The actual quote is: "The only truly secure system is one that is powered off, cast in a block of concrete and sealed in a lead-lined room with armed guards -- and
even then I have my doubts."
The quote was made by Dr. Eugene Spafford, director of www.cerias.org at the University of Purdue. He's most probably most notable for his work on Tripwire.
I always thought it would be nice to have something similar to a glove. Anyone remember that Nintendo glove they had? How bout the movie with Fred Savage called the wizard, it was in there. Seriously though, I think it would be very easy to be able to move your hand side to side, and up or down to mimic the movement of a mouse. There could be some issues with wrist strain but it might help to have the user hold on to a ball or something. Blech....just an idea.
Oh and for the computer geeks who think a touch screen would be nice, hah! I'd love to see you trying to see through twinkie filling.
The only ports I know @home scans for is 119 or NNTP. They're doing this only for because of the fact that they got threatened with a blacklist because of the amount of spam from @home.
I've known several people who run servers on @home and none of them have ever got into any trouble. The bottom line is, it is against the TOS. You "could" theoretically lose your access. But I highly doubt it will ever happen. For me, I'm content running my servers on high numbered ports and redirecting them to the standard ports on the inside of my lan. Considering I'm the only one who uses my servers, it shouldn't matter if I have to connect to some odd, high numbered port. I'm very doubtful that @home would scan all 65,000 ports on thier 24/8 subnet.
I've heard rare cases of @home services (Media one I believe) redirecting inbount port 80 traffic to one of thier own web servers, preventing you from running on port 80. That would be the _smart_ way to do it if you ask me. Then again, I don't think thier too smart.
Bottom line is unless they get a complaint or your using an unreasonable amount of bandwidth, they have no reason to kick you off. Your paying you monthly bill and they probably don't want to spend the man hours enforcing some stupid TOS.
You can check out Webusenet. I kinda hate recommending them as they have had some MAJOR problems as of late. Webusenet is the same company who runs usernetserver.com one of the major premium new services.
You should also check out alt.binaries.news-server-comparison or something like that (do a search on *news*server*). You can good some good recommendations in there as well as see some the problems usenetserver.com has been facing lately. Despite all the complainers in the group, overall, usenetserver.com is a pretty good service.
So you do absolutely nothing in the way of volunteering to help out humanity yet your content to flame others who wish to use thier talents in some way to help others. Get off your fucking high horse. I can't believe your such a hypocrite. You do nothing more than spew pessimism to those wishing to make a diference.
It's not the fact Africa needs food and shelter more than they need internet access. It's the fact that people want to use thier skills to make a difference. True, maybe it's not the best way to help out others but it will help none the less. The fact that you sit there and berate them for trying to help is disgusting.
"First they came for the hackers. But I never did anything illegal with my computer, so I didn't speak up. Then they came for the pornographers. But I thought there was too much smut on the Internet anyway, so I didn't speak up. Then they came for the anonymous remailers. But a lot of nasty stuff gets sent from anon.penet.fi, so I didn't speak up. Then they came for the encryption users. But I could never figure out how to work PGP anyway, so I didn't speak up. Then they came for me. And by that time there was no one left to speak up." -- Unknown
A couple months ago there was an article in one of the Linux mags about a guy who wrote some perl code that interfaced with IBM's via voice and a MySQL database so you could play mp3's by voice. Pretty damn cool if you ask me.
No I don't have a link or issue number. I'm too damn lazy. If it interests you enough put a post through and I'll look it up when I get home.
Sounds strange but I'd actually recommend "linux firewalls" by Robert Ziegler.
I've read all of the books mentioned so far and I'd have to say first place goes to Orielly's even though it's a tad out of date. Second goes to Ziegler's book even though it's for Linux. It explains some important info in a very easy to understand layout that you need to get your firewall running.
Most importanly, don't forget the indespensable IPFilter FAQ someone mentioned above.
"The only truly secure system is one that is powered off, cast in a block of concrete and sealed in a lead-lined room with armed guards -- and even then I have my doubts." -- Eugene H. Spafford
Wanting to gain some experience with networking I decided to build a LAN in my room. It's not a small room, but it's not a large one either. My requirements were to keep the noise and heat down as well as have an aesthetic appeal to it.
I started by trying to build a desk with integrated rack mount cabinets on the side. It worked but it was huge and became a pain to work with. I eventually gave up on that design when I ran out of money to do the air conditioning and switch to a seperate power circuit. My cabinet/desk had a good design to it but in the end I decided it wasn't what I wanted. Too much money and even though I thought it would save money to build it myself, in the end I could have saved money going with rackmount retail products.
Next design....rackmount everything! I thought about this one for awhile and eventually this is what I would like to do. But for now it's not feasible. The cost for 3 cabinets, 10 cases, seperate power circuit, UPS's, etc, was something I couldn't afford. Besides, the majority of my computers were P2 233's or P133's. Why spend $250 on a case for a computer that was only worth $100-200 to begin with?
