Slashdot Mirror

Chronic reviewer chromatic writes again, this time with a review of the newest iteration of what is probably the emblematic Perl book, the O'Reilly camel book. Read on to see how it stacks up to earlier versions of that work, and whether your Perl skills would benefit from reading through it.

Programming Perl (third edition) author Larry Wall, Tom Christiansen, & Jon Orwant pages 1067 publisher O'Reilly & Associates rating 9.5 reviewer chromatic ISBN 0-596-0027-8 summary The definitive guide to the Perl language, updated for 5.6.1.

The Scoop Longtime Perl fans know Programming Perl as the Camel, because of the cover animal. With the first edition in 1991, Perl programmers gained not only a charmingly appropriate mascot, but the ultimate language reference. True to form, this Camel's grown with the language. In the four years since the last release, it's increased in size by 67%.

Everything you liked about previous editions has returned, in one form or another. Additionally, this third edition covers the largest changes made for Perl 5.6 (actually 5.6.1, as the book's ahead of the current stable release by a bit) -- Unicode, threading, and more Perl guts.

While the previous editions were exceptionally well-written references, they were also aimed squarely at experienced programmers. This edition pushes back the starting blocks somewhat, providing a gentler introduction to the world of Perl. The wealth of new information is staggering, but as you'd expect from the luminous authors, even the core language reference is highly readable and entertaining.

What's to Like? Logically, the book is divided into five main sections. (Gone are the massive 80-page chapters of the second edition). The first section, one chapter, gives a good overview of Perl, as a language and a philosophy. It includes a quick introduction. The second section gives the language's gory details, covering just about everything you would need to know. It's arranged in terms of ascending complexity. The enhanced, extended, and improved regular expression chapter stands out as the best member of this group.

The third section discusses Perl as technology. Here's where Unicode comes in, as well as the internals of Perl (through the internal compilation process, using the debugger, or using XS to extend Perl with C code). Everything here is quite good. Expectably dry subjects like Unicode or threading are readable and even a little entertaining. If you're not convinced, you can skip around and still learn quite a bit.

The fourth section is devoted to Perl as culture, with discussions about portability, security, good practices, documentation, CPAN, and a bit of poetry. The security chapter is quite good, but left me wanting more information. Any chapter here is accessible if you've made it through the second section, so feel free to pick and choose what you need to know.

Rounding up the spare bits is the reference section. Not only will you find descriptions of the special variables, built-in functions, and standard library, but the organization and presentation of these descriptions has improved. Functions have little annotations listing which magic variables they set, possible exceptions they raise, and the like. That accounts for 150 pages of the overall goodness. Don't skip the glossary at the end, if you're confused or looking for amusement.

What's to Consider? While it's a temporary conundrum, it's a little odd to read about features that aren't quite implemented yet. This is most noticeable in the Unicode discussions and the chapter on threading. Occasionally, the authors will describe a feature and then admit that the specifics will likely change. (Have a look at the documentation.) Granted, the bulk of the language is mature and stable, and the definitive guide can't very well get by with ignoring major features, but it reads a little oddly.

The intended audience is still the serious Perl programmer. Dabblers and casual learners will find enlightenment and instruction. Realize, though, that while it's easier to start your journey here, absolute beginners would do well to explore a Learning Perl or Elements of Programming with Perl first. People who've programmed before (beyond dabbling with VB, or doing mouseovers in Web pages) should have little difficulty picking up the Perl language and mindset.

The only other possible improvement that comes to mind is expanding certain chapters. As noted before, there's more to say about security and efficiency. It would also be nice to have a chapter on common Perl idioms one might find in EFNet #Perl or at Perl Monks, or the latest Perl Mongers meeting. (Half of the fun is discovering and sharing new tricks and shortcuts.)

The Summary Part of being a good programmer is knowing where to turn for accurate and useful information. This is the place for all things Perl. If you use Perl regularly, put the new Camel on your shelf. Table of Contents

1. Overview
2. 1. An Overview of Perl
3. The Gory Details
4. 1. Bits and Pieces
   2. Unary and Binary Operators
   3. Statements and Declarations
   4. Pattern Matching
   5. Subroutines
   6. Formats
   7. References
   8. Data Structures
   9. Packages
   10. Modules
   11. Objects
   12. Overloading
   13. Tied Variables
5. Perl as Technology
6. 1. Unicode
   2. Interprocess Communication
   3. Threads
   4. Compiling
   5. The Command-Line Interface
   6. The Perl Debugger
   7. Internals and Externals
7. Perl as Culture
8. 1. CPAN
   2. Security
   3. Common Practices
   4. Portable Perl
   5. Plain Old Documentation
   6. Perl Culture
9. Reference Material
10. 1. Special Names
    2. Functions
    3. The Standard Perl Library
    4. Pragmatic Modules
    5. Standard Modules
    6. Diagnostic Messages
    
    Glossary
    Index

You can purchase this book at ThinkGeek.

davecb writes: "Louis Pouzin, the inventor of datagrams, just contributed an article to Multicians.org on the creation of the first shell, "runcom," on CTSS and later Multics." Multicians is one of the coolest sites I've seen -- if you think the odd Atari 2600 is retro, look out. They also provided information on the Multics scheduler a little while ago.

In addition to all the other books he has insightfully reviewed, chromatic has written this review of CGI Programming With Perl. This books sounds like a great resource for the builder of dynamic Web sites with a Perl background. And isn't it nice to see a book with "an unapologetic Unix flavor"?

CGI Programming with Perl author Scott Guelich, Shishir Gundavaram, & Gunther Birznieks pages 451 publisher O'Reilly & Associates rating 9 reviewer chromatic ISBN 1-56592-419-3 summary Your guide to the protocols and practices of CGI programming, with a look at current tools, tips, and tricks.

The Scoop Static web pages sufficed back when the web was young. Information flowed one way (like it does on most corporate sites today). Those days are long behind us -- if you want dynamic and interactive content, a whole host of technologies have appeared to fill in the gaps.

Enter Perl and CGI -- the original Swiss Army chainsaw of programming met the standard for exchanging data over HTTP and it was good. Thousands and thousands of programmers discovered this combination of power and simplicity, and the web has never been the same. Now, it's your turn to descend into the mysteries of query strings and stateless transactions, hoping to emerge successfully with the knowledge of simple -- yet interactive -- web programming.

In this second edition, the authors have gone far beyond CGI circa 1996. New topics include XML, search engines, security, and high performance Perl-based alternatives to CGI. How far we've come...

What's to Like? The book begins with an explanation of HTTP. Understanding the underlying protocol gives a picture of the whole process. The same is done for CGI, examing the interface -- the environment, input, output, and headers. It's simple enough that the description never bogs down, but detailed enough to explain difficulties CGI authors must work around (session management being high on the list).

From there, it's on to forms and HTML and, before spending much time trying to write a custom decoder for form data, it's off to CGI.pm. (That's important, because it's hard to get this right, even for authors of some other CGI programming books.) As befits the module, this chapter explains handling input, generating output, and handling errors.

Shift gears for a second, and think about embedding your code in your HTML. Try SSI, HTML::Template, or Embperl. (This is just a taste of the techniques available for templating -- see Template Toolkit or Mason for other nice ones.) Following that, grit your teeth and learn some of the JavaScript you've been putting off. Use it to add an additional client-side form input checker, hook it up to your Perl with WDDX, or discover the powerful Bookmarklet.

Consider security in chapter 8 -- now that you've learned some cool tricks but before you know enough to get into real trouble, discover the vulnerabilities and how you can program around them. Use Perl's Taint mode and your web server configuration to help you out. Do not skip this chapter -- read it, then read perldoc perlsec until you get it. (It's a good chapter, but security can be hard, so don't rely on just one source of information.)

The rest of the book is a tour of various tasks you might want to accomplish. They're good too, but things shine again in the last three chapters, with help for the new, curious, frazzled Perl CGI programmer. How do you get rid of that annoying 500 server error? How can you make your program worth using for the next three years instead of worth throwing away every three months? How can you write something that will handle a hundred users a day? A thousand? A front-page link on Slashdot? (The answer is more than just FastCGI or mod_perl, though they're definitely the heavy guns.)

It's definitely time for a second edition of this tome. The expanded coverage of CGI.pm and templating technologies is a welcome addition. Promoting the use of the existing well-tested, documented, and debugged tools will, hopefully, lead to more maintainable code. Unlike some other books, the example code is clean and worthy of emulation. Hit the references and recommendation section in Appendix A for more good information, including relevant RFCs. Really. (It's a good sign for a Perl book to mention both the CPAN and perldoc, as in Appendix B.)

What's to Consider? Be careful about copying code blindly from the first few chapters without reading at least chapter 8 (and perldoc perlsec in Perl's included documentation)! Simple examples are appropriate for teaching and personal testing, but could have disastrous consequences on publicly-accessible servers. To the authors' credit, even the simple example code runs with warnings, taint mode, and the strict pragma.

You'll need to know some Perl -- at least enough to follow along with somewhat-idiomatic code. Platform and portability wise, there's an unapologetic Unix flavor to the examples. Nearly everything should work on Win32 and other operating systems, but be aware of certain differences. As for web server information, it's Apache-specific. (Configuration for other platforms will be similar, but is left as an exercise for the reader.)

Some topics could use more treatment. It would have been nice to have more information on HTML::Mason (though admittedly complex, it's powerful and probably deserves more than a two page introduction) and XML and Middleware. New technologies like RSS and WAP need tools and users and programmers. There's also more to say on debugging CGI applications, though a pointer to the facetiously named Idiot's Guide could be helpful.)

The Summary Newly updated, chock full of good advice and, above all, high-quality code, this book is a great place to learn how to focus your Perl skills in a popular direction. Follow the advice presented, ask around for help if you need it, and have fun. Don't bother spending 24 hours or 21 days or whatever it is now, learn CGI programming with Perl the right way.

special thanks to the amazing Simone at O'Reilly for her help making these and other reviews possible!

Table of Contents

1. Getting Started
2. The Hypertext Transfer Protocol
3. The Common Gateway Interface
4. Forms and CGI
5. CGI.pm
6. HTML Templates
7. JavaScript
8. Security
9. Sending Email
10. Data Persistence
11. Maintaining State
12. Searching the Web Server
13. Creating Graphics on the Fly
14. Middleware and XML
15. Debugging CGI Applications
16. Guidelines for Better CGI Applications
17. Effeciency and Optimization

1. Works Cited and Further Reading
2. Perl Modules

You can purchase this book at ThinkGeek.

Simone of O'Reilly writes "On Freenet, the more popular information gets, the more copies it generates--and the easier it is to find and download. That's just one significant feature of this promising peer-to-peer network. Freenet inventor Ian Clarke may not be talking about his new company, Uprizer, but he has a lot to say about how decentralized architectures can fix what ails the Internet. Here's the interview." We've heard from Clarke before, but this is an interesting piece.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

RAD Kade 1 writes "An editorial on mozillazine.org is criticizing recent criticism against Netscape. Netscape stories will also no longer be posted on mozillazine.org, only Mozilla-related items."

Steve Chapel writes: "JavaScript: The Definitive Guide author David Flanagan has posted an article and a petition requesting that the final release of the Netscape 6 browser based on the Mozilla open-source project be delayed until it fixes the problems with support for current Web standards." It seems clear to me that Netscape cares a lot more about shopping tabs and similar deadwood - things that bring immediate profit to the Netscape Corporation but absolutely no value to the user - than they do about putting out a decent browser. Personally, I'd recommend beta-testing IE 6, since IE not only has won the browser wars, it's clearly a better browser - and will remain so.

Sara Winge pointed out BountyQuest which (not surprisingly) allows people to post cash rewards if people can find prior art on a patent. Tim O'Reilly has posted a bount on Amazon's notorious 1-click shopping patent. If you can produce a document describing one click purchasing that was published prior to September 12, 1997, you can earn the $10,000 bounty.

Simone submits this article about two different visions of peer-to-peer computing - one from Tim O'Reilly, and one from the Intel corporation. (O'Reilly expounds further in his column). Watch and cheer from the sidelines as the mega-corps jockey to control the buzzword standards process, turn it into a useless mush, and are surpassed by protocols that work.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(Order The PHP Pocket Reference from Fatbrain.)

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

Networks are everywhere, and more of them than ever are running Linux, which makes sense given its cost and its Unix background. If you're responsible for more than a handful of networked Linux machines, you probably run into more than a few situations each day that you wish you had a trusted advisor (or a few) to help you get through. How do I set up a server for [task X]? What do I do when my mail storage needs change? Christopher Thompson here briefly dissects O'Reilly's Linux Network Administrator's Guide, which promises to be a decent partner when you have network SNAFUs, at least much of the time.

The Linux Network Administrator's Guide author Olaf Kirch, Terry Dawson pages 450 publisher O'Reilly & Associates rating 7.5 reviewer Christopher Thompson ISBN 1565924002 summary A handy reference book for intermediate and experienced Linux networkers.

Introduction At long last, O'Reilly has released their second edition of the Linux Network Administrator's Guide. Updated to cover the 2.2 kernel, this book also serves as a handy reference for people using 2.0 or 2.4 kernels.

The book covers a wide variety of topics, including TCP/IP, DNS, SLIP, PPP, and PLIP, NIS, NFS, email servers, news servers, firewalling, masquerading, and IPX configuration.

Target Audience This book is clearly aimed at network administrators rather than Linux newbies. If your network consists of one or two computers, there will likely be little of value here. On the other hand, if you have a more complicated home network or administer an office lan, you will find much of value.

What's Good? This book is based on the Linux Documentation Project, though the online copy available there is rather outdated. O'Reilly have provided the entire contents of the book online, however, as part of their Open Books Project and should be commended for this.

The Network Administrator's Guide provides a great deal of information, complete with background, clear explanations, and examples. Although covering a range of topics, the guide is complete and fairly comprehensive. It is far more convenient to refer to this book rather than scanning through numerous HOW-TOs in order to set up your network. The guide covers each topic in sufficient detail that a reader is unlikely to resort to the HOW-TOs. Furthermore, the guide is a much easier read.

The author has taken considerable effort to ensure the information will not immediately become obsolete. The chapter on firewalling, for example, gives commands for kernels 2.0, 2.2, and the upcoming 2.4.

What's Bad? Unfortunately, there are some problems with the Network Administrator's Guide, both in what it contains and in what it does not.

The guide is mysteriously silent on a number of topics, not least of which are Samba, Apache, and Coda. While O'Reilly sells separate books covering at least the first two of these topics, some basic information on them would have been quite appropriate for this book. Many networks contain one or more Windows boxes and everyone seems to run web servers these days.

Sendmail and exim are covered fairly well but no mention is made of other mail transport agents such as qmail. This can be excused as no book of this size could be entirely comprehensive. Still, some of these choices seem arbitrary.

Also confusing is what the book does contain. There is, for example, an entire chapter on UUCP, as well as several references elsewhere. Although UUCP is certainly not dead, I question its importance for the majority of network administrators.

