Slashdot Mirror

prostoalex writes "You're as likely to find a landline in a college dorm as you're an old typewriter, according to this Washington Post article on MSNBC. While roughly 30% of college students had a cell phone 5 years ago, more than 90% have them today, resulting in student directories including out-of-state numbers instead of 4-digit extensions. More trivia on college students: 90% own a PC, 65% have broadband, 62% own a stereo system, 74% have a DVD player, 55% have a gaming system. What the Washington Post article also hints at, is possible tuition hikes due to the landlines dropped so quickly. "Six or seven years ago, telephones on campus were a cash cow," said Glenn Gaslin of Morrisville State College in New York."

prostoalex writes "Folks from MonkeyMethods.org have researched the BitTorrent world after many popular destinations (SuprNova among others) have been shut down. Since BitTorrent always relied on the presence of trackers and servers hosting them, MonkeyMethods decided to see whether the shutdown impacted the BitTorrent community. So has the shutdown of centralized SuprNova had any impact? "In this case, centralization is a feature, not a necessity. Just look at del.icio.us most popular and you'll see BitTorrent sites every couple days, as people uncover new places to find the files they're looking for.""

prostoalex writes "In a long and disturbing story on child molesters, the New York Times Magazine among other issues researches the impact of the Internet on the child molesters. While officially the number of child molestations did not change significantly, Dr. Fred Berlin, associate professor of psychiatry at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, considers the Internet to be a new vehicle for child molestation: 'There are three areas of concern. First, the illusion of anonymity -- an illusion because Internet use can be easily tracked -- leads to disinhibition. Second, there's a blurring of fantasy and reality. There's someone at the other end of the Internet conversation, but it's not quite a real person; there's a feeling of playing a game that can lead to actually doing what one otherwise wouldn't. Third, the easy accessibility can facilitate moving over boundaries.'"

prostoalex (Alex Moskalyuk) writes "Anywhere from 26% to 40% of U.S. employees refer to their work as stressful or very stressful. So it's not too surprising that the business motivation and self-improvement market, which includes books, courses, training seminars, etc. generates $5.7 billion a year. David Allen is the author of Getting Things Done, which on its cover promises the Holy Grail of business management -- stress-free productivity." Read on for the rest of Moskalyuk's review. Getting things done author David Allen pages 288 publisher Penguin rating 9 reviewer Alex Moskalyuk ISBN 0142000280 summary The art of stress-free productivity

Allen's idea is to first look at the sources of stress. Whether you're working a cushy corporate job, are self-employed, or are still in college, what makes you feel frustrated and stressed? Unless you have had some major disasters in life, the answer will probably rotate around having too much to do and too little time to accomplish all the tasks. Moreover, people around you don't seem to realize how pressed for time you are as they keep coming up with every possible way to interrupt you.

Business people like to talk about multi-tasking. It fills one with feeling of self-importance, since it's obvious that if one multi-tasks, then he or she is involved in multiple projects, failure on most of which would probably result in the end of human civilization. But as Allen points out (his site contains a promotional WMV/QuickTime video), multi-tasking requires you to persist a bunch of projects (most of them unfinished) in your head.

If you count the time you spend on each actual project, and the time you spend switching between the projects, you'd be surprised how much time is spent on the overhead of going from one project to another. Basically (although Allen doesn't express it in these terms) we all would like to be Knoppix, with everything kept in RAM (our brains), nothing relegated to the hard drive (paper or information-management software), multi-tasking at its best. But as anyone would tell you, Knoppix can be quite resource-intensive, and you do not exactly get screaming speeds with it. We're all wired up like early DOS - single-tasking with everything else assigned to external storage, best at doing one thing at a time, if we're to do it well.

Allen develops a system to deal with projects and everyday interruptions accompanying them. Does the issue that came up require less than 2-3 minutes to respond to? Is it returning a call to confirm the dental appointment or e-mail to another developer saying you agree with his suggestion and would approve of it? If it takes you less than 2-3 minutes, do it right away. Do not file it under "Later," do not postpone it until lunch, because your brain keeps track of this stuff, and this unfinished while loop will be running in your brain, even if consciously you do not think about it every minute. In other words, keep the RAM clean.

Allen advocates the 3-D model, where the Ds stand for "Do it," "Delegate it," "Defer it" and advises all projects and small tasks to be processed in that order. The "Do it" part was described above for the tasks that take just a few minutes. The author promises you'd be surprised how much can be achieved by following this simple rule. At the same time, if the project just requires your approval, and you'd pass it to someone else after that, delegate it. But get it off your mind right away, because it's not yours and thus cannot occupy the precious RAM space. Delegate it -- send the e-mail, fax it away, or transfer it to another person in your organization. And if it's definitely a long task and it needs to be done by you, then defer it to the time slot when you're sure you can sit down and do it (by the time you get rid of all the doable and delegable, you will find yourself with plenty of time left to important projects).

Allen is pretty good at pointing out the various excuses that we come up with to excuse our lack of productivity. The rules sound simple, even simplistic, but that's the key to the efficiency of his system. I liked the author's approach, and adhering to his system seemed to bring a relaxed attitude into my daily schedule, since now I don't have a guilt trip over concentrating on a single task and refusing to multi-task. You can read an interview with an author at About.com. There's also an article about the methodology in Fast Company magazine with descriptive title You can do anything - but not everything. I would recommend this book to anyone who feels stress after work or someone who feels they are not at the top of their productivity and spend too much time doing inessential things.

In his spare time Alex enjoys reading business and technology books. He also keeps a list of free books for readers on a tight budget. You can purchase Getting Things Done from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, carefully read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

prostoalex writes "Mike Hall from Microsoft asks the audience why they would choose Linux over Microsoft for embedded projects. He provides a point-by-point description of benefits of Microsoft's products (Windows CE and Windows XP Embedded) and points out that starting out on Windows-based embedded platform might save development and testing time."

prostoalex writes "Associated Press says a 38-year-old was arrested in Hong Kong for uploading Daredevil, Red Planet and Miss Congeniality via a BitTorrent client. Hong Kong laws provide for a maximum of 4 years in prison and $6,400 fine for every copy distributed without copyright owner's permission."

prostoalex writes "Eugene Blanchard made his Introduction to Data Communications (also known as Introduction to Networking) available for free. The book covers a broad variety of topics such as RS-232, Ethernet, RF, TCP/IP and many other topics in its 63 chapters. This is a valuable reference and read for those just starting to understand networking and data communications as well as seasoned professionals in the field."

