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It's a little more complicated than that, if you want to really grab any valid email address. See this perl script, which carefully builds a huge regexp that almost satisfies rfc822 definition of a valid email address. The uncommented version of the regexp is far more daunting, but I couldn't find a copy of it online. It's the finalle of the the book Mastering Regular Expressions, and it takes up a whole page. A page of solid regexp makes obfu perl look like well ordered data!

I didn't say that Amazon web services, BARWN, Xbox hardware hacking, or MMORPGs were "the next killer app." What I said was that all these things were on my radar, and why. My point was not to pick the most important things out there, but to pick four things that people might not view in the same context, and to identify the common element that put them on my radar: They represent the hacker impulse, people pushing the boundaries of a system and coming up with innovations that the original creators didn't imagine. I outlined some of the key elements that put technologies on my radar: hackability, being in line with some major trend (such as the increase in ubiquitous networking), disruptive potential, grassroots enthusiasm rather than top-down corporate promotion but still the presence of professional practitioners and a possible business ecology.

There are many other technologies that are also on my radar. I chose these four to highlight precisely because they seem so disjoint, yet to me show all of the characteristics that I outlined above, the characteristics that make a technology worth following by O'Reilly.

• Windows Annoyances (covering 95 and NT)
• Windows 98 Annoyances
• Windows ME Annoyances
• Windows XP Annoyances
• Office 97 Annoyances
• Excel 97 Annoyances
• Word 97 Annoyances
• Outlook Annoyances

• Windows Annoyances (covering 95 and NT)
• Windows 98 Annoyances
• Windows ME Annoyances
• Windows XP Annoyances
• Office 97 Annoyances
• Excel 97 Annoyances
• Word 97 Annoyances
• Outlook Annoyances

• Windows Annoyances (covering 95 and NT)
• Windows 98 Annoyances
• Windows ME Annoyances
• Windows XP Annoyances
• Office 97 Annoyances
• Excel 97 Annoyances
• Word 97 Annoyances
• Outlook Annoyances

• Windows Annoyances (covering 95 and NT)
• Windows 98 Annoyances
• Windows ME Annoyances
• Windows XP Annoyances
• Office 97 Annoyances
• Excel 97 Annoyances
• Word 97 Annoyances
• Outlook Annoyances

• Windows Annoyances (covering 95 and NT)
• Windows 98 Annoyances
• Windows ME Annoyances
• Windows XP Annoyances
• Office 97 Annoyances
• Excel 97 Annoyances
• Word 97 Annoyances
• Outlook Annoyances

• Windows Annoyances (covering 95 and NT)
• Windows 98 Annoyances
• Windows ME Annoyances
• Windows XP Annoyances
• Office 97 Annoyances
• Excel 97 Annoyances
• Word 97 Annoyances
• Outlook Annoyances

• Windows Annoyances (covering 95 and NT)
• Windows 98 Annoyances
• Windows ME Annoyances
• Windows XP Annoyances
• Office 97 Annoyances
• Excel 97 Annoyances
• Word 97 Annoyances
• Outlook Annoyances

• Windows Annoyances (covering 95 and NT)
• Windows 98 Annoyances
• Windows ME Annoyances
• Windows XP Annoyances
• Office 97 Annoyances
• Excel 97 Annoyances
• Word 97 Annoyances
• Outlook Annoyances

We could use more software businesses with models like that.

You're probably confusing Learning Python with Programming Python. Both have M. Lutz as author. IMHO, "Learning Python" is a pretty good first book on Python.

You're probably confusing Learning Python with Programming Python. Both have M. Lutz as author. IMHO, "Learning Python" is a pretty good first book on Python.

• If it has such a page, and it's short (all books will have at least some typos -- that's life), then you're in good shape.
• If it looks like the errata page is updated often, that's also a good sign -- it means the publisher is paying attention. That may be even better.
• If it has an errata page, and it's really long, then maybe the book is just sub-par: be careful here.
• If it has no errata page, the publisher is lying, or hasn't gotten around to it yet: be careful here, too.

I don't know which book you got, but O'Reilly's Programming PHP has its own confirmed and unconfirmed errata pages. If this is the book you've got, feel free to go over the corrections noted on these pages and jot them down in your copy -- I've done that with a couple of my books, and would have missed many of the glitches without that hint. If you see an error that isn't on this page, O'Reilly offers a error submission form that you can use for that book (and others of course) -- so use it! If the publisher doesn't find out about these mistakes, they aren't going to get fixed. A good publisher will offer revised printings -- not that that helps you once you've got a copy, but it will prevent other learners from having to hit the same obstacles you did. :-)

You can't, unfortunately, expect books to be perfect & pristine. (Well, maybe Knuth's books, but everyone else has to deal with typos & thinkos :-). You can, however, and should expect the publisher to own up to their little mistakes and offer you corrections on their site. Go find that info and get the fixes into your copy and you'll be a happier camper.

