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For a normal user, linux is not too much different than any other UNIX like system. One book that I found to be very helpful when I was UNIX for the impatient. There were many things I liked about this book. It covered both emacs and vi pretty extensively. It covered programming in awk, although awk is pretty much superceeded by perl. It also covered many of the small text processing utilities like cut, grep, etc.

Another good book for users might be the Oreily Linux in a nutshell book. I'm not usually a fan of the nutshell books, but this one seems to cover many of the same topics that the impatient book covers.

When You Can't Find Your UNIX System Administrator

There's a good book explaining a lot of this stuff in detail available from O'reilly. I can vouch for it having some neat stuff, and it covers how to write fortran in such a way as to take advantage of the parallelism features.

I've been reading Zeldman's book Designing for Web Standards at safari.oreilly.com and it addresses this quite well. Safari and Mac IE 5.2 are very compliant to standards moreso than any version of IE on Windows, so it's not as big a deal now as it once was during the browser war era. Yeesh what a mess that was.

If you can move away from using old pre-war coding practices you'll be a step ahead in the fight. Check out these sites for more info on coding pages that look good in any browser on any platform:

• The Web Standards Project

• Zeldman's site of course.

• A List Apart

• Netscape's DevEdge is a great source of info.

• Validate your source.

• Validate your CSS.

• Another html validator.

• Accessibility is not only a good thing it's the right thing, especially if you ever make a government site.

• Bluerobot has some pre-cooked layouts to cut your teeth on.

Designing with XHTML and CSS means not leaving anybody out. From Web-enabled phones to IE 6 to text only browsers like lynx or links you'll only need to write your code once. I say do away with javascript browser detection scripts and write once, run (almost) anywhere!

There is a last resort you can go to if you must. Macromedia Flash looks the same in any browser provided you have the proper plugin. :) Although that is not my recommended solution.

Wow, why bother typing out that review when you could have just posted a link to ORA's description. ;)

Can anyone explain the differences between "Java Web Services in a Nutshell" and "Java Web Services" both published by O'Reilly? Look very similar with the latter probably a bit outdated seeing as it was published March 2002. Is this Nutshell book just a rehash of the other book but with updated API's?

Needing answers to the same question, yesterday i bought a copy of this book: Managing Imap Perhaps you should get hold of it too. It covers the whole IMAP thing and Cyrus and UW in detail. If you are not worried about using proprietary s/w, and want something easy to set up for testing, have a look at Communigate. This is a complete mailserver solution, very quick to install set up configure, has an IMAP module and lots more. A licence costs $$ but the free version is identical save for a 1-line- text advert appended to outgoing emails. (Linux versions available, don't know how it would fit with Gentoo though)

In case of eBooks, the way of reading adds something to the formula and as a result the most viable customers for eBook would be people who love (or just used) to read from the screen. Guess who? That's right - computer engineers and web artists. And what do they love to read? The stuff that they have to read: books for their job.

I can prove it. Just check the most successful eBook retail site and see yourself: they have lots books for that audience, new books are coming frequently and the price is very affordable. Oh, by the way, no need to even download it: you can read it right from the web or you can cache it for reading later on any off-line browser. You can cut and paste examples right to your editor or the terminal window. And you can even give up the book from your bookshelf back to to the store and get another one instead!

I thought C-pound was roughtly equivalant to Java, not J2EE.

Just FYI, C# is pronounced "see sharp".

As an aside, why do some people say "pound" to refer to "#"? It doesn't look much like a pound sign to me.

I hear that's what O'Reilly has planned for the cover art on the 2nd edition of this

• Consider running any WWW server from a Macintosh platform instead of from a UNIX platform.
• After you change your password, don't forget it!
• Lock and physically isolate your computers from public access.
• Never use rot13 as an encryption method to protect data.

Interestingly enough, I just picked up Mac OS X for Unix Geeks, and it states there (not that this is definitive, mind you) that the PPC arch can do either big-endian or little-endian. This is controlled (on Apple products) through an Open Firmware variable. Makes me wonder how big a deal this actually is, and whether or not this feature is still present on a G5 and/or if this is a convenient excuse on the part of the Beast of Redmond.