Dead Tree? Or Online? So is this book worthwhile? If you are involved in administering a Linux network, unquestionably yes. You may need additional information if your network also contains Windows boxes but this book should still prove valuable.

As to whether it is worth the purchase price or whether you should just read it online, this comes down to personal preference. Some people are satisfied with online content but I prefer having the information in dead-tree format, for reference when I am without a network connection. I also find it easier to read a book than a web page. I have no doubt that this guide is worth its purchase price.

Table of Contents

1. Chapter 1. Introduction to Networking
2. Chapter 2. Issues of TCP/IP Networking
3. Chapter 3. Configuring the Networking Hardware
4. Chapter 4. Configuring the Serial Hardware
5. Chapter 5. Configuring TCP/IP Networking
6. Chapter 6. Name Service and Resolver Configuration
7. Chapter 7. Serial Line IP
8. Chapter 8. The Point-to-Point Protocol
9. Chapter 9. TCP/IP Firewall
10. Chapter 10. IP Accounting
11. Chapter 11. IP Masquerade and Network Address Translation
12. Chapter 12. Important Network Features
13. Chapter 13. The Network Information System
14. Chapter 14. The Network File System
15. Chapter 15. IPX and the NCP Filesystem
16. Chapter 16. Managing Taylor UUCP
17. Chapter 17. Electronic Mail
18. Chapter 18. Sendmail
19. Chapter 19. Getting Exim Up and Running
20. Chapter 20. Netnews
21. Chapter 21. C News
22. Chapter 22. NNTP and the nntpd Daemon
23. Chapter 23. Internet News
24. Chapter 24. Newsreader Configuration
25. Appendix A. Example Network: The Virtual Brewery
26. Appendix B. Useful Cable Configurations
27. Appendix D. SAGE: The System Administrators Guild

Networks are everywhere, and more of them than ever are running Linux, which makes sense given its cost and its Unix background. If you're responsible for more than a handful of networked Linux machines, you probably run into more than a few situations each day that you wish you had a trusted advisor (or a few) to help you get through. How do I set up a server for [task X]? What do I do when my mail storage needs change? Christopher Thompson here briefly dissects O'Reilly's Linux Network Administrator's Guide, which promises to be a decent partner when you have network SNAFUs, at least much of the time.

The Linux Network Administrator's Guide author Olaf Kirch, Terry Dawson pages 450 publisher O'Reilly & Associates rating 7.5 reviewer Christopher Thompson ISBN 1565924002 summary A handy reference book for intermediate and experienced Linux networkers.

Introduction At long last, O'Reilly has released their second edition of the Linux Network Administrator's Guide. Updated to cover the 2.2 kernel, this book also serves as a handy reference for people using 2.0 or 2.4 kernels.

The book covers a wide variety of topics, including TCP/IP, DNS, SLIP, PPP, and PLIP, NIS, NFS, email servers, news servers, firewalling, masquerading, and IPX configuration.

Target Audience This book is clearly aimed at network administrators rather than Linux newbies. If your network consists of one or two computers, there will likely be little of value here. On the other hand, if you have a more complicated home network or administer an office lan, you will find much of value.

What's Good? This book is based on the Linux Documentation Project, though the online copy available there is rather outdated. O'Reilly have provided the entire contents of the book online, however, as part of their Open Books Project and should be commended for this.

The Network Administrator's Guide provides a great deal of information, complete with background, clear explanations, and examples. Although covering a range of topics, the guide is complete and fairly comprehensive. It is far more convenient to refer to this book rather than scanning through numerous HOW-TOs in order to set up your network. The guide covers each topic in sufficient detail that a reader is unlikely to resort to the HOW-TOs. Furthermore, the guide is a much easier read.

The author has taken considerable effort to ensure the information will not immediately become obsolete. The chapter on firewalling, for example, gives commands for kernels 2.0, 2.2, and the upcoming 2.4.

What's Bad? Unfortunately, there are some problems with the Network Administrator's Guide, both in what it contains and in what it does not.

The guide is mysteriously silent on a number of topics, not least of which are Samba, Apache, and Coda. While O'Reilly sells separate books covering at least the first two of these topics, some basic information on them would have been quite appropriate for this book. Many networks contain one or more Windows boxes and everyone seems to run web servers these days.

Sendmail and exim are covered fairly well but no mention is made of other mail transport agents such as qmail. This can be excused as no book of this size could be entirely comprehensive. Still, some of these choices seem arbitrary.

Also confusing is what the book does contain. There is, for example, an entire chapter on UUCP, as well as several references elsewhere. Although UUCP is certainly not dead, I question its importance for the majority of network administrators.

Dead Tree? Or Online? So is this book worthwhile? If you are involved in administering a Linux network, unquestionably yes. You may need additional information if your network also contains Windows boxes but this book should still prove valuable.

As to whether it is worth the purchase price or whether you should just read it online, this comes down to personal preference. Some people are satisfied with online content but I prefer having the information in dead-tree format, for reference when I am without a network connection. I also find it easier to read a book than a web page. I have no doubt that this guide is worth its purchase price.

Table of Contents

1. Chapter 1. Introduction to Networking
2. Chapter 2. Issues of TCP/IP Networking
3. Chapter 3. Configuring the Networking Hardware
4. Chapter 4. Configuring the Serial Hardware
5. Chapter 5. Configuring TCP/IP Networking
6. Chapter 6. Name Service and Resolver Configuration
7. Chapter 7. Serial Line IP
8. Chapter 8. The Point-to-Point Protocol
9. Chapter 9. TCP/IP Firewall
10. Chapter 10. IP Accounting
11. Chapter 11. IP Masquerade and Network Address Translation
12. Chapter 12. Important Network Features
13. Chapter 13. The Network Information System
14. Chapter 14. The Network File System
15. Chapter 15. IPX and the NCP Filesystem
16. Chapter 16. Managing Taylor UUCP
17. Chapter 17. Electronic Mail
18. Chapter 18. Sendmail
19. Chapter 19. Getting Exim Up and Running
20. Chapter 20. Netnews
21. Chapter 21. C News
22. Chapter 22. NNTP and the nntpd Daemon
23. Chapter 23. Internet News
24. Chapter 24. Newsreader Configuration
25. Appendix A. Example Network: The Virtual Brewery
26. Appendix B. Useful Cable Configurations
27. Appendix D. SAGE: The System Administrators Guild

davecb linked us to a story at The Atlantic about the whole Napster, DeCSS, RIAA blah blah blah thats been all the rage with the kids these days. Talks about how this case is bigger then just Napster: its results will affect the future of democracy. It's a really well written piece that you definitely should read if you're following this stuff.

ghost. writes: "I'm sure it's been submitted already, but here's an O'Reilly interview with Anders Hejlsberg, Chief C# language architect for Microsoft (as well as the force behind Turbo Pascal and Delphi, in the past). While my interest in C# specifically is mild at best, I always seem to learn a lot when /. gets into a good discussion about programming and language design, and I'd enjoy reading everyone's insight based on what Hejlsberg had to say." It's a good read, too -- this interview brings to the fore some of the questions about openness that people raise about C#, and Hejlsberg has strong words about his new baby.

As reported by various submissions and sites, the winners of the Apache Appaloosa Awards were announced at the O'Reilly Open Source Conference today.

The winners (2 for each catagory) are:

• Vision Award - best ideas of how to move Apache forward: Roy Fielding and Ryan Bloom
• Evangelism Award - promoting Apache awareness or acceptance: The Apache XML Project and Lars Eilebrecht
• Technical Contribution Award - New ideas, bug fixes, new modules: The PHP Group and Doug MacEachern (mod_perl)

You may recall that when voting, the PHP Group was represented by a vote for Rasmus Lerdorf.

Chris Nandor wrote in to tell us that Larry Wall has announced his vision for perl 6 as part of this keynote at the O'Reilly Open Source Convention. You can read an announcement at Perl.org or read Chris's summary of things (like information about the from-scratch rewrite being planned!)

The following was written by Chris "Pudge" Nandor... Perl Guru, Slashcode Guru, and all around swell guy.

Perl 6 To Be Complete Rewrite (But Not What You Think)

Larry Wall and other active Perl porters and Perl helpers met on Tuesday afternoon at Perl Conference 4.0 and mapped out a what is planned to become a complete rewrite of Perl that will become Perl 6 in 18 to 24 months, with a prerelease targeted for next year's conference.

Perl 5 will not be abandoned, but will primarily be concerned with bugfixes both major and minor.

The meeting for members of the perl5-porters mailing list was the result of an earlier, smaller meeting of Wall, Nathan Torkington, Chip Salzenberg, and others who basically decided that Perl needed to be fixed in certain ways, and that a rewrite was the best way to do it. Salzenberg started the Topaz project two years ago, to reimplement Perl in C++. Though Topaz itself will not be the basis for Perl 6, Salzenberg noted that the lessons learned in the experience will be very helpful to the new effort.

Torkington led the three-hour meeting, starting off by saying what was wrong with Perl. Much of the focus on the problems with Perl centered around how increasingly difficult it was to improve, extend, and embed Perl. A rewrite and redesign are needed, he said, and maybe it is time for a hard change. So while the focus of the effort seems to be on improving the Perl guts and API, the project will also be used as an opportunity to clean out some of the cruft, including bad and seldom-used features.

Some of the primary (and still vague) goals of the effort will be to reimplement the core so it is better, stronger, and faster; improve syntax; add new features where appropriate; have better version and installation management for perl and its modules; and have a clear and automated migration path, which may include a backward compatibility mode. Some old features may be removed, like typeglobs. Others will be improved.

The group hopes to re-shape Perl community, too. Instead of one all-encompassing perl5-porters list, tightly focused mailing lists with a terminal lifespan will be formed. To start off, the mailing list bootstrap at perl.org will be for discussion of the beginnings of the project. Like most, if not all, other new lists, when it has fulfilled its purpose, it will be closed.

Wall said, "Perl 5 was my rewrite of perl ... I think this should be the community's rewrite of perl, and the community's rewrite of the community."

Specifics have not yet been ironed out. A group has been formed to begin the work, which will primarily consist of planning the work to be done. No coding is to be done at this stage, only planning and support. Roles were determined for the group, and then they were filled. They now include the perl 5 maintainer (Jarkko Hietaniemi and Nick Ing-Simmons), the language design pumpking (Larry Wall), the internals design pumpking (Dan Sugalski), the documentation manager (Adam Turoff), the system administrator (Ask Bjoern Hansen), the quality assurance bloke (Michael Schwern), the spokesdroid (brian d foy), the customer relations person (Dick Hardt), and the project manager himself, Nathan Torkington. Other porters, such as Chip Salzenberg, volunteered to consult when needed.

Some of the short term goals of this group are to draft a language specification, start an RFC channel, get feedback, and set up mailing lists, a documentation repository, and a web site. Hansen will be setting up the mailing lists. The bootstrap list will be open to the public, while the list for the intial small group of people will be closed for posting by anyone not on the list. All lists will be readable by the public, through the web, and perhaps through email. Turoff is going to be preparing the notes for the morning meeting, and foy will be posting the notes and the mailing list links on the www.perl.org web site.

Review dynamo chromatic again regales you with enough information to tweak your ears and possibly encourage serious browsing, at least if if you are lucky enough to deal with multi-platform networks involving such obscurities as Windows NT and TCP/IP. Just like an O'Reilly book to make things easy.

Windows NT TCP/IP Network Administration author Craig Hunt and Robert Bruce Thompson pages 504 publisher O'Reilly & Associates rating 8 reviewer chromatic ISBN 1-56592-377-4 summary Setting up a Windows NT Server-based network? You'll learn the basics of TCP/IP and the NT TCP/IP services with this guide.

Overview If you find yourself using or administering a network with Windows NT clients and servers, but don't understand TCP/IP and all that it entails, this book will teach you. Note that it's aimed at administrators and power users, though the first few chapters provide a good introduction to a complicated subject. Expect plenty of information about providing services with components like WINS, RRAS, and IIS.

The Details While the pragmatic approach might brush over gory details of routing protocols and protocol architecture to reach pages full of screenshots, Administration takes a more gradual approach by explaining first. (Understanding the intricacies may not be a prerequisite to follow the wizards and set up a working NT Server, but the planning and troubleshooting stages require the real knowledge you'll get here.) Thankfully, the authors have organized the book into three logical sections -- Fundamentals, Tutorials, and Reference.

Fundamentals digs into the history of TCP/IP, covering its development, usage, and peculiarities. Included is information about routing, addressing, clients, and services. It covers a lot of ground, and most of the discussion is clear. (Some of the explanation of address classes and subnetting less clear -- but the subject matter can be complex the first time through.) Where there are multiple solutions to a problem, as in the case of routing protocols, the authors take time to show the benefits and drawbacks of each approach, and suggest which is most appropriate for a given situation.

The Tutorials section demonstrates setup and configuration of various services of the network. It's server-centric, so don't expect complete details on setting up clients. Topics covered range from the basic TCP/IP component installation to IIS setup and configuration. The scope of the network the authors describe ranges from a small network with a dialup Internet connection (at best) to a full-blown multi-subnet beast with a dedicated connection. The planning section is very informative and useful.

As it's dedicated to tutorials, the installation and configuration sections follow the Microsoft dialogs very closely. It's a good resource for explaining each of the options in sequence. The authors also point out the strengths and weaknesses of NT's implementation of the various services.

The final section is a Reference section. Two chapters stand out as very important -- the chapter on Troubleshooting and the chapter on Network Security. Troubleshooting describes various command-line tools such as ping, netstat, and traceroute, with regard to the information they provide and how they are useful in tracking down network problems. It even gets into the basics of SNMP and protocol analysis. It's a unique approach, and it works well.

Summary One overall weakness is that there was little information about integrating an NT server into a heterogenous network -- certainly a common task. Still, with the breadth of information covered, there's really not room to get into the specifics and peculiarities involved. Also, while there is some discussion of future developments (such as IPv6 support), be aware that the information pertains to Windows NT 4.0 (with IIS 4.0 from the Option Pack).

The strengths of Windows NT TCP/IP Network Administration are plenty. Information is presented clearly and accurately and arranged logically and chronologically, as one would set up a network. The tutorials are comprehensive, relying more on thorough written explanation than strategic screenshots. The section on additional resources points straight to the authoritative sources, such as RFCs. The Appendixes go into a great deal of detail that may never apply -- but would be useful and handy in some cases. Clearly, this book will be useful even after the network is in operation.

Table of Contents

1. Overview of TCP/IP
2. Delivering the Data
3. Network Services
4. Getting Started
5. Installing TCP/IP
6. Using Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol
7. Using Windows Internet Name Service
8. Configuring DNS Name System
9. Microsoft Routing and Remote Access Service
10. Internet Information Server (IIS)
11. Troubleshooting TCP/IP
12. Network Security
13. Information Resources

Appendixes

1. PPP Scripting Languages
2. DNS Resource Records
3. Microsoft DHCP Option Support
4. Routing Protocols

It may have taken a semi-obscure German professor, the profit motive of the world's CD-ROM drive producers, ingenious hackers and aesthetically gifted interface designers, but the simple fact is that MP3s are out there, and they're everywhere -- every major desktop OS comes with players for your easy listening. Chronic book review madman chromatic points you to a fount of knowledge for anyone who needs more than "click here to play."