prostoalex writes "No one quite knows the exact point when high-tech marketing went wrong. When instead of selling distinct products and services, the company Web sites and brochures started pitching 'the next big thing.' When even software developers don't have a slightest idea about what's being sold to them. Raj Karamchedu from Silicon Image, however, feels that certain things in high-tech marketing should be straightened out, hence this book." Read on for Moskalyuk's review of Karamchedu's It's Not About the Technology . It's not about the technology author Raj Karamchedu pages 230 publisher Springer rating 4 reviewer Alex Moskalyuk ISBN 0387233504 summary Developing the craft of thinking for a high-tech corporation

20 chapters are written from the point of view of tech marketing executive, as Karamchedu tries to answer the question of why some products gain a loyal audience and enjoy commercial success, while the others are simply additions to the dusty shelves of history. Everyone has their favorite comparison, where a technically advanced product does not gain acceptance on the market while a supposedly inferior competitor is rolling in cash. Hey, IBM built an entire theory on how it was safe to let Microsoft sell its not-so-great DOS with IBM PCs in order to push the hardware from the warehouse while the company was preparing the next revision of state-of-the-art OS/2 -- which, of course, everyone will buy on the day of release in order to replace Microsoft's software.

History occasionally teaches tech marketers some curious lessons, and the conclusion that the author comes up is summarized in the book title. The title might sound like an insult to a design engineer, but in most of the cases the success in the market is not guaranteed by superiority of technology. Karamchedu is on the mission to find out why.

The first chapters take us through a conflict inside a company. Seldom will you find a high-tech startup where marketing people do not clash with engineers. Marketers promise the features to the customers in order to adhere to the mantra of "we listen to our customers," only to see feature requests denied by the engineers, since the budgets and deadlines are fixed. Marketers then complain to the executives about lack of response from the engineering staff and their inability to deal with the new features, while engineers fight back, claiming that the product is about to miss the deadline even with existing feature set and overworked staff.

Later, Karamchedu focuses on a second problem, peculiar to high-tech marketers: after being immersed in the technology world for too long, they cannot relate to the customers. Hence grandmas in Best Buy staring at the computer described as "P4 3.0 GHz 256 DDR 40.0 GB DVD/CD-RW" when all she wants to know is whether she can check email and view photos of the grandkids. Marketers forget to empathize with the customers. They spend too much time with engineering, and like to tell customers how the new microprocessor has a much wider front-side bus, or how their new piece of software supports dual-core systems, without really telling the customer how that will improve business processes or increase efficiency.

The third part of the book takes a look at a typical semiconductor company and tries to draw the plan of attack for a starting marketing executive. At this point the book turns into a manual on high-tech marketing, which the author hopes the readers will find useful, as there are no set rules and algorithms for launching successful marketing campaigns in high-tech world.

The book is quite insightful, but one can't help but feel that it is missing something. It will probably prove to be a valuable read to anyone facing the daunting task of marketing a high-tech product, but even though I got to the last page of the book, I found the title to be too terse and dry, lacking concrete examples and not quite coherent as far as the chapter-by-chapter arrangement. The preface and the author's description of the book are available online. It's also strange that in an attempt to write a textbook on high-tech marketing, the author decided to provide no case studies whatsoever. In Search of Stupidity from Apress is a great book about high-tech marketing, since it tells the story of a failed marketing attempt and also tries to figure out the reasons, but in It's Not About the Technology, Karamchedu just tells years of his personal experience, without references to specific companies or projects, which makes the book a compilation of abstractions on high-tech marketing.

In his spare time Alex enjoys reading technology and business titles. He also keeps a collection of free books for readers on a budget." Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

prostoalex writes "No one quite knows the exact point when high-tech marketing went wrong. When instead of selling distinct products and services, the company Web sites and brochures started pitching 'the next big thing.' When even software developers don't have a slightest idea about what's being sold to them. Raj Karamchedu from Silicon Image, however, feels that certain things in high-tech marketing should be straightened out, hence this book." Read on for Moskalyuk's review of Karamchedu's It's Not About the Technology . It's not about the technology author Raj Karamchedu pages 230 publisher Springer rating 4 reviewer Alex Moskalyuk ISBN 0387233504 summary Developing the craft of thinking for a high-tech corporation

20 chapters are written from the point of view of tech marketing executive, as Karamchedu tries to answer the question of why some products gain a loyal audience and enjoy commercial success, while the others are simply additions to the dusty shelves of history. Everyone has their favorite comparison, where a technically advanced product does not gain acceptance on the market while a supposedly inferior competitor is rolling in cash. Hey, IBM built an entire theory on how it was safe to let Microsoft sell its not-so-great DOS with IBM PCs in order to push the hardware from the warehouse while the company was preparing the next revision of state-of-the-art OS/2 -- which, of course, everyone will buy on the day of release in order to replace Microsoft's software.

History occasionally teaches tech marketers some curious lessons, and the conclusion that the author comes up is summarized in the book title. The title might sound like an insult to a design engineer, but in most of the cases the success in the market is not guaranteed by superiority of technology. Karamchedu is on the mission to find out why.

The first chapters take us through a conflict inside a company. Seldom will you find a high-tech startup where marketing people do not clash with engineers. Marketers promise the features to the customers in order to adhere to the mantra of "we listen to our customers," only to see feature requests denied by the engineers, since the budgets and deadlines are fixed. Marketers then complain to the executives about lack of response from the engineering staff and their inability to deal with the new features, while engineers fight back, claiming that the product is about to miss the deadline even with existing feature set and overworked staff.

Later, Karamchedu focuses on a second problem, peculiar to high-tech marketers: after being immersed in the technology world for too long, they cannot relate to the customers. Hence grandmas in Best Buy staring at the computer described as "P4 3.0 GHz 256 DDR 40.0 GB DVD/CD-RW" when all she wants to know is whether she can check email and view photos of the grandkids. Marketers forget to empathize with the customers. They spend too much time with engineering, and like to tell customers how the new microprocessor has a much wider front-side bus, or how their new piece of software supports dual-core systems, without really telling the customer how that will improve business processes or increase efficiency.

The third part of the book takes a look at a typical semiconductor company and tries to draw the plan of attack for a starting marketing executive. At this point the book turns into a manual on high-tech marketing, which the author hopes the readers will find useful, as there are no set rules and algorithms for launching successful marketing campaigns in high-tech world.

