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nk497 writes "Dell's 'Project Sputnik' laptop is now on sale. The XPS 13 Developer Edition comes with Ubuntu 12.04 pre-installed, and costs $1,549 — $50 more than the same model running Windows. The Ubuntu Ultrabook is the result of a skunkworks project to optimise the open-source OS to run on Dell projects, to create better laptops for developers. The idea of the project was to create a laptop for developers, based around 'the idea that developers are the kings of IT and set the agenda for web companies, who in turn, set the agenda for the whole industry,' Dell said." Reader skade88 points out a positive review from Ars Technica.

concealment writes "For three years, a group of hackers from China waged a relentless campaign of cyber harassment against Solid Oak Software Inc., Milburn's family-owned, eight-person firm in Santa Barbara, California. The attack began less than two weeks after Milburn publicly accused China of appropriating his company's parental filtering software, CYBERsitter, for a national Internet censoring project. And it ended shortly after he settled a $2.2 billion lawsuit against the Chinese government and a string of computer companies last April."

concealment writes "Coleman, an anthropologist who teaches at McGill University, spent three years studying the community that builds the Debian GNU/Linux open source operating system and hackers in the Bay Area. More recently, she's been peeling away the onion that is the Anonymous movement, a group that hacks as a means of protest — and mischief. When she moved to San Francisco, she volunteered with the Electronic Frontier Foundation — she believed, correctly, that having an eff.org address would make people more willing to talk to her — and started making the scene. She talked free software over Chinese food at the Bay Area Linux User Group's monthly meetings upstairs at San Francisco's Four Seas Restaurant. She marched with geeks demanding the release of Adobe eBooks hacker Dmitry Sklyarov. She learned the culture inside-out."

MojoKid writes "Not many SSD controller manufacturers have been able to compete with the likes of SandForce and the myriad of SATA drives from various OEMs on the market that are based on their technology. However, OCZ took a different approach recently when they acquired SSD controller manufacturer Indilinx and PCI Express Switch maker PLX. Today the company took the wraps of their new Vector line of SSDs. The Vector is the first drive from OCZ to utilize only technologies developed by the unified Indilinx, PLX, and OCZ teams (except for the actual NAND flash), since the acquisitions. The Vector is based on the new INDILINK Barefoot 3 controller, which in terms of its features and specifications, looks competitive with some of the fastest drives on the market currently. In the benchmarks, the drive's IOMeter and CrystalDiskMark scores line up well and OCZ is offering a 5 year warranty on the product."

New submitter drkim writes "'Apple has reportedly fired the head of its mapping team following software glitches which annoyed customers and rained mockery on the company.' Mr. Williamson promptly left Apple headquarters in Antarctica, and walked to his home in Middelfart, Denmark." Nerval's Lobster adds: "Cue is also 'seeking advice from outside map-technology experts' as well as 'prodding maps provider TomTom to fix landmark and navigation data it shares with Apple.'"

Richard Stallman (RMS) founded the GNU Project in 1984, the Free Software Foundation in 1985, and remains one of the most important and outspoken advocates for software freedom. RMS now spends much of his time fighting excessive extension of copyright laws, digital rights management, and software patents. He's agreed to answer your questions about GNU/Linux, free software, and anything else you like, but please limit yourself to one question per post.

An anonymous reader writes "Over the past couple of days, there have been reports about the return of file sharing lawsuits to Canada, with fears that thousands of Canadians could be targeted. While it is possible that many will receive demand letters, Michael Geist has posted a detailed primer on liability in Canada that notes that recent changes to Canadian copyright law limit liability in non-commercial cases to a maximum of $5,000 for all infringement claims. In fact, it is likely that a court would award far less — perhaps as little as $100 — if the case went to court as even the government's FAQ on the recent copyright reform bill provided assurances that Canadians 'will not face disproportionate penalties for minor infringements of copyright by distinguishing between commercial and non-commercial infringement.'"

another random user writes with news that the founder of TVShack probably won't be thrown into a U.S. prison for life. From the article: "Richard O'Dwyer, from Sheffield, is accused of breaking copyright laws. The US authorities claimed the 24-year-old's TVShack website hosted links to pirated films and TV programs. The High Court was told Mr O'Dwyer had signed a 'deferred prosecution' agreement which would require him paying a small sum of compensation. Mr O'Dwyer will travel to the US voluntarily in the next few weeks for the deal to be formally ratified, it is understood." Looks like Jimbo going to bat for him generated a bit of bad press. As usual, the MPAA is not enthused. Different articles are reporting that his mother is the one traveling to the U.S. to finalize the deal.

concealment writes with news of dissatisfaction with a pilot program for stoplight-monitoring cameras. The program ran for several years in New Jersey, and according to a new report, the number of car crashes actually increased while the cameras were present. "[The program] appears to be changing drivers’ behavior, state officials said Monday, noting an overall decline in traffic citations and right-angle crashes. The Department of Transportation also said, however, that rear-end crashes have risen by 20 percent and total crashes are up by 0.9 percent at intersections where cameras have operated for at least a year. The agency recommended the program stay in place, calling for 'continued data collection and monitoring' of camera-monitored intersections. The department’s report drew immediate criticism from Assemblyman Declan O’Scanlon, R-Monmouth, who wants the cameras removed. He called the program 'a dismal failure,' saying DOT statistics show the net costs of accidents had climbed by more than $1 million at intersections with cameras." Other cities are considering dumping the monitoring tech as well, citing similar cost and efficacy issues.

Gaurav Kuchhal (Head of Product, Slashdot) writes "Slashdot Mobile has finally made it out of the gates for tablets as well as phones. The Mobile site for phones launched some weeks back, but now you can take advantage of the changes we've made to read Slashdot easier to read through touch-screen devices on tablets as well as phones. That includes features we've folded in to the mobile version from the desktop-browser view of the site, so you can scan user profiles, sip from the Firehose, and keep up with notifications. See this blog post for more details, and keep the feedback coming. If you see a problem, please tell us about it!"