My current decision, wire racks. I've found these for around $300 for a 72" wide by 24" deep rack. They offer excellent cooling, they're sturdy (600lbs per shelf) and they're relativly cheap. I still have to bring in another power circuit as well as UPS's and Air condition the entire room, but in the long run, this is the only feasible option for me. The only problem is the noise. So far I'm not too worried about it, I've been putting up with a few computers sitting out in the open for awhile now. Lately I haven't even noticed. Besides sometimes it nice to have some computers humming while I sleep, it keeps me dreaming about my next hairbrained idea.
What I've learned from all of this:
If you build something custom it will cost 10 times what you planned on even if you plan on bieng 10 times over budget
It's more fun to dream about building it than to actually build it
Start off simple, then add all the cool things you have to have
I'll never be happy
Credit cards are hard to pay off
Just be prepared if you decide to do this yourself. It takes a long time and a lot of money.
I'm so glad other people are having this problem as well. I thought it was just me. Every person I have ever asked about this just looked at me like I was insane.
I see a lot of similarity with some of the above posts. I can play Command and Conquer or Rainbow 6 for days on end but within 5 minutes of playing Quake or Halflife I get all dizzy.
My worst case came after watching my buddy play Team Fortress Classic for less than 15 minutes. I had a splitting headache and the worst case of dizziness for the entire weekend. The strange thing is he was on a brand new Athlon 800 with a 32MB DDR GeForce video card, 512MB ram and a 21" moniter. Top of the line everything. That makes me wonder if the effects are the cause of hardware. It's sounds very plausible but seems a bit odd im my circumstance.
My worst fear is about the future. Most sci-fi techno books paint a picture of a future with "virtual worlds" (i.e. Snowcrash). I'm just worried that I won't be able to participate because of my motion sickness.
Suffice to say, I'm glad other people are having this problem. Up until now I thought I was the only one.
While I'm all for fighting abusive power hungry corporations, even bastards like Mattel, I have to side with them this time.
Why did you choose the name "thebarbies"? My guess is because it's something you associate with girls and girliness (is that a word?). Something that Mattel has spent millions if not billions of dollars to achieve. The fact that you think you can use thier trademarked name without retort from them is mind numbing to say the least.
On the other hand, I kind of hope you win. I hate Mattel for what they did to Sorehands.
"but then I feel Metallica does have a legitemate beef with Napster since it's quite obvious that Napster was not making an effort to enforce its T&C by shutting down users trading copyrighted mp3's."
Napster has complied. A list of over 300,000 users was given to Napster. Napster banned thier nick and thier IP. What the hell do you expect them to do? Because ISP's use dynamic ip's for most of thier users is not the fault of Napster.
"In not enforcing its ban on pirated material, Napster was assisting in the crime of pirating"
They did enforce the ban! Napster has never assisted in piracy. They built a tool, a popular tool, one that would have been created by someone else if they didn't. The fact that it's users use it for piracy is not thier fault. The fact that someone used a Glock to go blow someone's brains out does not make it Glock's fault.
"They DO have the necessary information to track down a user and ban them since they collect the personal info when you register"
And I'll bet $100 that less than 2% of Napster users use thier real info. Napster doesn't verify names and addresses. If you were unscrupulous and signing up for Napster to pirate songs, would you use your real info?
"Napster should have complied with the lawyers instead of fighting them tooth and nail"
In essence, bending over and saying, "do what you want with us, we'll do whatever you say". Someone needs to stand up to these companies and let them no that the threat of a lawsuit is NOT the way to get your way!
I'm not saying Napster is the holiest of the holies. Sure thier morals could use a little fine tuning. It still does not make thier program illegal. Where does it stop? First Napster, than what? Usenet? IRC? WWW?
The RIAA had the oppurtunity awhile ago to embrace the technology and create a new and exciting business model. One that could posssibly renew thier strength is this exciting new world. Instead, they fight the technology and sue everyone who has a vision of the way this new technology could be used.
The RIAA has one interest and one interest only, to keep thier aging business model alive as long as possible. They had the oppurtunity to start something new. They failed. Now they're just prolonging thier fate in an attemp to line thier pockets just a little bit more.
Most would agree this was meant as a deliberate scare tactic to try and bully slashdot.
The original letter from MS demanded that the offending posts be withdrawn within 48 hours as called for by the DMCA. Since it's been well over 48 hours and we haven't heard of anymore threats from the MS camp I'm guessing they realized they don't have a leg to stand on.
I've seen you argue in no less than 5 of the above comments. You refuse to admit your even partially wrong.
"Several people have asserted that a firewall somehow magically has more resources to deal with an attack. Sorry, no. If you have N+1 hosts, calling the one a firewall doesn't create more resources to deal with an attack."
Well considering that according to the article a large number of attacks were coming from nonroutable ip's......
block in quick on fxp0 from 10.0.0.0/8 to any
Hmmmm. looks like you just stopped a lot of the nasty traffic.
"If you can secure a Unix firewall, you can secure a Unix server."
Yes, they should have secured _all_ the boxes. Given the fact that they had already been extremely stressed with little sleep. The time needed to secure one box is far less than that to secure many.
I'm not arguing that they shouldn't secure the boxen behind. But your argument that they wasted time with a firewall is simply moronic.
