Linux Development Platform author Rafeeq Ur Rehman and Christopher Paul pages 320 publisher Prentice Hall PTR rating 7 reviewer Tony Williams ISBN 0130091154 summary Good guide to developer tools

The Linux Development Platform might be better titled "The GNU Development Platform" since almost all of the tools discussed come from the FSF, and those that don't are nevertheless open source; as a result they will run on almost any Unix variety. You know that the 'Linux' in the title is almost just a marketing ploy, but we will forgive Prentice Hall and the authors. Certainly more people will buy this book to learn about using these tools under Linux than under any other *nix variety.

The book starts with a short chapter on software development per se before getting down to the nuts and bolts. It starts in the obvious spot, with editors, and quickly covers choosing an editor before taking a brief look at Emacs, Jed and VIM. The rest of the book is devoted to much less contentious issues.

As a whole, the text provides a good grounding in using gcc, make, CVS and GDB, with enough extra information on smaller tools and larger issues (such as cross-platform and embedded systems) that you will not need more than this book and, perhaps, the man pages to understand and use these tools. Of course others, have written entire volumes on each of these topics, but for most of us this book will provide the information we need.

The Linux Development Platform comes with a CD containing the source for a fair number of the tools discussed, so you can build any tools which happen to be missing on your platform, though some of the included apps are, of course, already a version or two behind.

The writing is mixed in quality: while never bad, it has a slightly heavy, technical feel to it, often a bit wordy or cumbersome. This rarely gets in the way of understanding, but it does slow you down. The topic coverage is good, moving from a beginner level right through to a good understanding of each tool discussed. More importantly, all the tools you will need are covered.

I imagine this would make an excellent companion text for any programming course: note that it doesn't provide details on any programming language, but covers everything else you need to know regarding the development tools. It is thinnest in the discussion of editors, really only giving a brief overview of each. I cannot really see this as a fault since detailed coverage really would take a separate book, and this quick look is better than pretending to cover the topic well and failing. The other possible weakness is that there is almost no coverage of general Linux usage, so calling the book The Linux Development Platform is a bit of a misnomer -- it is really devoted to the tools available for development, not the underlying operating system at all. Once again, I feel that this lack is not serious; most buyers should know enough about the operating system and any attempt to cover it adequately would have swelled the size and cost of the book.

Prentice Hall PTR have a site for the book with a Table of Contents or you can see the whole book in HTML format at FAQs.org.

I would recommend this book to anyone who would like a good, general introduction to developing software on a Unix platform. Though it's not a cheap book, it is a good one. It was certainly a relief for me to find a good book in Prentice Hall's 'Bruce Peren Open Source Series' after a couple of flawed ones.

You can purchase The Linux Development Platform from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to submit a review for consideration, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

honestpuck writes "Titling a volume 'Online! The Book' and putting "The perfect gift for any computer user!" amongst other hyperbole on the back cover must rank as this years greatest act of hubris." Honestpuck has a strong opinion of whether this hubris is justified or insane -- read on below for his review. Online! The Book author John C. Dvorak and Chris Pirillo (with Wendy Taylor) pages 701 publisher Prentice Hall PTR rating 3 reviewer Tony Williams ISBN 0131423630 summary Padding, information and errors all in the one volume. Could be worse, but not by much.

If only John C. Dvorak and Chris Pirillo (with Wendy Taylor) had been able to deliver. If only they had not strewn the book with error, verbiage and irrelavancy. Ah, well.

This volume in its 700 pages (divided into 28 chapters) tries to cover everything from hardware basics to voice over IP, in between touching on e-commerce, security, web programming, networking, content management and business websites, to name just six of the topics perhaps each better suited to a volume of their own.

This book skims, and skims fast, over a number of important and vital topics while dwelling on others that many will find useless. Chris Pirillo seems to be an expert on marketing, so that gets thirty pages, while web programming languages get ten. We get forty pages of 'Hardware Basics,' which cover information vital to getting online such as operating systems, varieties of Intel chips, video cards and gaming audio drivers. I know that if I wanted to find the perfect spot to put breakout boxes about Babbage and von Neumann (essential to any book about getting online) I'd put them in the chapter on viruses. It seems as if the three authors said "we're contracted to seven hundred pages so let's just throw in topics we know a lot about until we get to seven hundred pages -- then stop."

Then there are the errors. We get editing errors like the text that tells us a 'geostationary satellite' orbits at 'about 22,300 miles,' next to a diagram showing the number 20,300 miles. We get errors in logic like the breakout box that has "DNS servers may run Apache, which is an open source Web server program" and goes on to imply that all DNS servers will run a web server. We get errors in grammar. We get paragraphs like "Although there are dynamic Web page URLs (meaning they change, or at least part of it does), most are static (stay the same). These can be dynamic by use of a programming error or dynamic because someone named the URL extension without adding a link elsewhere on the web site." With sentence construction like that I'm still not sure if the claim intended is true or not.

Did I like anything about this book? Sure, the chapter on 'How A Modem (Really) Works' was full of good solid information. Other chapters were similar, particularly the two following on networking and handhelds, phones and PDAs. Others did contain some good information, just surrounded by dross.

You can go to the book's website, which is basically just a single page with yet more hyperbole ("Everything is here. Well-written. Comprehensive.") or visit the Prentice Hall page, which actually gives you a table of contents and a sample chapter. Just don't go straight to the Prentice Hall PTR home page and search for books with "Online" in the title, as that won't find it. Instead search for books with "Book" in the title.

I'd only recommend this book to those who want to spend a lot of time finding the good bits, a few minutes chuckling over some of the errors, and thirty dollars on a paperweight. If you're really looking for a 'perfect gift' for people new new to the net, then find something cheaper covering just the essentials, and for those more expert, find a volume that actually covers a topic of interest well.

You can purchase Online! The Book from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

honestpuck writes "Even Grues Get Full is the fourth and latest collection of cartoons from User Friendly. I got this collection because a friend said the third collection was brilliant 'from cover to cover.' I have to say that this collection did have some exceptionally good moments, but 'from cover to cover,' I think not." Honestpuck's review continues, below. Even Grues Get Full author J.D. "Iliad" Frzer pages 122 publisher O'Reilly rating 8 - Funny reviewer Tony Williams ISBN 0596005660 summary Chock full o' laughs. Funny, didn't split my sides or spit coffee out my nose, but funny

To start, I didn't find the inside title page even worth a smile, the only joke 'Even Grues Get Full' had already been on the front cover and I'd noticed its repetition on the back one as well.

To investigate a little further I read the 'Foreword' by Wil Wheaton. OK, it did have one good Wesley joke but mostly it seemed to be saying how much he didn't mind Iliad making fun of him in the strip.

Then we get to the strips. Yeah, some are funny. I laughed a bit. Iliad certainly knows a good tech joke when he draws one - even if he does seem to make a lot of jokes at the expense of the Windows operating system -- which seems to be a combination of shooting fish in a barrel and politically incorrect making fun of the crippled and lame. However some things are just not funny, Mr Frazer.

What about those cartoons from page 78 to 83. To start off, no self respecting Lego geek with two hundred and seventy million dollars would buy two million sets of Lego Mindstorms. I'd only (sorry, I mean 'He'd only') buy one and a half million to leave cash left over for buying a couple of hundred thousand Lego models of the Millenium Falcon -- I mean, "D'uh!" Oh, and about the cartoon on page 82: missing a 16-wheel cog to complete your project is no laughing matter you know. I don't see what's so amusing about building a missile silo out of Lego either -- I'm going to build a carry box for my cat when I can get enough blue 12 x 1 bricks.

Then there's the series about the visiting MBA. No real geek would fall in love with a woman merely because her name, 'Pearl,' was a homonym for a scripting language - get real. If her name had been 'See' or 'Jarvah,' maybe. But not funny, Iliad.

Frankly, I think this book is full of the usual 'User Friendly' rubbish. Jokes at the expense of those poor users (hey, they don't know any better), clueless management (hey, they don't know any better) and socially disadvantaged and deprived geeks (hey, we don't know any better.) Joking about the outstanding, well-informed and upright citizens that work in the sales and marketing departments of our IT firms and ISPs? Shame on you J.D. Oh, and poking fun at poor Larry Ellison just cause he isn't as rich as Bill is just downright mean.

I think Tim O'Reilly should be ashamed to publish this book. I guess the only reason he does is that Iliad hasn't poked fun at him (yet).

I wouldn't recommend this book to anyone. It's just chock full of jokes that only a Linux-loving geek could find funny. Cartoons full of references that only a Perl programming geek would understand. I didn't learn a single thing about programming in C# for .NET ot the latest protocols used in Active Directories -- a totally useless tech book, really.

Look, just go to the User Friendly web site and see some more recent examples from this deeply disturbed cartoonist, or go to the O'Reilly book page and check out a few strips from the book itself and you will agree with me.