The book is quite insightful, but one can't help but feel that it is missing something. It will probably prove to be a valuable read to anyone facing the daunting task of marketing a high-tech product, but even though I got to the last page of the book, I found the title to be too terse and dry, lacking concrete examples and not quite coherent as far as the chapter-by-chapter arrangement. The preface and the author's description of the book are available online. It's also strange that in an attempt to write a textbook on high-tech marketing, the author decided to provide no case studies whatsoever. In Search of Stupidity from Apress is a great book about high-tech marketing, since it tells the story of a failed marketing attempt and also tries to figure out the reasons, but in It's Not About the Technology, Karamchedu just tells years of his personal experience, without references to specific companies or projects, which makes the book a compilation of abstractions on high-tech marketing.

In his spare time Alex enjoys reading technology and business titles. He also keeps a collection of free books for readers on a budget." Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

prostoalex writes "The next effort to improve wireless security might involve a trip to Home Depot. Force Field Wireless sells buckets of aluminum and copped-laced paint designed to prevent the 802.11 packets from escaping the building, Information Week reports. The article also talks about the Firce Field's pitch to the government in order to improve the homeland security, but the only governments that got interested in anti-Wi-Fi paint were from the Middle East. According to the products page, they also sell the brush sets." Easier than wallpaper, or moving into an old house.

prostoalex writes "LinuxDevCenter interviews RMS. Interesting that Stallman supports the free software projects ported to proprietary operating systems: 'Porting free applications to nonfree operating systems is often useful. This allows users of those operating systems to try out using a few free programs and see that they can be good to use, that free software won't bite them. This can help people overcome worries about trying a free operating system such as GNU/Linux. Many users really do follow this path.'"

prostoalex writes "New York Times reviews the digital picture frames available commercially: 'Yes, with the ultimate digital camera accessory: the digital picture frame, a flat-panel screen designed exclusively for showing digital photos. A digital frame can do something no ordinary frame can do: change what's in it at the touch of a button, or even treat you to a slide show. Think of it as a screen saver that doesn't tie up your computer.' For those who would rather build the devices themselves - both Linux Toys and Wi-Fi Toys contain the chapters on creating Linux-based digital picture frames out of old laptops. Channel 9 on Microsoft Developer Network also has a step-by-step walk-through of building a Windows-based digital picture frame."

prostoalex writes "In 2005 Wolfgang Puck will start selling containers of self-heating coffee, USA Today says. The combination of calcium oxide and water will heat the coffee to 145 degrees and keep it warm for the next 30 minutes. The coffee will be sold in regular grocery stores, and folks at Fool.com tell Starbucks to watch out as this product, coming from a well-known chef, might target those of us grabbing a cup of hot latte on the way to work."

prostoalex writes "USA Today has an article on Japanese telecom company delivering fragrances via the Internet. NTT Communications will send a combination of 36 scents through a crystal ball, which can be attached to a PC."

prostoalex (Alex Moskalyuk) writes "After the Presidential election process and U.S. foreign policy directions, outsourcing is a topic guaranteed to stir up heated debate. Bill Blunden's Offshoring IT is not a 'how-to' guide, as one might expect from the title. It's a collection of stats, figures and opinions on outsourcing information technology to foreign providers." Read on for the rest of Moskalyuk's review; watch out too for my upcoming review of N. Sivakumar's Debugging Indian Computer Programmers: Dude, did I steal your job?. Offshoring IT author Bill Blunden pages 138 publisher Apress rating 5/10 reviewer Alex Moskalyuk ISBN 1590593960 summary The good, the bad and the ugly (but mostly the bad) on IT offshoring

Bill Blunden is the author of Cube Farm - a humorous autobiography and story of author's fruitless employment at Lawson Software. A physics major faced with the grand prospects of waiting tables after college graduation, Blunden is not a newbie in the unemployment world. Offshoring IT promises to give the reader "the good, the bad and the ugly" of IT outsourcing practices.

The book is not very long -- just five chapters -- but it's thorough, as each chapter packs data and statistics from various government and commercial reports. "Setting the stage" talks about general trends in the software industry and cost of education. "Measuring the trend" tells the reader which companies outsource, why they outsource and who's helping them with outsourcing. "The Offshoring Obstacle Course" describes existing outsourcing processes - when exactly should company start thinking about outsourcing, what type of jobs is most likely to go offshore, what's the difference between India, Ireland, Israel, Russia and Mexico. Finally, "Arguments in Favor of Offshoring" made it into the book just because the publisher requested a fair look at the other side's arguments (which shows which "side" Mr. Blunden is biased towards). "Arguments Against Offshoring" is truly the author's work with major myths and excuses about offshoring debunked.

Blunden points out that in order to compete in the global marketplace, countries like India invested in their educational system and constructed high-speed data networks, which provided the foundation for companies popping up with the capability to take over remotely as call centers, software development houses, and R&D departments. Meanwhile, the cost of going to Ivy League schools keeps going up, leaving the fresh graduates with six-digit debt -- debt which the Student Loan Corporation (division of CitiCorp) expects to be promptly paid. The cost of college education for those who choose to go this route stipulates adequate pay requirements after graduation, and in the world where IT is going offshore, the paycheck is often just not there anymore, which leaves the fresh grad owing money and needing immediate retraining or a career switch.

The book delves into specific industries and companies, looking at the outsourcing numbers and potential for jobs to be offshored. Blunden notes that while corporations made their offshoring figures public before, lately the backlash against going offshore has made PR departments suddenly avoid the topic. Blunden refutes the argument that only low-level jobs are being outsourced and points to Intel designing CPUs for wireless devices on campuses in India.

Chapter 3 focuses on reasons for outsourcing. According to Blunden, the more face-to-face interaction and management effort a job requires, the less likely it is to be outsourced. At the same time, many companies are currently exploring offshoring some of their projects, claiming that only non-essentials are going abroad. Outsourcing of small projects allows them to establish the necessary processes and test their service provider, so that when a bigger project comes along, the management can feel safer working with the same offshore provider.

Chapter 4 deals with pro-offshoring arguments. Even though the author states he only had to write this chapter to satisfy the publishers, the arguments he picks are ones that appear in the press quite often - namely, that offshoring means more efficient allocation of resources, better revenue projections, and increased shareholder value. In Chapter 5 Blunded goes on a crusade to discredit these arguments, though, saying that offshoring does not benefit average Americans, that only the top 5% of income earners benefit from increased shareholder values, and that frequently top management receives additional benefits while laying off the proles.

While the first two chapters of the book are filled with data, numbers and statistics, the last three chapters mostly read like an rant on the current state of affairs, which many of us may have gotten for free from the older members of the family at Thanksgiving. Blunden does have some valid arguments about the increased danger to national security and wealth due to offshoring, but you can't help but notice the feeling that the author feels entitled to a job provided by an American corporation, even though corporate America is bad-mouthed in the next sentence. To give Blunden credit, he mentions that sometimes reasons for offshoring include the low popularity of call-center and data-entry positions in the U.S. Americans view doing support for AOL and data entry for Cingular as grunt jobs, just temporary positions on the way to a better life, while for many Indians it is the ultimate career, and are thankful to the provider for giving them the opportunity.