C# is one programming language I've stayed away from--and for no particular reason. I had picked up the C# specification [PDF] in 2000, but never really got down to the canonical "hello world" program. Today in 2003, as I look back, I guess I haven't missed much.

Let's go back to August 2000 and revisit Hejlsberg's famous O'Reilly interview by Josh Osborn.

Why are there no enums in Java, for example? I mean, what's the rationale for cutting those?

And Java has enums now, just like they come in C#.

one of our key design goals was to make the C# language component-oriented

I think this was really nice, and fitted in well with Microsoft's COM framework. I remember COM enthusiasts mentioning how every C# object would automatically be a COM object, thereby eliminating all that old school drudgery.

C# is the first language to incorporate XML comment tags that can be used by the compiler to generate readable documentation directly from source code.

Python and Java have docstrings (or javadoc) as part of the language.

Developers are building software components these days. They're not building monolithic applications or monolithic class libraries.

Developers are building all sorts of stuff, and not just "components". I think that statement is overrated.

Boxing allows the value of any value type to be converted to an object, while unboxing allows the value of an object to be converted to a simple value type.

Thanks, now Java has it too!

Unsafe code allows you to write inline C code with pointers, to do unsafe casts, and to pin down memory so it won't accidentally be garbage-collected. [...] The real difference is that it's still running within the managed space. The methods you write still have descriptive tables that tell you which objects are live, so you don't have to go across a marshalling boundary whenever you go into this code. Otherwise, when you go out to undescriptive, unmanaged code (like through the Java Native Interface, for example), you have to set a watermark or erect a barrier on the stack.

Honestly, I didn't understand the stuff about "unsafe code", the implementation of IL, and the implementation of generics. Just for comparison sake, Python also has a scheme for inlining C and C++ code.

Let's face it, some people like to program in COBOL, some people like to program in Basic, some like C++, and some will like C#, I hope. But we're not trying to tell you to forget everything you ever did.

I've raised this point to Java bigots on several occasions. It's just too difficult (and sometimes impossible) to interface Java with other languages. (In this context,

C# is one programming language I've stayed away from--and for no particular reason. I had picked up the C# specification [PDF] in 2000, but never really got down to the canonical "hello world" program. Today in 2003, as I look back, I guess I haven't missed much.

Let's go back to August 2000 and revisit Hejlsberg's famous O'Reilly interview by Josh Osborn.

Why are there no enums in Java, for example? I mean, what's the rationale for cutting those?

And Java has enums now, just like they come in C#.

one of our key design goals was to make the C# language component-oriented

I think this was really nice, and fitted in well with Microsoft's COM framework. I remember COM enthusiasts mentioning how every C# object would automatically be a COM object, thereby eliminating all that old school drudgery.

C# is the first language to incorporate XML comment tags that can be used by the compiler to generate readable documentation directly from source code.

Python and Java have docstrings (or javadoc) as part of the language.

Developers are building software components these days. They're not building monolithic applications or monolithic class libraries.

Developers are building all sorts of stuff, and not just "components". I think that statement is overrated.

Boxing allows the value of any value type to be converted to an object, while unboxing allows the value of an object to be converted to a simple value type.

Thanks, now Java has it too!

Unsafe code allows you to write inline C code with pointers, to do unsafe casts, and to pin down memory so it won't accidentally be garbage-collected. [...] The real difference is that it's still running within the managed space. The methods you write still have descriptive tables that tell you which objects are live, so you don't have to go across a marshalling boundary whenever you go into this code. Otherwise, when you go out to undescriptive, unmanaged code (like through the Java Native Interface, for example), you have to set a watermark or erect a barrier on the stack.

Honestly, I didn't understand the stuff about "unsafe code", the implementation of IL, and the implementation of generics. Just for comparison sake, Python also has a scheme for inlining C and C++ code.