Gaurav Kuchhal (Head of Product, Slashdot) writes "Slashdot Mobile has finally made it out of the gates for tablets as well as phones. The Mobile site for phones launched some weeks back, but now you can take advantage of the changes we've made to read Slashdot easier to read through touch-screen devices on tablets as well as phones. That includes features we've folded in to the mobile version from the desktop-browser view of the site, so you can scan user profiles, sip from the Firehose, and keep up with notifications. See this blog post for more details, and keep the feedback coming. If you see a problem, please tell us about it!"

Gaurav Kuchhal (Head of Product, Slashdot) writes "Slashdot Mobile has finally made it out of the gates for tablets as well as phones. The Mobile site for phones launched some weeks back, but now you can take advantage of the changes we've made to read Slashdot easier to read through touch-screen devices on tablets as well as phones. That includes features we've folded in to the mobile version from the desktop-browser view of the site, so you can scan user profiles, sip from the Firehose, and keep up with notifications. See this blog post for more details, and keep the feedback coming. If you see a problem, please tell us about it!"

Nerval's Lobster writes "Netflix has released Hystrix, a library designed for managing interactions between distributed systems, complete with 'fallback' options for when those systems inevitably fail. The code for Hystrix—which Netflix tested on its own systems—can be downloaded at Github, with documentation available here, in addition to a getting-started guide and operations examples, among others. Hystrix evolved out of Netflix's need to manage an increasing rate of calls to its APIs, and resulted in (according to the company) a 'dramatic improvement in uptime and resilience has been achieved through its use.' The Netflix API receives more than 1 billion incoming calls per day, which translates into several billion outgoing calls (averaging a ratio of 1:6) to dozens of underlying systems, with peaks of over 100,000 dependency requests per second. That's according to Netflix engineer Ben Christensen, who described the incredible loads on the company's infrastructure in a February blog posting. The vast majority of those calls serve the discovery user interfaces (UIs) of the more than 800 different devices supported by Netflix."

New submitter alexanderb writes "While DOOM 3 BFG Edition might not have blown most gamers' minds, it sure blew some hackers' minds by supporting the Oculus Rift head-mounted display. Now, id Software have put up the source code of the BFG Edition under the GPL in good time for the tentative Oculus Rift release date, 12/12/12."

Sparrowvsrevolution writes "You may remember a vulnerability in four million keycard locks presented at the Black Hat conference in July. Hacker Cody Brocious showed he could insert a device he built for less than $50 into the port at the bottom of the common hotel lock, read a key out of its memory, and open it in seconds. Two months later, it turns out at least one burglar was already making use of that technique to rob a series of hotel rooms in Texas. The Hyatt House Galleria in Houston has revealed that in at least three September cases of theft from its rooms, the thief used that Onity vulnerability to effortlessly open rooms and steal valuables like laptops. Petra Risk Solutions, an insurance firm focus the hospitality industry also reports that at least two other hotels in Texas were hit with the attack. Onity has been criticized for its less-than-stellar response to a glaring vulnerability in its devices. The Hyatt says Onity didn't provide a fix until after its break-ins, forcing the hotel to plug its locks' ports with epoxy. And even now, Onity is asking its hotel customers to pay for the full fix, which involves replacing the locks' circuit boards."

Sparrowvsrevolution writes "You may remember a vulnerability in four million keycard locks presented at the Black Hat conference in July. Hacker Cody Brocious showed he could insert a device he built for less than $50 into the port at the bottom of the common hotel lock, read a key out of its memory, and open it in seconds. Two months later, it turns out at least one burglar was already making use of that technique to rob a series of hotel rooms in Texas. The Hyatt House Galleria in Houston has revealed that in at least three September cases of theft from its rooms, the thief used that Onity vulnerability to effortlessly open rooms and steal valuables like laptops. Petra Risk Solutions, an insurance firm focus the hospitality industry also reports that at least two other hotels in Texas were hit with the attack. Onity has been criticized for its less-than-stellar response to a glaring vulnerability in its devices. The Hyatt says Onity didn't provide a fix until after its break-ins, forcing the hotel to plug its locks' ports with epoxy. And even now, Onity is asking its hotel customers to pay for the full fix, which involves replacing the locks' circuit boards."

concealment writes "It's widely believed that Google search results are produced entirely by computer algorithms — in large part because Google would like this to be widely believed. But in fact a little-known group of home-worker humans plays a large part in the Google process. The way these raters go about their work has always been a mystery. Now, The Register has seen a copy of the guidelines Google issues to them."

1sockchuck writes "During SuperStorm Sandy, few data centers faced a bigger challenge than the Datagram facility in lower Manhattan. The storm surge from Sandy flooded its basement, disabling critical pumps. 'It was apocalyptic,' said CEO Alex Reppen. 'It was like a tidal wave over lower Manhattan.' While companies like CoreSite dealt primarily with the loss of ConEd power, the Datagram team sought to recover operations in an active flood zone. Why was mission-critical equipment in the basement? Because city officials restrict placing fuel tanks on rooftops and upper floors, citing concerns about diesel emerging from the 9-11 attacks."

kfogel writes "Two thumbs up, and maybe a tentacle too, on Version Control with Git, 2nd Edition by Jon Loeliger and Matthew McCullough. If you are a working programmer who wants to learn more about Git, particularly a programmer familiar with a Unix-based development environment, then this is the book for you, hands down (tentacles down too, please)." Read below for the rest of Karl's review. Version Control with Git, 2nd Edition author Jon Loeliger, Matthew McCullough pages 456 publisher O'Reilly Media rating Very good. reviewer Karl Fogel ISBN 978-1-4493-1638-9 summary Using the Git version control system for collaborative programming. There's a catch. You have to read the book straight through, from front to back. If you try to skip around, or just read the parts you feel you need, you'll probably be frustrated, because — exaggerating, but only slightly — every part of the book is linked to every other part. Perhaps if you're already expert in Git and merely want a quick reminder about something, it would work, but in that case you're more likely to do a web search anyway. For the rest of us, taking the medicine straight and for the full course is the only way. To some degree, this may have been forced on the authors by Git's inherent complexity and the interdependency of its basic concepts, but it does make this book unusual among technical guides. A common first use case, cloning a repository from somewhere else, isn't even covered until Chapter 12, because understanding what cloning really means requires so much background.