Blunden also does not distinguish between different types of IT workers. The aforementioned AOL support soldier and top NASA scientist, designing microcontrollers for the next space mission would be aggregated into the same "IT worker" category. There's little detailed statistics on what sectors of IT are prone to outsourcing and which are pretty stable to be in. Sometimes the author plays little tricks with the reader to make his points across. On p. 106 he talks to an invisible IT manager: "Sure, you can hire six Indian engineers for the price of an American engineer. But if an American engineer can do the work of six Indian engineers, what's the difference?" Oops. Notice how by the time we get into the second sentence the equality in price gets substituted by equality in productivity. Just because 6 Indian salaries would equal to one American, the author assumes the productivity level is going to stay the same, making the example nonsensical, since why would you outsource if it's the same money and the same productivity?

Overall, it's an interesting book to read, although somewhat depressing, as it provides little pointers into how do the readers stay competitive in this marketplace or what needs to be done on the personal skills level to make oneself more valuable. You can definitely tell which side the author is leaning, but subjective writing makes the reading more interesting. Nevertheless, the title does leave an impression of being one giant complaint about the current state of affairs, and I don't think I will be re-reading it. Perhaps just loan it to my friends, who are in college pursuing IT-related careers.

In an attempt to stay up-to-date with his skills Alex reads and reviews many programming and technology as well as keeps the list of free ones available on the Web. You can purchase Offshoring IT from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

prostoalex (Alex Moskalyuk) writes "After the Presidential election process and U.S. foreign policy directions, outsourcing is a topic guaranteed to stir up heated debate. Bill Blunden's Offshoring IT is not a 'how-to' guide, as one might expect from the title. It's a collection of stats, figures and opinions on outsourcing information technology to foreign providers." Read on for the rest of Moskalyuk's review; watch out too for my upcoming review of N. Sivakumar's Debugging Indian Computer Programmers: Dude, did I steal your job?. Offshoring IT author Bill Blunden pages 138 publisher Apress rating 5/10 reviewer Alex Moskalyuk ISBN 1590593960 summary The good, the bad and the ugly (but mostly the bad) on IT offshoring

Bill Blunden is the author of Cube Farm - a humorous autobiography and story of author's fruitless employment at Lawson Software. A physics major faced with the grand prospects of waiting tables after college graduation, Blunden is not a newbie in the unemployment world. Offshoring IT promises to give the reader "the good, the bad and the ugly" of IT outsourcing practices.

The book is not very long -- just five chapters -- but it's thorough, as each chapter packs data and statistics from various government and commercial reports. "Setting the stage" talks about general trends in the software industry and cost of education. "Measuring the trend" tells the reader which companies outsource, why they outsource and who's helping them with outsourcing. "The Offshoring Obstacle Course" describes existing outsourcing processes - when exactly should company start thinking about outsourcing, what type of jobs is most likely to go offshore, what's the difference between India, Ireland, Israel, Russia and Mexico. Finally, "Arguments in Favor of Offshoring" made it into the book just because the publisher requested a fair look at the other side's arguments (which shows which "side" Mr. Blunden is biased towards). "Arguments Against Offshoring" is truly the author's work with major myths and excuses about offshoring debunked.

Blunden points out that in order to compete in the global marketplace, countries like India invested in their educational system and constructed high-speed data networks, which provided the foundation for companies popping up with the capability to take over remotely as call centers, software development houses, and R&D departments. Meanwhile, the cost of going to Ivy League schools keeps going up, leaving the fresh graduates with six-digit debt -- debt which the Student Loan Corporation (division of CitiCorp) expects to be promptly paid. The cost of college education for those who choose to go this route stipulates adequate pay requirements after graduation, and in the world where IT is going offshore, the paycheck is often just not there anymore, which leaves the fresh grad owing money and needing immediate retraining or a career switch.

The book delves into specific industries and companies, looking at the outsourcing numbers and potential for jobs to be offshored. Blunden notes that while corporations made their offshoring figures public before, lately the backlash against going offshore has made PR departments suddenly avoid the topic. Blunden refutes the argument that only low-level jobs are being outsourced and points to Intel designing CPUs for wireless devices on campuses in India.

Chapter 3 focuses on reasons for outsourcing. According to Blunden, the more face-to-face interaction and management effort a job requires, the less likely it is to be outsourced. At the same time, many companies are currently exploring offshoring some of their projects, claiming that only non-essentials are going abroad. Outsourcing of small projects allows them to establish the necessary processes and test their service provider, so that when a bigger project comes along, the management can feel safer working with the same offshore provider.

Chapter 4 deals with pro-offshoring arguments. Even though the author states he only had to write this chapter to satisfy the publishers, the arguments he picks are ones that appear in the press quite often - namely, that offshoring means more efficient allocation of resources, better revenue projections, and increased shareholder value. In Chapter 5 Blunded goes on a crusade to discredit these arguments, though, saying that offshoring does not benefit average Americans, that only the top 5% of income earners benefit from increased shareholder values, and that frequently top management receives additional benefits while laying off the proles.

While the first two chapters of the book are filled with data, numbers and statistics, the last three chapters mostly read like an rant on the current state of affairs, which many of us may have gotten for free from the older members of the family at Thanksgiving. Blunden does have some valid arguments about the increased danger to national security and wealth due to offshoring, but you can't help but notice the feeling that the author feels entitled to a job provided by an American corporation, even though corporate America is bad-mouthed in the next sentence. To give Blunden credit, he mentions that sometimes reasons for offshoring include the low popularity of call-center and data-entry positions in the U.S. Americans view doing support for AOL and data entry for Cingular as grunt jobs, just temporary positions on the way to a better life, while for many Indians it is the ultimate career, and are thankful to the provider for giving them the opportunity.

Blunden also does not distinguish between different types of IT workers. The aforementioned AOL support soldier and top NASA scientist, designing microcontrollers for the next space mission would be aggregated into the same "IT worker" category. There's little detailed statistics on what sectors of IT are prone to outsourcing and which are pretty stable to be in. Sometimes the author plays little tricks with the reader to make his points across. On p. 106 he talks to an invisible IT manager: "Sure, you can hire six Indian engineers for the price of an American engineer. But if an American engineer can do the work of six Indian engineers, what's the difference?" Oops. Notice how by the time we get into the second sentence the equality in price gets substituted by equality in productivity. Just because 6 Indian salaries would equal to one American, the author assumes the productivity level is going to stay the same, making the example nonsensical, since why would you outsource if it's the same money and the same productivity?