You can purchase Even Grues Get Full from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

honestpuck writes "Webmin is a pretty neat tool for administering a server using a GUI, particularly remotely. Managing Linux Systems with Webmin, written by Webmin's author, Jamie Cameron, is an extensive look at using and extending it, a good guide not without flaws." Read on for honestpuck's take on this book's good / bad ratio. Managing Linux Systems With Webmin author Jamie Cameron pages 765 publisher Prentice Hall rating 6 - Serious flaws in structure in an otherwise excellent book reviewer Tony Williams ISBN 0131408828 summary Good guide to using Webmin flawed by lack of structure

The book is structured as 60 chapters, without any division into sections and I have serious arguments with the order of chapters; why are the chapters about configuring Webmin at the end, for example. That said, the book has a fine index and the usual two-level contents make it a fraction easier to find what you want.

I do, however, have a little digression about the 'Bruce Peren's Open Source Series,' of which this book is a member. Frankly, I think they all need, and deserve, a much stronger hand in editing. With this volume it is the bad structure and order; with "Intrusion Detection Systems with Snort" I found myself engrossed by the information and furious at the appalling grammar and sentence construction, particularly in the introductory chapters. The others in the series look significantly better at first glance but could still use better editing.

Once again we have an author or publisher who throws Linux into the title to make sure that it gets found by the greatest mass of likely readers while the tool described is more (not that I criticise the practice, they want to sell books.) Any *nix system can be controlled using Webmin -- including a great deal of Mac OS X not available through 'System Preferences.' Indeed, I'd recommend the tool to all OS X users who want to gain better control and install better tools for the underlying BSD layer in OS X. I use it myself for just this reason. If you run any other *nix system don't be put off by the 'Linux' in the title: very little of this book is Linux specific.

This one is well written -- Cameron has a light, informative style that I look for in a tech book. The book is well laid out, he gives good examples, good explanations and screen shots.

Cameron starts out with three introductory chapters on Webmin, its installation and security before launching into forty three chapters on using various Webmin modules, but with no real pattern to the order of most of the chapters. Why, for example, is the NFS module at chapter 4 while the Samba module is discussed in 43? I could list another half dozen examples without raising a sweat.

There is then a chapter on Usermin, the Webmin system for ordinary users. This is followed by three chapters on the server clustering system, a few on Webmin configuration and logging before the volume ends with chapters on building modules and themes.

Some of the chapters on the modules within Webmin border on merely stating the obvious, others are extremely useful. Overall they constitute a good manual to using the system, Webmin users who have not spent a great deal of time administering servers will find them particularly useful. The chapters on clustering, using Webmin on multiple servers to perform the same task at the once on many machines, are a good guide to administering and using this useful facility. I found the chapters on writing your own module more than adequate, I'm well under way to writing my first one after only a short time with the system and book.

One final complaint. Where in this book does it tell you how to start Webmin? I didn't want Webmin running from boot, so I answered No to that question and Webmin then ran. Nowhere did it tell me how to restart Webmin after I rebooted my computer and having the script 'start' in the directory specified as the config directory is a little less than intuitive.

Prentice Hall have a page for the book that has an author bio, the Preface and a sample chapter. Though this book is supposedly 'open content,' I couldn't find an electronic version anywhere. It might have helped, as it would give me a way to search the book faster.

In conclusion, this is a good book. With a little work on the structure it would be an excellent book, rising from a rating of six to an eight or nine. the lack of structure makes it unduly hard to find what you are after. I would recommend Webmin, as a tool, to almost everyone running a supported server. If you have no need for the section on clustering and writing your own modules you could buy The Book of Webmin for a few dollars less or browse the same book (even download a PDF version free) at Swelltech, which is less comprehensive but much better structured (and tells you how to restart Webmin). If you want a guide to Webmin that includes notes on writing your own module then this will do until something better comes along, or they release a second edition with greater thought to structure and order.

You can purchase Managing Linux Systems With Webmin from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

honestpuck writes with the review below of O'Reilly's Practical mod_perl, which he describes as "a doorstop sized volume that provides more information on using mod_perl than you ever thought you needed." Read on for the rest of his review, and to see whether you actually do need to know what's in this book. Practical mod_perl author Stas Bekman & Eric Cholet pages 858 publisher O'Reilly rating 8 - Good book, some flaws reviewer Tony Williams ISBN 0596002270 summary Good overall guide for running and developing with mod_perl

The almost 900 pages are divided into five parts and a bunch of appendices. Part I, "mod_perl Administration" covers building, configuring and installing mod_perl, followed by some Apache details and an 80-page guide to coding with mod_perl in mind. Part II, 'mod_perl Performance' deals with ways of getting the best out of Apache and mod_perl, with a little about security. Part III deals with databases, including persistent connections and data sharing. Part IV is a great guide to debugging and troubleshooting. Part V is a brief look at Apache 2 and mod_perl 2.

The appendices are useful. The first is a short section of around a dozen small 'recipes' for performing various tasks using mod_perl. I found these a good base for more complex tasks, particularly when combined with examples from elsewhere in the book. The second is a list of Perl modules that extend Apache and mod_perl with a brief description of each. The third gives some strategies for providers wanting to host Apache with mod_perl. The fourth and fifth give good overviews of the Template Toolkit and AxKit, an XML application server built on mod_perl.

The book is readable, tending towards heavy writing and certainly dense, but I didn't feel this was a problem in a book meant for a fairly advanced audience. I think you'd want to be a fairly good Perl programmer and well versed in Apache before needing this volume and shouldn't expect to be spoon fed. I thought it well written.

In a book of this size you expect to find a lot of example code, and you won't be disappointed. The book is peppered with short Perl examples and example command lines and configurations, all well explained. The one shortcoming is that there aren't many examples of full-blown applications where you can see everything discussed and have it explained all in one place. I would have appreciated some more of this, the examples tend to be on the short side.

This book sits well in the marketplace. It provides more details on running, installing and configuring mod_perl and Apache than mod_perl Developer's Cookbook (and also delves more into the reasons for doing something one particular way and much more help on debugging), though the Developer's Cookbook becomes a good companion to this volume as it provides a lot more in the way of examples. For those that want to get deep into the high end of mod_perl there is Writing Apache Modules in Perl and C, which is at core a good book on high end mod_perl programming.

O'Reilly have their usual website with Table of Contents, an example chapter, and errata. The authors have their own website with some of the same information and all the code examples from the book as both individual files and one 40k tarball.

I would recommend this book to anyone who administers and writes for mod_perl, it fills the missing pieces in mod_perl Developers Cookbook and is a good companion volume to it.

You can purchase Practical mod_perl from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

honestpuck writes "To say that understanding HTTP is crucial for web development might seem like saying water is wet, yet many people don't take the time to fully understand the protocol. This book could be a good help. HTTP Developer's Handbook from SAMS gives you a great deal of information about the protocol in a clearly understood fashion." Read on for the rest of honestpuck's review. HTTP Developer's Handbook author Chris Shiflett pages 280 publisher Developer's Library/SAMS rating 6 - Serious flaws reviewer Tony Williams ISBN 0672324547 summary Mixed volume with fair look at HTTP protocol

One of the strangest feelings I've ever had reading a book is that I have a better opinion of it than does the author. Shiflett spends most of the introduction convincing the reader that this is a useful book and it seems that the start of most chapters is another few sentences telling me why the chapter is incredibly useful for me to read. I felt like yelling "I'm convinced, I'm convinced."

The book is broken up into 6 parts: 'Introducing HTTP,' 'HTTP Definition,' 'Maintaining State,' 'Performance,' 'Security,' and 'Evolution of HTTP.'

The first section and a large part of the introduction are the sort of information that is covered elsewhere in just as good a detail: it basically covers the obvious. The second section covers the HTTP protocol itself, with a good discussion of requests and responses, including all the nitty gritty details of the headers in some detail. This is the really useful heart of the book and it covers 80 of the 280 pages. The third, fourth and fifth sections give a too-concise look at their subject matter, I felt the book could have given much more detail here. The last section is a waste of space; in this volume I don't really need to have a small amount of information about SOAP and XML-RPC.

This book is well-written; I believe its two fatal flaws are that Shiflett seems unsure of his own book and that the book itself tries to offer everything for a developer while explaining it all for the newcomer. I think that had Shiflett given up on the newcomer and given the developer greater depth (with a lot more examples) he would have delivered a much better book. For a developer, the volume is much too light on example code, the book is not really 'practical,' more 'informative.'

This might be a good volume for a library, either a corporate or school library. It provides the salient information in one spot in a concise and readable manner. I think that an individual might find it a less than totally useful book for the money -- you're likely to have already have a volume or two that covers most of the information, and with most languages in web development having libraries that take care of most of the low-level stuff for you, it becomes less and less necessary to really understand the bottom level. Personally, I'll keep it for the 80 page section on the HTTP definition so I have it all in one spot.