• If it has such a page, and it's short (all books will have at least some typos -- that's life), then you're in good shape.
• If it looks like the errata page is updated often, that's also a good sign -- it means the publisher is paying attention. That may be even better.
• If it has an errata page, and it's really long, then maybe the book is just sub-par: be careful here.
• If it has no errata page, the publisher is lying, or hasn't gotten around to it yet: be careful here, too.

I don't know which book you got, but O'Reilly's Programming PHP has its own confirmed and unconfirmed errata pages. If this is the book you've got, feel free to go over the corrections noted on these pages and jot them down in your copy -- I've done that with a couple of my books, and would have missed many of the glitches without that hint. If you see an error that isn't on this page, O'Reilly offers a error submission form that you can use for that book (and others of course) -- so use it! If the publisher doesn't find out about these mistakes, they aren't going to get fixed. A good publisher will offer revised printings -- not that that helps you once you've got a copy, but it will prevent other learners from having to hit the same obstacles you did. :-)

You can't, unfortunately, expect books to be perfect & pristine. (Well, maybe Knuth's books, but everyone else has to deal with typos & thinkos :-). You can, however, and should expect the publisher to own up to their little mistakes and offer you corrections on their site. Go find that info and get the fixes into your copy and you'll be a happier camper.

• If it has such a page, and it's short (all books will have at least some typos -- that's life), then you're in good shape.
• If it looks like the errata page is updated often, that's also a good sign -- it means the publisher is paying attention. That may be even better.
• If it has an errata page, and it's really long, then maybe the book is just sub-par: be careful here.
• If it has no errata page, the publisher is lying, or hasn't gotten around to it yet: be careful here, too.

I don't know which book you got, but O'Reilly's Programming PHP has its own confirmed and unconfirmed errata pages. If this is the book you've got, feel free to go over the corrections noted on these pages and jot them down in your copy -- I've done that with a couple of my books, and would have missed many of the glitches without that hint. If you see an error that isn't on this page, O'Reilly offers a error submission form that you can use for that book (and others of course) -- so use it! If the publisher doesn't find out about these mistakes, they aren't going to get fixed. A good publisher will offer revised printings -- not that that helps you once you've got a copy, but it will prevent other learners from having to hit the same obstacles you did. :-)

You can't, unfortunately, expect books to be perfect & pristine. (Well, maybe Knuth's books, but everyone else has to deal with typos & thinkos :-). You can, however, and should expect the publisher to own up to their little mistakes and offer you corrections on their site. Go find that info and get the fixes into your copy and you'll be a happier camper.

• If it has such a page, and it's short (all books will have at least some typos -- that's life), then you're in good shape.
• If it looks like the errata page is updated often, that's also a good sign -- it means the publisher is paying attention. That may be even better.
• If it has an errata page, and it's really long, then maybe the book is just sub-par: be careful here.
• If it has no errata page, the publisher is lying, or hasn't gotten around to it yet: be careful here, too.

I don't know which book you got, but O'Reilly's Programming PHP has its own confirmed and unconfirmed errata pages. If this is the book you've got, feel free to go over the corrections noted on these pages and jot them down in your copy -- I've done that with a couple of my books, and would have missed many of the glitches without that hint. If you see an error that isn't on this page, O'Reilly offers a error submission form that you can use for that book (and others of course) -- so use it! If the publisher doesn't find out about these mistakes, they aren't going to get fixed. A good publisher will offer revised printings -- not that that helps you once you've got a copy, but it will prevent other learners from having to hit the same obstacles you did. :-)

You can't, unfortunately, expect books to be perfect & pristine. (Well, maybe Knuth's books, but everyone else has to deal with typos & thinkos :-). You can, however, and should expect the publisher to own up to their little mistakes and offer you corrections on their site. Go find that info and get the fixes into your copy and you'll be a happier camper.

Tough subjects, tight deadlines, and the profit-first additude lead to bad books.

I recently purchased Learning Java from Oreilly. Usually I've had a good experience with Oreilly books, but this one was horrible. Several of the examples in the first chapter of the book didn't work because they had typos!

Few things are more frustrating then debugging a "Hello World" program that doesn't work. I went over every character, bit by bit, and my program matched their text exactly. I couldn't find the damn bug. Was I so stupid that I couldn't see the obvious? No! I viewed the Online Errata, and found that a zillion other people were having similar problems with examples throughout the book! Typos galore!

If there are too many mistakes in the book, then let the publisher note. Return the book, get your money back, send a note to the publishers, and buy an alternative book.