Overall, it's an interesting book to read, although somewhat depressing, as it provides little pointers into how do the readers stay competitive in this marketplace or what needs to be done on the personal skills level to make oneself more valuable. You can definitely tell which side the author is leaning, but subjective writing makes the reading more interesting. Nevertheless, the title does leave an impression of being one giant complaint about the current state of affairs, and I don't think I will be re-reading it. Perhaps just loan it to my friends, who are in college pursuing IT-related careers.

In an attempt to stay up-to-date with his skills Alex reads and reviews many programming and technology as well as keeps the list of free ones available on the Web. You can purchase Offshoring IT from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

prostoalex writes "You read a lot of stories about older generation either adopting or having troubles with Internet. But some people in this world cannot imagine their everyday life without Internet. The kids who went to school during the early days of the Web are now going to colleges and are demanding broadband, downloading music, sharing photos and posting to Web logs, Associated Press says. Most of the everyday tasks, like homework and job search, have migrated to the Web as well. According to the latest data, 188.5 million Americans and more than 1 billion people globally are online."

prostoalex writes "Just when you thought all the software niches were taken, IDC comes out with the report saying $12 million was spent on spyware removal tools in 2003, and $305 million will be spent in 2008. IDC also estimates two-thirds of PC users out there are infected. Large PC vendors are waking up to the spyware threat, having their call centers overwhelmed with spyware-related calls."

prostoalex writes "Michael Regan from the Associated Press started reviewing MyFi, a portable satellite radio receiver, by treating it as a competitor to iPod, but then admitted the two devices are quite different. For $350 and a $10-a-month subscription the buyer gets access to XM satellite radio stations and ability to record the stream to 128 MB of built-in flash. There's no way to transfer the recorded content to the computer or vice versa. The review recommends waiting for lower price and better features."

prostoalex writes "TV ratings publisher Nielsen is one company that got affected by the digital video recorder boom. With 7 million households recording TV shows and watching them on their own schedules, the concept of primetime changes, and the audience reporting is becoming skewed. So now Nielsen is launching a special program for DVR households, which would allow advertisers and TV executives to track the popularity of TV programs. Nielsen plans to distribute paper diaries among the households that use digital video recorder. Last time I did a Nielsen TV rating diary, they paid $5 a week."

prostoalex writes "A recent submission to my free tech books site included a title that I thought many Slashdotters would enjoy. How It Works: The Computer (published 1971 and re-published 1979) is an exciting look into this new thing called computer. The site presents the scanned pages of 1971 and 1979 editions, and you can see how the page on computer code changes over 8 years from punchcards exclusively to magnetic tapes."

prostoalex writes "A recent submission to my free tech books site included a title that I thought many Slashdotters would enjoy. How It Works: The Computer (published 1971 and re-published 1979) is an exciting look into this new thing called computer. The site presents the scanned pages of 1971 and 1979 editions, and you can see how the page on computer code changes over 8 years from punchcards exclusively to magnetic tapes."

prostoalex writes "In a recent Slashdot story on Skype CEO interview some comments expressed displeasure with the fact that you have to be tied up to your computer to make those VOIP calls via Skype. Not anymore - this adapter from Siemens plugs into the USB port of the computer and allows Siemens Gigaset S645, Gigaset S440/445 or Gigaset C340/345 phone models to use the Skype connection instead of landline. News.com has the story."

prostoalex writes "A lot of avid PC users got first introduced to the computers through games. Some later turned their hobbies into full-time jobs. The ExtremeTech series of Wiley books aims at the readers who are curious about technology and are willing to dedicate some time to personal to projects that educate and develop skills. Before this review starts reading as a press release, I will throw in a link to my review of another title, Linux Toys, the book that pioneered the series." Read on for Alex's review of Wi-Fi Toys. Wi-Fi Toys author Mike Outmesguine pages 408 publisher Wiley rating 9 reviewer Alex Moskalyuk ISBN 0764558943 summary 15 cool wireless projects for home, office and entertainment

Wi-Fi Toys by Mike Outmesguine offers 15 projects for radio enthusiasts and those, who have never dealt with wireless networking beyond buying an 802.11 access point at local electronics store. Former US AirForce and National Guard engineer, the author is currently running a technology services company.

Assume for a minute that you have had limited experience with wireless technologies, but are young, ambitious, and eager to dive into the deep sea of wireless data. What kind of projects would be fun to play with? What kind of projects would be educational as well as useful? Probably improving the reception via various antenna hacks would be a cool thing to do, and improving access point to increase coverage would be another way to wow the neighbors with your wireless skills. Discovering other people's networks and wardriving is a must for any wireless security beginner. The author dedicates the first three parts of the book (table of contents here) to building antennas, wardriving and hacking access points. Yes, the book requires toying with hardware and occasionally being outside in the fresh air.

The first chapter, Building Your Own Wi-Fi Antenna Cable, is available online in PDF format and it talks about building your own antenna cable. The rest of the chapters in Part 1 take the reader through building a paperclip antenna, creating a tin can antenna, and modifying the existing access point with a high gain antenna.

Probably there are some people that read the last sentence and asked themselves, "So what is a high gain antenna?" Which brings us to the next point - the readability of the book. Outmesguine did a really nice job outlining the projects step by step and supplying all the major steps with the photos. The pictures are black-and-white, and so are the diagrams. Overall the pictures turned out nicely, but I wish the author had the color version on the Web site, since some of the images (like on page 79), displaying computer graphics on dark backgrounds, did not turn out very detailed. Everything essential to the project is there, but still, color photos and screenshots would have made the difference in some cases.

The author does a good job of explaining terminology before launching into the project. Where needed, Mike Outmesguine provides helpful diagrams, that any radio amateur is probably already aware of, but they still make a nice and readable book for the rest of us. Also, the goal of the chapters is not just build the toy and get done with it as soon as possible. For example, in chapter 4 when talking about modifying the existing access point, the author understands that the only reason you want to do that is to increase the WiFi coverage in your house. So a few pages are dedicated to propagation losses, interference and everything radio-related that the reader needs to take into account before strengthening the access point with a high-gain antenna.

Chapter 14 is probably the coolest in the book, as it talks about creating a car-to-car wireless link for the purpose of... videoconferencing involving two Webcams and Microsoft NetMeeting. Naturally, this is not for driver-to-driver communication, but in case you've got two cars on the road trip, the passengers now can use their WiFi-enabled laptops (and by now everyone should have one) to launch a video conference.