You can purchase HTTP Developer's Handbook from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

Mar's closest visit to the earth for a while may be over -- but while that reddish speck is still far brighter than usual, you might want to brush up on your Martian knowledge. Read on below for honestpuck's review of A Traveler's Guide To Mars. A Traveler's Guide To Mars author William K. Hartmann pages 445 publisher Workman Publishing rating 8 - Good book, some flaws notwithstanding. reviewer Tony Williams ISBN 0761126066 summary Good interesting guide to Mars

With all the noise and kerfuffle about Mars recently I thought I should take a look at the Red Planet. I'm not well educated about astronomy, have to think hard to get the order of the planets right, but still wanted something with some depth. I found a great little guide for the uninformed visitor, "A Traveler's Guide to Mars" by William K Hartmann. This fairly inexpensive volume is full of all the information you're going to need, a large number of pictures, several maps and a great deal of information about previous voyagers to the planet. Indeed Hartmann was one of the scientists for the Mars Global Surveyor mission.

This book really does look like a typical traveler's guide with large print, bold headings, a good use of colour and text boxes. The style is light enough that when it gets scientific you don't notice too much. It is broken up into seven sections

1. Introducing Mars: Past and Present.
2. Noachian Mars: Exploring The Oldest Provinces
3. Interlude: Landing on Mars
4. Hesperian Mars: A Time of Transition
5. Interlude: Rocks From Mars
6. Amazonian Mars: The Red Planet Today
7. Where Do We come From, Where Are We Going

The first section is a quick overview of the planet and a look at the history of Martian research. Section three looks at the various landings and what they discovered. Section five is a single chapter explaining the Martian meteors and what they might mean. Section seven is also small and looks at future Martian research. The other three sections look at the geography and geology of various parts of the Red Planet.

I found the whole book fascinating. I particularly liked the way Hartmann kept almost all his own tale in small sidebars called "My Martian Chronicles", 15 of them scattered through the book. These were interesting and meant that he could push his own barrow in a way that didn't intrude into the rest of the book, you could read them when you wanted. Throughout the book you get a huge amount of information about Mars and how the various bits were likely formed and what further exploration is likely to find.

All that said, it's not a book that can be taken in huge gulps. It took me several weeks to read it, picking it up and reading a few chapters then putting it down for a day or so, then perhaps another hour or two just looking at pictures, maps and reading sidebars. The layout does lend itself to this, however, so I'm not quite certain I'd call this a flaw, it seemed like a good way of making a 450 page book on Mars that much easier to digest. It also doesn't seem like a book that you need to read cover to cover, in order. I certainly didn't, reading bits about the meteors and landings and the last section before reading the section on Hesperian Mars.

The Workman Publishing web page on the book is not much use, with only a tiny excerpt from the book and while the book does have a selected reading list at the end it would have been nice to have a list of recommended web sites for further information as most of us don't have access to the sort of library likely to carry advanced astronomy journals or books.

If you're not an astronomy geek and want to know more about Mars then you may well find this book ideal. I certainly enjoyed my visit to the Red Planet.

You can purchase A Traveler's Guide To Mars from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

honestpuck writes "As digital video cameras spawn in the hands of you, me, parents and tourists like cockroaches in my kitchen we find ourselves needing the kind of technical and aesthetic help not really seen since the advent of 'desktop publishing'. Once again a 'Missing Manual' has come to my help." Read on for honestpuck's review of David Pogue's iMovie 3 & iDVD: The Missing Manual. iMovie 3 & iDVD: The Missing Manual author David Pogue pages 456 publisher Pogue Press/O'Reilly rating 7 - Good book, some flaws reviewer Tony Williams ISBN 0596005075 summary A quality introduction to two closely tied products.

I have previously reviewed iPhoto2: The Missing Manual and said "The target audience for this book would probably be a little less technical than myself or the average Slashdot reader, however when I find myself in a field I don't understand well I don't mind a little stuff for the absolute newbie" -- and once again this is true. iMovie 3 & iDVD: The Missing Manual finds me in an area where I am technically inferior. Once again I truly appreciated this book and its style.

The book is broken up into four sections, one devoted to video cameras and shooting a movie, a large one on editing in iMovie 3, and smaller sections on exporting out of iMovie 3 and on using iDVD. At the end are two useful appendices: the first is a menu-by-menu look at iMovie 3, and the second is an iMovie 3 troubleshooting guide. The latter is often needed and always useful -- iMovie 3 still has more than one bug.

The first section gives a great deal of incredibly useful information about video cameras and how to use them, including hints on various types of shooting such as sporting events, interviews and weddings. The technical information on cameras is perfect if you have yet to buy a camera, including a guide to which features are essential and which unnecessary as you can do the same thing (only better) in iMovie 3. When it goes on to the 'how to shoot' section, you get pretty much the same advice you'll get anywhere, but since we didn't really read all of from the last book on video we read (and forgot half the bits we did read) it's nice to have it there again.

The second section does a good job of explaining the details of iMovie 3, even down to some of its shortcomings and bugs. I also appreciated the way it spent as much time on improving the quality of the finished film as it did telling me how to use the various parts of the software. It follows a logical sequence through the movie-making process, giving good details on how iMovie does the job, how to get the best result and what sort of things to avoid -- particularly useful for things like transitions and effects when less is best.

The third section, titled "Finding Your Audience," is a bit more of a problem. It really has nothing to do with finding an audience and a lot more to do with QuickTime. The section first spends ten pages telling us how to get our edited film back onto the camcorder or onto a VCR, then it spends a lot of time dealing with exporting to QuickTime, including posting movies to the web and some info on using the QuickTime player, including some "tricks" with QuickTime Player Pro.

The attention to the finished product in the second section carries through to the fourth section on iDVD, though the writing here is not quite as good. It is incredibly informative, however. I learned a great deal about putting together all sorts of iDVD projects, including ways of customizing almost every aspect of the finished product.

O'Reilly have the usual marketing stuff while Pogue Press have the handy little Missing CD section with links to all the free and shareware software mentioned in the book. Neither has a sample chapter or the table of contents, you can't even get either at Amazon.

One of the drawbacks of getting free software is that we don't get good free documentation. One of the benefits of free software is that we can choose which 'documentation' to buy. Some people might prefer the style of the 'Dummies' books, others the style of Peachpit's Visual Quickstart Guide. I've had a look at all three and like the balance of depth and explanation that Pogue has in his 'Missing Manual' series. I once again find myself recommending a 'Missing Manual' to everyone. While catering to the beginner, this book goes deep enough that all but the most long-term user of these two pieces of software will find something to learn in this volume.

You can purchase iMovie 3 & iDVD: The Missing Manual from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

honestpuck contributes this review of Sams Publishing's Teach Yourself AppleScript in 24 Hours, writing "The market for books on AppleScript cannot be a large one, since there never seem to be many volumes in it; usually only one at a time is up to date and worth the money. Now that O'Reilly's AppleScript In A Nutshell is showing its age (and wasn't that great in the first place), and Danny Goodman's book is even older, I was pleased to hear that this volume had come along." Read on for honestpucks' mixed impressions of the book. Teach Yourself AppleScript in 24 Hours author Jesse Feiler pages 432 publisher Sams Publishing rating 7 reviewer Tony Williams ISBN 0672325187 summary Not a bad introduction to AppleScript but leaves off far too early.

Teach Yourself Applescript in 24 Hours (TYA) from Sams Publishing is certainly up to date: it covers Applescript under OS 10.2 and the use of AppleScript Studio to build GUI applications using the language. That's its strength. The book's first weakness, though, is that it starts too far down the learning curve in my opinion. The first few chapters of TYA could be read by someone almost totally new to the Macintosh -- they cover such basics as running the scripts installed with the OS and getting new scripts from Apple and installing them. At the same time, they introduce basic AppleScript programming terminology not really required for these sorts of tasks such as suites, classes and commands. This material would have best waited a few chapters. It is not really until 'Hour 6', most of the way through the first part of the book, that it really sorts itself out and gets down to really teaching you AppleScript.

The Basics The book is divided into four parts: 'Getting Started With AppleScript,' which covers using scripts and basic programming concepts; 'Writing Scripts With Script Editor,' which takes you through using the Script Editor, details AppleScript syntax and how to script the Finder and various applications and using AppleScript Dictionaries; 'Working With AppleScript Studio,' which covers building AppleScript-based GUI applications using Project Builder and Interface Builder all the way through to complex applications that can store and retrieve documents; and a final section 'Advanced Scripting,' which covers Script Objects, scripting across a network (including SOAP and XML-RPC), and integrating scripts with the terminal and cron.