Let's face it, some people like to program in COBOL, some people like to program in Basic, some like C++, and some will like C#, I hope. But we're not trying to tell you to forget everything you ever did.

I've raised this point to Java bigots on several occasions. It's just too difficult (and sometimes impossible) to interface Java with other languages. (In this context,

I would consider myself a kernel developer at this stage, even before my driver is included in the mainstream kernel versions.

It sounds like you are at this stage already, so are you actually asking "How do I get a driver included in the kernel as distributed?". Well I think the answer to that is to keep submitting it to the maintainer of the relevant kernel. Things like revelance, and especially quality are important factors too.

For anyone at an earlier stage, perhaps "normal" programmers who need to learn how it all works in the kernel, I have (reccomend is too strong a word, as I have only read these 2 books on the topic) read 2 OReilly books.

Understanding the Linux Kernel, 2nd Edition and Linux Device Drivers, 2nd Edition

Of course you should also be on the linux kernel mailing list

And the rest is dependant on exactly you want to add to the kernel.

I would consider myself a kernel developer at this stage, even before my driver is included in the mainstream kernel versions.

It sounds like you are at this stage already, so are you actually asking "How do I get a driver included in the kernel as distributed?". Well I think the answer to that is to keep submitting it to the maintainer of the relevant kernel. Things like revelance, and especially quality are important factors too.

For anyone at an earlier stage, perhaps "normal" programmers who need to learn how it all works in the kernel, I have (reccomend is too strong a word, as I have only read these 2 books on the topic) read 2 OReilly books.

Understanding the Linux Kernel, 2nd Edition and Linux Device Drivers, 2nd Edition

Of course you should also be on the linux kernel mailing list

And the rest is dependant on exactly you want to add to the kernel.

It seems that everytime Mozilla comes up in the news here at Slashdot, clueless posters come in and start complaining about Mozilla's speed. Mozilla is not just a browser (and other utils like a mailer and so forth). Mozilla is built as an application platform. Yes, it's much more.

Basically, with XUL and JavaScript, Mozilla provides a facility very similar to Java on the client. You can build a complete set of applications with Mozill as the foundation. O'Reilly has a book on the subject that goes into further detail.

If you think back a while ago, Slashdot even ran a story about OEone which has built a complete desktop environment on top of Mozilla.

For what Mozilla actually does under the hood (and considering the application you interact with is itself built on this framework) it's surprisingly fast. And small to boot. You see, Mozilla embodies the original Netscape philosophy of creating an application platform in the browser. This is one of the reasons Microsoft was scared and so eager to kill them off. It would be another Java, but a Java that didn't require developers to create applications.

But I digress. I am sure every Mozilla related story on Slashdot will produce an army of people like you complaining abbout speed. Of course, how old of a computer do you have? I have never understood how anyone can consider Mozilla slow (unless you're dealing with the milestone releases which were full of debug code).

I'm currently freelancing as an editor for the official manual on a certain general code compiler that you may have used before. It's not exactly a writing job, but because the book was written by a committee a big part of the work involves rewriting sections to make sure it doesn't read like something written by a committee.

I think this work & some other random writing I've done gives me a little bit of room to reply here.

(1) what are the general opinions of programmers on technical writers;

The work I've done so far has been very well received by the members of this general code compiler's list. Apparently, no one has sat down and attempted to do a cleanup of the text in years, and it shows. Parts of the text were written by people for whom English isn't their strongest language, and most of it was written by people who are more talented as programmers than in explaining complex material to a lay audience. Moreover, the writing style changes drastically from section to section, and even from paragraph to paragraph. Trying to follow such a twisted text would be difficult even if the material wasn't so advanced, so if anyone steps forward and offers to make this material more accessible to people, it seems like that person is likely to be well received.