Overall the book reads great, even if you're not serious about doing some projects, it's still fun to follow photographs and see what Mike and the contributors have done in terms of wireless projects. Each chapter is presented as a single project, so with the exception of terminology knowledge there's no preceding knowledge that needs to be there, so one could theoretically start with a digital picture frame (Chapter 15) that hangs on the wall, downloading the pictures via the wireless link and playing occasional videos.

Overall, this is an interesting book to read, and if you've been looking for simple and intermediate projects involving radio technologies and WiFi, the Wi-Fi Toys is packed with useful information.

You can purchase Wi-Fi Toys from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews. To see your own review here, carefully read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

prostoalex writes "New York Times says William O. Genovese Jr., 27, of Meriden, Conn. has been arrested by the Feds for selling source code for Windows NT and Windows 2000 operating systems. It's not perfectly clear whether Genovese was selling the portion of the code that was leaked earlier this year or if he had access to other portions of Windows source code. The timing, though, coincides, as the code leaked in February, the same month NYT claims the entrepreneur obtained the source code."

prostoalex writes "Niklas Zennström, the ever-elusive CEO of Skype, is interviewed by Engadget. Turns out Skype currently has more than 13 mln users in 200+ countries. The interview also discusses the future of Skype and VOIP applications in general."

prostoalex writes "The SCO Group reached an agreement with the lawyers to limit the litigation expenses to $31 million until the IBM lawsuit is resolved. The company already paid $12 million to Boies Schiller & Flexner LLP, Kevin McBride and Berger Singerman, which provide legal services to the company."

Alex Moskalyuk writes "When reading about the computer crimes, we are usually told the victim's point of view. We learn about the thieves stealing thousands of credit card numbers and identity theft victims, who lost their credit history with the wallet they lost at the mall. But how do criminals ever get caught? Who performs the forensic search and participates in sting operations?" Read on for Alex's review of High-Tech Crimes Revealed, which addresses these questions. High-Tech Crimes Revealed author Steven Branigan pages 448 publisher Addison-Wesley rating 9 reviewer Alex Moskalyuk ISBN 0321218736 summary Cyberwar Stories from the Digital Front Steven Branigan is a cop, a system administrator, an Internet security consultant and network security researcher. Ex-employee of Bell Labs now is a founder of a company that "specializes in solving leading edge computer and network security issues."

The book is a collection of high-tech investigations performed by Branigan in cooperation with the police force and sometimes the Feds. Generally Branigan would be involved in forensic research of the evidence and be on the scene as the "computer expert" that cops would refer to when dealing with cybercrime.

Twelve chapters take us through some of the high-tech crimes that the Western world faces today. An attack on the telephone network (unauthorized access to the switches), backdoors left at the former employer, hacking into university networks and the well-publicized identity theft are all covered in the book. Branigan brings up anecdotal evidence from his own career, describes some of his cases in great detail, and provides advice for practitioners in the forensics field.

The author is a Linux/Unix/BSD guru, and he shares his methods for retrieving telltale data from the equipment that the criminals leave behind. He also talks about the generic problems that law enforcement faces when investigating a high-tech crime - how do you obtain a warrant, what's a proper way to conduct searches, how do you work with the confiscated computer so that all the data is left intact?

However, don't expect some secrets to pop-up in regards to data collection - Branigan uses commonly available Linux tools like grep for searching the suspect's hard drive for needed data. More often that not, the investigator, it turns out, depends on his experience, not the book knowledge - one has to recognize the network sniffer log when they see it, and be capable of recognizing the tools freely downloadable from security sites.

Thus it's not surprising that there are some chapters in the book dedicated purely to the author's experience in the field. He describes working with the hackers who have been arrested, discusses how rootkits are spread around, discusses the motivation behind the network attacks (it's not always money, to say the least), describes the structure of a hacking ring and their potential revenues and also talks about ways to unravel the networks. His motto? No crime is too small, and sometimes things so little as missing the rent can lead to more discoveries and tie-ins into bigger crimes.

If you're thinking about becoming a security consultant, a law enforcement officer or just a sysadmin with better than average knowledge of security, this book is an interesting read. It's not a textbook, nor it is technical by nature. It reads more like a detective story, except the stories are real, the culprits are real and so are the victims. One can read the book on two levels - as a forensics tutorial (however, don't expect extended technical tutorials and tools overview) or as an autobiography of a cop, who had to deal with high-tech crimes all his life. If you liked Art of Deception or Hacking: The Art of Exploitation , this title would be a perfect complement.

Chapter 3, If Only He Had Paid the Rent, is available online from Addison-Wesley.

Alex enjoys reading programming, technology and business tech books in his spare time. He also keeps a list of free books available on the Internet for tech readers on a budget. You can purchase High-Tech Crimes Revealed from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, carefully read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

prostoalex writes "Financial Express quotes a Dell executive saying that spyware is installed on roughly 90% computers out there. Right now 20% of all Dell phone support calls are spyware-related. University of Washington research this March published a moderate estimate of 5.1% PCs running spyware."

prostoalex writes "BusyBox, a stripped-down minimalistic toolkit for embedded Linux, is now shipping 1.0.0. ChangeLog is available on the project Web site."

prostoalex writes "eWeek Labs reviewed the latest editions of GNOME and KDE desktop environments, and for all the criteria that eWeek uses for evaluating the software products ranked 'good,' while usability, capability and reliability for both products ranked 'excellent.' The online version is missing the screenshots and ranking tables that the printed version has, but eWeek likes Evolution (for mail), Konqueror (for file management), Samba and Kopete. They dislike GConf (still complex and a hassle to use) on GNOME and KMail on KDE."

prostoalex writes "As millions of Americans lose their identities to online and offline thieves, a new kind of crime has been cooked up by the criminals who are not bothering with doing pesky credit card charges. They steal entire companies, opening up merchant accounts for existing businesses and running up charges from aforementioned stolen credit card numbers. What's worse, is that the hole the criminals exploit seems to be built into the system. According to Bob Sullivan from MSNBC, "Many of the processing firms interviewed for this article claimed they caught on to the fraud after the transactions had cleared, but before the suspects had withdrawn the money from various checking accounts around the country. One did concede, however, that the scheme has real potential.""

prostoalex writes "The patent dispute between Eastman Kodak and Sun Microsystems in regards to three patents that EK claimed Sun was violating with Java, came to an end. Thursday afternoon Associated Press announced the companies settled out of court with terms of the deal unclear yet. Before Eastman Kodak was looking for $1.06 billion in damages."

prostoalex writes "USA Today and dozens of others report that Washington state archives went online. Over the past two years project participants scanned 1 million documents issued by state and country authorities. The archive is located in my alma mater Eastern Washington University (go Eagles!) The 800 terabyte storage system was developed by Microsoft and EDS."

prostoalex writes "Information Week magazine takes a look at Wal-Mart's IT infrastructure. Wal-Mart's yearly global sales are quoted at more than 250 billion dollars, their IT spending is less than 1% of that. At the same time, the company manages to pursue new venues in optimizing retail with the wonders of technology. And what about outsourcing IT for the sake of optimization? 'We'd be nuts to outsource,' a top IT executive at Wal-Mart replies."

