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ntropi asks: "As the drive on my old MP3 player (an iRiver H320) grinds toward its last days, I've found myself in search of a new one. Given the options the new iPod seems the best choice, but I'm hesitating somewhat over the murmurings as to the iPod's supposedly poor sound quality. However, while Marc Heijligers has provided a comprehensive breakdown of iPod performance for up to the fourth generation, I have been hard-pressed to find any information on the 5G's performance. With the exception of this CNET review, which reports that 'Audio quality is quite good and probably better than the previous iPod's, with reasonable bass, distinguishable mids, and shiny highs, plus the audio-output power is quite good.', there seems not to have been any detailed analysis of the iPod's output quality. Thus, it seemed a good idea to appeal to the Slashdot hive-mind for its personal experiences with the 5G's playback, or even analyses that people might have done which were simply never put online."

benjiboo writes "This is one of the many books designed to help the average technical manager or developer get a feel for what the .NET framework means for them. Primarily geared towards developers and technical managers, this book aims to cut through the marketing hype. But, does it succeed? Read on for Benjiboo's answer to that question. Understanding .NET: A Tutorial and Analysis author David Chappell pages 288 publisher Addison-Wesley rating 4 reviewer Benjiboo ISBN 0201741628 summary A summary of the .NET framework

Firstly, this book doesn't attempt to act as a programming tutorial, and as a result is thin on code examples. Instead, the book takes a highly summative approach to the main technologies of the framework, broadly dividing them into: web services, the CLR and languages, the class library, data access, ASP.net and .NET my services.

Having said this, the central theme through the book is that of XML and web services, accurately reflecting their importance in the .net framework. It frustrates me how web services are often described as revolutionary, when built on technologies such as UDDI and WDSL which in turn are based on relatively mature technologies such as XML and HTTP. This book falls into the same trap of pandering to the hype surrounding web services, without really managing to convince me of what is so revolutionary about them.

The author dedicates a chapter to a summary of the main .NET languages, Visual Basic .NET, C#, and the managed extensions of C++. The author concludes that "Managed C++ adds even more complexity to an already complex language." Some may have reservations with this statement; garbage collection, interfaces, attributes and the managed types are only likely to result in less work for the developer even after a relatively short learning curve. The author appears to come out in favour of C# over the "more complex" Visual Basic. I would like to have seen some discussion on other .NET languages under development.

The chapter on the class libraries makes a relatively good job of summarising the massive .NET libraries. It's a fleeting overview of the most useful and interesting parts of the libraries. Remoting (remote method calls), reflection and the ubiquitous GUI libraries are just a few examples. This is one of the stronger sections of the book in my opinion, though this is coming from a developer's perspective.

There is a concise chapter on ADO .NET. The author acknowledges the fact that this is the latest in a long line of Microsoft data access libraries but fails to indicate why this one is better. The controversial .NET My Services is also detailed. The book doesn't really ponder the politics surrounding My Services, which is surprising as this element was always likely to be its downfall.

In parts, this book is overwhelmingly pro-Microsoft. In a particularly gushing moment, the author implies that COM was successful in its goals of interoperable component software, only failing to reach critical mass due to a failure by other vendors to support it. OMG's corba on the other hand was based on an incomplete standard, destined to failure due to Microsoft's decision not to support this 'doomed' standard. I would whole-heartedly disagree with this. Firstly, the distributed object technologies of CORBA are applicable to a different range of problems. Even overlooking the validity of this comparison, CORBA has seen massive support and is generally considered to be more successful than COM.

On a more positive note however, this book does provide isolated moments of insight. Some of the sidebars, for instance, tend to delve a little deeper, providing a little bit of the insight I was hoping to gain by reading this book. A brief look at the differences between MSIL and Java's VMs for instance led me to research further. Apparently future versions of SQL server are set to host a version of the .NET CLR natively, similarly to how Oracle 9i can run its own Java VM. For me, these insights go beyond the information which I could have picked up on any number of white-papers out there on the net.

In hindsight this book is perhaps too shallow, falling into the trap of using a barrage of acronyms and buzzwords without delving deep enough into any one topic. There is no mention of cross-language interoperability, and more importantly no mention of cross platform interoperability efforts -- which do exist. Also, even with a book so Microsoft oriented, I would expect to see either a distinct section, or at least more comments, on the pitfalls and barriers to takeup of the framework. A more critical and less Microsoft-centric text would for me have made this book more authoritative.

Table Of Contents

Preface
1. An Overview of .NET. 2. Web Services.
3. The Common Language Runtime.
4. .NET Languages.
5. The .NET Framework Class Library.
6. Accessing Data- ADO.NET.
7. Building Web Applications- ASP.NET.
8. .NET My Services.
Conclusion

You can purchase Understanding .NET: A Tutorial and Analysis from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

Rolo Tomasi writes: "Germany's first online service, BTX (Bildschirmtext) is shutting down. BTX had a history of major security flaws, which made the Chaos Computer Club famous." Non-speakers might want to try a translation.

interstar asks: "It's been noted before, but Cringely has an interesting article on Carnivore. The final, big thought is that it might give the U.S. security services the possibility to shut down the Internet. Now, as a UK resident, I'm concerned, but it raised another question in my mind. As of today - July 2000 - how dependent are we in the rest of the world on the U.S. Internet? If all nodes under U.S. jurisdiction shutdown tomorrow, could I still route mail to my girlfriend in Brazil, around the smoking crater? Could a company in Paris hire programmers in India and Russia? Do we still need the U.S. or is the global Internet now independent?"

Shane MacLochlainn writes "The Winner for the linux T-Shirt Competition has been announced. It's a rather cool X-filesque design. Place your orders now!" I thought there were some better designs, but assuming nobody from fox tries to sue anyone over this design, it's pretty cool. Update we have a nice table listing the top 21 designs. You'll be able to get any of them. BigAssNerd sent us a nice table listing all the shirts that you'll be able to choose from:
Top 21 Linux T-shirt Contest Results rank entry 1st 2nd 3rd points 1st % points % 1 73 (73) 347 169 173 1552 10.8 10.1 2 94 (94) 316 192 204 1536 10.0 10.1 3 71 (71) 329 142 32 1303 10.5 8.6 4 70 (70) 243 140 98 1107 7.7 7.3 5 109 (109) 170 62 44 678 5.5 4.5 6 9 (9) 131 72 58 595 4.2 4.0 7 111 (111) 91 48 94 463 3.0 3.1 8 99 (99) 93 53 48 433 3.1 3.0 9 85 (85) 78 60 51 405 2.6 2.8 10 98 (98) 84 26 50 354 3.0 2.6 11 41 (41) 59 44 32 297 2.1 2.2 12 7 (7) 54 51 32 296 1.9 2.2 13 8 (8) 57 33 32 269 2.0 2.0 14 89 (89) 53 35 32 261 1.9 1.9 15 112 (112) 52 32 26 246 1.9 1.8 16 95 (95) 46 24 22 208 1.7 1.6 17 4 (4) 39 26 25 194 1.4 1.5 18 59 (59) 33 32 29 192 1.2 1.5 19 84 (84) 38 24 26 188 1.4 1.4 20 22 (22) 28 22 23 151 1.0 1.2 21 101 (101) 31 17 23 150 1.1 1.2