(2) is there someone out there who has first-hand experience in technical writing who can tell me about the work and their experiences;

What do you want to know? I could go into detail, but the work I've done to date has mostly been editing, not first-hand writing. It's a related task, but not identical. Basically it means looking over the manuscript, making sure that the text is understandable, consistent, and adheres to the house style guidelines. In cases where the text needs to be rewritten, I have to be careful to be sure that the edited text still expresses the same intent that the original version did (and sometimes, that means muddling through what the original intent was in the first place). In cases where the meaning is especially ambiguous, it has meant consulting with experts on the topic, either over the phone, by personal email, or by asking on relevant mailing lists. It has been a lot of work. Much more than I anticipated when I started (but then, apparently no one realized how messy the text was, how out of date in parts, how ambiguous in others...)

(3) what software is used mainly in the process; and of course

Well, this book is formatted in Texinfo, but that's probably a quirk of this organization. The other book I was involved with was written in Perl's POD documentation format, but again that may have just been the whim of the author's as much as anything else.

I think, more generally, that most pubishers will let authors work in the tool of their choice, provided that the end result is in a format they can work with. The books I've been involved with were edited in Emacs, Vim, and presumably similar editors; others I'm told are done in Word, other word processors, other text editors, and other desktop publishing applications.

A good source of info on this question might be the colophon page in the back of many reference books. A lot of the O'Reilly books cite FrameMaker and Quark, but these may come up later in the production process than the authorship stage, and I'm assuming that it isn't as important for you to know the minutae of how a manuscript gets typeset and printed -- at least at this point.

(4) what seems to be the average pay?

I'm working for a non-profit, so you may not want my opinion on this one :-)

----

Another good source of material would be the so you want to write for us section on O'Reilly's site. Whether or not you intend to actually write for them, it's a good overview of things to be aware of. Other publishers probably have similar documents, and being familiar with this kind of material can't hurt you whether you're planning to be a book author or if you intend to do in-house documentation for some company.

What I did was to use Dawn to produce an initial .ldif file. Then I wrote a little script to massage entries based on the dn's and ou's that I wanted to use. Create said dn's and ou's via a seperate, hand crafted .ldif, a quick little exercise, bring in your massaged .ldif, and you're set.

To manage, phpLDAPadmin is the best tool I've found so far.

Outlook, Mozilla, etc. can all access as clients.

I also recommend LDAP System Administration by Gerald Carter, though with some reservations. It provides a decent grounding in LDAP, but won't be an end-all-be-all definitive resource.

Sample chapters of the book can be found here and here. I read this first one (the one on TCP/IP) and found that it was an excellent introducation to it. The other is on "secure programming techniques." Gotta read that.

Not PDF, but online in html.

BTW, you can download example code for this book from here.

Some problems with this review:

1. Where's the basic information about this book? Author, publisher, ISBN, list price, etc. None of these are mentioned in the review (yes, there's a link to B&N, but, c'mon).

2. Sequencing is an essential aspect of a technical book review. In what order does the author address the topics? Are there many forward references? Does the author march through the topics one at a time or is the subject matter gradually explored, step-wise? A Table of Contents listing (instead of the simplistic 6 parts) would be nice, at a minimum.

Some problems with this book:

1. Having found the TOC on O'Reilly's website (http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/cplus2/toc.html), it's clear that this book features the Bad Old Style of C++ pedagogy: namely, teach C first. The author tackles arrays before std::vector, structs (and unions!) before classes, C-style linked lists before std::list, switch statements before virtual functions, and macros before templates. The new approach to teaching C++ is to give the user familiarity with the powerful utilities of the standard library, so that useful programs can be written right off the bat, and then to explore the dizzying array of language constructs which make the standard library what it is. I encourage those new to C++ to check out Accelerated C++ as an alternative introduction to C++.

2. The reviewer points out that there are many code errors in the book. This is unacceptable, especially for a beginning book. A small number of obvious typos can be forgiven, but anything more than that should consign a tech book -- again, especially an introductory book, where the audience has little experience for dealing with errors -- to the circular file.

While I love many of O'Reilly's offerings, their coverage of C++ has always seemed spotty and outdated. I encourage anyone trying to learn C++ to check out the C++ In Depth series published by Addison-Wesley, starting with Accelerated C++ and Essential C++.