Ant writes "CNET's News.com has an article that says Microsoft plans to offer its own anti-spyware software." prostoalex writes "Both OsNews and InfoWorld talk about Bill Gates' speech at the Computer History Museum in California. Gates is noting that Linux is taking over, and claims that 10 years forward Linux and Windows will be the only OSs left in the market."

Alex Moskalyuk writes "'Open source is great, but where do we start?' This is probably one of the most frequently asked questions in the corporate world when CIOs are faced with the need to choose between open and proprietary solutions. How do you figure out when it's feasible to implement an open source solution? Are there any support or training options if the solution does get approved, or if the project chosen was an alpha version developed by some student, who's away for the summer? Bernard Golden from NavicaSoft has probably heard the same questions too often, and then decided to write the book." Read on for prostoalex's review. Succeeding with open source author Bernard Golden pages 272 publisher Addison-Wesley Professional rating 7 reviewer Alex Moskalyuk ISBN 0321268539 summary IT manager's guide into implementing an open-source solution

Implementing an open source solution requires a different approach from the buyer's point of view: There is no salesperson you'll get a call from, there are no license agreements to sign and no serial numbers to enter. Access to the software is simplified, but sometimes there are few pointers about what to do next.

Golden takes the reader through different aspects of dealing with open source technologies. As one can see from the table of contents, the information is presented from the business professional's point of view. This title is for an IT manager, not developers or IT personnel who might be using open source products already and feel strongly about them. The basic question that the book explores is this: When does it make sense for an organization to implement an open source product? How do you evaluate the product's maturity, functionality, ease of use, support infrastructure and documentation quality so that running open source within the organization starts making sense?

Golden's answer is the Open Source Maturity Model (OSMM), which the author developed himself. The model asks the IT manager to evaluate the software, support, training options, documentation, integration and professional services on 10-point scale. If the technology ranking reaches a certain score (which highly depends on the userbase), then it will make sense to implement it.

For example, on page 144, when the author discusses software support options, he suggests assigning 6 points for excellent community support, 3 points for available paid support and 1 point for availability of self-support (i.e., an employee who understands the product). So on the next page JBoss gets 6 points for community support (very helpful and respectful forums), 2 points for commercial support (since it was e-mail and phone only, and no on-site support) and 0 points for self-support (since no one within the organization stepped up to claim herself as JBoss expert).

JBoss is the prime example used by the author throughout the chapters, and turns out to be quite a convenient choice -- the company offers commercial support, training and documentation for an open-source product. Golden's model is supposed to help IT managers distinguish high-quality open source projects from 0.0.1 version, so widely available on SourceForge.

The book's primary market is business professionals and IT managers who would probably benefit from having a formal evaluation model instead of relying on pure gut feeling. Despite the book's ambiguous title, it's not a manual on how to create your own business with open-source products. Some chapters will be helpful for figuring that out (Chapter 2 talks about business models in the open source world), but it's mostly for people who are implementing rather than developing open source products. The language is somewhat dry, but if your weekly reading requires CIO Magazine, you're probably used to that.

Something I think the author would have done well to include is a collection of in-depth case studies on open source implementations. There's some data on Sabre and Charles Schwab running successful businesses on open-source infrastructure, but the details are not there. While certain companies publish hundreds of case studies to prove that their products will either save money or allow the customer to make more, the success stories are not that frequently publicized in the open source world. Having such material in the book would provide a confidence booster for an IT manager, I think.

The last chapter or the first appendix is where I would expect to find information on solid open-source products suitable for corporate deployment. I mean, if the evaluation model is introduced, why not list the most prominent projects out there for quick reference? The highest-ranked open-source operating system, office suite, corporate messaging system, accounting and tax package, etc.?

Overall the book is pretty good for a manager who has heard of open source, but has not read too much into it. Chapter 1 in PDF format is available from Addison Wesley site. Golden also wrote an article for OreillyNet that deals with bringing open source into the organization. There's also an interview with the author on TechTarget.

You can purchase Succeeding With Open Source from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

prostoalex writes "For the week ending August 21st AMD managed to capture 54% market share among new desktops sold. Intel's share during the week was 45%. While Intel leads the U.S. CPU market with 82.7% market share, folks from AMD are proud to announce this is the second week this year - they also outsold Intel on the desktop market one time in April 2004."

prostoalex writes "The Wi-Fi Alliance approved Wi-Fi Multimedia (WMM) technology that allows packet prioritisation to the multimedia data streamed wireless LANs. Broadcom already announced that one of their access points and one reference design are WMM-certified. Other news outlets report that WMM will accelerate Wi-Fi adoption in consumer electronics and mobile devices."

prostoalex writes "Eric Sink from SourceGear shares his experience on software pricing. Whether you're developing open-source or proprietary software, the money has to come into the business in some form, and the article suggests several strategies as well as the pitfalls for managing software pricing. Sink claims it's tough to compete on price, dangerous to run seasonal promotions and almost impossible to avoid criticism on being over-priced."

prostoalex writes "Associated Press claims that media industry has been quietly avoiding Microsoft and trying to keep the movie and music industries to their own. However, these days there's little chance of doing business without Microsoft and the movie studios are afraid of digital piracy more than they're afraid of Microsoft. The biggest fear? Microsoft will use its desktop PC monopoly to charge Hollywood outrageous fees and basically own the movie industry. Microsoft refutes the accusations, saying that it's only interested in selling more copies of Windows and applications for its platform, and providing movie content would promote the platform. Also noteworthy that among the four video-on-demand services that New York Times reviewed recently two that got the journalistic acclaim (StarzTicket and CinemaNow) are run by technology companies - Real Networks and Microsoft."

