Amazon's Best Computer Books of 2004

theodp writes "Amazon.com's Editors have announced their selections for the Best Books of 2004 in the Computers and Internet category. Their favorite book of the year? Excel Hacks, which edged out Head First Servlets & JSP (#3), a Grand Theft Auto Strategy Guide (#5) and The Data Warehouse ETL Toolkit (#8). Can Slashdot readers offer some more inspired choices?"

Comments

That wardriving book

[Spy Handler]

that wardriving book by that Russian dude.... I wanna get that.

Re:That wardriving book

[mordors9]

After you get done with that one, perhaps Hacking for Dummies, another soon to be timeless classic. :-)

Best computer book of the year - 1979

[Realistic_Dragon]

Valves - why they are better than transistors.
Transistors - why they are better than valves.
The Transputer - computing the future in paralell.
Pong - strategy guide.

And the number one computing book of 1979.

Miss DEC - the pagent.

Re:Best computer book of the year - 1979

[Jorkapp]

Best magazines of 1979:

* Circuit diagrams - Schematics that leave nothing to the imagination! (With included 3 page fold out)

* Computing Enthusiast - How to build a computer with only $165,348! Step by step guide included.

* Electronics and more - The latest Gaming machine - now with a CRT display! Wow! (Included Tic-Tac-Toe Punch-card game)

I've got one for you.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's called "Hide The Fact You're On AOL By Using A Free Webmail Service." I just wrote it.

Oh christ..

[Anonymous Coward]

Those are barely "Computer Books" Those are more acuratly described as "Books for idiots with an attention span of 5 seconds flat"

I was expecting to see real books on that list. Things like C Unleashed perhaps. Not that cornicopia of crap.

Re:Oh christ..

[mr_z_beeblebrox]

Those are barely "Computer Books" Those are more acuratly

I missed the second half of your post. Theres a lot going on here with all the... ooh shiny

Best computer book ever

[91degrees]

They didn't mention The story about ping Clearly the best introduction to this network test tool.

Just look at the reviews, especially the one from John E. Fracisco.

Re:Best computer book ever

[alptraum]

Oh dear, slashdot will serious disrupt the Amazon review system, for the Fracisco comment mentioned above:

6963 of 7162 people found the following review helpful.

Usability

[RAMMS EIN]

Probably they felt that GNUCash is so easy you don't need a book with it, whereas Excel is such a beast you absolutely need a manual.

Re:Usability

[DogDude]

Probably they felt that GNUCash is so easy you don't need a book with it, whereas Excel is such a beast you absolutely need a manual.

Not that the two programs are at all related, but there can't be more than a few hundred active users of GnuCash, and even if every one of those people bought a book, it still wouldn't end up anywhere near Amazon's Top 10.

Re:How did they choose?

[mwood]

Probably by running a quick query:

SELECT quantityonhand FROM booksinwarehouse SORTED BY quantityonhand DESCENDING

and taking the first ten rows.

(Yes, I typed that off the top of my head, and I don't wallow in SQL 8x5 every week.)

Sales volume

[MadFarmAnimalz]

This might be more logical an indicator of what the buying public considers a good book.

Also windows and gaming heavy though. Erh... And why's there a book called "Windows XP for Dummies"? How dumb do you have to be to not only use XP but to require a book for it? And furthermore, a book slagging you off for being such a dummy? The mentally retarded mascochist niche must be bigger than I thought.

Thank goodness...

[eeg3]

That the Grand Theft Auto Guide is getting it's due. I don't know what I would've done without it.

Re:Thank goodness...

[Tyler Eaves]

Dead god. Has it come to this? Why do you need a strategy guide for a fscking FOOTBALL game?

how about us dummies?

[koi88]

I don't buy no book that doesn't have "for dummies" in the title.
So I wanna preorder

• Excel Hacks: 100 Industrial-Strength Tips and Tools for dummies
• The World's 20 Greatest Unsolved Problems for dummies

But really interesting sounds No. 4:

• On Intelligence for dummies

Quote from "Excel Hacks" review...

[beeglebug]

"The spreadsheet is the software tool that turns everyone into a hacker"

Riiiiiight...

Re:Consumer books are hot

[Timesprout]

Jesus what planet have you been living on. Consumer orientated books have always been 'hot'. Why do you think there are million books in the stores on do xxx with excel, access, word, photoshop. Have you never heard of the XXX for dummies series?

I have a $20 suggestion

[antifoidulus]

Best career book you can buy

Missing from the list

[Eric Giguere]

Check out the hilarious Dating Design Patterns. (Your spouse may wonder why you're reading it, though.)

Eric

Re:How did they choose?

[wwwojtek]

(Yes, I typed that off the top of my head, and I don't wallow in SQL 8x5 every week.)

Sure you don't. I ran your query and here is what I got
1032423
323234
323321
34422
32425
23443
23323
23421
10008
8777
not very interesting, isn't it?

Re:'LaTeX companion' should definitely be on the l

[Timesprout]

Hmmm is the formatting of you post testament to its teaching prowess?

Re:Eigenpolls

[PornMaster]

eigenpolls [all-technology.com] a way to gather knowledge from a crowed.

From a crowed what?

LIMIT

[ylikone]

You need to add "LIMIT 10" to the end of your sql statement.

Re:Question about C book.

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know about that. A few files I have lying around in the darker receses of my hard drive are into some odd scenes. Just yesterday I caught exception.c wearing a rubber gimp suit and spanking debug.h with a hairbrush.

Best computer book of 1987

[hockpatooie]

Compute!'s third book of Commodore 64 Games.

Type in hex code like mad!
Actually, this is the best computer book *ever*.

I don't trust their review process...

[ayjay29]

... when their top rated music CD is this.

Re:How did they choose?

[redivider]

SELECT nerds FROM slashdot_comments WHERE takes_a_joke='way too seriously'

Re:How did they choose?

[Kehvarl]

I especially recomment 23323, it's one of those books you just can't put down (because the cheap glue in the binding leeches out and adheres the book to your flesh), but it's actually quite good. a bit of romance, some suspense, plenty of action, and of course a surprise ending (here's a hint: the string isn't null-terminated).

Actually it is interesting

[scovetta]

1032423
323234
323321
34422
32425
23443
2332 3 <--- they need a new
23421 <--- database engine
10008
8777