Like most readers, I'm an everyday user of Git but not at all an expert. Even this everyday use is enough to make me appreciate the scale of the task faced by the authors. On more than one occasion, frustrated by some idiosyncrasy, I've cursed that Git is a terrific engine surrounded by a cloud of bad decisions. The authors might not put it quite so strongly, but they clearly recognize Git's inconsistencies (the footnote on p. 47 is one vicarious acknowledgment) and they gamely enter the ring anyway. As with wrestling a bear, the question is not "Did they win?" but "How long did they last?"

For the most part, they more than hold their own. You can sometimes sense their struggle over how to present the information, and one of the book's weaknesses is a tendency to fall too quickly into implementation-driven presentation after a basic concept has been introduced. The explanation of cloning on p. 197 is one example: the jump from the basics to Git-specific terminology and repository details is abrupt, and forces the reader to either mentally cache terms and references in hope of later resolution, or to go back and look up a technical detail that was introduced many pages ago and is suddenly relevant again[1]. On the other hand, it is one of the virtues of the book that these checks can almost always be cashed: the authors accumulate unusual amounts of presentational debt as they go (in some cases unnecessarily), but if you're willing to maintain the ledger in your head, it all gets repaid in the end. Your questions will generally be answered[2], just not in the order nor at the time you had them. This isn't a book you can read for relaxation; give it your whole mind and you shall receive enlightenment in due proportion.

The book begins with a few relatively light chapters on the history of Git and on basic installation and local usage, all of which are good, but in a sense its real start is Chapters 4-6, which cover basic concepts, the Git "index" (staging area), and commits. These chapters, especially Chapter 4, are essentially a design overview of Git, and they go deep enough that you could probably re-implement much of Git based just on them. It requires a leap of faith to believe that all this material will be needed throughout the rest of the book, but it will, and you shouldn't move on until you feel secure with everything there.

From that point on, the book is at its best, giving in-depth explanations of well-bounded areas of Git's functionality. The chapter on git diff tells you everything you need to know, starting with an excellent overview and then presenting the details in a well-thought-out order, including an especially good annotated running example starting on p. 112. Similarly, the branching and merging chapters ensure that you will come out understanding how branches are central to Git and how to handle them, and the explanations build well on earlier material about Git's internal structure, how commit objects are stored, etc. (Somewhere around p. 227 my eyes finally glazed over in the material about manipulating tracking branches: I thought "if I ever need this, I know where to find it". Everyone will probably have that reaction at various points in the book, and the authors seem to have segregated some material with that in mind.) The chapter-level discussions on how to use Git with Subversion repositories, on the git stash command, on using GitHub, and especially on different strategies for assembling multi-source projects using Git, are all well done and don't shirk on examples nor on technical detail. Given the huge topic space the authors had to choose from, their prioritizations are intelligently made and obviously reflective of long experience using Git.

Another strength is the well-placed tips throughout the book. These are sometimes indented and marked with the (oddly ominous, or is that just me?) O'Reilly paw print tip graphic, and sometimes given in-line. Somehow the tips always seem to land right where you're most likely to be thinking "I wish there were a way to do X"; again, this must be due to the author's experience using Git in the real world, and readers who use Git on a daily basis will appreciate it. The explanation of --assume-unchanged on p. 382 appeared almost telepathically just as I was about to ask how to do that, for example. Furthermore, everything they saved for the "Advanced Manipulations" and "Tips, Tricks, and Techniques" chapters is likely to be useful at some point. Even if you don't remember the details of every tip, you'll remember that it was there, and know to go looking for it later when you need it (so it might be good to get an electronic copy of the book).

If there's a serious complaint to be made, it's that with a bit more attention the mental burden on the reader could have been reduced in many places. To pick a random example, in the "Branches" chapter on p. 90, the term "topic branch" is defined for the first time, but it was already used in passing on p. 68 (with what seems to be an assumption that the reader already knew the term) and again on pp. 80-81 (this time compounding the confusion with an example branch named "topic"). There are many similar instances of avoidable presentational debt; usually they are only distractions rather than genuine impediments to understanding, but they make the book more work than it needs to be. There are also sometimes ambiguous or not-quite-precise-enough statements that will cause the alert reader — which is the only kind this book really serves — to pause and have to work out what the authors must have meant (a couple of examples: "Git does not track file or directory names" on p. 34, or the business about patch line counts at the top of p. 359). Again, these can usually be resolved quickly, or ignored, without damage to overall understanding, but things would go a little bit more smoothly had they been worded differently.

Starting around p. 244 is a philosophical section that I found less satisfying than the technical material. It makes sense to discuss the distinction between committing and publishing, the idea that there are multiple valid histories, and the idea that the "central" repository is purely a social construct. But at some point the discussion starts to veer into being a different book, one about patterns for using Git to manage multi-developer projects and about software development generally, before eventually veering back. Such material could be helpful, but then it might have been better to offer a shallower overview of more patterns, rather than a tentative dive into the "Maintainer/Developer" pattern, which is privileged here beyond its actual prominence in software development. (This is perhaps a consequence of the flagship Git project, the Linux kernel, happening to use that pattern — but Linux is unusual in many ways, not just that one.)

The discussion of forking and of the term "fork", first from p. 259 and reiterated from p. 392, is confusing in several ways. It first uses the term as though it has no historical baggage, then later takes that historical baggage for granted, then finally describes the baggage but misunderstands it by failing to distinguish clearly between a social fork (a group of developers trying to persuade users and other developers to abandon one version and join another), which is a major event, and a feature fork (that is, a branch that happens to be in another repository), which is a non-event and which is all that sites like GitHub mean by forking. The two concepts are very different; to conflate them just because the word "fork" is now used for both is thinking with words, and doesn't help the reader understand what's going on. I raise this example in particular because I was surprised that the authors who had written so eloquently about the significance of social conventions elsewhere would give such an unsatisfactory explanation of this one.