prostoalex writes "Alan Cullison covered the events in Afghanistan for Wall Street Journal in late 2001. On the day that Kabul fell Cullison was offered to buy a bunch of computers from a local al-Qaeda office. For $1100 Cullison purchased an IBM desktop and a Compaq laptop. Before giving the hard drives to CIA agents in Afghanistan, Cullison copied the contents and shares some of the electronic messages in September's Atlantic Monthly. Interesting insight on al-Qaeda's financial operations and their merger with Taliban movement. The letters include e-mail messages from Osama bin Laden himself."

prostoalex writes "Wireless LANs seem to be enjoying the tremendous amount of interest lately, if you judge by the number of book covers and articles written on the topic. It's no wonder that this year the sales of WLAN equipment will grow 20% and generate $2.1 billion - everyone seems to be installing a wireless network in their office, their apartment complex or their own backyard. With extending the network into the radio world one is always extending the opportunities for unwelcome visitors to become part of the network. This book is a hands-on guide on hacking wireless networks followed by the recipes and principles to protect WLANs." Read on for the rest of prostoalex's review of Wi-Foo . Wi-Foo: The Secrets of Wireless Hacking author Andrew Vladimirov, Konstantin V. Gavrilenko, Andrei A. Mikhailovsky pages 608 publisher Addison-Wesley rating 9 reviewer Alex Moskalyuk ISBN 0321202171 summary Complete guide to wireless attack and defense

Wi-Foo requires a certain level of expertise, and it's unlikely that the book will be sold left and right or that everyone will want a copy. First of all, to do anything substantial you need to have Linux or FreeBSD operating system installed and know your way around it. Second of all, some knowledge of Perl is required to go through the script source code and enjoy occasional tools that appear on the Internet. The third required bit of knowledge is some familiarity with how wireless networks work and how one can gain advantage of those radio waves that seem to contain pieces of data.

The authors claim that one has little knowledge of wireless security unless he's done some war-driving. So, skipping the first two chapters (which talk about security in general), chapters 3, 4 and 5 take the reader through the hassle of setting up the Linux laptop with all the hardware and software needed to do successful war-driving. The last time I reviewed a book on getting wireless to work with Linux, you guys kept asking what card would work the best with a Linux laptop. To quote p. 28 of Wi-Foo, "if you're serious about 802.11 penetration testing, you should get a decent Prism chipset card. If you plan to base your security audit effort around the BSD platform, you probably cannot do without it. Prism chipset CF and PCMCIA cards are known to be produced by Addtron, Asante, Asus, Belkin, Buffalo, Compaq, Demark, D-Link, Linksys, Netgate, Netgear, Proxim, Senao, SMC, Teletronics, US Robotics, Zcomax and ZoomAir."

What follows could essentially be condensed into a single Web site with links to various Linux tools for network discovery, traffic analysis, encryption cracking, 802.1x cracking, frame generation and traffic injection. Kudos to the authors for providing sometimes detailed instructions on setting up the utility and getting the successful results out of it -- it's obvious that they did not just peruse the Web in search of what's available and provided a list of URLs; they installed, tested and reviewed all the Linux network security utilities listed in the table of contents. As much as many of the products and tools listed complement one another, it was useful for me to see the professionals' take on advantages and disadvantages of free tools out there. Wherever possible, the authors try to stick with free software, which makes the book a pretty useful guide for most enthusiasts out there.

The authors are serious about getting the reader to war-drive at some point, and chapter 8 specifically talks about generating wireless denial-of-service attacks as a last resort for a cracker, who seems to be in the bad mood when other methods of wireless penetration do not work. The books talks about antenna amplifiers and some hardware you might buy to be more successful in wireless hacking. They also discuss the possibilities of war-biking, war-walking and riding a hot air balloon.

By the time you're finished with the chapter 9, if your title includes words like "security" or "administrator," you will probably find yourself quite perplexed. That's where Part 3 (Defense) kicks in, as the authors discuss counter-measures against wireless cracking and possible steps one can take to secure the wireless network. It's not a typical don't-use-WEP-don't-broadcast-your-ID-don't-rely-o n-MAC-filtering preaching one can find in security manuals created for the home user (I am not saying those are bad -- for a home user they do provide necessary guidance in securing a WLAN). This is mostly industrial-level security, which might include multiple levels of protection, such as 802.11i implementation, implementing encryption around the wireless networks, creating hardware Linux-based gateways, deploying VPNs and intrusion detection systems. Setting up honeypots is missing from this list, although one can debate whether this could be considered a worthwhile project outside of academic world.

The book uses clear language and is easy to read. At the same time it takes a while to go through it, as you keep trying out the presented solution on your Linux laptop. The chapters that talk about the philosophical decisions when securing wireless LANs are helpful as well -- the authors occasionally get away from hands-on approach and talk about general principles to consider. Code examples are easy to follow, and every tool that's presented in the title is accompanied by the URL (for some reason Addison-Wesley did not include a CD with Wi-Foo); a large number of them point to sourceforge.net. All the links are available on the book's Web site; see the attack and defense sections.

If you should decide to take up a career as a wireless security consultant, Appendix G includes a variety of checklists and templates that the authors recommend for the corporate environment. Chapter 8 -- Breaking Through is available for free in PDF format. Overall I liked this book a lot. It seemed to concentrate on what's necessary without going into fluff and chapters like "History of radio" or "Linux on laptops for beginners." It's informative and easy to read; if you're an enthusiast, try out the free chapter and see if you like the authors' style, but if you're network admin or security professional, this book is almost a must. It's a combo of Exploiting Software and Hacking Exposed with specialization on wireless LANs.

You can purchase Wi-Foo from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews. To see your own review here, carefully read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

prostoalex writes "ZDNet UK says that, while SCO Group's legal department took a timeout from generating new lawsuits, their Linux license prices might be increased. 'Companies that license now may be able to do so cheaper than if they do so later,' [Blake] Stowell said. In the upcoming financials call, SCO expects to announce 6-figure revenue from its SCOSource division."

prostoalex writes "A 23-foot-long space rocket carrying 3 dummies exploded in the Pacific Northwest after reaching about 200 feet. The team was competing for Ansari X Prize, offering $10 million to the team that successfully completes a low-budget private space rocket capable of carrying men into space. Google News offers more perspectives into the event, the team is saying the rocket, whose parachute malfunctioned, would have to be rebuilt." And AmiNTT writes "Everygeek's favorite rocketeers over at Armadillo Aerospace have suffered a fairly serious setback over the weekend - the crash of their 48-inch vehicle link in a test hop at their 100 acre test field. Of course there is video and pictures - 2 3... This setback should keep them from flying for about five weeks, but will give them a chance to make some design changes. I'm sure they will be back better than ever. (Armadillo have shown up on Slashdot many times in the past.)"