Each section is then divided up into chapters designed to be worked through in less than an hour ,with a small number of short exercises at the end. I found that most chapters took me about half an hour before I reached the exercises, which then took ten to fifteen minutes.

As you can see, almost everything you could ask for is touched on in this book. Once over the introductory chapters, I found the book to be well laid out, well structured and well written. I particularly liked Part III on AppleScript Studio; it started easily and worked up to quite an advanced little application explaining everything well along the way.

The Bad There are some things missing, however. Debugging is hardly mentioned (3/4 of one lesson), and debugging is not exactly trivial in AppleScript. I also found no mention of my pet demon with AppleScript; its incredibly strong typing and problems with having data in the wrong type; this is a classic problem with files and file names. In reality, this book teaches you the language without really getting down to teach you how to program in the language. A fine distinction, I know, but after just reading Learning Perl Objects, References & Modules, I found TYA to be light on real examples and real world code. Even the best section, the one on AppleScript Studio, didn't touch on many things you will need to know.

Sams have a page devoted to the book at the Sams web site, but frankly the URL is so long and cumbersome I don't dare risk putting it in a post. Go to the site and type 'AppleScript' in the search box. It has the table of contents and a sample chapter and some of the code from the book. The sample chapter is the third chapter 'Running The Scripts You Already Have' and really doesn't give you a good feel for how the book teaches you AppleScript programming. The page to download the code examples says "All the code developed for the book in one convenient download," but in fact all you get are the AppleScript Studio projects and source from four of the chapters. Oh, and the introduction says "There are even a few goodies on the web site that aren't in the book" -- they sure must be good as I couldn't find them.

In conclusion, I think this book starts too far down the learning curve and leaves off too early, with not enough detail. It seems a shame, what we have here is well laid out and well written, I wanted it to be better after I had finished. This book might suit someone absolutely new to the Mac who wanted to learn enough AppleScript to perform a few basic operations, for everyone else it'll be better to wait till October when AppleScript 1-2-3 will be out from Peachpit and AppleScript: The Definitive Guide will be out from O'Reilly, and we might have a better option. If you absolutely need to get some help with AppleScript Studio then borrow someone else's copy or find one second hand.

You can purchase Teach Yourself AppleScript in 24 Hours from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

honestpuck writes "Security has long been a concern for Unix administrators who find themselves connected to the sometimes dark and dirty world of the Internet. With the advent of personal operating systems with file sharing, remote login and built-in web servers, and the spread of broadband networks with their always-on connectivity, it should now be a concern for everyone." Specifically, honestpuck is talking here about Mac OS X; read on for his review of Sams Publishing's Mac OS X Maximum Security. Mac OS X Maximum Security author John Ray and William C Ray pages 768 publisher Sams rating 7 reviewer Tony Williams ISBN 0672323818 summary Comprehensive but sometimes long winded book that covers securit on your Mac well

It really didn't concern me until one day when I was checking the logs on my Mac OS X box while developing a web app and discovered dozens of entries from all over the globe probing my box to see if it was an insecure IIS server. I then decided I needed to pay attention to security alerts and the help of a book like Macintosh OS X Maximum Security to help me understand and fix any holes.

The Good

The book is divided into four sections. Part 1 is about learning to think about security, covering such topics as physical security and protection from your users and bad guys. Part II, 'Vulnerabilities and Exposures,' covers the various sorts of attack such as password attacks, trojans and worms, sniffers and spoofing. Part III, 'Specific Mac OS X Resources and How To Secure Them,' covers just that, the various servers such as FTP, mail, Apache and SSH and how to go about making them safe. The final part covers attack prevention, detection, reaction and recovery with topics such as firewalls, alarm systems, logs and disaster planning.

Macintosh OS X Maximum Security is a large, extremely comprehensive volume. For the average person who wants to protect a small home network the information it provides is probably overkill. To make matters worse, the style is fairly verbose, particularly in the first section. Of course, if you want to secure a company network then you may need to know all the information -- and so all this background material is useful, if only so you can reach the right level of paranoia and suspicion.

The book is not a 'recipe' book that tells you "take these steps and you will have a secure machine"; rather it takes you through the possible holes and how to fix them. This approach seems much better for security, since it teaches you a respect for the places you have to open up and a methodical approach to doing so that will hopefully carry over beyond the specifics addressed. Any recipe is bound to have flaws since the operating system and the services are all changing, I'm hoping the methods and style this book have imparted to me will last beyond any changes.

The book also deals well with all the Macintosh-specific stuff, informing you well about such topics as Rendezvous, Apple Remote Desktop, using NetInfo and the like. One aspect that isn't well covered is Airport; securing an 802.11 network is barely touched on.

The Bad

The information provided in all areas of the book is quite detailed, and includes many links to further places to look for more (and more recent) information. Once again, for a book in an ever-changing field like security, this is a huge benefit. I would have appreciated some sort of a small website devoted to the book with the links mentioned gathered together and perhaps some notes on how things may have changed since the book's publication. Unfortunately the Sams Publishing site has a broken link to the book and while the authors say "we are creating a security section for the www.macosxunleashed.com website," no such section exists as I was writing this review. Frankly I am disappointed at this, I think with a book on this sort of topic it behooves either the publisher or author to provide a place for errata, discussion and notes. The best you can do is go to Amazon where you can see the Table of Contents and one chapter. [Ed. Note: The site's errata section is currently up and running.]

My only real complaint with the book itself is the huge size, and the long-winded nature of some of the material. I found the first two sections in particular almost tedious and definitely lecturing in tone. I would have rated this book higher if the editors at Sams had taken a large red pencil to slabs of the first section. Overall, I'd say that while not a 'must buy,' this book will have to do till I find something better, and I expect to loan my copy to several friends.

You can purchase Mac OS X Maximum Security from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

honestpuck writes "In the world of Perl there was once only the 'camel book,' held in perhaps as much reverence as 'K & R' among C programmers. It certainly appealed to roughly the same audience, those who wanted a short, sharp introduction to a programming language. It was with a problem that needed solving and a copy of the camel book that I started as a Perl programmer." Read on for honestpuck's review of another book he regards at least as highly. Learning Perl Objects, References & Modules author Randal L. Schwartz with Tom Phoenix pages 205 publisher O'Reilly rating 9.9 - Cannot find a fault reviewer Tony Williams ISBN 0596004788 summary Perfect book for taking your Perl skills to the next level

Then for those that wanted a introduction to Perl and programming Randal L. Schwartz wrote Learning Perl, a book that has arguably become the definitive textbook for teaching Perl. The one weakness was that it left off before really getting to the guts of building large, complex projects in Perl. It did not cover classes, objects, breaking your code up into pieces or the more arcane aspects of variables, references. For this we had to resort to the last few chapters of the 'camel book' and I, for one, have never really been totally comfortable at this end of the language; when I'm reading someone else's code it might take a couple of reads to fully understand the process.

Now this weakness has been well and truly addressed. Schwartz, with Tom Phoenix, has written "Learning Perl Objects, References & Modules", a volume that takes the same steady approach to teaching you the more advanced topics as the earlier 'Learning Perl'. Schwartz has spent the years since writing 'Learning Perl' teaching and writing. You can tell, this is a superbly written book, not that 'Learning Perl' wasn't well written; it's just that this volume is far better.

The Guts

The book starts with a chapter on building larger programs that covers @INC, eval, do and require before discussing packages and scope. It then has several chapters on references that explains in well understandable fashion and increasing complexity all the ins and outs of references including dereferencing, nested references, references to subroutines and references to anonymous data before a final chapter on references that gives you some incredibly useful tricks such as sorting and recursively defining complex data.

The book continues with three chapters that give you a solid grounding in Perl objects. Here Schwartz has assumed that you know at least a little about object oriented programming, some may feel the need for more explanation of concepts might be required, but if you've had any experience in OOP before then the clear examples and descriptions here are probably all you want.

Modules are not as well covered, with only a single chapter, but it is hard to think of anything left out, it covers using them and building your own so well that it left me wondering what all the fuss was about, "seems obvious to me." The book concludes with chapters on building a distribution out of your module, testing it using make test (with Test::Harness), Test::Simple and Test::More before a chapter telling you how to contribute to CPAN.

Each chapter of the book concludes with a number of small exercises, designed to be done in just a few minutes, that cement the learning of the previous chapter. The answers to these are at the end of the book.

Conclusion

Once I'd finished I felt I had a much more solid grounding in Perl, certainly I was much better able to understand another programmer's code that dealt with such things as subroutine references and some complex data structures. While the subject matter of this book is almost entirely covered in 'Programming Perl' the tutorial aspects of this book made it much easier going. The style would be familiar to anyone who has read 'Learning Perl', light without being frivolous and extremely well written, Schwartz seems a master at reducing complexity to manageable bites.