MP3: The Definitive Guide author Scott Hacker pages 388 publisher O'Reilly & Associates rating 8.5 reviewer chromatic ISBN 1-56592-661-7 summary Everything there is to know about MP3, as it stands right now and might be in the near future.

The Scoop Judging by the way even my non-technical friends are talking about MP3s, digital music is on a lot of minds. As usual, O'Reilly has published the definitive guide to all things MP3. Computer and music guru Scott Hacker takes you through the codec, the software, the controversies, the competition, and building your own equipment. Though it's aimed at end-users, the book is still accessible to the do-it-yourself weekend hardware wizard.

What's to Like? Hacker's writing is simple and not-too-technical. In places, it's even informal. Sure, there are plenty of gory details, but you won't miss anything essential if you skip over the sidebars now and then. An average computer user could probably create his own MP3s while reading chapter five, for example. Power users aren't left out, though: Audiophiles, hackers and tweakers will benefit from the extensive comparisons of players, encoders, hardware, and competing codecs.

No stranger to alternative operating systems (he also wrote the BeOS Bible), Hacker takes pains to be cross-platform, covering Windows, Mac, Linux, and BeOS. This isn't limited to playback options, though that's the most extensive discussion, but includes serving files over the Internet. Of special consideration are quality issues. The author's perspective as a sound connoisseur comes in handy while discussing optimal (and affordable) recording and playback equipment.

As per the title, the Guide completely covers the subject. If you're interested in collecting MP3s, creating them, playing them back with software, with portable hardware, car hardware, building your own hardware, making music available to others, discovering alternate means of delivery and other codecs, or just want a broad overview of all things MP3, you'll find something of immediate interest. If Hacker whets your appetite for more information, follow one of his references to the source itself. (That's especially nice in his treatment of the more exotic hardware players.)

What's to Consider? Though the chapter on legal information and MP3 is excellent, and among the most extensive treatments of the issue lay readers are likely to encounter, it's U.S. Centric. Also, it should be noted that the digital music debate is undeniably fuzzy, so any interpretations are open to correction. Though he debunks the common disclaimers found on shady MP3 sites, the author wisely sidesteps copyright arguments by explaining the relevant laws, and allowing his readers to come to their own conclusions in the gray areas.

People who've been tracking the scene for a while know how fast things change. Information on specific programs or hardware players could become obsolete quickly. (That's noted in the text.) For the most part, Hacker prefers to explain concepts and trends rather than the fine details of any particular implementation. For items still unresolved, such as the eventually supported ID3v2 specification, he provides caveats regarding compatibility issues.

The Summary Catch up to the digital music revolution with MP3: The Definitive Guide. It's packed with information, yet easy to read, and stuffed with links to satisfy your appetite for up-to-the-second information.

Purchase this book at ThinkGeek.

Table of Contents

1. The Nuts and Bolts of MP3
2. How MP3 Works: Inside the Codec
3. Getting and Playing MP3 Files
4. Playlists, Tags, and Skins: MP3 Options
5. Ripping and Encoding: Creating MP3 Files
6. Hardware, Portables, Home Stereos, and Kits
7. The Not-So-Fine-Print: Legal Bits and Pieces
8. Webcasting and Servers: Internet Distribution
9. Competing Codecs and Other File Formats

1. ID3v1 Genres

Spoing dropped this bit of informative info into the bin: "Last week, a friend of mine griped that he didn't know of an easy way -- short of getting Adobe Capture and paying per-use licence fees -- of creating searchable PDFs. I scoffed, and told him I've done it many times, and it was free -- as in beer and speech. Dumbfounded, he pushed me to show him how, and I did; print to a Postscript file, and run ps2pdf on it...done! Since every document could be output as Postscript, his problem was solved. If he wanted to batch process the documents, he could set up a few scripts to simplify the task. While he was impressed, he ended up asking what seemed like an easy question; 'Can you do the same with a scanned image?'" And therein lies the question...

"After a week of on/off searching, I did find some good references as well as nearly all the parts necessary for the job, including open source OCR engines, PDF and Postscript tools, search engines, and the like.

Unfortunately, I came up with only two solutions -- neither of them Open Source, and most quite costly (premium beer); Adobe Capture or dedicated "PDF scanners" like this one.

My question to the Slashdot crowd is this:

1. Is there a cost-effective way of moving existing dead-tree documents into either HTML, PDF, or other searchable mixed text and graphics format?

We all deal with a mix of electronic and printed documents -- and you're like me you've paid for some of them in both formats.

If you're like me, you buy new documents in electronic, searchable, format when you can. How many of us have O'Reilly's Networking Bookshelf, or some other CD texts ready to search on our notebooks and networks?

Yet, I have a four foot wide stack of technical documents and books that just isn't going to come with me on each plane trip. I'm not going to get rid of them -- they are still valuable -- but I can't figure out how to make them useful more often.

The available tools for capturing paper and converting it into searchable PDFs is costly, and is geared toward corporations that can justify the costs by the number of users. To me, a per-use licence of Adobe's Capture --

1. Adobe Capture - Prices

   Adobe Capture - Features

-- is just not cost effective.

If the document is already a text document -- even if it's in some word processor I don't use -- generating PDF files is easy and cheap;

Print a document to a Postscript file, or create one. For example a simple text document is trivial;

1. enscript file.txt -p file.ps

Convert the resulting Postscript file to PDF;

1. ps2pdf file.ps file.pdf

Converting a paper document to PDF is also easy. Just scan the image and use tiff2ps or jpeg2ps to create the Post script file. The only problem is that the resulting PDF is a bitmap image and isn't searchable.

Interestingly enough, TIFF -- a format used extensively for scanned documents -- does support TIFF+Text, but usually as an extention to TIFF and isn't really an optimal format; The Unofficial TIFF Home Page.

So, if you want to search the documents and keep the formatting and diagrams, you're back to paying Adobe for Capture or some other nearly as expensive method. "

Want some way to show your appreciation for the efforts of those who helped make Apache what it is today? Then place your votes for the 2000 Appaloosa Awards. The Appaloosa Awards are new this year, and are designed to give the Apache community the opportunity to select those who they believe have had the most significant influences on the Apache Software Foundation's open-source projects.

The nominations are complete and voting is now open in one of the following categories:

• Vision Award - best ideas of how to move Apache forward
• Evangelism Award - promoting Apache awareness or acceptance
• Technical Contribution Award - New ideas, bug fixes, new modules

July's O'Reilly Open Source conference plays host to the awards ceremony on 18th July in Monterey, California.

Never content to rest on his laurels, chromatic has again supplied us with a no-nonsense, informative book review. This time it's of O'Reilly's Programming the Perl DBI, for those of you unwilling to let any TLA go unconquered. If you're building a Web site or learning MySQL (or any other database) and want to combine Perl skills with data storage, he's got a few words for you. [Updated 13 June 3:20GMT by timothy:] Heck, it's a double header! PotPieMan gives a different perspective on the same book, all below.

Programming the Perl DBI author Alligator Descartes and Tim Bunce pages 346 publisher O'Reilly and Associates rating 8.5 reviewer chromatic, PotPieMan ISBN 1-56592-699-4 summary Everything you need to know about the Perl database interface, straight from the source. Store, update, and retreive information -- or even write your own database driver.

Review No. 1: chromatic

The Scoop At some point in your programming life, you'll run into the idea of persistence. Whether data mining or storing customer information gathered from Web forms, data will end up shelved somewhere. Luckily for the Perl monks among us, we have the excellent DBI (DataBase Independent) module to provide a layer of abstraction and compatibility for multiple database systems. This book makes a great introduction and reference for the DBI.

Newcomers will quickly come up to workable knowledge on database concepts like basic SQL and relational models as well as Perlish constructs like object storage. Experienced users can use the included DBI specification as a reference and Appendix B for particular DBD quirks and caveats.

What's to Like? The writing is exceptionally crisp and clean. A DBI novice could absorb the knowledge of masters in just three hours, simply by reading the chapters. It's hard to imagine a better explanation of most concepts. The quality is consistent, as is the data being manipulated. As soon as the relational database concept comes on stage, so does the sample database used throughout: a list of locations and descriptions of megalithic sites in the UK.

The real meat starts in chapter four, with a discussion of the DBI architecture. Get used to manipulating statement handles -- you'll be doing a lot of that. Be sure to follow the recommendations for quoting and error checking, to save yourself hours of tedious debugging! Chapter five continues the tutorial, exhaustively covering database interactions. As usual for O'Reilly books, the authors take pains to point out benefits and drawbacks of different approaches. As there are multiple ways to pull rows from a completed query, and which fetch method is most efficient, or more flexible? The Advanced DBI chapter talks about database attributes and metadata -- ways to communicate with underlying DB and to massage data there. There's also good information about optimizations and transactions.

The material covered doesn't stop at the title. Chapter 7 talks about ODBC -- which may be preferable in some cases. Along the same lines, chapter 2 introduces all of the most important database concepts (Storing, Updating, Fetching, and Deleting) by looking at non-SQL means for storing data. These include Data::Dumper, Storable, flat files, and the Berkeley Database Manager. Though DBI receives its due for flexibility, portability, and power, the more tricks in your toolbag, the better you'll program. If you're new to the concept of persistent data storage, it also serves as a good introduction.

Porters and rogue programmers will appreciate Appendix B: an analysis of 13 database systems and their DBI drivers. Information on special syntax, SQL flavors, and supported DBI operations is included. Be sure to catch the gotchas and issues of your particular database. Administrators will appreciate chapter 8, which discusses the DBI shell (useful for testing SQL statements and connections) and the DBD::Proxy modules (providing compression and encryption as well as query forwarding).

What's to Consider? Perhaps due to the clarity and simplicity of the writing, the tutorial-esque DBI feature section, is rather short. Of 186 pages, 46 cover non-DBI mechanisms (chapter 2). That's not to say that there's anything missing, but that you might reach chapter six and ask, "Oh, is that all?" Adding another example database might flesh out some illustrations -- demonstrating how to solve two different problems would reinforce the important concepts. The Summary With its clear explanations and concise reference value, serious Perl programmers ought to make room on their shelves for the Cheetah. When you're knee deep in your first serious Web project, or bundling information from one database to another, you'll happily reach for Programming the Perl DBI.

Review No. 2: PotPieMan

The Scoop

Programming the Perl DBI starts with the basics: flat-file databases (like /etc/passwd) and DBM file libraries. Most of us have implemented some type of database system using tab- or comma-delimited files, and the authors use these flat-file databases as a starting point for the rest of their discussion. First, they give an overview of the various functions that a programmer might want to perform on data that is placed in a database. This leads them into an organized explanation of the DBI and the advantages and disadvantages of using the DBI.

What's Bad?

My main gripe about this book is that the DBI programming examples seem very basic. Granted, the book is specifically written about DBI programming, not manipulation of data retrieved by the DBI. Depending on one's perspective, this can be bad. If you are a CGI programmer expecting to find all the answers on designing a database-driven Web site, you will be slightly disappointed.

What's Good?

On the other hand, if you have any skill as a programmer, you would be able to use this book as a great starting point for database-driven Web sites. It gives a great overview of all the important functions of a relational database and the structured query language. At first, the authors give examples of SQL statements, without any actual Perl code. They move slowly through the query language so as to make sure that the reader understands, and include a few tables to structure the discussion of the SQL operators. The authors then discuss queries over multiple tables, along with primary and foreign keys. Next, the authors discuss SQL statements to modify (insert, delete, and update) data.

The actual DBI programming sections begin with an explanation of the DBI architecture, which allows them to introduce all the elements of a Perl program that would interface with a database and grab data. The authors begin with a very basic program and then expand on it to include error checking, parameter binding, atomic fetching, and so on. (The parameter binding section is particularly informative.)

For the most part, programmers looking to get into database programming would be set after the first five chapters. The sixth chapter is concerned with advanced DBI programming, and does not seem absolutely necessary to read the first time through. However, its explanation of transactions will most likely be important. There is also a chapter that discusses ODBC and the DBI, which might be important if you have to deal with Windows machines or other ODBC data sources. The chapter gives a comparison between the DBD::ODBC and Win32::ODBC modules, which is nice. Finally, the eighth chapter concerns the DBI shell (dbish) and database proxying, which might be important to some.

The appendices are quite comprehensive. The authors (using man pages as a reference) go through all the nuts and bolts of the DBI and the various DBD drivers. Overall, Programming the Perl DBI gives a substantial explanation of utilizing the DBI.

So What's In It For Me?

On the one hand, if you already have Perl experience and are new to database programming, you should consider picking up this book. To be honest, I did not know much about the DBI until I read this book. Now, I am relatively confident in my ability to implement databases in my programming. If you already have experience in programming with the DBI, though, you might not need this book. The last few chapters might be helpful, but it would be good to flip through the book before buying it.

Purchase this book from ThinkGeek.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction
2. Basic Non-DBI Databases
3. SQL and Relational Databases
4. Programming with the DBI
5. Interacting with the Database
6. Advanced DBI
7. ODBC and the DBI
8. DBI Shell and Database Proxying

1. DBI Specification
2. Driver and Database Characteristics
3. ASLaN Sacred Site Charter

Following the success of last year's User Friendly , O'Reilly strikes back. This time, it's a collection of 1999's comics (3 January through 11 December). Slightly oversized, with three daily strips or one daily and one Sunday strip to a page, this happy little collection will spruce up your coffee table and bring a smile to your guests. (If you have a coffee table, that is.)

Evil Geniuses In A Nutshell author Illiad pages 122 publisher O'Reilly & Associates rating 8 reviewer chromatic ISBN 1-56592-861-x summary See the world through slightly warped eyes with the gang at Columbia Internet in the second bound collection of Illiad's daily comic.

What's to Like? When he's on, he's really on. Some of the strips in here are laugh-out-loud funny. Even when it's merely amusing, Illiad captures elements of the real world in their twisted glories. Who can't put real names to half of the personalities running around in his little experiment?

There's Mike, a network engineer, forced to choose a server OS based on mascot issues. AJ, the designer, is torn between his feelings for Miranda and his inability to relate to anything organic -- when he's not debating a caffeine-induced hallucination. Greg, head of tech support, can't believe his customers questions. Pitr, coder extraodinaire, eagerly awaits his recognition as an Evil Genius. Stef, marketing weenie, is haunted by his poor Quake performance and his inability to make any progress with Miranda. Miranda, equal parts geek and goddess, finds herself the equal of the male techs, but cannot quite understand their unique brand of communication. On the far side of reality are the Dust Puppy (an intelligent, innocent, and adorable ball of that stuff you ought to clean out of your server -- but with feet) and Erwin, an AI who's switched bodies more than Cher.