I'd just like to point out a misnomer in the previous replied to article that "SMB was originally invented by Digital Equipment Corporation". Looks like SMB can trace it's roots to IBM in 1985. I believe the story goes that Andrew Tridgell wrote Samba to communicate with DEC's Digital Pathworks and quite by accident discovered that it also successfully communicated with Windows Netbios. Microsoft must have "invented" SMB right around the same time they "invented" Windows.

What you say!!!

If it weren't for a Bad Printer, there would be no Free Software Movement!

Bad Printers are good for Freedom and Growth. Move 'zig' For great justice

Jason McIntosh has done many Cool Things (tm), including co-authoring Perl and XML and defining ComicsXML. He worked at O'Reilly for awhile in the now defunct Tools group, helping to build programs to convert author manuscripts into a formats amenable to the Production workflow. When not hacking code, jmac finds and plays obscure games from impolitely named companies. Buy his book and encourage him to write a second edition about Panther.

Carefully consider this, it could make or break your business if you do not proceed carefully.

Take some time out to read:

There is a lot more information on the topic, feel free to email me if you need a hand with anything

it's been said here before I think, but this [macosxhints.com] is a great site with tons of usefull (also sometimes stupid) osx info.

And, interestingly, that site's editor has written an O'Reilly book himself, that is due to come out shortly, titled "MacOS X Hints".

This is the first O'Reilly Review I can remember without a mention of the Sample Chapter O'Reilly is known to provide.

(Blatant Kerma whoring, but I immediately "dug" to find is, so I thought I'd post it.)

I have a copy of the previous edition of this book, written by Doug Tidwell, James Snell and Pavel Kulchenko.

No you don't. This is the first edition of Programming Web Services with Perl . Looks like you have a copy of Programming Web Services with SOAP . Two completely separate books with a small amount of overlap.

I have a copy of the previous edition of this book, written by Doug Tidwell, James Snell and Pavel Kulchenko.

No you don't. This is the first edition of Programming Web Services with Perl . Looks like you have a copy of Programming Web Services with SOAP . Two completely separate books with a small amount of overlap.

A sample chapter, Programming Soap, is available in PDF format here.

Next thing you know we'll be expected to pay for food, gas, and books

Pay for books??!?? What are you crazy??!?!

Next thing you know we'll be expected to pay for food, gas, and books

Pay for books??!?? What are you crazy??!?!

• CGI.pm
• templates (including HTML::Template and Mason
• Javascript
• security issues (taint mode, use strict, use warnings, etc)
• email
• persistence (from text & DBM files to DBI & SQL)
• XML
• dynamic image generation
• debugging & architecture issues

My only gripes are that mod_perl is given short shrift (a chapter on getting standard CGI scripts to work under Apache::Registry would have been nice), and that coverage of templates could have been fleshed out a bit more (I like HTML::Template, but both Mason & Template Toolkit seem to be more popular -- and Mason gets little more than a mention while T::T really wasn't mentioned at all). An XML-RPC / SOAP section might have been nice too, but that really is pretty recent.

The book is still an excellent, competent overview of the topic though. Books written this well don't age badly, and while the books you list are also good ones, for someone trying to learn CGI it makes more sense to me to recommend a CGI specific book. Given the choice between this book and, say, Matt Wright's code, there's simply no question which is better.

... Web Database Applications with PHP and MySQL, from O'Reilly. It not have the same focus as this book, but will give also a lot of useful concepts.

Think of it as an investment - you need to spend a couple hours reading at least the first chapter of Learning Perl, maybe browsing a few others. Then, when you need to do something, look it up in The Perl Cookbook. Most of the time the example code will do everything you need. If not, you can modify it with what you've learned in Learning Perl. For the kind of tasks you mention, this should be more than sufficient, and for a few hours and $75 (retail) you'll save hours and hours and hours down the road. My only regret is that I didn't listen to my friend Eric who told me about perl when I was still a C++ guy and wasted a couple years without it.

Think of it as an investment - you need to spend a couple hours reading at least the first chapter of Learning Perl, maybe browsing a few others. Then, when you need to do something, look it up in The Perl Cookbook. Most of the time the example code will do everything you need. If not, you can modify it with what you've learned in Learning Perl. For the kind of tasks you mention, this should be more than sufficient, and for a few hours and $75 (retail) you'll save hours and hours and hours down the road. My only regret is that I didn't listen to my friend Eric who told me about perl when I was still a C++ guy and wasted a couple years without it.

Mac OS X Hacks might suite you better as it talks the Unix side more.

You want Mac OS X for Unix Geeks, by our good friends at O'Reilly. It's the only OS X book I have, and the only useful one I could find at the bookstore. It approaches the BSD side of OS X from a command line *nix perspective through mostly a series of short examples and descriptions of the system. It's not as thorough as I (and probably you) would like, but it's adequate to get you the terms that you'd need to type into Google. :)

Preview buttons are for the weak!