This book is deceptively easy to follow, each new idea built onto earlier ones, each new language concept introduced in an easy manner. The writing is excellent, it's hard to explain why I appreciated it so much. That may be the reason, the writing isn't forced or heavy or too light or obvious. It just allows the solid material of the book to shine through. Go to the ubiquitous O'Reilly website and grab the example chapter (the site also has a few Errata, the Table of Contents and the code from the book) and give it a look.

I think this may well become a classic, I may well in ten years time talk of Schwartz's books with the same awe I now talk of Brian Kernighan's. I'll certainly eagerly await his next book and keep this one close until it comes. Oh, and Randal, how about 'Software Tools for Perl Programmers'?

You can purchase Learning Perl Objects, References & Modules from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

honestpuck writes "The Missing Manual series has been around for quite some time, but I have never felt the need to buy one until I started doing some serious work with iPhoto. iPhoto 2: The Missing Manual was a good volume to assist." Read on for the rest of honestpuck's review. iPhoto 2: The Missing Manual author David Pogue, Derrick Story, Joseph Schorr pages 336 publisher O'Reilly/Pogue Press rating 8 reviewer Tony Williams ISBN 0596005067 summary An good guide to iPhoto2 for beginner to intermediate users

One of the things I like about Apple's iApps is that they hide a great deal of complexity behind a simple interface; they do indeed make the complex simple. The drawback to this is that I often find myself ignoring the more powerful aspects of the application and never using it to its full. It was here that the Missing Manual came to my help.

The target audience for this book would probably be a little less technical than myself or the average Slashdot reader, however when I find myself in a field I don't understand well I don't mind a little stuff for the absolute newbie. This book has an entire first section that deals with photography and digital photography in particular that may be a total repeat for some, I found it a welcome reminder of how to get a good photograph along with some extremely useful hints about the new technology and choosing a camera. It covers such topics as composition and lighting for a host of different situations such as landscapes, night, portraits, children and sports.

It then goes on to a section of similar size on the basics that covers getting the photos from your camera to the Mac, organising the photos using albums and keywords and then editing your shots.

A third section covers the various ways of publishing and showing your photos such as printing, CD, and web pages, and a final section with some tricks and tips on things like managing your libraries. There are two appendices: one very useful troubleshooting guide, and a menu-by-menu look at iPhoto 2.

I particularly appreciated the thorough treatment of how to get the most out of iPhoto when printing photo books and creating web pages in the third section; it was here that I really discovered how little I knew from just 'playing' with the application. The book is peppered with useful information and tips that take you beyond the level that most of us discovered when we ran and used the program. The authors have also provided some marvelous explanations of what is going on, the "why" as well as the "what."

The book is well written with a readable, light, almost witty style that somehow deceives the reader as to the depth of the material being covered. It is only when I reflected back on how much the book taught me that I realised how well it had done the job.

O'Reilly have their usual web page for the book with a sample chapter, Table of Contents and Index. Pogue Press have a neat idea - they have a page that features all the software mentioned in the book. A neat idea that I liked a lot.

In conclusion, I would recommend this book to everyone who is serious about digital photography on their Mac. If you have used iPhoto for a long time you may think the book a waste, but I'd be surprised if even long-time users didn't get their money's worth out of this book. I much preferred the style of this volume to IDG's iPhoto 2 for Dummies , the only other real competitor for this volume was iPhoto 2 for Mac OS X: A Visual Quickstart Guide , and that is a shorter volume with less depth and less advice for photography and nothing on the camera technology, though I think Engst's writing seems a bit clearer at times.

I wouldn't buy a "Missing Manual" for every iApp or the operating system, but if you take the slogan for the series seriously, "The book that should have been in the box" (for the box is entirely devoid of books), I think they are a marvelous help for becoming a true 'power user.'

You can purchase iPhoto2: The Missing Manual from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

honestpuck writes "Linguistics has long been an interest of mine, and one of my fields of study, and I've recently read two good books that combine linguistics with other topics. The Keys of Egypt is the tale of history's most famous decoding task, the translation of Egyptian hieroglyphics and In The Beginning is the story of the King James Bible, the history, theology, politics, linguistics and technology that surrounded Bible translation and printing in Renaissance Europe and England." Read on for his combination review of two books that might inspire your curiosity, no matter how far from the usual Slashdot fare. In The Beginning & The Keys of Egypt author Alister E. McGrath & Lesley Adkins & Roy Adkins pages 352 & 368 publisher Anchor & Perennial rating 7 reviewer Tony Williams ISBN 0385722168, 0060953497 summary A good book on the history of the King James Bible & A decent read on the translation of hieroglyphics

Hieroglyphs The Keys Of Egypt was written by husband-and-wife archaeological team Lesley and Roy Adkins. It is subtitled "The Race to Crack the Hieroglyph Code," and starts with a short chapter that introduces the eventual winner of that race, the Frenchman Jean-Francois Champollion, and mentions his most serious rival, the Englishman Thomas Young.

The book goes on to examine Napoleon's expedition to Egypt which both brought the Rosetta Stone to light and started a period of French and European fascination with ancient Egypt. These were the two catalysts for the riddle's eventual solution.

This is a well-written book that looks at the struggle and race for translation and the political and academic machinations (often both combined) that surrounded Champollion. It is essentially a biography of Champollion, who grew up and worked amid the turmoil of the Napoleonic era. The story is a compelling one and the authors have done well to make it at times fascinating.

As a genre I find that 'scientific biographies' tend to be a little overblown and flowery, the writing not quite precise -- and Keys suffers from these shortcomings. I also felt that while the book is subtitled "The Race to Crack the Hieroglyph Code" it really only focuses on Champollion, while he is the eventual winner a little more effort in examining the others involved in the effort would have improved the book.

The Bible It can be argued that the King James Bible has had as large an effect on our language today as the work of Shakespeare. 'In The Beginning' has at its core the story of biblical translation, a topic you may think anything but fascinating. McGrath has done a good job in making this a compelling book.

He starts, as one may expect, with the story of Gutenberg and his first printed bibles. Before arriving at the King James he covers Martin Luther, the rise of Protestantism in Europe, Henry the Eighth, more than one hanging, and several other bible translations and translators. Along the way he manages to dispel a few myths I had held about biblical translation and the King James in particular. I always thought that it was the King James version that introduced the idea of the main body in roman type and words inserted to clarify meaning in italics, but it was actually an earlier English translation known as the Geneva Bible that first implemented this idea. After explaining the technology, theology, politics and linguistics nuances that led King James to permit (but not fund) a new translation, McGrath tells us how the translation was accomplished organizationally before examining some of the nuances of the translation itself. Some of the language in the King James was archaic even when it was published; translators had been instructed to lift from previous translations all the way back to the partial translation of William Tynsdale published 90 years earlier, and this at a time when the English language was going through the huge changes of the Elizabethan era. McGrath examines this aspect, pointing out such things as changes in verb endings and personal pronouns.

I found the book patchy. McGrath does a much better job covering the story up until the translation. It is harder to get a feel for how the translation was accomplished and how the various teams worked, and when he comes to examine some of the nuances of the translation, the text makes much harder going. If this had not been a part of the topic that interested me a great deal, I may have lost interest.

Conclusion

Both books may have their flaws but both are well worth the read. It is important to realise the history of science and language that have brought us to our current place and both these volumes do a good job of illuminating the past efforts of men who worked under entirely different pressures than we find today.

You can purchase both In The Beginning and The Keys of Egypt from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

honestpuck writes " I am a big fan of the written word on dead trees, but sometimes I like to have the written word where I can easily search it, or cut and paste from it. That's why I like PHP.net and why I decided to get a copy of O'Reilly's Web Programming CD Bookshelf. And I am pleased with it, though not ecstatic." Read on to see what honestpuck liked about this collection, and what drawbacks it may have for you. The Web Programming CD Bookshelf author [Various] pages 540 paper, 1189 HTML publisher O'Reilly rating 7 reviewer Tony Williams ISBN 0596005105 summary A good resource for PHP developers, overpriced for others

The Good The Web Programming CD Bookshelf (WPCB) consists of a CD and a paper copy of Webmaster in a Nutshell, 3rd Edition. The CD contains an HTML version of that, as well as Dynamic HTML: The Definitive Reference, 2nd Edition, Programming PHP, PHP Cookbook, JavaScript: The Definitive Guide, 4th Edition and Web Database Applications with PHP & MySQL. There is an excellent combined index of the six volumes and a nice Java search engine, QuestAgent Pro version 4.0.9. from JObjects. According to the documentation for the engine on the CD, "It has problems running with Mozilla 0.9 and 1.0 and Netscape 7 on Mac OS 9, and occasionally on Linux"; I had no problems running it on Mac OS X in Mozilla 1.3, Safari or Internet Explorer apart from a small visual problem with another tab in Mozilla (separate windows was fine, only another tab in the same window caused a problem).