On his best days, Illiad reads like a combination of Doonesbury and Bloom County, with the requisite Open Source flavor. Linux usually comes out ahead and Microsoft way behind, though occasionally the situation's reversed. (Insert photo of Alan Cox reeling from sunlight after the MS Terminator steals his sunglasses). That's not to say that sacred penguins don't make good hamburger. (Once the boss approves migrating the servers to Linux, what do you do? Answer -- Nerf Gun duels to determine whose pet distribution is best.)

What's to Consider? As UFies know, Illiad's Sunday comics are often topical. Remember eBay's spate of availability problems? ESR at Microsoft last summer? If so, you'll catch on pretty quickly. If not, you'll just have to scratch your head and keep reading. (There's also one comic missing the last panel on the top of page 18. If you're reading this, though, you'll find the proper punchline here.) For the purists, note that some strips appear in topic-related sections, not chronological order. That serves to bring out more of the subtle humor, in my opinion.

Also, Illiad's song parodies provoke mixed reactions. A lyricist, he's not, though his Gap parody hits squarely between the eyes. Illiad's better at the episodic stuff -- see his Star Wars storyline from the last book, or the strange tale of the One True Ping. Thankfully, the all-singing, all-dancing shorts are kept to a minimum.

The Summary A potent mixture of wry social commentary, high technology, cynicism that bites back, and a good dose of innocence that really does win out in the end, if you can put this book down for very long, you're either playing Quake or utterly humorless. Submit to your inner Evil Genius, and let the rest of the world wonder why you're grinning so much. (And if you're really evil, you won't loan out your copy.)

Purchase this book at ThinkGeek.

Table of Contents

• Preface -- Eric S. Raymond
• Introduction -- Illiad
• The Comics

Following the success of last year's User Friendly , O'Reilly strikes back. This time, it's a collection of 1999's comics (3 January through 11 December). Slightly oversized, with three daily strips or one daily and one Sunday strip to a page, this happy little collection will spruce up your coffee table and bring a smile to your guests. (If you have a coffee table, that is.)

Evil Geniuses In A Nutshell author Illiad pages 122 publisher O'Reilly & Associates rating 8 reviewer chromatic ISBN 1-56592-861-x summary See the world through slightly warped eyes with the gang at Columbia Internet in the second bound collection of Illiad's daily comic.

What's to Like? When he's on, he's really on. Some of the strips in here are laugh-out-loud funny. Even when it's merely amusing, Illiad captures elements of the real world in their twisted glories. Who can't put real names to half of the personalities running around in his little experiment?

There's Mike, a network engineer, forced to choose a server OS based on mascot issues. AJ, the designer, is torn between his feelings for Miranda and his inability to relate to anything organic -- when he's not debating a caffeine-induced hallucination. Greg, head of tech support, can't believe his customers questions. Pitr, coder extraodinaire, eagerly awaits his recognition as an Evil Genius. Stef, marketing weenie, is haunted by his poor Quake performance and his inability to make any progress with Miranda. Miranda, equal parts geek and goddess, finds herself the equal of the male techs, but cannot quite understand their unique brand of communication. On the far side of reality are the Dust Puppy (an intelligent, innocent, and adorable ball of that stuff you ought to clean out of your server -- but with feet) and Erwin, an AI who's switched bodies more than Cher.

On his best days, Illiad reads like a combination of Doonesbury and Bloom County, with the requisite Open Source flavor. Linux usually comes out ahead and Microsoft way behind, though occasionally the situation's reversed. (Insert photo of Alan Cox reeling from sunlight after the MS Terminator steals his sunglasses). That's not to say that sacred penguins don't make good hamburger. (Once the boss approves migrating the servers to Linux, what do you do? Answer -- Nerf Gun duels to determine whose pet distribution is best.)

What's to Consider? As UFies know, Illiad's Sunday comics are often topical. Remember eBay's spate of availability problems? ESR at Microsoft last summer? If so, you'll catch on pretty quickly. If not, you'll just have to scratch your head and keep reading. (There's also one comic missing the last panel on the top of page 18. If you're reading this, though, you'll find the proper punchline here.) For the purists, note that some strips appear in topic-related sections, not chronological order. That serves to bring out more of the subtle humor, in my opinion.

Also, Illiad's song parodies provoke mixed reactions. A lyricist, he's not, though his Gap parody hits squarely between the eyes. Illiad's better at the episodic stuff -- see his Star Wars storyline from the last book, or the strange tale of the One True Ping. Thankfully, the all-singing, all-dancing shorts are kept to a minimum.

The Summary A potent mixture of wry social commentary, high technology, cynicism that bites back, and a good dose of innocence that really does win out in the end, if you can put this book down for very long, you're either playing Quake or utterly humorless. Submit to your inner Evil Genius, and let the rest of the world wonder why you're grinning so much. (And if you're really evil, you won't loan out your copy.)

Purchase this book at ThinkGeek.

Table of Contents

• Preface -- Eric S. Raymond
• Introduction -- Illiad
• The Comics

Kailden writes: "O'Reilly has an interview with Antony Fountain, co-author of Volume 6B: Motif Reference Manual, 2nd Edition, in which he claims that both QT for KDE and GTK+ for GNOME don't compare to Motif (and mentions that Java is the only thing that comes close). " The interview's old -- but the response from user comments adds more to it. Yeah, I know the article's a couple of weeks old -- but it's a good one.

Kailden writes: "O'Reilly has an interview with Antony Fountain, co-author of Volume 6B: Motif Reference Manual, 2nd Edition, in which he claims that both QT for KDE and GTK+ for GNOME don't compare to Motif (and mentions that Java is the only thing that comes close). " The interview's old -- but the response from user comments adds more to it. Yeah, I know the article's a couple of weeks old -- but it's a good one.

Kailden writes: "O'Reilly has an interview with Antony Fountain, co-author of Volume 6B: Motif Reference Manual, 2nd Edition, in which he claims that both QT for KDE and GTK+ for GNOME don't compare to Motif (and mentions that Java is the only thing that comes close). " The interview's old -- but the response from user comments adds more to it. Yeah, I know the article's a couple of weeks old -- but it's a good one.

Python is an object-oriented scripting language, similiar in ideas (if not in style) to Perl. It's getting more and more popular, as people discover the benefits brought by its simple style. It's a natural under Windows, thanks to good object-orientation. Like many free software projects, though, the Windows port of Python has suffered from poor documentation. Until now, that is. [Updated 15:00GMT by timothy -- fixed link to tutorial.](Read more.)

Python Programming On Win32 author Mark Hammond & Andy Robinson pages 652 publisher O'Reilly, 01/2000 rating 8.5 reviewer chromatic ISBN 1-56592-621-8 summary A great introduction both to programming Python under Windowsand to COM programming for non-Windows programmers.

What's Good?

Python has made programming under Win32 really, really easy. Not that it didn't need to be easy before -- it's just that nobody knew how it worked. This book knocks that for six. It covers a basic introduction to Python, builds a slightly more advanced tutorial on that and then covers a load of other topics to finish off. The really big secret is that the information inside isn't just for Windows, though. Quite a lot of it is applicable elsewhere. Topics like printing output to PDF files, using POP3 and HTTP in python would be a useful addition to anybody using Python who isn't already aware of these things. If you've just started learning Python, there will be tons of ideas for you to experiment with.

But the big thrust of the book is COM (or OLE, or ActiveX or whatever it's called this week). The book slides you gently in, explaining the ideas behind OO programming that you need to know to take advantage of it, before presenting simple demos of what COM can do and how it was achieved. Then it takes you on to bigger and better things, and specifically to an accounting system that was developed using Python/Win32. Please ignore the word "accounting" in the previous sentence! It's just an application that the book uses to demonstrate Python and COM working together and ways of using it (e.g. shoveling data straight into Excel from the aforementioned accounting system).

The remaining part of the book has plenty to sink your teeth into, from Internet to serial communication, along with little things that you'll soon begin to appreciate as essential, like user management using Python. If you suddenly want to change all of your users somehow, you'll be grateful that you can do it programmatically.

The book brims with practical ideas that focus on one programming paradigm that a lot of people seem to forget about: Getting Things Done. Also, it was written by the author of the code, and it shows.

In short, this book brings the Windows world the kind of programmability that Unix people have come to expect. And the kind that Unix people can expect to see, too; from what I've seen of Bonobo, it's rather similiar to COM.

What's Bad?

No book is without its flaws, and this one has a couple. My biggest bugbear would be with the Python tutorial section: At 8 pages, it's just not long enough for someone who isn't accustomed to Python. While the online Python tutorial is reasonable, I would have expected a better introduction, given that Python isn't as well known as it could be. That could put some people off the book.

My other complaint is that the book is too small. Well, no -- it's just right actually, and has the nice bendy RepKover thing. But the book is burdened with so many topics that at times some subjects feel like they could have used a bit more in-depth treatment, or more extended examples. The authors must have felt the same way, since at the end of most chapters, there are pointers to further information, which is actually pretty useful.

Summary

I'm sure that there are a lot of Slashdot readers who run Windows on a regular basis. I think that this book will help a lot of them understand their environment better and help them tame it. It's also useful for die-hard Unix-heads like me, who are suddenly faced with a need to get things done under Windows and would like a clearer explanation of what they are up against, as well as some interesting ideas for when they return. Lastly, it's definitely useful to anybody already using the Python Win32 extensions, because the documentation that comes with those extensions cannot compare to this lovely, practical book.

Table Of Contents

1. Introduction to Python

   1. What is Python?
   2. Python Language Review
   3. Python on Windows
   4. Integrated Development Environments for Python
   5. Introduction to COM
   
   

2. Building an Advanced Python Application

   1. A Financial Modeling Toolkit in Python
   2. Building a GUI with COM
   3. Adding a Macro Language
   4. Integration with Excel
   5. Printed Output
   6. Distributing Our Application
   
   

3. Python on Windows Cookbook

   1. Advanced Python and COM
   2. Databases
   3. Working with Email
   4. Using the Basic Internet Protocols
   5. Windows NT Administration
   6. Processes and Files
   7. Windows NT Services
   8. Communications
   9. GUI Development
   10. Active Scripting
   11. Extending and Embedding with Visual C++ and Delphi
   
   

4. Appendixes

   1. Key Python Modules and Functions
   2. Win32 Extensions Reference
   3. The Python Database API Version 2.0
   4. Threads
   
   

Andy Oram of CPSR has has a nice reply comment to the Copyright Office's Anti-Circumvention Rulemaking. As slashdot has discussed before, the Copyright Office has a mandate to examine a part of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act and decide whether and how to implement it. If you haven't commented, today is your last chance - see the notice for the requirements for filing, and mark your submission as a reply to, say, Time Warner's comment. I just read an article noting that Stephen King would be in violation of this provision of the DMCA if he read his own e-book.

chromatic has reviewed O'Reilly's DocBook. Written by Norman Walsh and Leonard Muellner the book is: "A hefty reference of DocBook Elements and Entities, with an emphasis on customization and configuration -- if you know what that means, you'll find this book useful." DocBook: The Definitive Guide author Norman Walsh & Leonard Muellner pages 652 publisher O'Reilly & Associates, 10/1999 rating 8.5/10 reviewer chromatic ISBN 1565925807 summary A hefty reference of DocBook Elements and Entities, with an emphasis on customization and configuration -- if you know what that means, you'll find this book useful.

DocBook, a SGML DTD for technical writing and documentation, has been widely adopted by a number of organizations and authors. Many commercial and free tools support it, and the specification is under active development. DocBook: The Definitive Guide is the official documentation.

Content The first section of the Guide discusses SGML and XML concepts, as well as the specifics of DocBook. Be warned that this is not a particularly gentle introduction -- familiarity with well-formed HTML will help, but the Guide is a reference, not a tutorial.

With that in mind, the introduction walks through creating, parsing, and publishing valid DocBook documents. As the specification is cross-platform and not tied to any particular editor, the discussion focuses on the logical divisions and elements and practices of editing a document, rather than the particulars and mechanics of using a particular tool. The Parsing chapter gives solutions for some of the more common validation errors ("DTD not found", "misspelled tag", et cetera). The Publishing chapter zeroes in on stylesheets, focusing on DSSSL and the Jade utility. The authors demonstrate a stylesheet based configuration which will simplify the customization and publishing processes for different output formats.

The bulk of this book is a reference section which lists DocBook elements alphabetically. Each element has a content model lifted straight from the DTD, a list of applicable attributes, a list of parameter entities in which the element occurs, a description of what is is and where it might be used, processing expectations, and examples of its use mentioning any gotchas. Some elements are very simple, while elements higher in the hierarchy have much more complex requirements and nuances. Deprecated elements are marked with the appropriate version of the specification, with valid replacements suggested.

Each parameter entity has a synopsis and a description, listing all of the elements in which it occurs. Finally, each character entity is listed along with its Unicode number, a glyph, and the ISO decription. Characters are listed by character set, in alphabetical order.

The final section wraps up odds and ends in Appendices. This includes a section on installing the DocBook DTD, a discussion of the past and future versions of DocBook, and a useful list of additional resources (including pointers to SGML and XML tutorials). Another appendix is devoted to the differences between standard DocBook and XML. The included CD-ROM contains the complete SGML and HTML versions of the Guide itself, various DocBook DTDs, stylesheets, and applications mentioned in the book.

Pros and Cons The Creating section includes an enumeration of the categories of DocBook elements. This includes sets, lists, and components. It would be nice to have a comprehensive list arranged hierarchically, in addition to the alphabetical reference. (Occasionally an author might want to search for the correct element in a specific context. Why not?)

Including a troubleshooting section, so to speak, in the Parsing chapter was an excellent idea. One might almost conclude that the best way to think of DocBook is as a code library instead of a huge tree of entities and options. (The Customization chapter bears this out.) The authors also present various ways to accomplish specific goals, always with an eye out for the best and most flexible option.

As mentioned before, however, the tutorial value of the Guide is low, unless you're already comfortable with SGML or XML. DocBook's probably not the place to start out anyway, but someone who needs a quick introduction to DocBook for whatever reason ought to look elsewhere first.

Summary You may never use all of the information found here -- but if you're developing a customization layer, building stylesheets, or just using DocBook to mark up your writings, you'll find this book invaluable. (If you're the kind of person who can read the DTD and absorb the meaning there, you might not need it.) For anything more than casual use of the DTD, this is the first and last place you'll look.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction
2. 1. Getting Started with SGML/XML
   2. Creating DocBook Documents
   3. Parsing DocBook Documents
   4. Publishing DocBook Documents
   5. Customizing DocBook
3. Reference
4. 1. DocBook Element Reference
   2. DocBook Parameter Entity Reference
   3. DocBook Character Entity Reference
5. Appendixes
6. 1. Installation
   2. DocBook and XML
   3. DocBook Versions
   4. Resources
   5. What's on the CD-ROM?
   6. Interchanging DocBook Documents
   7. DocBook V3.1 Quick Reference

Read this book online at Docbook.org.