O'Reilly's Info Page for Mac OS X: The Missing Manual

This review told me practically nothing! What does this book have in it that is good for geeks?

Based on my reading of the first edition, there isn't much geek stuff in this book. Readers are told how to open a terminal window, and given a very quick gloss of the unix command line.

However, even geeks are likely to spend a significant amount of time working with the GUI, and the book covers a lot of fairly obscure features of OS X. A good bit of space is devoted to helping users of earlier Mac systems find equivalent functionality in the new OS, as rhe review notes. I read the book as a Mac user trying to make the transition to OS X, so my perception may be skewed, but I don't think there is a better introduction to OS X out there, no matter what environment you're switching from.

If you're a unix person and want to know how OS X differs from environments you're familiar with, there's an O'Reilly Book called Mac OS X for Unix Geeks [oreilly.com].

I know you probably prefer dead-tree books, as do many people. But O'Reilly's Safari service supposedly offers a relatively inexpensive way to gain exposure to a lot of technical titles. I haven't used it myself, so I can't really comment beyond that, but I'm sure others can share their experiences.

--Nat

Editor at ORA

Here is one of the more interesting entries in the Open Books Project: Free as in Freedom

i was convinced by adam spier's page and the zsh faq to give zsh a try - it was even a netbsd system that prompted it. i got sick of administering freebsd/opensbd/netbsd with different shells and i wanted to standardize on something with the features i wanted.

bash was tried first, but when i started playing with misc options like vi mode, got deeper into completion, etc i realized that bash/ksh weren't appropriate long-term choices for me. auto cd to directories, amazing completion options, typo correction, shared history, and a proper vi mode (see this for the confession from gnu's docs).

'knowing' zsh will largely translate to bash/ksh systems when you use them and zsh is not available - you'll just be reminded of their shortcomings :) the basics are largely identical.

the new unix power tools book also makes much mention of zsh.

Agreed that profit is his primary motive.

However, Bezos has stated a belief that the US patent system is broken, and that by publicizing the problem, Amazon creates pressure to fix it.

(That letter was provoked by Tim O'Reilley.

The project lost precious time in its early infancy, while Linux progressed at warp speed (people say that Linus was REALY active those days). Linux was also seen as a haven for possible lawsuits as it was writen from scratch, even tough it was technically inferior in the early days. But, as the community around it grew faster, soon it gained momentum and critical mass. Its use of GNU software was also important. The whole story is in the book Open Sources.

Ok, I know about O'Reilly's Safari, and that's cool, but where can I get a book that has an electronic copy with it? Safari doesn't cut it. I have O'Reilly's Perl CD bookshelf as well as their Network CD Bookshelf and I love them. I bought around $2,000 worth of books last year and not one of them came with an electronic copy. I need both. I need the hard-bound copy to read in bed or in the lazy-boy in the living room. I want my electronic copy so I can copy and paste code snippets, or put it on my password-protected website so I can access the book from work. I don't want to tote my books from home to work every day and I certainly don't want to buy 2 copies of every book. Safari just doesn't cut it. Safari only lets me view the book on their website. I want a copy on my local hard drive. I think everyone that purchases an O'Reilly book should at least have free access to that same book on Safari. I still want HTML or PDF copies of my books. Where o where can I get them?

If you serve a particularly popular site, you will eventually find the wall at which your server simply can't serve any more requests. In the web server world, this is called the Slashdot effect, and it isn't a pretty site (er, sight).

It already is.

Our company tried the safari thing for a while. It's very sweet, many many books online covering a wide variety of topics.

You pay for the books you use, and you can add / remove books at your leisure. Some books are worth more than others. It really makes a lot of sense.

Not sure what the costs are for individual use. Considering their "group" rates, I'd say their individual rates are probably very fair.

Personally, I don't like online books too much. I'd rather be able to kick back and drink a beer and read. Can't do that with a 19" CRT. :)

Perhaps when web-pads are more mainstream (and thinner and lighter)...

• There are lots of documents on the Free Software Foundation site. Don't be put off if some of the documents are not terribly new; the ideas are still valid.
  
• This explanation of the (first version of) the Open Source Definition compares some licences.
  
• This is quite a nice, simple read.
  

I picked up Designing Embedded Hardware a couple of weeks ago; being a software geek, with no hardware experience (except for assembling PC's, etc), I found this book to be amazing.

I highly recommend it.

This is available on the Safari website for those that have subscriptions, which is nice because it's not a very long book. I was able to read most of it in a day, and I would have felt a little robbed had I bought it, but just checking it out gave me enough time to read what I wanted.