All the contents pages and indices of the volumes are of course hyperlinked. Once you are on the pages of a 'book' the top of each page has a link to the contents page, next page, previous page and the search form. The bottom of each page has next and previous buttons (with the relevant page titles), a link to the books contents page and index and below them all a row of links to the Bookshelf home and each of the books. Taken together this makes moving through the books and finding the information you want easy, for the most part.

Once you start using the collection there are some great benefits. The ability to just cut and paste the example code right out of the text you are reading cannot be underestimated.

The books themselves are the quality you expect from O'Reilly - well-written, well-edited and containing the information you need on a given subject. The one you get on paper, Webmaster in a Nutshell is a good overview of HTML, CSS, XML, JavaScript, CGI and Perl, PHP and Apache that I find a good desktop reference. The others provide a good depth and perspective on their respective subjects.

The Bad

Obviously a great deal of the work of converting the books to HTML must be done by automated software, and sometimes you wish a little more had hand-work had been done. For example, Dynamic HTML: The Definitive Reference has an alphabetical list of all HTML and XHTML tags and their attributes -- as one page of 23,000 lines of HTML. The only way into this mammoth list is via the book index, there is no quick list of tags with links on a separate page or other fast way.

My other complaint about that content is that the selection of books is PHP heavy. If you are involved in using PHP to build websites this volume would be a great help; others may feel they would have been better served by a collection that dropped at least one of the PHP books in favour of, perhaps, The Perl Cookbook. Webmaster in a Nutshell is not as useful in this collection as you might think, some of what it contains is covered by other volumes in the set. That's not to say that it isn't an excellent book and a good choice as the one that comes in paper with the CD, just that once again I'm not sure it really needed to be in the collection.

That brings me to my final complaint, cost. Sure, 6 books for $130 U.S. seems like a bargain, but unless you are interested in all 6 books (which means principally developing for the web in PHP) it starts to be less of a bargain. If you think of it as more expensive than a six-month subscription to O'Reilly's online book service, Safari (which allows you ten books, changeable when you want) then this is less than a bargain.

Conclusion

If you are developing for PHP then this might be a good resource at a fair price; you'll find it almost indispensable and (unlike Safari) you can use it when you're offline. If you develop in some other environment, it is an overpriced way of getting a few books as electronic text. If you develop for the web in Perl, then have a serious look at The Perl CD Bookshelf instead, or perhaps consider a Safari subscription.

You can purchase The Web Programming CD Bookshelf from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

honestpuck writes "Earlier this year I decided to learn Java. I'd spent some time using JavaScript without really getting my hands too dirty but I'd pushed it way to far and realized I needed a bigger hammer. Grabbing a copy of Learning Java, 2nd Edition from O'Reilly I started learning. First problem, I have to admit I've stayed away from object-oriented programming; after all, I've been writing software for nigh on twenty years without it - why make life hard? Sure, I understood the concepts and I'd done a little but never in a language so strongly committed to OO as Java." Read on for honestpuck's review of Head First Java, which he compares in style and content to Learning Java. Head First Java author Bert Bates, Kathy sierra pages 650 publisher O'Reilly rating 8 reviewer Tony Williams ISBN 0596004656 summary Good, offbeat Java tutorial with new approach to learning computer topics

The Good

Of course, you can't learn Java without a good understanding of object-oriented languages. I made fairly heavy going with 'Learning Java' until I decided to dive in head first. Head First Java, that is -- a new book from O'Reilly that has a totally different attitude to teaching than I've seen before in computer books. It also looks like this might be the start of a series from O'Reilly, the website an introduction seem to assume that there will be more 'Head First' titles and I hope so. The style is humorous, full of graphics, cartoons, puzzles, quizzes and crosswords. It reminds me of the textbooks that used to try and teach me geometry and algebra in high school or my daughter's elementary books on Roman and Greek history I purchased for her at the British Museum. The style didn't work to teach me much algebra and geometry, but I wasn't anywhere near as motivated. This time, it worked. In a couple of weeks I worked through the book and finally have Java skills where I can branch off and start coding the projects I had in mind (though something more advanced will be required soon.)

In the introduction the authors examine learning and explain why they designed the book as they did. To quote from one section: "Some of the Head First learning principles. Make it visual. Put the words within or near the graphics. Use a conversational and personalized style. Get the learner to think more deeply. Get -- and keep -- the reader's attention. Touch their emotions." They argue that our brain is tuned to novelty, and that their style provides the novelty to keep your brain turned on. They also provide ten tips for good learning. That's one thing that seems to set this book apart from most other computer books, they say they think of their reader as a learner and indeed that's the way you are treated by the book. You can start to get a feel for their ideas by visiting headfirst.oreilly.com, a site devoted to the series. You can also grab a couple of example chapters from the books web page, which also has the usual marketing info, table of contents and errata.

The Bad

When compared to Learning Java the coverage is not as good. Head First really only covers the basics, up to and including creating a GUI with SWING and then touches a number of others; Learning Java goes on to explore, with a fair depth, network programming, web programming, servlets, applets, Java Beans, XML and other topics that are only touched on briefly in Head First. If the style of learning does not suit you then this will be an incredibly irritating and useless book, I'd give it a try first, though. If it isn't for you then the style of Learning Java might be better.

Conclusion

When you get down to it, though, the only way to really decide on the worth of a tutorial is to decide how well it teaches. Head First Java excels at teaching. OK, I thought it was silly, I had a hard time making myself do the exercises, fill out the crosswords and solve the puzzles. Then I realized that I was thoroughly learning the topics as I went through the book. Learning Java was doing the same job, but the dry traditional method wasn't doing as well. Both books are well written, designed and constructed -- the style of Headfirst Java just made learning, well, easier.

It would seem to me that the 'Head First' approach is going to work wonderfully for the more 'beginner' topics, books for introducing you to a new style of programming, a new language or a radically different operating system or application. So if you're looking for a book to introduce you to Java then I can recommend Head First Java. Now if I could only find a book as good to introduce me to Common Lisp.

You can purchase Head First Java from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

honestpuck writes "I find it surprising that with the current popularity of the The Lord of The Rings movies and subsequent rise in sales of the trilogy and The Hobbit that so few bookshops stock more of the Professor's other works. Fortunately this volume makes it easier. It puts four of his works in one, Farmer Giles of Ham, The Adventures of Tom Bombadil Leaf By Niggle and Smith of Wootton Major." The first and fourth of these I've read elsewhere (and enjoyed), so I'm glad to learn of the other two. Read on for honestpuck's capsule description of each. Tales From The Perilous Realm author J.R.R. Tolkein pages 192 publisher Harper Collins rating 9 reviewer Tony Williams ISBN 0261103431 summary Excellent short stories and poetry from a master story-tellet Farmer Giles of Ham This is a marvelous tale of a reluctant, and accidental, hero and a dragon who doesn't quite live up to the stereotype. The style is a little old fashioned, making it seem more like the fairy tales of your childhood than even The Hobbit, with a dry sense of humour. That said, it also seems to be the hardest for a child to enjoy (my sample size is only two, however), though personally I liked it when I first read it and enjoy it still.. It is the longest of the four works and by far the earliest written and published, 1949. The Adventures of Tom Bombadil The Adventures is a collection of 16 assorted poems, most are either partially quoted or referred to in The Lord Of The Rings. The poems are a mixed bag, ranging from the short and amusing "Oliphaunt" through to the more adult and wistful "The Last Ship" that closes the collection. All are enjoyable for the adult reader, some enjoyable for children. Iâ(TM)ve never really liked Tolkienâ(TM)s verse when he tries to be serious, in this collection I only really like "Oliphaunt." Leaf By Niggle The shortest of the three stories, in this one Niggle, whose dreams far outweigh his talent, sets out to paint the perfect tree and is caught up in his own variation of the Pygmalion myth (though it is a tree that comes to life.) It is a marvelously written tale that unfolds beautifully. Smith of Wootton Major My favourite of them all, a tale in which Smith voyages to the land of the faeries via a magical cake. Another story that revolves around the dreams and fantasies in a life. This one is a perfect fairy tale and perfect for reading aloud to a small person, full of magic and charm and whimsy it brings to mind everything I loved about The Hobbit. Conclusion

While the three tales and 16 poems all have their differences there is certainly a distinctive style across them all. Just a little old-fashioned, a little formal - in fact almost exactly how you'd expect an Oxford Professor to write fiction. This volume is worth reading, and an enjoyable read but does not quite have the magnificence of language in The Lord of The Rings nor the wonderful light touch of well-crafted children's tale in The Hobbit. They are good short pieces, that sort of excellence is hard to craft into such short works.

