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25 Years of O'Reilly Books
wka writes "The year 2003 marks the 25th anniversary of publisher O'Reilly and Associates. O'Reilly has a site to mark the event. Readers can learn about the origin of the first animal covers in the time line, and read an anniversary message from Tim O'Reilly, stating his 'audacious' goal '[t]o change the world by capturing and transmitting the knowledge of innovators.'"
We even ran O'Reilly WebSite for a number of years with no complaints. Take that Microsoft! No IIS for us!
Congrats and Well Done to an icon of the industry.
*votes to change RTFM to RTFO'Reilly Book*
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When I grow up, I want to be a kid again.
>>Publishers like Manning, Wrox, and Microsoft Press have been able to offer books that blow away the competing O'Reilly books and at a fraction of the cost.
I agree that ORA books have been getting a wee bit more expensive lately. But I don't really think the quality of their content is slipping.
ADW has been putting out quality books for years. In some cases the books are better than ORA's. Though they're a bit dryer in content and style.
WROX and MS Press? I guess that we all have our tastes. If they work for you, then go for it. Personally, I have a hard time reading both. The typesetting is hard to read. And the books themselves...just look cheap. ORA's are easy to read and have a touch of class to them.
In the case of WROX, my past experience with them has been that their books are full of tecnical errors. More than the average textbook. If someone can confirm that their quality has improved, I'll start looking at their books again.
Huh?
Without trying to sound like an advertisment, I've found O'Reilly's Safari service is ebooks over the web done RIGHT. They get your contribution which funds the library, you get cheap access to books that would otherwise cost you a lot more money legitimately. The only downside is that you don't get the geek-cred of having all of those animal books on your shelf at work.
Has anyone seen any other publishers offering a similar service that is as good value wise? I wasn't particularly impressed by the offering from Wrox but I'm guessing that someone else out there will follow O'Reilly's lead.
I've been a unix system administrator for about 10 years now. In fact, I've never had another professional job outside of system administration. And I owe *all* of it to O'Reilly. Their books launched my career, and made me what I am today. I've paid full cover price for my entire library several times over (new editions, you know) but they deserve a larger chunk of my salary than that. Congratulations, and keep up the good work!
$comment =~ s/($verb)\s+($noun)/IN SOVIET RUSSIA, $2 $1s YOU!/g;
pink books. I also have brown books, mint books an orange book and one book that doesn't really have any color at all.
Yeah, I've got a couple red books and a handful of "bumble bee" books from the "other guys," but none of them are day to day usable like the O'Reillys. Even where I've found the odd book a bit superior for first contact with a particular subject it's the O'Reilly's that end up being my prefered reference down the road.
But most of all no other computer tech books give me the pure *pleasure* of O'Reilly books. I love books. I've always loved books. When I was two and could first answer on my own the question, " What would you like for your birthday?" I said, "Books!"
O'Reilly books aren't just manuals. They're honest to goodness, God almighty *Books.* No one else seems quite able to pull this off ( although New Riders is starting to get close).
If I could only take one tech book to a desert island it would be an O'Reilly because they're the only books of the genre just plain worth *reading*.
KFG