Somewhat surprisingly, the authors don't review or even mention the many sources of online help about Git, such as the #git IRC channel at Freenode, the user discussion groups, wikis, etc. While most users can probably find those things quickly with a web search, it would have been good to point out their existence and maybe make some recommendations. Also, the book only covers installation of Git on GNU/Linux and MS Windows systems, with no explicit instructions for Mac OS X, the *BSD family, etc (however, the authors acknowledge this and rightly point out that the differences among Unix variants are not likely to be a showstopper for anyone).

But this is all carping. The book's weaknesses are minor, its strengths major. Any book on so complicated a topic is bound to cause disagreements about presentation strategy and even about philosophical questions. The authors write well, they must have done cubic parsecs of command testing to make sure their examples were correct, they respect the reader enough to dive deeply into technical details when the details are called for, and they take care to describe the practical scenarios in which a given feature is most likely to be useful. Its occasional organizational issues notwithstanding, this book is exactly what is needed by the everyday Git user who wants to know more — and is willing to put in the effort required to get there. I will be using my copy for a long time.

Footnotes

[1] One of my favorite instances of this happened with the term "fast-forward". It was introduced on p. 140, discussed a little but with no mention of a "safety check", then not used again until page 202, which says: "If present, the plus sign indicates that the normal fast-forward safety check will not be performed during the transfer." If your memory is as bad as mine, you might at that point have felt like you were suddenly reading the owner's manual for an early digital wristwatch circa 1976.

[2] Though not absolutely always: one of the few completely dangling references in the book is to "smudge/clean filters" on p. 294. At first I thought it must be a general computer science term that I didn't know, but it appears to be Git-specific terminology. Happy Googling.

[3] (This is relegated to a floating footnote because it's probably not relevant to most readers.) The book discusses other version control systems a bit, for historical perspective, and is not as factually careful about them as it is about Git. I've been a developer on both CVS and Subversion, so the various incorrect assertions, especially about Subversion, jumped out at me (pp. 2-3, p. 120, pp. 319-320). Again, this shouldn't matter for the intended audience. Don't come to this book to learn about Subversion; definitely come to it to learn about Git.

[4] As long as we're having floating footnotes, here's a footnote about a footnote: on p. 337, why not just say "Voltaire"?

[5] Finally, I categorically deny accusations that I gave a positive review solely because at least one of the authors is a fellow Emacs fanatic (p. 359, footnote). But it didn't hurt.

You can purchase Version Control with Git: Powerful tools and techniques for collaborative software development from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

kfogel writes "Two thumbs up, and maybe a tentacle too, on Version Control with Git, 2nd Edition by Jon Loeliger and Matthew McCullough. If you are a working programmer who wants to learn more about Git, particularly a programmer familiar with a Unix-based development environment, then this is the book for you, hands down (tentacles down too, please)." Read below for the rest of Karl's review. Version Control with Git, 2nd Edition author Jon Loeliger, Matthew McCullough pages 456 publisher O'Reilly Media rating Very good. reviewer Karl Fogel ISBN 978-1-4493-1638-9 summary Using the Git version control system for collaborative programming. There's a catch. You have to read the book straight through, from front to back. If you try to skip around, or just read the parts you feel you need, you'll probably be frustrated, because — exaggerating, but only slightly — every part of the book is linked to every other part. Perhaps if you're already expert in Git and merely want a quick reminder about something, it would work, but in that case you're more likely to do a web search anyway. For the rest of us, taking the medicine straight and for the full course is the only way. To some degree, this may have been forced on the authors by Git's inherent complexity and the interdependency of its basic concepts, but it does make this book unusual among technical guides. A common first use case, cloning a repository from somewhere else, isn't even covered until Chapter 12, because understanding what cloning really means requires so much background.

Like most readers, I'm an everyday user of Git but not at all an expert. Even this everyday use is enough to make me appreciate the scale of the task faced by the authors. On more than one occasion, frustrated by some idiosyncrasy, I've cursed that Git is a terrific engine surrounded by a cloud of bad decisions. The authors might not put it quite so strongly, but they clearly recognize Git's inconsistencies (the footnote on p. 47 is one vicarious acknowledgment) and they gamely enter the ring anyway. As with wrestling a bear, the question is not "Did they win?" but "How long did they last?"

For the most part, they more than hold their own. You can sometimes sense their struggle over how to present the information, and one of the book's weaknesses is a tendency to fall too quickly into implementation-driven presentation after a basic concept has been introduced. The explanation of cloning on p. 197 is one example: the jump from the basics to Git-specific terminology and repository details is abrupt, and forces the reader to either mentally cache terms and references in hope of later resolution, or to go back and look up a technical detail that was introduced many pages ago and is suddenly relevant again[1]. On the other hand, it is one of the virtues of the book that these checks can almost always be cashed: the authors accumulate unusual amounts of presentational debt as they go (in some cases unnecessarily), but if you're willing to maintain the ledger in your head, it all gets repaid in the end. Your questions will generally be answered[2], just not in the order nor at the time you had them. This isn't a book you can read for relaxation; give it your whole mind and you shall receive enlightenment in due proportion.

The book begins with a few relatively light chapters on the history of Git and on basic installation and local usage, all of which are good, but in a sense its real start is Chapters 4-6, which cover basic concepts, the Git "index" (staging area), and commits. These chapters, especially Chapter 4, are essentially a design overview of Git, and they go deep enough that you could probably re-implement much of Git based just on them. It requires a leap of faith to believe that all this material will be needed throughout the rest of the book, but it will, and you shouldn't move on until you feel secure with everything there.