Anyone who enjoyed The Hobbit will find this a wonderful volume. Tolkein always talked of writing both The Hobbit and The Lord of The Rings as a way of creating truly English myth and fairy tales (he felt that Arthur was too much a tale borrowed from the French). While both of those 'grew in the telling,' this small volume gives us three marvelous (and English in feel) fairy tales and some good poetry. A must for all Tolkein fans.

Tales from the Perilous Realm is harder to find than Tolkein's better-known works, but is available from online merchants including Amazon. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

honestpuck writes "I've seen a fair number of books for OS X and they range in target audience from the raw beginner such as Mac OS X for Dummies and Robin William's Mac OS X Book through to those for technical readers such as Mac OS X In A Nutshell (IAN)." Read on for honestpucks' review of the new edition of Todd Stauffer's Mastering OS X. Mastering Mac OS X (2nd Ed.) author Todd Stauffer pages 804 publisher Sybex rating 7 reviewer Tony Williams ISBN 0782141188 summary Good guide to OS X for intermediate beginners to intermediate users

Mastering Mac OS X falls firmly in the middle. Unlike IAN it spends a fair amount of time on the GUI and a major section is devoted to QuickTime and the iApps. Unlike Robin William's volume it covers high end topics such as AppleScript and the terminal and has a good section on troubleshooting. One thing lacking that I applaud is that it does not have IAN's large chapter summing up Unix commands.

The Good

The book is well structured, divided into 7 sections, 5 of increasing complexity, 'The Mac OS X Basics', 'On The Internet', 'Multimedia: Images Sound, Video', 'Networking, Coonectivity and Portables' and 'Advanced Mac OS X topics' - which covers AppleScript, the Terminal, and various servers including QuickTime, Samba and Sendmail. These are followed by a hardware and troubleshooting section and finally the appendices. The index is good and it has the by now traditional two level table of contents, the first listing just the chapter heads and the second listing all the sub sections as well.

Given that structure, the book touches all the bases and covers all the required topics well.

The writing is not bad, I think a stronger hand with the editing would have done wonders as it tends to the wordy.

The Bad

Once again a certain amount of the early stuff is either below the needs of the target audience or not really required. Oh, and Sybex do have a page for the book which includes a Table of Contents, sample chapter, index and errata but get a load of that URL and the author has a web page for the book but he hasn't touched it in over a year, since before this second edition was published.

Conclusion

It should be said that among all the books in this genre none are badly written, or badly structured. Personally I don't like the style of the 'Dummies' books and so I put it at the bottom of my list but others may not have the same feeling. That said, how do you choose among them? The choice boils down to two things, how close you are to the target audience for a particular book and how well it addresses the target audience. Mastering Mac OS X is targeted at "intermediate beginners (those who have some experience with a graphical operating system) and solidly intermediate to advanced users" according to the Introduction. I think that it covers the needs of the first group well but will probably fall short if you are already an "advanced user." For these people I'd recommend Mac OS X In A Nutshell. If you are a total newbie, then I'd recommend Robin William's Mac OS X Book.

You can purchase Mastering OS X from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

honestpuck writes with the short review below of Sams' PHP and MySQL Web Development, 2nd Edition, which he says is aimed at "someone who has programmed before needs to know about both PHP and MySQL," and a good book for the intended audience. Read on for his thoughts on the book. PHP and MySQL Web Development author Luke Welling & Laura Thomson pages 815 publisher Sams rating 9 reviewer Tony Williams ISBN 067232525X summary New edition to for an excellent guide to PHP and MySQL

There is a good review of the first edition of this book here on Slashdot. For this second edition, I would add that Welling and Thomson have updated extensively and improved slightly a book that may well be the classic text on the topic.

PHP and MySQL are probably the most pervasive add-ons to Apache web servers across the web. Certainly they are both easy to acquire and common on a large range of web hosting systems, including several extremely low-cost ones. They also fit together extremely well.

This book demonstrates just how well. It starts out with a quick course in PHP (OK, 160 pages is hardly quick but it seems to move along at a good pace), follows it up with a brief look at MySQL before a short digression on E-commerce leads into building authentication and secure systems with the two tools (a marvelous place to start when you're thinking about commercial-grade web systems).

Then, after some more on PHP, the final section covers some large projects, a shopping cart, email service, mailing list manager and web forums. The final chapter in this section is new for this edition and covers XML and SOAP.

The new edition has been updated extensively. All scripts work now perfectly in PHP 4.3

I like this book a great deal. Even after a fair amount of time with the previous edition I still find it useful. It is well structured for finding what you need, well written, and has few typos. (Though there are still some, including ones in code examples -- when will authors learn to work straight off running code into the manuscript and keep godforsaken editors away from it? Brian Kernighan managed it twenty-five years ago.)

This would not be the best book if you had little programming experience, nor would it be the best book if you had a fair amount of PHP experience.

You will want to have some program design experience and preferably some experience with database design as these are given short shrift. The book also lacks examples and discussion of some of the less database intensive parts of PHP and some of the more obscure tasks you may need to perform. It covers what someone who has programmed before needs to know about both PHP and MySQL while informing on methods of using both to build practical and sturdy web applications. If that sounds like the book you want then I heartily recommend this volume to you.

You can purchase PHP and MySQL Web Development from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

honestpuck writes "'Mac OS X Hacks' is a good grab bag of tips and techniques for getting the most from your Mac. While the tips are not as universally appealing (even among Mac owners) as those in 'Google Hacks' most people will find some value in the selection; experienced users may find it a little thin." Read on for the rest of honestpuck's review. OS X Hacks author Rael Dornfest & Kevin Hemenway pages 380 publisher O'Reilly rating 7 - Good reviewer Tony Williams ISBN 0596004605 summary Good grab bag of tips and techniques for getting the most from your Mac

The book is split into 9 chapters; 'Files', 'Startup", 'Multimedia and the iApps', 'The User Interface', 'Unix and the Terminal', 'Networking', 'Email', 'The Web' and 'Databases'.

For my money the last chapter is a complete waste of space since it only covers installing MySQL and PostgresSQL, and if you can't figure out how to install them from the documentation then you aren't smart enough to use them. A number of the other tips would come close to that level, I feel their only use may be to encourage people who would otherwise stay away to make some use of the terminal and similar tools.

Over a dozen people have contributed 'hacks' to the book, among them some major geeks such as James Duncan Davidson (Tomcat author) and Jon Udell (well respected O'Reilly blogger.) This accounts for the wide number of areas covered by the hacks.

When I first started reviewing the book I would have complained about a large number of the tips being too application specific, too general or too low in skill level. Since then I've had a friend who wanted to edit a movie and we both found the chapter on iApps useful, one with a brand new Bluetooth phone who liked the couple of tips on Bluetooth and another who found the cross platform Windows-Mac stuff useful. so I have to say that while some of the tips might seem useless now you may come to appreciate them later.

Overall the book is well written, well laid out and well cross-referenced and covers a wide range of information. My one major beef is still that there are too many 'tips' that are well covered by other material. Since you shouldn't really get this book until you are at least Mac proficient and probably own a basic Mac book or two then perhaps a tenth of the hundred tips will be covered in most Mac books and perhaps another five to ten you will have discovered on your own.

While O'Reilly doesn't offer a sample chapter of this book online they do have a page at Hacks that lists all the hacks and allows you to read eight of them. There is also a page in the catalog with the Table of Contents, Index and Errata.

Reading over my notes I feel split between raving about how good the book is - well written with a bunch of useful tips and tricks for any Mac user - and complaining about the useless nature of some of the tips. After taking another look at 'Google Hacks' and my review I realised where the conflict lies -- in my level of experience on the Mac. If you already feel comfortable with getting your hands dirty on your Mac then this book may well not satisfy you. If, on the other hand, you still have some trepidation about hacking at your OS X Macintosh then you'll probably love this book.

You can purchase OS X Hacks from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

honestpuck writes "It must be difficult when writing a book for 'power users' to decide what exactly needs to be put in and what can be safely left out. This volume does the job quite well, covering the simple stuff quickly and early while devoting a great deal of its 750 pages to topics of more interest to serious users of Apple's new(ish) operating system. It also declares its audience early, the preface devotes a page to explaining the target audience and states it is 'aimed at folks with a more technical bent than the average user--the power user.'" Read on to see what Honestpuck thinks of O'Reilly's OS X in a Nutshell. Mac OS X In A Nutshell author Jason McIntosh, Chuck Toporek & Chris Stone pages 768 publisher O'Reilly rating 8 - Almost excellent reviewer Tony Williams ISBN 0596003706 summary An Excellent book on OS X for 'power users' that will remain useful.