We've got a double-headed review of Simson Garfinkel's new book Database Nation: The Death of Privacy at the End of the 21st Century. It's a thought-provoking vision of the future which frankly scares the heck out of me. Database Nation: The Death of Privacy at the End of the 21st Ce author Simson Garfinkel pages 312 publisher O'Reilly & Associates rating 7/10; 9/ reviewer Matthias Wenger, Kurt Gray ISBN 1-56592-653-6 summary Thoughtful look at threats to privacy, and appropriate responses

Review 1: Matthias Wenger

Personally, privacy has been a big issue lately -- hearing about DoubleClick and Real Networks customer tracking made the issue a bit of a sore point for me. Then a friend of mine bought a shredder after her credit card fell victim to a Dumpster diver, and I started getting paranoid. Reading Database Nation hasn't helped, but it brings up some possible solutions and provides a good deal to think about as we march blindly on towards Big Brother, Inc.

Database Nation starts out strong, with a hypothetical day in the life of someone with no privacy -- cold-call telemarketing at 6:30 in the morning, surveillence cameras all around, veiled blackmail for a hospital in desperate need of cash and plenty of medical histories, still more cameras at work, etc. This story ends up being a rough outline for the book, which also covers electronic footprints (ATM and credit card records and the like), private databasing a la DoubleClick, identity vs. body, and surprisingly enough, AI and intelligence agents. Each of the major topics covered has at least a full chapter devoted to it -- explaining the specific issues at hand, what sort of data is at risk, who would be interested in such data, and how data can be protected.

The biggest flaw in the book is that it is too ambitious -- how can you cover the sanctity of medical records in 30 pages? It would be difficult to do a better job with such space limitations, certainly, but it does make for a more general view of privacy rather than dealing with specifics. The result is "Privacy in a Nutshell," to steal a turn of phrase from O'Reilly. Given the subject matter, the Nutshell approach might even be preferable, since the theory can be applied in any situation once the awareness is there. Still, each topic felt like it could be expanded much further.

The over-eager breadth of the subject matter is also wonderful. Enough particular concerns are illustrated in each topic that there is an outline of the larger picture of information management even though a good deal remains to be filled in. Covering so many topics makes it easier to see just how much information can be collected about an individual while they remain unawares, and just how much that information can be abused or misused. To illustrate this very point, Garfinkel relates the story of an Internet-based scavenger hunt where the end result was to find out as much as possible about a particular "target," working only with a name. The information collected in 1993 included his place of employment, parents' names, home address, degrees earned, doctoral dissertation, the operating system he used, what his fiance's name was, and more. I found out five minutes ago, with the help of google, that he's now married and that he and his wife hyphenated their last names together. That was just the first hit. And that was a very casual search -- if someone was really interested in finding information, what are the limits?

Database Nation is, in a way, the ultimate discussion of information security. Garfinkel covers an amazing range of topics in exploring privacy and personal information today and into the 21st century. This is both a blessing and a curse -- there are so many things to be aware of, so many topics and points of view to consider, yet each one is worthy of more attention. At the opening of the book, Garfinkel expresses hope that Database Nation will do for privacy what Silent Spring did for environmentalism -- if something doesn't do it soon, there wont be any privacy left to save.

Review 2: Kurt Gray

If Simson Garfinkel's name doesn't ring a bell, check the computer section of your local bookstore or library: Garfinkel co-authored the O'Reilly Practical UNIX Security book, the O'Reilly Stopping Spam book, and some six other books. Before I was a Slashdot addict I enjoyed reading Garfinkel's columns in Packet and the Boston Globe , where his talents for technology journalism and futurist projections make informative reading for geeks and lay persons alike.

Just as Upton Sinclair's The Jungle led to sweeping reforms in the meat-packing industry (and probably turned a lot of people to vegetarianism) Garfinkel's latest book, Database Nation, should draw some much-needed attention to the manner in which everyone's personal information is being captured, cataloged and sold as commodity, and how each aspect of this process detracts from our civil liberties. If you're an American, you certainly know what the IRS is, but have you ever heard of TRW? Equifax? Experian? Or the DMA? Or the MIB, the Medical Insurance Bureau? Each of these corporate entities keeps records on you that determine your eligibility for bank loans, lines of credit, and medical insurance. Are you allowed to see your own record? Well, it's their data, so it doesn't belong to you -- but maybe if you ask them nicely and have due cause, they'll make an exception. Suppose you discover an error in the records they keep on you; are you allowed to demand corrections? Now you're asking subversive questions so we're putting an CM31 flag on your file ... George Orwell warned that the march of technology could allow a monolithic, tyrannical Big Brother to emerge. Database Nation points out that it's the thousands of unsupervised "kid brothers" that have a far greater potential to disrupt your life, and in ways you never expected.

I find the best way to summarize this book is chapter-by-chapter, so here are my own brief reviews of each chapter:

Chapter 1: Privacy Under Attack: Garfinkel opens with his own futurist vision: a day in the life of a typical working American. This hapless near-future dweller is continuously surrounded by targeted advertising, monitored at home and even in his car, and works in an office where constant politeness is enforced by the company surveillance cameras that are programmed to recognize facial expressions and sound an alarm whenever an employee appears disgruntled. Garfinkel explains that this book is not about Big Brother, but rather how the widespread capture and exchange of our personal information has been eroding our civil liberties already and goes largely unnoticed. Garfinkel makes the positive point that no threat to our privacy that exists today is beyond our control, and that we can develop robust, built-in systems of privacy protection rather than allow them to be only loosely guaranteed by the legal equivalent of patchwork.

Chapter 2: Database Nation: Chapter 2 starts with a historical perspective, answering the question "How did we get here?" In short, via the national census, the Social Security Board (leading to the creation of the National Data Center) and the widespread adoption of the Social Security Number and its inherent flaws (limited data capacity and lack of a checksum digit to avoid clerical errors). Page 26 launches into the disturbing episode of Steve and Nancy Ross, whose lives were shattered when the IRS botched their tax returns in 1983 and put a lien on the Ross' house for $10,000. That lien was noted in their credit records at TRW and Equifax, which in turn sold this data to 187 other independent credit bureaus. Here Garfinkel makes an interesting observation: the Ross' bad credit data spread "like a computer virus that kept reinfecting TRW's computer with incorrect information," and it took over seven years for the bulk of their credit problems to subside. Chapter 2 then explains how simple identity theft can be, whether Dumpster diving for credit statements (hint: buy yourself a cross-cutting shredder), or using Equifax's quickie credit report service to find chumps with good lines of credit, then applying for new credit cards in the victims' names. Equifax provides such thieves with everything they need: mother's maiden name, previous addresses, SSN -- it's all there. The victim's credit rating is ruined for years while bill collectors harass them day and night, and the credit card company writes off the charges and flags the victim's file. Frequently, the credit thief gets a slap on the wrist if anything at all. Page 33 lists at least 30 government agencies that are hardwired to track you only by your SSN. Chapter 2 definitely had me sitting up and paying attention.

Chapter 3: Absolute Identification: Chapter 3 is about biometrics and unambiguous identification of every member in a society, a seductive idea that has tantalized policymakers for centuries. Garfinkel argues, however, that this idea is fundamentally flawed. Garfinkel again provides historical perspective, pointing out that using biometrics is an old idea that only appears new as the technology matures. Garfinkel reminds us that even DNA testing is flawled. When a person's name is linked to a given DNA profile, for example, how hard would it be to modify that database record and change the name attached to that profile? (And did you know that 99% of DNA from any two people is identical, so DNA tests actually compare only regions of the genome that are nonessential to cell life? Hmmm ...) Garfinkel then lists various other biometric technologies such as face, voice and iris recognition; even your signature can be used as a biometric identifier. Some of these systems are already in use: Have you signed for a UPS delivery lately, or signed for credit-card purchases on an electronic touch pad? Biometrics. So here's a near-future scenerio: suppose all children need to have a DNA test shortly after being born "for the baby's health." Then the FBI warehouses the DNA fingerprints of every citizen in the U.S., and sells the data to the insurance industry, which can then compare it to the human genome map to weed out the "at risk" people, then target healthy prospects for profitable health plan solicitations... big ol' cluestick being waved around here.

Chapter 4: What Did You Do Today?: Maybe you went shopping, got some cash from the ATM, racked up some more frequent flier miles? Even the most mundane events in your daily life are recorded and archived somewhere -- from how often you withdraw cash from an ATM, to your entire purchasing history at the neighborhood grocery store, even the movies you rent at the video store. Dramatic developments in data-storage technology make it easier for businesses to keep what Garfinkel calls "hot files" on every customer transaction from day one, and then describes how we are creating the Earth's "datasphere." Nearly every durable product you buy has a serial number. Often that serial number becomes attached to your name and personal information (ever filled out a warranty card?) which can then be sold on the open data market, Garfinkel argues that even seemingly mundane information needs to be treated with respect for privacy.

Chapter 5: The View From Above: Chapter 5 is about surveillence technology and the growing private market for satellite photos and Webcams. Does it bother me that right now someone can buy a grainy aerial photo of my neighborhood taken sometime in 1987? No, sorry, that doesn't bother me. City police departments are installing surveillance cameras in public places. I still don't care. Garfinkel then explains how he set up a QuickCam to time-lapse record his Realtor while allowing prospective buyers to browse through his home without supervision. At this point I can't tell if the chapter is supposed to a condemnation or an endorsement. I suppose Garfinkel is pointing out that it's technically possible that are being watched and recorded in places when you assume you're alone. At the very least, it should change your ideas about expectations of privacy.

Chapter 6: cite> To Know Your Future: So who is the MIB? Men in Black right? No, the MIB referred to here is the Medical Information Bureau, which happens to be the secretive data warehouse of the American medical insurance industry's "customer profiles." Think you have a God-given right to medical coverage? Well, if you like Kafka novels then you'll definitely enjoy the hijinks that erupt around page 139, where Garfinkel tells us of more than a few people who've been refused medical insurance because of clerical errors in their MIB records -- records which they never knew exisited. But wait, isn't it illegal in many cases to deny medical coverage to someone with preexisting conditions? Yeah, sure it is, so what's your point? Garfinkel points out that only 23 of the 50 states actually have laws that require citizens be allowed to view their own medical histories. My only complaint with this chapter is that it pursues flaws in existing policies rather than staying with the theme of technology marching faster than prudent policy.

Chapter 7: Buy Now!: The DMA is the Direct Marketing Association. They lobby lawmakers at the state and federal level to further what they consider a God-given right to own and sell any piece of information they can attach to you. One of the nation's largest direct marketing list resellers is Metromail, now owned by the credit bureau giant Experian. Ever apply for a shopping card or magazine subscription, or fill in a product bingo card? Ever fill out a change of address form at the post office? Direct marketers get an automatic notification of your new address from the U.S. Postal Service, which causes your name/address to be copied into a hot prospect list called "New Movers," one of many direct-mailing lists sold by Metromail at the rate of $60 per thousand names. Garfinkel lists some 50 products Experian sells to businesses, like AutoCredit for quickie loan approvals, Bankruptcy candidates, Business Owner Profiles, and Property Link which provides a details of a subject's property holdings. He then argues against the opt-out clause the DMA offers to whiners (arguing instead for a more consumer-oriented opt-in approach), and lists preventative steps you can take to keep your name on as few lists as possible. This chapter left me with a question: if you complain to a direct marketing firm about what they've been doing with your personal information and then they flag you as hostile, and that direct marketer happens to be owned by a major credit bureau, what would that to your credit rating? Food for thought.

Chapter 8: Who Owns Your Information?: Take the case of Ram Avarahmi, who tried to sue a magazine publisher for selling his name, which was in their list of subscribers, to other magazine publishers. Mr. Avarahmi argued that Virginia law states that his name and his image are his property which can not be used in advertising or trade without his consent, and guess what the courts told him? "Sorry Charlie, or Ram, whatever your name is." Information is basically owned by those who gather the information and personal information is a commodity. Medical information is also a commodity owned by medical insurance providers. But can all this medical information be abused? Or let me ask it like this: are we evolved enough to not attach genetic defects to say, a person's ethnicity? Garfinkel excerpts an ad he found in the New York Times: "Ashkenazi Jewish Families Are Needed to Help Scientists Understand the Biological Basis for Schizophrenia and Bipolar Disorder" -- a 1998 John Hopkins University study, right here in America in 1998. Certainly, some medical disorders are confined to certain populations; the question is, what if someone wants to abuse such links? So do you own the books you read or the software you use? No, thanks to copyright laws. Garfinkel makes the point that you can't use the concept of ownership to protect your privacy, because you don't own data about you, however I'm not convinced. Maybe I can't force you to take my name out of your address book, because you own your address book, but I think I do have the right to demand that you not send me mail or sell my address to other businesses without my consent.

Chapter 9: Kooks and Terrorists: This chapter argues that individual terrorists deploying low-tech explosive and biological contaminants have spooked us into accepting ever more surveillance of our everyday activities. True to his style, Garfinkel dismisses some well-known urban terrorist acts as amateur-night material, then describes two fairly effective methods of introducing anthrax into an unsuspecting office building. Further pages show how terrorists might gain access to nuclear and biochemical devices. Garfinkel's point here is that constant surveillance cannot save us from a determined kook. The chapter then moves into the Big Brother question: what constitutes thoughtcrime? Didn't our benevolent goverment inter over 100,000 Japanese-Americans at the start of World War II? Didn't J. Edgar Hoover's FBI spend much of 1950's investigating "Communists" and "homosexuals"? So could our government be trusted with "brain wiretapping" technology? Sounds far-fetched? We're already using polygraphs and experiments involving fast sucessive MRI scans. Garfinkel makes the point that if we are truly concerned about public safety, we should track dangerous materials rather than try to identify potentially dangerous people.

Chapter 10: Excuse Me, But Are You Human? Imagine you're on an electronic mailing list, and you strike up an e-mail dialog with another member of the list. He tells you some things bout himself and you share something about yourself in return. Turns out "he" was actually an AI conversationalist programmed by a marketing agency to gather personal information to be sold in the form of marketing lists. Garfinkel then describes various intelligent agents that can parse natural language. But how is this useful for marketing? It is technically feasible for a marketer to scan the entire datasphere for everything that can be found about you in order to create a predictive model of your behavior: When will you buying a new car? When you will be on vacation? Valuable stuff for direct marketers to know. Might it be possible in 50 years to create a complete AI behavorial copy of you, and test various marketing schemes against it? Garfinkel actually argues that avatars should be afforded the same privacy rights as humans.

Chapter 11: Privacy Now!: Is technology neutral in the war on privacy? Garfinkel's answer is no, technology permits the greater cataloging and measuring of the world around us, and therefore technology is inherently intrusive. He argues that for the cost of around $5 million added to the annual budget, a Federal oversight agency could be created to monitor and regulate the flow of personal information throughgovernment and business data channels. Further, he proposes a list of reasonable amendments to the Fair Credit Reporting Act of 1970, such as giving consumers the ability to sue for damages resulting from the addition of erroneous information to their credit reports. Garfinkel argues that better laws and policies will be more effective than cryptography in protecting one's privacy, and warns that when some have their privacy violated, you can expect retaliation such as deliberate pollution -- and disruption to -- the datasphere. Overall, Garfinkel concludes that we need laws and policies that repect our personal information, not just a technological picket fence.