From that point on, the book is at its best, giving in-depth explanations of well-bounded areas of Git's functionality. The chapter on git diff tells you everything you need to know, starting with an excellent overview and then presenting the details in a well-thought-out order, including an especially good annotated running example starting on p. 112. Similarly, the branching and merging chapters ensure that you will come out understanding how branches are central to Git and how to handle them, and the explanations build well on earlier material about Git's internal structure, how commit objects are stored, etc. (Somewhere around p. 227 my eyes finally glazed over in the material about manipulating tracking branches: I thought "if I ever need this, I know where to find it". Everyone will probably have that reaction at various points in the book, and the authors seem to have segregated some material with that in mind.) The chapter-level discussions on how to use Git with Subversion repositories, on the git stash command, on using GitHub, and especially on different strategies for assembling multi-source projects using Git, are all well done and don't shirk on examples nor on technical detail. Given the huge topic space the authors had to choose from, their prioritizations are intelligently made and obviously reflective of long experience using Git.

Another strength is the well-placed tips throughout the book. These are sometimes indented and marked with the (oddly ominous, or is that just me?) O'Reilly paw print tip graphic, and sometimes given in-line. Somehow the tips always seem to land right where you're most likely to be thinking "I wish there were a way to do X"; again, this must be due to the author's experience using Git in the real world, and readers who use Git on a daily basis will appreciate it. The explanation of --assume-unchanged on p. 382 appeared almost telepathically just as I was about to ask how to do that, for example. Furthermore, everything they saved for the "Advanced Manipulations" and "Tips, Tricks, and Techniques" chapters is likely to be useful at some point. Even if you don't remember the details of every tip, you'll remember that it was there, and know to go looking for it later when you need it (so it might be good to get an electronic copy of the book).

If there's a serious complaint to be made, it's that with a bit more attention the mental burden on the reader could have been reduced in many places. To pick a random example, in the "Branches" chapter on p. 90, the term "topic branch" is defined for the first time, but it was already used in passing on p. 68 (with what seems to be an assumption that the reader already knew the term) and again on pp. 80-81 (this time compounding the confusion with an example branch named "topic"). There are many similar instances of avoidable presentational debt; usually they are only distractions rather than genuine impediments to understanding, but they make the book more work than it needs to be. There are also sometimes ambiguous or not-quite-precise-enough statements that will cause the alert reader — which is the only kind this book really serves — to pause and have to work out what the authors must have meant (a couple of examples: "Git does not track file or directory names" on p. 34, or the business about patch line counts at the top of p. 359). Again, these can usually be resolved quickly, or ignored, without damage to overall understanding, but things would go a little bit more smoothly had they been worded differently.

Starting around p. 244 is a philosophical section that I found less satisfying than the technical material. It makes sense to discuss the distinction between committing and publishing, the idea that there are multiple valid histories, and the idea that the "central" repository is purely a social construct. But at some point the discussion starts to veer into being a different book, one about patterns for using Git to manage multi-developer projects and about software development generally, before eventually veering back. Such material could be helpful, but then it might have been better to offer a shallower overview of more patterns, rather than a tentative dive into the "Maintainer/Developer" pattern, which is privileged here beyond its actual prominence in software development. (This is perhaps a consequence of the flagship Git project, the Linux kernel, happening to use that pattern — but Linux is unusual in many ways, not just that one.)

The discussion of forking and of the term "fork", first from p. 259 and reiterated from p. 392, is confusing in several ways. It first uses the term as though it has no historical baggage, then later takes that historical baggage for granted, then finally describes the baggage but misunderstands it by failing to distinguish clearly between a social fork (a group of developers trying to persuade users and other developers to abandon one version and join another), which is a major event, and a feature fork (that is, a branch that happens to be in another repository), which is a non-event and which is all that sites like GitHub mean by forking. The two concepts are very different; to conflate them just because the word "fork" is now used for both is thinking with words, and doesn't help the reader understand what's going on. I raise this example in particular because I was surprised that the authors who had written so eloquently about the significance of social conventions elsewhere would give such an unsatisfactory explanation of this one.

Somewhat surprisingly, the authors don't review or even mention the many sources of online help about Git, such as the #git IRC channel at Freenode, the user discussion groups, wikis, etc. While most users can probably find those things quickly with a web search, it would have been good to point out their existence and maybe make some recommendations. Also, the book only covers installation of Git on GNU/Linux and MS Windows systems, with no explicit instructions for Mac OS X, the *BSD family, etc (however, the authors acknowledge this and rightly point out that the differences among Unix variants are not likely to be a showstopper for anyone).

But this is all carping. The book's weaknesses are minor, its strengths major. Any book on so complicated a topic is bound to cause disagreements about presentation strategy and even about philosophical questions. The authors write well, they must have done cubic parsecs of command testing to make sure their examples were correct, they respect the reader enough to dive deeply into technical details when the details are called for, and they take care to describe the practical scenarios in which a given feature is most likely to be useful. Its occasional organizational issues notwithstanding, this book is exactly what is needed by the everyday Git user who wants to know more — and is willing to put in the effort required to get there. I will be using my copy for a long time.

Footnotes

[1] One of my favorite instances of this happened with the term "fast-forward". It was introduced on p. 140, discussed a little but with no mention of a "safety check", then not used again until page 202, which says: "If present, the plus sign indicates that the normal fast-forward safety check will not be performed during the transfer." If your memory is as bad as mine, you might at that point have felt like you were suddenly reading the owner's manual for an early digital wristwatch circa 1976.

[2] Though not absolutely always: one of the few completely dangling references in the book is to "smudge/clean filters" on p. 294. At first I thought it must be a general computer science term that I didn't know, but it appears to be Git-specific terminology. Happy Googling.

[3] (This is relegated to a floating footnote because it's probably not relevant to most readers.) The book discusses other version control systems a bit, for historical perspective, and is not as factually careful about them as it is about Git. I've been a developer on both CVS and Subversion, so the various incorrect assertions, especially about Subversion, jumped out at me (pp. 2-3, p. 120, pp. 319-320). Again, this shouldn't matter for the intended audience. Don't come to this book to learn about Subversion; definitely come to it to learn about Git.

[4] As long as we're having floating footnotes, here's a footnote about a footnote: on p. 337, why not just say "Voltaire"?

[5] Finally, I categorically deny accusations that I gave a positive review solely because at least one of the authors is a fellow Emacs fanatic (p. 359, footnote). But it didn't hurt.