Jon

Perhaps this will help:

http://safari.oreilly.com/images/0596004192/figs/C ++2_0701.gif

Why buy the book when you read it on safari, along with thousands of other books with a free 14 day trial..

not all software can be free.

Why not?

Seriously. I don't see any reason that programming a computer to do any arbitrary task requires a corporation backing the development of the program.

And even if there is corporate backing, that doesn't eliminate the possibility that the software will be released as Free Software -- look at Apple, Red Hat, SuSE, Mandrake, et al.

As to who puts food on the table, that's for them to figure out. Apple et al pay their developers for their time; other developers make money selling books ( O'Reilly , Bruce Eckel ); others give lectures (Bruce Perens, Eric Raymond, Richard Stallman), and others make money at their day jobs which could be anything -- attorney, dentist, carpenter, factory worker, you name it.

Please back up your assertion, as I don't see any reason that "not all software can be free."

It's Here

The Tanenbaum-Torvalds Debate

From the Learning Python book (see sec. 1.1.1.1):

Of equal significance, OOP is an option in Python; you can go far without having to become an object guru all at once.

So, while Python supports object oriented programming, it doesn't force you to use it.

I was unaware that Linux (the kernel) provided FTP services...

Linux (the kernel) was the source of the root exploit which was not fixed for a week, during which the gnu.org ftp site was cracked. Somewhere Theo De Raadt is laughing...

Granted, the exploit was a local hole and was only exploitable because the FSF gave the maintainers shell access. But what do you expect from an organization run by a man who finds passwords morally repugnant?

I wasn't a big fan of the online book idea until I tried Safari for the first time a few months ago. A quick search for snort reveals 38 different books that focus on or have chapters dealing with snort, included the one book "Intrusion Detection with Snort" that was mentioned in this review. The retail cost of these three books alone would cover a safari subscription for a year (10 books out at any given time). There is a free 14 day trial, it got me hooked. I ended up selling 20+ books in my bookshelf that were already on Safari, covering my Safari fees for the next 2 years.

What about this book:


http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/linuxkernel2/

It has linux kernel 2.4 snippets?

That's DEFINATELY violating SCO's (fake) IP.

ChiefArcher

For me, it came down to documentation. I have a moderately complicated GUI Perl app (Perl because it was the language I was most familiar with). I looked into various toolkits, like wxPerl, GTK/Perl, QT/Perl, but ended up using good ol' reliable Perl/Tk.

The big advantage with picking up Perl/Tk was that the O'Reilly books were extremely informative - good examples on each widget, how they interoperate, how to use them, and larger program examples. The documentation for the other toolkits I considered basically consisted of "look at the arguments this C++ function takes, and use it," which didn't make for an easy time picking things up (wxPerl was the worst in that regard). While an experienced C++ programmer might not have a hard time with that, it was way over my head.

As a result, though, I have a decent app that runs on X11 and Win32. With the great PAR archiver, I can even package the app up in a nice bundle.

Good times.

One photo shows Georgy working at the computer, with what appears to be a O'Reilly book on "Running Linux or Learning Redhat Linux.

It's on the window sill to the left of her with some kind of life form perching on it. You know, the state is looking to reform their whole IS operation, after the Oracle debacle and the Florez investigations. They discussed doing less contracting, more internal hiring and training like Illinois???. She would make a great splash in Suckramento as a possible State CIO???

One photo shows Georgy working at the computer, with what appears to be a O'Reilly book on "Running Linux or Learning Redhat Linux.

It's on the window sill to the left of her with some kind of life form perching on it. You know, the state is looking to reform their whole IS operation, after the Oracle debacle and the Florez investigations. They discussed doing less contracting, more internal hiring and training like Illinois???. She would make a great splash in Suckramento as a possible State CIO???

If they had the attitude the record industry did, the only stuff of theirs I'd read would come from interlibrary loan.

Only throw Exceptions in "exceptional" cases, because they will slow things down? Again, advice I've been hearing since the early days.

One tip from Java Performance Tuning by Jack Shirazi is to create the Exception once, store it statically, and throw the object as many times as you need to.

