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OS X Hacks
The book is split into 9 chapters; 'Files', 'Startup", 'Multimedia and the iApps', 'The User Interface', 'Unix and the Terminal', 'Networking', 'Email', 'The Web' and 'Databases'.
For my money the last chapter is a complete waste of space since it only covers installing MySQL and PostgresSQL, and if you can't figure out how to install them from the documentation then you aren't smart enough to use them. A number of the other tips would come close to that level, I feel their only use may be to encourage people who would otherwise stay away to make some use of the terminal and similar tools.
Over a dozen people have contributed 'hacks' to the book, among them some major geeks such as James Duncan Davidson (Tomcat author) and Jon Udell (well respected O'Reilly blogger.) This accounts for the wide number of areas covered by the hacks.
When I first started reviewing the book I would have complained about a large number of the tips being too application specific, too general or too low in skill level. Since then I've had a friend who wanted to edit a movie and we both found the chapter on iApps useful, one with a brand new Bluetooth phone who liked the couple of tips on Bluetooth and another who found the cross platform Windows-Mac stuff useful. so I have to say that while some of the tips might seem useless now you may come to appreciate them later.
Overall the book is well written, well laid out and well cross-referenced and covers a wide range of information. My one major beef is still that there are too many 'tips' that are well covered by other material. Since you shouldn't really get this book until you are at least Mac proficient and probably own a basic Mac book or two then perhaps a tenth of the hundred tips will be covered in most Mac books and perhaps another five to ten you will have discovered on your own.
While O'Reilly doesn't offer a sample chapter of this book online they do have a page at Hacks that lists all the hacks and allows you to read eight of them. There is also a page in the catalog with the Table of Contents, Index and Errata.
Reading over my notes I feel split between raving about how good the book is - well written with a bunch of useful tips and tricks for any Mac user - and complaining about the useless nature of some of the tips. After taking another look at 'Google Hacks' and my review I realised where the conflict lies -- in my level of experience on the Mac. If you already feel comfortable with getting your hands dirty on your Mac then this book may well not satisfy you. If, on the other hand, you still have some trepidation about hacking at your OS X Macintosh then you'll probably love this book.
You can purchase OS X Hacks from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
http://www.macosxhints.com/ rocks for searching, and if you're unclear on the concept, you can post a query and get an answer from someone in the know. Ad free, and on a decently fast server too. Highly recommended if you want to save a tree.
Yes, just open Terminal.app and type sudo justbuyadamnusbtwobuttonmouse -dumbass.
I'm just not sure that I agree with you here. A good DBA may not need to know very much in terms of system administration, but can probably walk all over a good sysadmin in terms of database design and management. A sysadmin will probably not be as familiar with MySQL as a good DBA will.
It seems to me as though what you're saying is sysadmins, because they can install these programs, exhibit a "certain level of expertise" that a person unfamiliar to a UNIX command line might not. A good DBA can always fall back on his/her SQL standards-compliant syntax and feel right at home, regardless of whether or not he or she can set up MSSQL Server, MySQL, PostgreSQL, DB2, or whatever.
the blood has stopped pumping, and he's left to decay
the me that you know is now made up of wires