You can purchase Version Control with Git: Powerful tools and techniques for collaborative software development from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

alphatel writes "In an odd PRWeb snafu, a press release was issued citing sources at Google as having acquired wireless carrier ICOA for $400 million. In full-out retraction, both companies denied the deal outright. Is this a case of pre-release or simply false PR by a third party? Could such incidents be used for pump and dump schemes?" ZDNet reports that, "at midday, more than 3 billion shares (pink sheets) traded over the counter for ICOA."

An anonymous reader writes "Ordered to tell Samsung all of the company's HTC secrets, Apple throws a tantrum and adds a bunch of new products to the never-ending list of products Samsung has infringed on. Apple's tantrum stems from a ruling on Thursday that could have a large effect on the Apple lawsuit. The Apple lawsuit, which was filed in February, alleges that Samsung violated Apple patents related to user interface, technology and style. The first decision was found in favor of Apple to the tune of $1 billion, but Samsung is trying to get that ruling thrown out. But as the Apple lawsuit has gone on, the Apple lawsuit has gotten fiercer, and because of a ruling on Thursday, Apple throws a tantrum and is trying to add even more products into the lawsuit."

In addition to founding Canonical Ltd., the Ubuntu Foundation, and funding the Freedom Toaster, Mark Shuttleworth is a space enthusiast. In April 2002 Mark became the second self-funded space tourist and the first African in space. He spent eight days participating in experiments on the International Space Station as part of his $20 million trip. Now he's ready to answer your questions. Ask him anything you like, but please limit yourself to one question per post.

Nerval's Lobster writes "This is the story of the comparison that just wasn't meant to be. It's a story of everything that can go wrong in the customer end of the software world, and some thoughts on what needs to be done, especially in an area known as Installers. I'm a software engineer with 25 years of experience, and for years I've wanted to point out some of the shortcomings of my own industry to help make it better for everyone involved—not only for the end-users, but also for the IT people who have to support the products; the salespeople who have to sell and later, possibly, apologize for the software; for the executives whose hands are tied because they don't have the technical knowledge to roll up their sleeves and help fix problems in the code; and for the programmers themselves who might get stuck with what some consider the absolute worst position for a programmer: maintenance of crappy code written by programmers who have long since left the organization."

If the thought of a robot apocalypse is keeping you up at night, you can relax. Scientists at Cambridge University are studying the potential problem. From the article: "A center for 'terminator studies,' where leading academics will study the threat that robots pose to humanity, is set to open at Cambridge University. Its purpose will be to study the four greatest threats to the human species - artificial intelligence, climate change, nuclear war and rogue biotechnology."

An anonymous reader writes "Following the news that Minecraft has been ported to the Raspberry Pi, Mojang has announced a new augmented reality iOS app. The app uses your iOS device's camera to track your surroundings before projecting creations onto the landscape. Not only can you see the results on your screen, but you can change their size as you please, and also walk around them to view from different angles."

theodp writes "The press has been filled with wide-eyed articles about how Obama's tech team pulled out the stops in their race against the Republicans. But as exciting as some of the new techniques dreamed up may be, Tom Steinberg points out it's important to reflect on the difference between choosing to use tech skills to win a particular fight, versus trying to improve the workings of the democratic system, or helping people to self-organize and take some control of their own lives. 'I am still filled with an excitement about the prospects for non-partisan technologies that I can't muster for even the coolest uses of randomized control trial-driven political messaging,' writes Steinberg. 'The reason why all comes down to the fact that major partisan digital campaigns change the world, but they don't do it in the way that services like eBay, TripAdvisor and Match.com do. What all these sites have in common – helping people sell stuff they own, find a hotel, or a life partner – is that they represent a positive change in the lives of millions of people that is not directly opposed by a counter-shift.'"

theodp writes "The press has been filled with wide-eyed articles about how Obama's tech team pulled out the stops in their race against the Republicans. But as exciting as some of the new techniques dreamed up may be, Tom Steinberg points out it's important to reflect on the difference between choosing to use tech skills to win a particular fight, versus trying to improve the workings of the democratic system, or helping people to self-organize and take some control of their own lives. 'I am still filled with an excitement about the prospects for non-partisan technologies that I can't muster for even the coolest uses of randomized control trial-driven political messaging,' writes Steinberg. 'The reason why all comes down to the fact that major partisan digital campaigns change the world, but they don't do it in the way that services like eBay, TripAdvisor and Match.com do. What all these sites have in common – helping people sell stuff they own, find a hotel, or a life partner – is that they represent a positive change in the lives of millions of people that is not directly opposed by a counter-shift.'"

An anonymous reader writes "The Register has a BlackBerry 10 preview up. They say, 'BlackBerry users have a love-hate relationship with their phones. The devices were often forced upon users rather than chosen. At the same time, the handhelds were the most usable and useful communications gadgets you could put in your pocket.' The preview is surprisingly positive, and it goes on to look at BB10's Hub/notifications feature, which they call 'utilitarian' and efficient compared to Windows Phones, which are more about 'style and novelty' whilst being 'a bit limiting.' BlackBerry's implementation may actually improve the system, rather than detracting from it. With BlackBerry providing a QT environment (compatible with Sailfish, which we discussed earlier) and RIM having managed to maintain BB's 3rd place in the mobile OS market, there may a chance for real three-way competition between QT, Android and iOS in the mobile market."

An anonymous reader writes "A dead pigeon discovered a few weeks ago in a UK chimney may be able to provide new answers to the secrets of World War II. Unfortunately, British cryptographers at the country's Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) have been unable to crack the code encrypting a message the bird was tasked with sending and say they are confident it cannot be decoded 'without access to the original cryptographic material.'"