The Gist The book is quite well structured, and organized into into 5 parts. The first is a quick overview of the Macintosh GUI. The second part, "System Configuration," is mainly devoted to getting the system running well (covering preferences, networking, the file system and Java). The third section, "System and Network Administration," is a good guide to several lower-level tasks, including an excellent chapter on directory services and NetInfo. The fourth is about development, including Apple's IDE "Project Builder" and CVS. The final part covers the Unix underpinnings of OS X and X Windows. This includes a Unix command reference of over 200 pages.

The Good The book is also well written, with light, easily understood prose and some good screen dumps, tables and diagrams to make some of the more complex points easily understood. I appreciate the detailed contents section, good quality index and black chapter tabs at the side of each page for finding the information I need.

Everything seems to be covered, though you may sometimes find yourself needing to go elsewhere for more depth, but this is really only to expected in a book that is trying more for breadth across an entire operating system than depth in one particular area.

Despite having used and developed on a Mac for over 15 years and OS X since the late beta stage I still found myself discovering something new and useful every few pages in the book.

The Bad The section of the book I appreciated least was the Unix Command Reference. 200 pages, most of which are adequately covered by the online man pages or a quick 'command --help'. Not that it isn't useful having this information on paper, and not that this section isn't more complete than the man pages and less error-ridden. It's just that my favourite operating system has a large number of commands that are hard to find by name alone. Online, I tend to rely on apropos to find what I need. Back when you paid a large amount of money for a Unix license they came with hard copy manuals that included a permuted word index of the same top slug that apropos searches, which made them infinitely more useful. O'Reilly could improve the heck out of this book by giving us the same thing for what I felt was otherwise an almost totally wasted 200 pages (though I admit that the combination of the chapter on NetInfo and the command references for nicl and niutil etc. actually have me now understanding and using NetInfo well.)

Once again O'Reilly have provided a web page for the book that is mostly marketing material -- though in this case the Errata page is useful. At the bottom of the page they have a number of links to "Related O'Reilly Articles" but have only listed three by the authors of the book, leaving out, for example, X11 and Open Office on Mac OS X by Wei-Meng Lee and Configuring sendmail On Jaguar by James Duncan Davidson to name two MacDevCenter articles I've found incredibly helpful.

Conclusion

This book is not quite in the "must buy" category. If you do want a book to help you with the more technical aspects of OS X or to help you move to OS X from Unix or Windows hacking then this one is worth a serious look. It certainly better covers the technical aspects than OS X Bible and others of that style (such as the Missing Manual or Robin Williams' Little Mac OS X Book.) The only other volume that really compares is OS X Unleashed and it has way too much coverage of the simple stuff and the various applications, is not as well structured and has a wordier, less terse and technical style. It's also more expensive and twice the size and weight.

You can purchase Mac OS X in a Nutshell from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

honestpuck writes "It has been quite a while since I have come across a book I'd label 'essential.' The last for non-programming computer users was Robin Williams' The Mac Is Not A Typewriter which I bought for a number of new Macintosh users." Now, though, honestpuck has found another book which he says is required reading for modern computer users -- read on for his review of O'Reilly's Google Hacks. Google Hacks: 100 Industrial-Strength Tips and Tools author Tara Calishain and Rael Dornfest pages 318 publisher O'Reilly rating Excellent reviewer Tony Williams ISBN 0596004478 summary Excellent compendium of tips and tricks for everyone on using Google and its API

The book in brief Google Hacks by Tara Calishain and Rael Dornfest and published by O'Reilly will appeal to an even wider audience, I can imagine buying this for friends who haven't cottoned on to 'net searching at all and friends who complain "Google returns too many sites." People who are afraid to code shouldn't be put off by the "Hacks" in the title: O'Reilly have obviously taken a wider meaning of "hack" than just a neat piece of code. This book is a marvelous compendium of tips and tricks for Google, ranging from simple ways of getting the search results you want, through using Google's newer services such as phone books and image search, all the way to advanced ways of using scrapers and the Google API.

The book demonstrates 100 hacks, of which close to half are useful for everyone -- newbie, programmer and non-programmer alike. The first 35 hacks, in chapters one and two, will educate you about the intricacies of getting the best out of searching both Google's main web catalog and the newer 'Special Services and Collections.' This is the part of the book that should be essential reading for Google users -- in the two days I've had this book these have proved invaluable. The rest are for those who are either looking for extremely advanced search tips, increasing their web site's Google page rank, or programming an application to use the Google data -- all topics well covered in this volume.

What's Good In This Book

To start, it is well written, well laid out with a good contents section, good index, and some appropriate introductory material before getting down to the first hack. Each of the hacks are numbered and a single hack will often cross-reference other hacks that add information relevant to it. The hacks in each chapter nicely add on each other in both complexity and function.

The hacks themselves seem to cover every area of Google that you might want. They range from the downright frivolous (there is a chapter "Google Pranks and Games") to serious ways of improving your search results and excellent examples of good ways to use the Google API.

Most of the code fragments are in Perl, and among the hacks are ways of getting the job done without over extensive use of extra modules such as XML Parsers and SOAP::Lite (including a hack that uses regular expressions to parse the XML).

What's Bad In This Book

It's hard to find anything bad to say, apart from some frustration that a couple of the hacks that interested me used ASP or VB rather than a more portable language.

Oh, another minor quibble, the allied web site O'Reilly Hacks Series has been slow and has none of the code in the book or any of the URLs mentioned listed anywhere -- it seems more geared towards marketing the books than helping the readers.

(DISCLAIMER: I use Rael Dornfest's Blosxom blog software and have contributed a plugin for his software.)

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honestpuck writes "Wrox Press seem to have become masters at putting together volumes from a large number of authors. This 600-page volume is another example. This way of working does have some drawbacks, there is a little repetition of some basic stuff throughout the book, but not enough to truly detract from it." Read on for the complete version of honestpuck's review. PHP4 Web Development Solutions author Raj Kumar Dash, Bryan Waters, Alison Gianotto et. al. pages 601 publisher Wrox Press rating Fair reviewer Tony Williams ISBN 1861007434 summary Mid to high level exposition of web site development in PHP

In brief: The book, after some expository material, details 11 projects of increasing complexity. They use PHP, MySQL, PEAR::DB, Smarty and PHPLib. The target audience, according to the book jacket, are programmers who already have a good knowledge of PHP, SQL Databases and XML. Frankly, I think they overdo the amount of experience you need to use and benefit from this book. If you are on top of all those topics well enough to consider yourself "professional" then this book may be too simple. If, on the other hand, you are, like me, conversant with PHP and SQL but would like to take yourself up to "professional" use of technologies like XML, templating and WAP enabling then this book will be good.

What's Good About This Book

The book is stuffed full of code examples -- and while you can download them in a ZIP file of over 3Mb you shouldn't think of this book as a "cookbook" as such. It shows various methods for performing most of the tasks you need to build solid backend web site systems to deal with a large variety of data. The projects cover importing and exporting of XML, messaging systems, forums, content management, using templates for both HTML and WML, search facilities and both simple and complex content management among other topics.

The projects are well designed. I'd have to say that among the 11 projects most web site requirements are covered somewhere. The code is well engineered and some thought has gone into making it readable, understandable and useful. The explanatory material is well written, if too short.

One thing I did appreciate about this book is how much they left out. No coverage of PHP fundamentals, SQL fundamentals and simple stuff like web forms might be covered once, at most. I certainly didn't need another book on my shelves explaining the basics.

What's Bad About This Book

My largest criticism of this book is one shared by too many modern titles for computer programmers; there is too much explanation and too much repetition. The section on SQL is the perfect example. Most projects contain some tables describing each database table, a diagram of the relationships and then the full SQL required to build them, their indices and some example data. For their proposed target audience this is way too much information, and as it is safe to assume that everyone who buys this book has a decent 'net connection, why put a printout of SQL available online in a PHP book? I could have easily written the SQL myself and having it in the book doesn't make it much easier and since it was available online it was a total waste of space.

I also have to take exception to, an (admittedly short) chapter devoted to installing and configuring PostNuke. It gives you no more information on this simple task than the online documentation. As someone who has installed PostNuke a couple of times and never needed any assistance beyond the readme files (and the first was long before I considered myself a good PHP programmer) I felt this was a complete waste of space and not "web development" at all.

My final criticism is once again shared by too many modern titles, there isn't really enough discussion of the design decisions and complications. There are enough code examples and walk throughs to satisfy anyone, but not enough key design decisions are discussed at all, with only a few short examinations of any real design problems. I would have appreciated some walk throughs of such things as code that was too slow, problems with race conditions, methods for mixing static and generated parts of a site and all the real world stuff that intrudes when your site gets slashdotted and that code that was so neat with a hundred visitors a day becomes a thousand. Then show how the code they provide is better, avoids the problems and how to get my code to the same state. Since this book is "professional" a little more real world, please.

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