Before reading Database Nation, I had the typical "nothing-to-hide" attitude regarding my own privacy. I didn't care if some government agency or large corporation was able to read my academic records, my medical records, my magazine subscriptions, my credit-card purchases, my phone bill. "Let them read it all for all I care," I thought, "I'm sure it would bore them to tears." After reading this book, I realize it's not so much about Big Brother, it's about how the spread of your personal information can bite you in the ass someday.

My assessment: Garfinkel jam-packed this book with information every American ought to be aware of -- enough to think about to make your head spin. Thankfully his tone is not hopeless gloom-and-doom; he does remind you that 30 years ago the Cuyahoga River was an environmental disaster, but today it's safe to eat fish caught there. Overall, it's a great book. Yet another reason for me to give a favorable review to anything Simson Garfinkel writes.

Purchase this book at ThinkGeek.

We've got a double-headed review of Simson Garfinkel's new book Database Nation: The Death of Privacy at the End of the 21st Century. It's a thought-provoking vision of the future which frankly scares the heck out of me. Database Nation: The Death of Privacy at the End of the 21st Ce author Simson Garfinkel pages 312 publisher O'Reilly & Associates rating 7/10; 9/ reviewer Matthias Wenger, Kurt Gray ISBN 1-56592-653-6 summary Thoughtful look at threats to privacy, and appropriate responses

Review 1: Matthias Wenger

Personally, privacy has been a big issue lately -- hearing about DoubleClick and Real Networks customer tracking made the issue a bit of a sore point for me. Then a friend of mine bought a shredder after her credit card fell victim to a Dumpster diver, and I started getting paranoid. Reading Database Nation hasn't helped, but it brings up some possible solutions and provides a good deal to think about as we march blindly on towards Big Brother, Inc.

Database Nation starts out strong, with a hypothetical day in the life of someone with no privacy -- cold-call telemarketing at 6:30 in the morning, surveillence cameras all around, veiled blackmail for a hospital in desperate need of cash and plenty of medical histories, still more cameras at work, etc. This story ends up being a rough outline for the book, which also covers electronic footprints (ATM and credit card records and the like), private databasing a la DoubleClick, identity vs. body, and surprisingly enough, AI and intelligence agents. Each of the major topics covered has at least a full chapter devoted to it -- explaining the specific issues at hand, what sort of data is at risk, who would be interested in such data, and how data can be protected.

The biggest flaw in the book is that it is too ambitious -- how can you cover the sanctity of medical records in 30 pages? It would be difficult to do a better job with such space limitations, certainly, but it does make for a more general view of privacy rather than dealing with specifics. The result is "Privacy in a Nutshell," to steal a turn of phrase from O'Reilly. Given the subject matter, the Nutshell approach might even be preferable, since the theory can be applied in any situation once the awareness is there. Still, each topic felt like it could be expanded much further.

The over-eager breadth of the subject matter is also wonderful. Enough particular concerns are illustrated in each topic that there is an outline of the larger picture of information management even though a good deal remains to be filled in. Covering so many topics makes it easier to see just how much information can be collected about an individual while they remain unawares, and just how much that information can be abused or misused. To illustrate this very point, Garfinkel relates the story of an Internet-based scavenger hunt where the end result was to find out as much as possible about a particular "target," working only with a name. The information collected in 1993 included his place of employment, parents' names, home address, degrees earned, doctoral dissertation, the operating system he used, what his fiance's name was, and more. I found out five minutes ago, with the help of google, that he's now married and that he and his wife hyphenated their last names together. That was just the first hit. And that was a very casual search -- if someone was really interested in finding information, what are the limits?

Database Nation is, in a way, the ultimate discussion of information security. Garfinkel covers an amazing range of topics in exploring privacy and personal information today and into the 21st century. This is both a blessing and a curse -- there are so many things to be aware of, so many topics and points of view to consider, yet each one is worthy of more attention. At the opening of the book, Garfinkel expresses hope that Database Nation will do for privacy what Silent Spring did for environmentalism -- if something doesn't do it soon, there wont be any privacy left to save.

Review 2: Kurt Gray

If Simson Garfinkel's name doesn't ring a bell, check the computer section of your local bookstore or library: Garfinkel co-authored the O'Reilly Practical UNIX Security book, the O'Reilly Stopping Spam book, and some six other books. Before I was a Slashdot addict I enjoyed reading Garfinkel's columns in Packet and the Boston Globe , where his talents for technology journalism and futurist projections make informative reading for geeks and lay persons alike.

Just as Upton Sinclair's The Jungle led to sweeping reforms in the meat-packing industry (and probably turned a lot of people to vegetarianism) Garfinkel's latest book, Database Nation, should draw some much-needed attention to the manner in which everyone's personal information is being captured, cataloged and sold as commodity, and how each aspect of this process detracts from our civil liberties. If you're an American, you certainly know what the IRS is, but have you ever heard of TRW? Equifax? Experian? Or the DMA? Or the MIB, the Medical Insurance Bureau? Each of these corporate entities keeps records on you that determine your eligibility for bank loans, lines of credit, and medical insurance. Are you allowed to see your own record? Well, it's their data, so it doesn't belong to you -- but maybe if you ask them nicely and have due cause, they'll make an exception. Suppose you discover an error in the records they keep on you; are you allowed to demand corrections? Now you're asking subversive questions so we're putting an CM31 flag on your file ... George Orwell warned that the march of technology could allow a monolithic, tyrannical Big Brother to emerge. Database Nation points out that it's the thousands of unsupervised "kid brothers" that have a far greater potential to disrupt your life, and in ways you never expected.

I find the best way to summarize this book is chapter-by-chapter, so here are my own brief reviews of each chapter:

Chapter 1: Privacy Under Attack: Garfinkel opens with his own futurist vision: a day in the life of a typical working American. This hapless near-future dweller is continuously surrounded by targeted advertising, monitored at home and even in his car, and works in an office where constant politeness is enforced by the company surveillance cameras that are programmed to recognize facial expressions and sound an alarm whenever an employee appears disgruntled. Garfinkel explains that this book is not about Big Brother, but rather how the widespread capture and exchange of our personal information has been eroding our civil liberties already and goes largely unnoticed. Garfinkel makes the positive point that no threat to our privacy that exists today is beyond our control, and that we can develop robust, built-in systems of privacy protection rather than allow them to be only loosely guaranteed by the legal equivalent of patchwork.

Chapter 2: Database Nation: Chapter 2 starts with a historical perspective, answering the question "How did we get here?" In short, via the national census, the Social Security Board (leading to the creation of the National Data Center) and the widespread adoption of the Social Security Number and its inherent flaws (limited data capacity and lack of a checksum digit to avoid clerical errors). Page 26 launches into the disturbing episode of Steve and Nancy Ross, whose lives were shattered when the IRS botched their tax returns in 1983 and put a lien on the Ross' house for $10,000. That lien was noted in their credit records at TRW and Equifax, which in turn sold this data to 187 other independent credit bureaus. Here Garfinkel makes an interesting observation: the Ross' bad credit data spread "like a computer virus that kept reinfecting TRW's computer with incorrect information," and it took over seven years for the bulk of their credit problems to subside. Chapter 2 then explains how simple identity theft can be, whether Dumpster diving for credit statements (hint: buy yourself a cross-cutting shredder), or using Equifax's quickie credit report service to find chumps with good lines of credit, then applying for new credit cards in the victims' names. Equifax provides such thieves with everything they need: mother's maiden name, previous addresses, SSN -- it's all there. The victim's credit rating is ruined for years while bill collectors harass them day and night, and the credit card company writes off the charges and flags the victim's file. Frequently, the credit thief gets a slap on the wrist if anything at all. Page 33 lists at least 30 government agencies that are hardwired to track you only by your SSN. Chapter 2 definitely had me sitting up and paying attention.

Chapter 3: Absolute Identification: Chapter 3 is about biometrics and unambiguous identification of every member in a society, a seductive idea that has tantalized policymakers for centuries. Garfinkel argues, however, that this idea is fundamentally flawed. Garfinkel again provides historical perspective, pointing out that using biometrics is an old idea that only appears new as the technology matures. Garfinkel reminds us that even DNA testing is flawled. When a person's name is linked to a given DNA profile, for example, how hard would it be to modify that database record and change the name attached to that profile? (And did you know that 99% of DNA from any two people is identical, so DNA tests actually compare only regions of the genome that are nonessential to cell life? Hmmm ...) Garfinkel then lists various other biometric technologies such as face, voice and iris recognition; even your signature can be used as a biometric identifier. Some of these systems are already in use: Have you signed for a UPS delivery lately, or signed for credit-card purchases on an electronic touch pad? Biometrics. So here's a near-future scenerio: suppose all children need to have a DNA test shortly after being born "for the baby's health." Then the FBI warehouses the DNA fingerprints of every citizen in the U.S., and sells the data to the insurance industry, which can then compare it to the human genome map to weed out the "at risk" people, then target healthy prospects for profitable health plan solicitations... big ol' cluestick being waved around here.

Chapter 4: What Did You Do Today?: Maybe you went shopping, got some cash from the ATM, racked up some more frequent flier miles? Even the most mundane events in your daily life are recorded and archived somewhere -- from how often you withdraw cash from an ATM, to your entire purchasing history at the neighborhood grocery store, even the movies you rent at the video store. Dramatic developments in data-storage technology make it easier for businesses to keep what Garfinkel calls "hot files" on every customer transaction from day one, and then describes how we are creating the Earth's "datasphere." Nearly every durable product you buy has a serial number. Often that serial number becomes attached to your name and personal information (ever filled out a warranty card?) which can then be sold on the open data market, Garfinkel argues that even seemingly mundane information needs to be treated with respect for privacy.

Chapter 5: The View From Above: Chapter 5 is about surveillence technology and the growing private market for satellite photos and Webcams. Does it bother me that right now someone can buy a grainy aerial photo of my neighborhood taken sometime in 1987? No, sorry, that doesn't bother me. City police departments are installing surveillance cameras in public places. I still don't care. Garfinkel then explains how he set up a QuickCam to time-lapse record his Realtor while allowing prospective buyers to browse through his home without supervision. At this point I can't tell if the chapter is supposed to a condemnation or an endorsement. I suppose Garfinkel is pointing out that it's technically possible that are being watched and recorded in places when you assume you're alone. At the very least, it should change your ideas about expectations of privacy.

Chapter 6: cite> To Know Your Future: So who is the MIB? Men in Black right? No, the MIB referred to here is the Medical Information Bureau, which happens to be the secretive data warehouse of the American medical insurance industry's "customer profiles." Think you have a God-given right to medical coverage? Well, if you like Kafka novels then you'll definitely enjoy the hijinks that erupt around page 139, where Garfinkel tells us of more than a few people who've been refused medical insurance because of clerical errors in their MIB records -- records which they never knew exisited. But wait, isn't it illegal in many cases to deny medical coverage to someone with preexisting conditions? Yeah, sure it is, so what's your point? Garfinkel points out that only 23 of the 50 states actually have laws that require citizens be allowed to view their own medical histories. My only complaint with this chapter is that it pursues flaws in existing policies rather than staying with the theme of technology marching faster than prudent policy.

Chapter 7: Buy Now!: The DMA is the Direct Marketing Association. They lobby lawmakers at the state and federal level to further what they consider a God-given right to own and sell any piece of information they can attach to you. One of the nation's largest direct marketing list resellers is Metromail, now owned by the credit bureau giant Experian. Ever apply for a shopping card or magazine subscription, or fill in a product bingo card? Ever fill out a change of address form at the post office? Direct marketers get an automatic notification of your new address from the U.S. Postal Service, which causes your name/address to be copied into a hot prospect list called "New Movers," one of many direct-mailing lists sold by Metromail at the rate of $60 per thousand names. Garfinkel lists some 50 products Experian sells to businesses, like AutoCredit for quickie loan approvals, Bankruptcy candidates, Business Owner Profiles, and Property Link which provides a details of a subject's property holdings. He then argues against the opt-out clause the DMA offers to whiners (arguing instead for a more consumer-oriented opt-in approach), and lists preventative steps you can take to keep your name on as few lists as possible. This chapter left me with a question: if you complain to a direct marketing firm about what they've been doing with your personal information and then they flag you as hostile, and that direct marketer happens to be owned by a major credit bureau, what would that to your credit rating? Food for thought.

Chapter 8: Who Owns Your Information?: Take the case of Ram Avarahmi, who tried to sue a magazine publisher for selling his name, which was in their list of subscribers, to other magazine publishers. Mr. Avarahmi argued that Virginia law states that his name and his image are his property which can not be used in advertising or trade without his consent, and guess what the courts told him? "Sorry Charlie, or Ram, whatever your name is." Information is basically owned by those who gather the information and personal information is a commodity. Medical information is also a commodity owned by medical insurance providers. But can all this medical information be abused? Or let me ask it like this: are we evolved enough to not attach genetic defects to say, a person's ethnicity? Garfinkel excerpts an ad he found in the New York Times: "Ashkenazi Jewish Families Are Needed to Help Scientists Understand the Biological Basis for Schizophrenia and Bipolar Disorder" -- a 1998 John Hopkins University study, right here in America in 1998. Certainly, some medical disorders are confined to certain populations; the question is, what if someone wants to abuse such links? So do you own the books you read or the software you use? No, thanks to copyright laws. Garfinkel makes the point that you can't use the concept of ownership to protect your privacy, because you don't own data about you, however I'm not convinced. Maybe I can't force you to take my name out of your address book, because you own your address book, but I think I do have the right to demand that you not send me mail or sell my address to other businesses without my consent.

Chapter 9: Kooks and Terrorists: This chapter argues that individual terrorists deploying low-tech explosive and biological contaminants have spooked us into accepting ever more surveillance of our everyday activities. True to his style, Garfinkel dismisses some well-known urban terrorist acts as amateur-night material, then describes two fairly effective methods of introducing anthrax into an unsuspecting office building. Further pages show how terrorists might gain access to nuclear and biochemical devices. Garfinkel's point here is that constant surveillance cannot save us from a determined kook. The chapter then moves into the Big Brother question: what constitutes thoughtcrime? Didn't our benevolent goverment inter over 100,000 Japanese-Americans at the start of World War II? Didn't J. Edgar Hoover's FBI spend much of 1950's investigating "Communists" and "homosexuals"? So could our government be trusted with "brain wiretapping" technology? Sounds far-fetched? We're already using polygraphs and experiments involving fast sucessive MRI scans. Garfinkel makes the point that if we are truly concerned about public safety, we should track dangerous materials rather than try to identify potentially dangerous people.