Mojo66 writes "After project savings had been estimated to amount to at least €4 million in March, more precise figures are now in: Over €10 million (approximately £8 million or $12.8 million) has been saved by the city of Munich, thanks to its development and use of the city's own Linux platform. The calculation compares the current overall cost of the LiMux migration with that of two technologically equivalent Windows scenarios: Windows with Microsoft Office and Windows with OpenOffice. Reportedly, savings amount to over €10 million. The study is based on around 11,000 migrated workplaces within Munich's city administration as well as 15,000 desktops that are equipped with an open source office suite. The comparison with Windows assumes that Windows systems must be on the same technological level; this would, for example, mean that they would have been upgraded to Windows 7 at the end of 2011. Overall, the project says that Windows and Microsoft Office would have cost just over €34 million, while Windows with Open Office would have cost about €30 million. The LiMux scenario, on the other hand, has reportedly cost less than €23 million. A detailed report (in German) is available."

An anonymous reader writes with an update about the student refusing to wear an RFID badge in Texas. From the article: "A district court judge for Bexar County has granted a temporary restraining order (TRO) to ensure that Andrea Hernandez, a San Antonio high school student from John Jay High School's Science and Engineering Academy, can continue her studies pending an upcoming trial. The Northside Independent School District (NISD) in Texas recently informed the sophomore student that she would be suspended for refusing to wear a 'Smart' Student ID card embedded with a Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tracking chip."

CowboyRobot writes with the (not unexpected) official U.S. denial of using the Flame malware to spy on France. From the article: "That allegation was leveled at the U.S. government by unnamed French officials, according to a Tuesday report in the weekly French newspaper L'Express. It reported that computers belonging to top advisers to then French president Nicolas Sarkozy had been hacked using the Flame cyberespionage malware, which was designed to be used in highly targeted attacks... Napolitano was also asked if it wasn't ironic that while the United States has been sounding alarms over the growing amount of malware that's targeting U.S. government system, it also commissioning the Stuxnet and Flame cyber-espionage malware used against Iran. Napolitano, however, pled official ignorance. 'These programs were never attributed in any way to the U.S. government.'"

An anonymous reader writes "Many this week have declared Israel's American financed Iron Dome rocket defense system a success. Some have even gone so far to declare it a vindication of Ronald Reagan's 1980's Star Wars missile defense system. Pundits have even gone so far to assume the system could be sold to other nations. However, the Iron Dome may not be the game changer many are making it out to be. Taking out unsophisticated rockets is quite different than advanced missiles: '...the technical and strategic challenges of shooting down ballistic missiles differ considerably from those of shooting down unguided rockets. BMD shares with rocket defense some common technological ground; both require fast reaction time and impressive sensor capabilities, and the Iron Dome project has benefited from technical work on missile defense. However, ballistic missiles in flight behave differently from unguided, sub-atmospheric rockets.'"

concealment sends in an AP report about an uproar in India over citizens arrested for their Facebook remarks. Quoting: "As India's financial capital shut down for the weekend funeral of a powerful politician linked to waves of mob violence, a woman posted on Facebook that the closures in Mumbai were 'due to fear, not due to respect.' A friend of hers hit the 'like' button. For that, both women were arrested. Analysts and the media are slamming the Maharashtra state government for what they said was a flagrant misuse of the law and an attempt to curb freedom of expression. The arrests were seen as a move by police to prevent any outbreak of violence by supporters of Bal Thackeray, a powerful Hindu fundamentalist politician who died Saturday."

Nerval's Lobster writes "The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) plans on replacing its existing stock of BlackBerry devices with Apple's iPhone 5. Research In Motion's BlackBerry smartphones, the government entity wrote in a Nov. 13 notice of intent, 'have been failing both at inopportune times and at an unacceptable rate.' The NTSB's use of iPads means it has the operational support for iOS; consequently, the decision was made to go with Apple. 'The iPhone 5 has been determined to be the only device that meets the dual requirement of availability from the existing wireless vendor and is currently supportable by existing staff resources,' the notice added. RIM is fighting to retain the government and enterprise contracts that originally made it such a mobile powerhouse. If agencies and boards such as the NTSB begin to embrace alternative platforms, however, that could critically weaken RIM's business model just as the company attempts a comeback behind the upcoming BlackBerry 10 platform."

An anonymous reader writes "3D Systems, one of the big fish in 3D printer manufacturing, filed a suit against Formlabs's hugely popular Form1 printer put forth on Kickstarter. The crowdfunding effort has amassed close to 3M US Dollars, of an initial 100K requested. 3D Systems accuses Formlabs and Kickstarter of knowingly infringing one of its still valid blanket patents on stereolithography and cross-sectional printing of 3D objects. The company is probably going to go for the kill, as one can deduce from the demands on their complaint." In "The State of Community Fabrication" presentation at HOPE9, Far McKon noted that no one had yet filed a patent lawsuit against a 3D printing company, but it looks like his fears have come true.

An anonymous reader writes "Last week, Nate Silver ranked Google Consumer Surveys as one of the most accurate polling firms of the 2012 US election. This week, Google has released the raw data that went into its election-day prediction, and is running a contest for interesting visualizations of that data. They provide a few examples of their own, including a WebGL globe view."

hypnosec writes "The Linux Foundation's plans for releasing a signed pre-bootloader that will enable users to install Linux alongside Windows 8 systems with UEFI have been reportedly delayed. The Foundation proposed a signed pre-bootloader that will chain-load a bootloader which, in turn, will boot the desired operating system, thus keeping Linux installations for novice users as simple as it was before. Further, this particular component is meant for small-time Linux distros which otherwise wouldn't have the required expertise or resources to develop their own system to tackle the secure boot issue. This was going as per plans up until Linux kernel maintainer James Bottomley disclosed that he has been having rather bizarre experiences with Microsoft sysdev centre. Bottomley said, 'The first time I sent the loader through, it got stuck (it still is, actually). So I sent another one through after a week or so. That actually produced a download, which I've verified is signed (by the MS UEFI key) and works, but now the Microsoft sysdev people claim it was "improperly" signed and we have to wait for them to sort it out. I've pulled the binary apart, and I think the problem is that it's not signed with a LF [Linux Foundation] specific key, it's signed by a generic one rooted in the UEFI key. I'm not sure how long it will take MS to get their act together but I'm hoping its only a few days." Update: 11/21 14:22 GMT by U L : See the Original weblog post, and one interesting tidbit: Microsoft banned bootloaders licensed under the GPLv3 and "similar open source licenses."

concealment tips this news from GigaOm: "Europe's proposed 'right to be forgotten' has been the subject of intense debate, with many people arguing it's simply not practical in the age of the internet for any data to be reliably expunged from history. Well, add another voice to that mix. The European Network and Information Security Agency (ENISA) has published its assessment of the proposals (PDF), and the tone is skeptical to say the least. And, interestingly, one of the biggest problems ENISA has found has to do with big data. They say, 'Removing forgotten information from all aggregated or derived forms may present a significant technical challenge. On the other hand, not removing such information from aggregated forms is risky, because it may be possible to infer the forgotten raw information by correlating different aggregated forms.'"