Ugly? Sure. Hacky? Definitely.

But if you're after that extra bit of performance without leaving Java, need to use exceptions, and don't care about the stack trace, then it saves many cycles.

One thing that I've found with hig performance numerical routines is the cost of array lookup (with all of its runtime range checking) is something that can really slow a routine down. I've taken a routine that ran in 500ms and tuned it down to about 80ms (running under the Hotspot compiler). A comparable hand optimized assembler routine doing the same job took 20ms.

One example doesn't make a trend... but when you know what you're doing the performance is there for the taking.

Ian.

SQL is one of the few languages I would argue actually does *not* need a book.

I agree at bottom with this statement. As a declarative, rather than procedural, language, for the basics SQL does not REALLY need a book.

However, just as in Perl, TMTOWTDI. And often several of those ways, depending on the RDBMS you are using, and, usually more importantly, on the data themselves, are FAR, FAR worse than many of the other ways. That's why you need a good book, both on the principles of SQL (I highly recommend Joe Celko's SQL For Smarties), and an RDBMS-specific book as well. I use Oracle, and my recommendations in this area are Mastering Oracle SQL by Mishra and Beaulieu, and the Oracle SQL Tuning Pocket Reference by Mark Gurry.

SQL is one of the few languages I would argue actually does *not* need a book.

I agree at bottom with this statement. As a declarative, rather than procedural, language, for the basics SQL does not REALLY need a book.

However, just as in Perl, TMTOWTDI. And often several of those ways, depending on the RDBMS you are using, and, usually more importantly, on the data themselves, are FAR, FAR worse than many of the other ways. That's why you need a good book, both on the principles of SQL (I highly recommend Joe Celko's SQL For Smarties), and an RDBMS-specific book as well. I use Oracle, and my recommendations in this area are Mastering Oracle SQL by Mishra and Beaulieu, and the Oracle SQL Tuning Pocket Reference by Mark Gurry.

Not the same kind of "hacks", but more than one might have missed that O'Reilly published recently Google Hacks. Mostly targeted to webmasters or "power users".

I bought and read Steve Oualline's Practical C Programming a while back, and while it was very good, I really didn't have a use for all of the chapters.

Of the 23 chapters, I totally skipped 19-22, and I actually only skimmed the chapters on bit operations (chapter 11) and floating point arithmetic (chapter 16). I guess I just don't have the attention span for all that.

Anyway, I was hoping I could have some of the $34.95 retail price pro-rated. Steve, make me an offer!

It incluces information on Solaris, even though it says Sys V (hint: look at the cover).

Yes, he has just ripped off the press release from O'Reilly themselves and passed it off as his own. It's sad to see such dishonesty in a programmer.

Yes. http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/lpython/

Why push macromedia into opening flash when we already have a better, more capable, fully open, w3c recommended substitute?

One word: ActionScript. SVG interactivity has a long way to go before it can touch the kind of interactions Flash can have.

Been to Safari?

I have a 15 slot subscription, and keep some books in there for several months. It's a very useful service, and has a wide range of titles from many publishers.

Although I could buy hard copies of all of books that have come and gone through my Safari account, it would financially stupid @ $35 - $50 per book. It's also nice to be able to go anywhere and have access to all of those books.

See the CD Bookshelves which are in open formats but don't use DRM. That doesn't mean they're not copyrighted, though. You're expected to do the right thing but you're not forced to do it.

You can also check out the book on Safari

This book might shed some insight.

Those of you unfamiliar with Perl history may find it interesting that the "Parrot" started out as an elaborate April Fool's day joke two years ago. Here is the book that was announced. Strangely enough, people found the idea useful and are now actively developing it!

You could recover your data using Knoppix, which would let you boot into a system and read the file system. Unless you encrypted that.

Better yet, you can use your bootloader to pass "init=/bin/bash" to the kernel so the first thing you get is a shell with no password checks at all.

(From Linux Server Hacks by Rob Flickenger)

Jay (=