Chapter 10: Excuse Me, But Are You Human? Imagine you're on an electronic mailing list, and you strike up an e-mail dialog with another member of the list. He tells you some things bout himself and you share something about yourself in return. Turns out "he" was actually an AI conversationalist programmed by a marketing agency to gather personal information to be sold in the form of marketing lists. Garfinkel then describes various intelligent agents that can parse natural language. But how is this useful for marketing? It is technically feasible for a marketer to scan the entire datasphere for everything that can be found about you in order to create a predictive model of your behavior: When will you buying a new car? When you will be on vacation? Valuable stuff for direct marketers to know. Might it be possible in 50 years to create a complete AI behavorial copy of you, and test various marketing schemes against it? Garfinkel actually argues that avatars should be afforded the same privacy rights as humans.

Chapter 11: Privacy Now!: Is technology neutral in the war on privacy? Garfinkel's answer is no, technology permits the greater cataloging and measuring of the world around us, and therefore technology is inherently intrusive. He argues that for the cost of around $5 million added to the annual budget, a Federal oversight agency could be created to monitor and regulate the flow of personal information throughgovernment and business data channels. Further, he proposes a list of reasonable amendments to the Fair Credit Reporting Act of 1970, such as giving consumers the ability to sue for damages resulting from the addition of erroneous information to their credit reports. Garfinkel argues that better laws and policies will be more effective than cryptography in protecting one's privacy, and warns that when some have their privacy violated, you can expect retaliation such as deliberate pollution -- and disruption to -- the datasphere. Overall, Garfinkel concludes that we need laws and policies that repect our personal information, not just a technological picket fence.

Before reading Database Nation, I had the typical "nothing-to-hide" attitude regarding my own privacy. I didn't care if some government agency or large corporation was able to read my academic records, my medical records, my magazine subscriptions, my credit-card purchases, my phone bill. "Let them read it all for all I care," I thought, "I'm sure it would bore them to tears." After reading this book, I realize it's not so much about Big Brother, it's about how the spread of your personal information can bite you in the ass someday.

My assessment: Garfinkel jam-packed this book with information every American ought to be aware of -- enough to think about to make your head spin. Thankfully his tone is not hopeless gloom-and-doom; he does remind you that 30 years ago the Cuyahoga River was an environmental disaster, but today it's safe to eat fish caught there. Overall, it's a great book. Yet another reason for me to give a favorable review to anything Simson Garfinkel writes.

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davecb wrote to us with a short description of three of the Multics schedulers. The piece has some background information and history as well, which adds another element to the reading.

Dredd13 writes, "On his site, Tim O'Reilly recounts the conversation he had with Jeff Bezos, of Amazon, in regards to the "overwhelming positive response" to Tim's open letter to the community about one-click shopping. Makes for a good read. "

Dredd13 writes, "On his site, Tim O'Reilly recounts the conversation he had with Jeff Bezos, of Amazon, in regards to the "overwhelming positive response" to Tim's open letter to the community about one-click shopping. Makes for a good read. "

andy@petdance.com writes, "In a recent Ask Tim article on the O'Reilly Web site, Tim O'Reilly takes Jeff Bezos to task for his attempts at patenting 1-click and the associates program. An Open Letter to Amazon is provided for adding your voice to Jeff & co." O'Reilly has a very thoughtful letter about how Amazon's attitude would have killed the Web in its infancy. He also submitted a letter to the IP mailing list which explains his thoughts a bit more. See also NoWebPatents.Org which is running their own anti-Amazon boycott, and our previous story about RMS's call for a boycott.

harryhoch writes "Activist and Web commentator Andy Oram has written an article on the consequences of database protection Laws. The Sap and the Syrup of the Information Age: Coping with Database Protection Laws addresses legal and social implications of database protection legislation. For folks interested in deCSS, patents, and other "intellectual property" issues on the Net, this article provides another interesting perspective." Congress is considering legislation that would make collections of facts protectable by law. Andy Oram takes a look at what that would mean to the Internet and public in general.

chromatic has returned with yet another review. For this time around, he's taken a look at O'Reilly's Practical Internet Groupware. As you would imagine, the book focuses on using software to better enable groups to work together. Jon Udell, the author, does a great job of exploring how to use technology to better work together. Practical Internet Groupware author Jon Udell pages 497 publisher O'Reilly, 10/1999 rating 8/10 reviewer chromatic ISBN 1565925378 summary A detailed discussion of how and why to connect your users and customers to information and to each other using common Internet protocols and applications. Problem Space Successfully managing the flow of information depends answering a few questions. How do people communicate? How do they find information? How can businesses provide information links between their employees and customers?

Even if you do provide them with tools to collaborate and to manage data more efficiently, how can you ensure that they will use them? What will the future of business and personal computing look like?

The Solution Practical Internet Groupware argues that we already have the blocks we need to build rich communication tools -- open Internet protocols, ubiquitous web browsers, e-mail clients, and newsgroup readers, and quick and dirty scripting languages. By understanding and applying the various technologies appropriately, you can not only reduce the burden of creating, aggregating, and retrieving data, but also enhance its availability and utility. What's Good? Take the word 'Practical' very seriously. While the bulk of the programming examples are Perl, there's JavaScript, VB, Java, and XML thrown in the mix. Udell also stresses working within your existing environment -- whether that means activating the NNTP server included with IIS 4.0 on an NT server or installing INN on the Linux box in the corner. He's also very pragmatic. While XML is poised to be a much cleaner tool, its still-limited availability means that the book spends time presenting solutions which work in the here-and-now heterogenous quick and dirty landscape. Of course, there's also information about shiny new (and mature-but-not-yet-widespread) standards such as LDAP.

Also, Udell's experience in the field of collaboration includes years developing and polishing groupware solutions at Byte magazine. Clearly, he has a passion for the subject as well as a deep understanding of the issues involved. Both shine through in his writing.

Through the pages, Udell develops a handful of interesting and useful applications. One is a Docbase system, which blends together a newsgroup, a database, and a web site with indexed searching, various levels of access, and data entry capabilities. Another grabs content from various web sites and merges it into a consistent whole.

The most interesting project in the whole book is something called Distributed HTTP. It's a Perl-based web server that actually runs on client machines. It's easily extensible (with Perl), supporting authentication, modular database access, and replication with other servers. It's really a clever piece of work. (Just imagine remote data entry from field technicians equipped with laptops, or browsing reports from other locations, and that's the tip of the iceberg.)

What's Not So Good? Like most trailblazing works, the biggest frustration is realizing that there are great ideas here that few people have realized yet. As such, expect to be one part cheerleader, one part trainer, one part pariah, and one part referee if you're implementing things. Also, if you're not somewhat familiar with common Internet protocols such as HTTP, NNTP, and SMTP, or with the concepts and execution of HTML and XML, or with general Perl, you'll have to play catchup through the later chapters. Summary It's hard not to believe that Practical Internet Groupware is a year ahead of the curve -- Udell's approach to technology and the seamless integration of various information stores is a tempting vision. If you're directing rivulets data, get this book, let your boss read the first section, and then set about transforming the way you do business. If you're interested in where the Internet and business are headed, get this book.

The cover animals are seals and sea lions.

Table of Contents

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1. Using Internet Groupware
2. 1. The Conferencing Dimension
   2. Public Online Communities
   3. Intranet Collaboration with NNTP and HTML
   4. Information Management Strategies for Groupware Users
3. Groupware Docbases
4. 1. Docbases as Groupware Applications
   2. Docbase Input Techniques
   3. Docbase Navigation
   4. Organizing Search Results
5. Groupware Applications and Services
6. 1. Conferencing Applications
   2. Groupware Servlets
   3. Membership Services
   4. Authentication and Authorization Techniques
   5. Deploying NNTP Discussion Servers
7. Advanced Internet Groupware
8. 1. Automating Internet Components
   2. Distributed HTTP
   3. Epilogue
9. Appendixes
10. 1. Software Developed for this Book
    2. Internet RFCs: A Groupware Perspective

John Regehr sent us an excellent review of Mastering Algorithims with Perl, another O'Reilly & Associates effort. Written by Jon Orwant, Jarkko Hietaniemi, and John Macdonald, this is a book designed to take your Perl to a new level of wizardery. Mastering Algo author Jon Orwant, Jarkko Hietaniemi, and John Macdonald pages 704 publisher O'Reilly, 08/1999 rating 8/10 reviewer John Regehr ISBN 1-56592-398-7 summary The intended audience is programmers who don't have a background incomputer science, who know at least some Perl. However, experiencedprogrammers who don't know Perl should have no trouble picking up thebasics of the language with this book and a copy of ProgrammingPerl. In The New Hacker's Dictionary under "superprogrammer," we read that "productivity can vary from one programmer to another by three orders of magnitude." I would argue that at least one of these factors of ten comes from the ability to quickly recognize what algorithms should be used to solve different parts of a problem and to find or write implementations of those algorithms that will result in an efficient program, given the available time and the characteristics of the problem. This ability is developed through experience and by understanding the highlights of the large body of algorithms and analysis of algorithms that has been developed to solve problems that occur over and over again in computer programs.

Mastering Algorithms with Perl is designed to provide the necessary background. It's structured like a traditional algorithms textbook: after describing some basic and advanced data structures (linked lists, trees, heaps, etc.), it has chapters about searching, sorting, sets, matrices, graphs, strings, and some related topics. After the introduction and discussion of data structures, the chapters are relatively independent and could be read in any order. The authors provide plenty of cross-references as well as pointers to books that describe individual subjects in more detail.

The intended audience is programmers who don't have a background in computer science, who know at least some Perl. However, experienced programmers who don't know Perl should have no trouble picking up the basics of the language with this book and a copy of Programming Perl. Also, computer scientists can often use a review of algorithms, and the CPAN pointers are very useful. So, I would go so far as to say that this book would enrich any programmer's bookshelf. A stringent test of the merit of a new technical book is to ask if it adds some value, given the best existing books in its area? I think that Mastering Algorithms with Perl definitely does. It is a well-written introduction to algorithms that is more accessible, practical, and entertaining than standard algorithm books. It leverages off of the strengths of a powerful language and a large base of reusable code.

The rest of this review will evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of Mastering Algorithms with Perl in more depth. The central issue that I will consider is why the reader might or might not prefer an algorithms book that concentrates on a single language, as opposed to a general algorithms book. I will try to be up-front about my biases: as a computer scientist, I consider this book to be a compromise between an algorithms book and a how-to manual. This compromise makes it much more useful to Perl programmers, but it sometimes causes the algorithms content to be too watered down.

It is traditional in algorithms books to describe algorithms in pseudocode, which often superficially resembles Pascal. The difference between pseudocode and real code is that pseudocode is not compilable - it ignores implementation details that are not helpful to understanding a particular example. This is considered to be an advantage: without the clutter, the core of the algorithm is easier to see and understand. At the beginning of the book the authors make the point that the Perl code for a binary search is actually shorter than the corresponding pseudocode. And it's true! The advantage of the Perl program is that we have a readable description of the algorithm, and it's executable too. (Unfortunately, it's often nontrivial to convert pseudocode into real source code - the devil is in the details.) The binary search example is slightly misleading, however, because in this case a native Perl data structure (the array) matches the semantics of the problem extremely well, leading to a clear and concise implementation. Later in the book, particularly in the chapter on graphs, we see examples where Perl's built-in data structures are less well suited to the problems. The executable Perl code for graph operations are much longer than the corresponding pseudocode, and are often so syntactically cluttered that they are difficult to read. Is this a flaw in the book or in Perl? No - it's a consequence of giving examples in runnable code instead of pseudocode. Is the tradeoff worth it? Probably, but it depends on what you're trying to get out of the book.

Another consequence of basing an algorithms book on a real language is that the authors can point readers to existing implementations of the algorithms, in CPAN. It's hard to overstate how big of a win this is. Perl is a powerful language to begin with, but it becomes far more powerful when programmers are able to take advantage of the large body of existing code modules. An unfortunate side effect of the fact that the book talks about specific versions of Perl and about specific CPAN packages is that this information will become outdated much more quickly than the algorithms will. Unless the Perl language and CPAN are exceptionally stable in the future, I would not expect most of this information to be valid for more than a few years - hopefully a new version of the book will be available before this one becomes too out of date.

Because the book provides executable code for the algorithms, it's possible to evaluate the performance of the example code (which is available at the O'Reilly site). The authors benchmark a number of the algorithms that they present, and compare the results. This is a nice change from the discussion of asymptotic running times found in traditional algorithm books, which generally ignore the constant factors that often make the difference between an algorithm being useful in practice or not.

The design and analysis of algorithms is a highly mathematical discipline. A sophisticated set of tools has been developed to evaluate the tradeoffs between various algorithms: How efficiently do they use memory and processor cycles? What is the best, average, and worst case running time of various operations? How does the algorithm scale as the size of the input grows? As it turns out, programmers need to understand a few of these formalisms, particularly the "big O" notation for describing asymptotic running time. I think that Mastering Algorithms with Perl uses theory in just the right way: as an aid to programmers' intuition about algorithms, rather than beating us over the head with formulae and proofs. That said, I think there is one area of theory that this book should have spent more time on: NP completeness. NP-complete problems are solvable, but are believed to be inherently hard: no efficient algorithm has been discovered to solve them. There are a wide variety of NP-complete problems, and they do come up in practice. For programmers, the important thing is first to recognize that an NP-complete problem has been encountered, and that it cannot be solved exactly except in small instances. Then, a heuristic that comes up with a good enough approximation of the solution needs to be found and implemented. This is a practical and well-studied part of algorithm design, and in a 650-page book I would expect more than a page or two to be devoted to it.

Several chapters of Mastering Algorithms with Perl are too shallow to be considered good introductions to the associated areas of algorithms. For example, the chapter on matrices only shows code for some of the more trivial matrix operations; for complex tasks, it tells the reader how to use PDL - the Perl Data Language. Although PDL looks like a useful and powerful package, readers should not confuse knowing how to use it with understanding matrix algorithms. In other words, the matrix chapter is too much of a how-to manual. Other chapters such as the ones on searching and sorting are excellent and avoid falling into this trap. Algorithms is a huge area, and it can't all be covered well in 650 pages. The later chapters are a lot of fun to read, but some of them should probably have been scrapped in favor of more depth in core areas.

In conclusion, this is a well-written, useful book. Viewed as a Perl book it's superb; it complements the strengths of Programming Perl and The Perl Cookbook, and I think most or all Perl programmers would benefit from having a copy. Viewed as a computer science book, it has made a number of compromises in order to focus on a specific language; this is not necessarily a problem but it is something that readers should be aware of.

Acknowledgments: Thanks to Tom Christiansen, Dave Coppit, Bill Pearson, and Jamie Raymond for helpful comments on previous drafts of this review.

Purchase this book at fatbrain.

Lawrence Lessig - the name may be familiar from the Microsoft trial - has written an excellent book, which I've taken my time reviewing because I felt I had to read it twice to grasp the full import. Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace covers the real future of your liberties on the internet, and it is not a happy book. Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace author Lawrence Lessig pages 297 publisher Basic Books rating 10/10 reviewer Michael Sims ISBN 0-465-03912-X summary A gloomy look at the forces which shape the internet.