Presto Vivace writes "Under the right conditions, online activism can be very effective. U.S. Senator Patrick Leahy has already abandoned his warrantless e-mail surveillance bill we discussed this morning. 'The Vermont Democrat said today on Twitter that he would "not support such an exception" for warrantless access. ... A vote on the proposal in the Senate Judiciary committee, which Leahy chairs, is scheduled for next Thursday. The amendments were due to be glued onto a substitute (PDF) to H.R. 2471, which the House of Representatives already has approved. Leahy's about-face comes in response to a deluge of criticism today, including the ACLU saying that warrants should be required, and the conservative group FreedomWorks launching a petition to Congress -- with over 2,300 messages sent so far -- titled: "Tell Congress: Stay Out of My Email!""

concealment sends this quote from MIT's Technology Review: "AT&T screwed up in 2010, serving up the e-mail addresses of over 110,000 of its iPad 3G customers online for anyone to find. But Andrew Auernheimer, an online activist who pointed out AT&T's blunder to Gawker Media, which went on to publicize the breach of private information, is the one in federal court this week. Groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation worry that should that charge succeed it will become easy to criminalize many online activities, including work by well-intentioned activists looking for leaks of private information or other online security holes. [Auernheimer's] case hasn't received much attention so far, but should he be found guilty this week it will likely become well known, fast."

concealment sends this quote from MIT's Technology Review: "AT&T screwed up in 2010, serving up the e-mail addresses of over 110,000 of its iPad 3G customers online for anyone to find. But Andrew Auernheimer, an online activist who pointed out AT&T's blunder to Gawker Media, which went on to publicize the breach of private information, is the one in federal court this week. Groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation worry that should that charge succeed it will become easy to criminalize many online activities, including work by well-intentioned activists looking for leaks of private information or other online security holes. [Auernheimer's] case hasn't received much attention so far, but should he be found guilty this week it will likely become well known, fast."

An anonymous reader writes "As expected, Mozilla on Tuesday officially launched Firefox 17 for Windows, Mac, and Linux. The biggest addition in this release is click-to-play plugins, announced back in October. In short, the addition means Mozilla will now prompt Firefox users on Windows with old versions of Adobe Reader, Adobe Flash, and Microsoft Silverlight (more will be added eventually)." The release notes are available, as is a list of changes for devs. Firefox for Android got a new release as well (notes).

jfruh writes "Sharp, the Japanese LCD supplier in dire financial straits, is trying to cut staffing by offering an early retirement package. Unfortunately, it seems Sharp employees are eager to abandon a sinking ship. The company was planning on cutting its headcount by about 2,000 employees with the move; instead, it had to cut short the program after getting nearly 3,000 applicants."

McGruber writes "CNBC is reporting that Meg Whitman claims HP was defrauded in its purchase of Autonomy. 'We believed there is a willful effort on the part of certain members of Autonomy management to mislead shareholders when Autonomy was a publicly traded company, and to mislead potential buyers including HP,' Whitman said. 'We stand by the forensic review that we've seen,' she added. I wish her the same level of success I had when I filed an eBay claim." Also covered at SlashBI, which names the write-down damage: $8.8 billion.

Nerval's Lobster writes "Microsoft, FuelCell Energy and a collection of local Cheyenne, Wyoming companies are collaborating on a project to supply one of Microsoft's local data centers with biogas, in a bid to determine if what we poop can be turned into power. FuelCell and Microsoft will test a small 200-kilowatt data center with a fuel cell that can produce up to 300 kilowatts in a carbon-neutral manner. Microsoft estimates the total carbon savings at about 1,833 pounds of carbon dioxide (CO2) per megawatt-hour, compared to a typical fossil fuel plant. Although other data centers rely on biogas as a power source, Microsoft claims this is the first time a biogas source — specifically, a wastewater treatment facility — will be integrated directly with a data center."

An anonymous reader writes "The Google Samsung Chromebook was already interesting for its competitive $250 price-tag and that it can be loaded with Linux distributions beyond Chrome OS, but it turns out that its performance is particularly good, too. When loaded with Ubuntu Linux, the Samsung Exynos 5 Dual ARM SoC on the Chrome notebook had outperformed a 1.8GHz Intel Atom, a quad-core Calxeda ARM server, and a TI OMAP4 PandaBoard."

An anonymous reader writes "The Google Samsung Chromebook was already interesting for its competitive $250 price-tag and that it can be loaded with Linux distributions beyond Chrome OS, but it turns out that its performance is particularly good, too. When loaded with Ubuntu Linux, the Samsung Exynos 5 Dual ARM SoC on the Chrome notebook had outperformed a 1.8GHz Intel Atom, a quad-core Calxeda ARM server, and a TI OMAP4 PandaBoard."

concealment writes "A Senate proposal touted as protecting Americans' e-mail privacy has been quietly rewritten, giving government agencies more surveillance power than they possess under current law. [Sen. Patrick] Leahy's rewritten bill would allow more than 22 agencies — including the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Federal Communications Commission — to access Americans' e-mail, Google Docs files, Facebook wall posts, and Twitter direct messages without a search warrant. It also would give the FBI and Homeland Security more authority, in some circumstances, to gain full access to Internet accounts without notifying either the owner or a judge."