Slashdot isn't the first to review this book. Declan McCullagh (Wired), Andy Oram, and Carl Kaplan (NY Times) have all taken a look at it, he's been interviewed, there's an audio debate (mp3 format) between Lessig and McCullagh, and at least a couple of other places have all mentioned it and it is, at this writing, 134 on Amazon.com's best-seller list. I was privileged enough to receive a review copy of the book some time ago, but my review has been delayed because the book is too deep to easily sum up. It's a book about law, and about policy, and about the internet, which doesn't require any grounding in any of the above, but it seems like it would be appropriate for people at almost any level of knowledge - if you know more, you'll get deeper insights, and if you know less, you'll get the basics. A fractal book, in other words. An almost philosophical work, disguised as a law book.

To start with, Lessig's book is a counter to John Perry Barlow's Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace. Barlow had a good idea, a good goal, but he was totally and completely wrong about how to achieve it, and his declaration and the mindset it embodies has and will do great harm to the future of civil liberties on the internet.

Cyberspace is not and has never been independent of real life, or of government. What it has been is a place where the rules of real life were hard to enforce. That doesn't mean that the rules don't exist - just that it has been hard to make people obey them. The problem for people, like me, who like this state of affairs, this lack of enforcement, is that there's no reason cyberspace has to remain in its current state.

Cyberspace wasn't designed to enforce real-world rules. Such enforcement wasn't built in to the code that runs the internet, was consciously avoided in the early internet designs, and therefore regulators have been working in an environment unfriendly to them. Copying of digital works is easy. Transmitting and receiving content, even forbidden content, is easy. Etc.

But just because it was designed that way once, does not mean that it need be that way in the future. There are tremendous forces (business and government) that would prefer an internet which is friendly and cooperative to regulators. The people building the internet of tomorrow are not professors and geeks, they're CEO's and to a lesser extent, bureaucrats. If the architecture of the internet is "adjusted" to favor regulation instead of disfavor it - and the current internet builders all have reasons to favor regulability - regulating behavior on the internet is not impossible, it's trivial. Lessig has a short chapter on "is-ism", the belief that just because something is, so must it always be. Applied to the internet, this is "We are free, and will always be so." Wrong, wrong! The internet is totally man-made, and what man has made, man can change.

It is hard for me (or Lessig) to emphasize this point too much: the people who claim that we should keep our hands off the internet are completely playing into the hands of government and business. While the net-libertarians have buried their heads in the sand, the net is being changed, constantly, to favor regulation by business and by government.

Lessig takes a look at the infrastructure of the internet and how it is changing for the worse. There's another terrible flaw in thinking about the internet, which runs roughly: "whatever restrictions are placed, someone of technical competence can get around them". This is not true, not if the architecture is designed to support those restrictions rather than oppose them.

The internet, says Lessig, is about to "flip" from "unregulable" to "totally regulable". When that occurs (neither Lessig nor I think there's an "If" involved), who will be regulating the place? Currently corporations, with guidance from government - guidance coming in the form of regulations like CALEA, which make demands not on individuals, but on the code. Once the code is altered to be conducive to regulation, regulation follows naturally.

Lessig makes a great point about open source software. Closed source code which incorporates regulation (censorware is the easiest example, but there are many others) means that the people who are regulated can't even tell exactly what regulation is occuring. When the source code is available, you can at least tell exactly what you can and cannot do, or exactly how your privacy is being infringed. Open source code is inherently less suited to enforcing regulation on users.

I can't do justice to the book without rewriting it. Lessig is deeply skeptical about the ability of the U.S. government to initiate policies which promote, rather than denigrate, the civil liberties we have come to take for granted in cyberspace. Government is busy selling off our freedom to corporations through mechanisms such as ICANN. But no one else is going to do it - and with a government actively hostile to liberties or even one that adopts a hands-off approach, freedom in cyberspace is headed downhill at a tremendous pace.

I recommend this book to almost anyone who cares about the future of the internet. It's well-written - he's a good teacher. It's got some awesome examples - like how Communist Vietnam is more effectively libertarian than the U.S., because it doesn't have the infrastructure of control that we do. It is a scholarly work, but the footnotes are pushed off to the end - they alone are worth the price of the book to a serious student, but someone looking to just read can skip them without problems. It's a deep and thus far unmatched view of what will shape the net of tomorrow, the most inspiring book I've read this year.

Some of Lessig's other papers and articles are available on his home page. The book has a promotional website as well, available at code-is-law.org or what-declan-doesnt-get.com.

Pick this book up at fatbrain.com.

Thanks to Arjen for sending a review of O'Reilly's Perl CD Bookshelf. The bookshelf is a collection of O'Reilly's well-known Perl books, complete with searchable information. Perl CD Bookshelf author Multiple Authors pages 406 publisher O'Reilly, 08/1999 rating 8/10 reviewer Arjen Laarhoven, Murphy Software ISBN 1565924622 summary This CD is a very handy collection of a number of well-knownO'Reilly Perl books. If you work on Perl-related stuff on various sites, a CD with the content of 6 books is much easier on your backto carry around with you. Overview This is kind of a weird review. Sort of a meta-review if you like. O'Reilly's Perl CD Bookshelf is a CD with 6 of O'Reilly's Perl books on them, in HTML format. To enable searching of the complete contents of the CD, a Java-based search engine is included, as are a number of Java Runtime Environments for various platforms.

I didn't read all 6 books on the CD 'cover to cover'. In my opinion, books in electronic form don't really lend themselves for relaxed reading. But as reference material, it's more appealing to carry around a single CD than lugging around almost 3200 pages in book form.

What's in it for me? Lots. Most importantly: the complete contents of the following books in HTML format:

• Perl in a Nutshell (review)
• Perl Cookbook (review)
• Learning Perl
• Learning Perl on Win32 Systems
• Programming Perl (review)
• Advanced Perl Programming (review)

Each book has its own index, but a master index spanning all 6 books is also provided.

With this much information, you want to be able to search for a nugget of information hidden somewhere in the equivalent of almost 3200 bookpages of information. Perl runs on a variety of platforms, so this CD contains a (proprietary) Java-based search engine. This engine supports a number of basic search capabilities, like wildcards and boolean operators. The engine isn't very sophisticated, and I don't use it much, as I generally know where to look for specific things, and the master index is very complete.

The search engine requires installation of a Java Runtime Environment (JRE) if you don't already have a JRE or a JDK (Java Development Kit). The Windows users have it easy; put in the CD and the search engine and a browser with the CD homepage start automagically. The Windows JRE is installed automatically. UNIX/Linux users have to do some handywork to install a JRE if they don't have installed one already. Binary JRE's for the following platforms are provided:

• FreeBSD 2.2.* with a.out binary format
• FreeBSD 3.* with ELF binary format
• HP-UX 10.20
• HP-UX 11
• Linux with glibc
• Older JRE for Linux with glibc (try if the other glibc JRE doesn't work)
• Solaris
• SunOS 4.1.3

JRE's for other platforms, like AIX, Digital UNIX (Tru64) and SCO are not on the CD because of license issues. Information about where to get a JRE for these platforms is provided on the page about UNIX JRE installation instructions.

I had some problems with installing the Linux JRE on my Debian GNU/Linux system, but after some headscratching and trying another package it worked well. The documentation on installing and using the JRE's and the search engine on the various platform is sparse, but sufficient for most cases.

What's good? The size and price. For about $54 (price at Amazon) you get 6 books which would add up to about $138 at only a fraction of the weight. Quite a bargain, if you ask me.

With the CD comes a dead-tree version of Perl in a Nutshell (or the other way around :-), so for that ``I know what I want to do, but what where the details again?'' questions, you can just reach to your bookshelf which is very handy. For in-depth discussions and explanations, you can refer to the content on the CD.

What's bad? Hmm. Tough one. IMHO, only some small details. The JRE installation for UNIX can be a bit hairy for novice UNIX/Linux users. Paper books read more easily than computer screens (but that's not O'Reilly's fault). The limited and proprietary search engine (maybe O'Reilly should have included a search CGI (written in Perl ;-) for those of us who run a Webserver on their systems). Conclusion If you're a programmer which works on different client sites, this is great replacement for a stack of good Perl books. For a reasonable price, you get a truckload of information on a handy portable medium. Links to Web pages related to The Perl CD Bookshelf

• O'Reilly's page on The Perl CD Bookshelf

Purchase this book at fatbrain.

Andy Oram's latest article has a nice analysis of the future of intergovernmental organizations and the internet. He covers the PICS bait-and-switch, DVDs, and ties it all in with the actions of groups like the WTO and WIPO. The intertwining of government and corporations to limit freedoms on the internet is a topic that every internet user should pay attention to, but few do. I personally plan to cover this situation in as great a depth as possible on slashdot in the future - stay tuned.

Matt Braithwaite writes "Answering RMS's call for free documentation, Karl Fogel has written a book on CVS that is free (GPLed) and available online. (The paper version has additional non-free material.) " Also, edinator wrote to say that ORA has put the Using Samba text online. Some old news there, but, hey, some light figure for after eating turkey.

nwetters asks: "I'd like my programs to run as fast as possible, and there are some great books (e.g. High Performance Computing) that give examples of loop optimizations and unit-stride memory use. However, I've heard that modern compilers will automatically optimize even the worst of my cludge. Should I bother with manual tweaking, or leave it up to the compiler? "

chromatic, another of our fine group of book reviewers, took some time with a draft copy of the new O'Reilly and Associates book Using Samba. Written by Robert Eckstein, David Collier-Brown & Peter Kelly, this book helps you learn how to setup Samba, as well as information on the protocol itself. Click below to learn more. Using Samba author Kelly, Peter / Collier-Brown, David / Eckstein, Robert pages 416 publisher O'Reilly & Associates, 11/1999 rating 8/10 reviewer chromatic ISBN 1565924495 summary Using Samba takes you from heterogenous network purgatory into manageable bliss by helping you install, configure, and maintain Samba installations.

Overview

Samba is a suite of software tools implementing the SMB protocol. With Samba, you can share files and printers from a Unix-based server to Windows-based clients. You can even control a Windows NT based domain with a Unix server, potentially saving thousands of dollars in software licensing fees and administration costs.

Using Samba takes you from your initial need for Samba in a heterogenous network to installation, through configuration, and ending up with performance tweaking. Most of the focus is on the server side, but there's information about the SMB protocol itself and client setup.

Note: This review is based upon a draft copy of the book. The final copy has been reorganized and some parts have been rewritten. Most of the information still applies.

What's Good?

As is Samba, Using Samba is Unix-variant agnostic, with installation tips for multiple OS's. This covers download sites, compilation, and even SWAT, the web-based configuration interface in Samba 2.0.x. The authors have a clear, clean style (as you'd expect from O'Reilly) and take a common-sense, practical approach to various issues such as security and configuration. The authors also focus on additional Samba utilties like smbclient and smbmount, which are useful for troubleshooting.

The chapter on tweaking for performance is excellent. More books deserve chapters like this. The authors go through the various bottlenecks and demonstrate how modifying one parameter affects the others. (I suspect the general principles are applicable elsewhere.)

The real gem of this book is chapter nine, the troubleshooting tree. If you're stuck with weird behavior and you have a deadline to meet, this chapter alone may be well worth the cover price. It starts by discussing Samba logs, moves into trace and tcpdump, spends pages and pages on an extremely detailed Fault Tree, and ends up with pointers to other resources.

What's not so good?

(These are really minor points. My recommendation is that if you're looking at Samba, you should read the sample chapter and then buy this book.)

The chapter on configuring Windows clients seemed a little out of place, given that this book promotes Samba as a replacement or alternative to a Windows server. That's pretty straightforward, and probably not why you'd buy a book about Samba. The NT Domain model discusison is valuable, though, given that a Samba server may have to act as a Domain Controller or a Master Browser, and that can have big implications.

Using Samba covers both versions 1.9.x and 2.0.x. It would have made more sense to me to stick with the latest stable version and cover it in detail. However, most of the options are the same between the two, and the differences are clearly marked. There are only a handful of places where this comes up. As I said, it's only a minor issue.

The Bottom Line

If you know you need Samba and want some help setting it up and configuring it, this is your book. If you're curious about what Samba can do for your network, flip through the first chapter and rest assured that this book will help you get things under control.

Purchase this book at fatbrain

Table of Contents

Preface

1. Learning the Samba
What is Samba?
What Can Samba Do For Me?
Getting Familiar with a SMB/CIFS Network
Microsoft Implementations
An Overview of the Samba Distribution
How Can I Get Samba?
What's New in Samba 2.0?
And That's Not All...

2. Installing Samba on a Unix System
Downloading the Samba Distribution
Configuring Samba
Compiling and Installing Samba
A Basic Samba Configuration File
Starting the Samba Daemons
Testing the Samba Daemons

3. Configuring Windows Clients
Setting Up Windows 95/98 Computers
Setting Up Windows NT 4.0 Computers
An Introduction to SMB/CIFS

4. Disk Shares
Learning the Samba Configuration File
Special Sections
Configuration File Options
Server Configuration
Disk Share Configuration
Networking Options with Samba
Virtual Servers
Logging Configuration Options

5. Browsing and Advanced Disk Shares
Browsing
Filesystem Differences
File Permissions and Attributes on MS-DOS and Unix
Name Mangling and Case
Locks and Oplocks

6. Users, Security, and Domains
Users and Groups
Controlling Access to Shares
Authentication Security
Passwords
Windows Domains
Logon Scripts

7. Printing and Name Resolution
Sending Print Jobs to Samba
Printing to Windows Client Printers
Name Resolution with Samba

8. Additional Samba Information
Supporting Programmers
Magic Scripts
Internationalization
WinPopup Messages
Recently Added Options
Miscellaneous Options
Backups with smbtar

9. Troubleshooting Samba
The Tool Bag
The Fault Tree
Extra Resources

A. Configuring Samba with SSL

B. Samba Performance Tuning

C. Samba Configuration Option Quick Reference

D. Summary of Samba Daemons and Commands

E. Downloading Samba with CVS

F. Sample Configuration File

Clifton Tipon wrote in to tell us that O'Reilly has a book on Lego Mindstorms for all you robot junkies out there. They're definitely covering the spectrum over there.

Anonymous Coward writes "According to this News.com article. VA Linux Systems, O'Reilly and Associates, and SGI. Will be co-sponsoring a retail box version of Debian GNU/Linux. In addition VA will be helping to setup toll free technical support for Debian."

This week's Slashdot interview subject is Eric S. Raymond. You already know who he is, and may even know that his new book, The Cathedral and the Bazaar, subtitled Musings on Linux and Open Source by an Accidental Revolutionary, will be published by O'Reilly in October. We anticipate lots of questions for Eric. Please try to avoid the obvious ones he's answered thousands of times already, and try to ask only one question per post! We'll forward the selected 10 - 15 questions deemed most interesting by Slashdot moderators and/or editors to him Tuesday afternoon. Answers will appear Friday.