How about trying to improve on the Eliza bot. I'm fairly positive Eliza bot would have been covered quite significantly in you AI class. For some more info check out http://www.msu.edu/user/gilber63/paper3.htm.
I've always been intrigued by this bot and since (according to the above article) she was created back in 1987 I'm sure there would be lots of "updates" you could make.
OTOH, you may have covered this extensivly and this could be very unoriginal. Whatever the case, Eliza is a prime example of AI at work.
Exactly how much do you think it costs to rent a place for holding the conference and organize a conference? We're probably talking about a meeting of a few hundred people, so trust me nobody is getting rich here.
Well, Defcon is held yearly in Las Vegas. A couple hundred people come. They have speakers. It's $50.
Yep, I'd have to agree it's overpriced. I'd love to go to a BSDcon but not for that kind of money. If I'm going to spend that much dough, I'd rather go to a SANS conference where I get a bunch of hard copy literature with the lectures.
Eventually the market will evolve where they are cheaper
I have to disagree here. The record companies have promised for many years to lower the price of music, whether it be cd or cassette. To date, have you seen any relevant change? Didn't think so.
People have complained for many years about the atrocious cost of music. Finally a technology comes along that allows music to be distributed without the normal costs of production and rather than embrace the technology, they attempt to set us back.
When the greedy record companies finally realize they can't keep gouging thier customers because they have been for so many years, I'll be more than willing to purchase music from them. Unfortunately I don't see it happening. This industry has made _many_ wealthy record exec's who I'm sure have no desire to lower the cost of music just because they can. They'd much rather keep the price the same while lowering thier production costs even more, just so they can have that extra cash lining thier pockets.
When they record exec's decide to get some morals, so will I. Until then, unless I want a cd with _every_ song on it, I'll just grab the one's I want, and not from napster. If I feel the band really deserves some credit, I'd much rather take the time and send $10 to the band directly, than have them get thier $1 from the record company for the cd I bought.
I just found this the other day on some linux quotes list. Sorry I can't find the link
"The only "intuitive" interface is the nipple. After that, it's all learned." -- Bruce Ediger, bediger@teal.csn.org, in comp.os.linux.misc, on X interfaces.
This is scary. As I lay in bed last night I was reading the book in question. After bieng sucked into the book for over an hour I finally put it down to sleep. Hmm, maybe Slashdot would be interested in a review when I finish. Doh! Oh well.
Anyways, I can't comment too extensivly on the book, I've only made it through a couple chapters.
So far this has got to be the best technical book I've ever read. Paul DuBois's writing style fit me perfect. I often have a hard time reading technical books. My mind starts to wonder and I lose track of the trail most tech books seem to lead you down.
With MySQL is was different. Everytime I started thinking about a "whatif" scenario Paul DuBois was there explaining the answer. It sort of startled me as I found my own logic following the books.
Too often I find myself struggling to keep up with some of the Orielly books. Most of thier books seem to already assume some level of proficiency with the topic on hand. I love they're books, I just have to read them a couple of times. Once to get an overview and once to put it all together.
So far I'm only a couple chapters deep in MySQL. I bought this book because it had some good reviews at Amazon (I bought it local) and I literaly had no experiences with databases. Withing this first couple chapters I find myself understanding the concept fairly good (IMO). Unless this book takes a drastic turn for the worse I can't imagine not getting my money's worth (I paid retail $59.95).
While I can't guarantee your train of thought will follow the authors like mine did. I still highly recommend this book to anyone with an interest in MySQL. Even if you have no experience with databases Paul makes it easy to start off and learn the basics.
Before you go labeling a whole publishers books "horrible" you might want to read more than a couple.
I've only had the oppurtunity to read two of thier books (linux firewalls, MySQL), but I've found the quality of these two books to be a step above the rest. I'm sure that New Riders has put out a few books that aren't up to par, but as far as my experiences go they're great.
I'm quite fond of Orielly's books. Don't get me wrong. However most often I have a hard time reading them from front to back. More often than not, they work best as a reference. Whereas with both of the New Riders books I've read, I found it very easy and entertaining to lay down and read for a couple of hours.
Slashdot Mirror
"The only truly secure system is one that is powered off, cast in a block of concrete and sealed in a lead-lined room with armed guards -- and even then I have my doubts."
The quote was made by Dr. Eugene Spafford, director of www.cerias.org at the University of Purdue. He's most probably most notable for his work on Tripwire.
Just letting you know.
LiNT
Oh and for the computer geeks who think a touch screen would be nice, hah! I'd love to see you trying to see through twinkie filling.
LiNT
I've known several people who run servers on @home and none of them have ever got into any trouble. The bottom line is, it is against the TOS. You "could" theoretically lose your access. But I highly doubt it will ever happen. For me, I'm content running my servers on high numbered ports and redirecting them to the standard ports on the inside of my lan. Considering I'm the only one who uses my servers, it shouldn't matter if I have to connect to some odd, high numbered port. I'm very doubtful that @home would scan all 65,000 ports on thier 24/8 subnet.
I've heard rare cases of @home services (Media one I believe) redirecting inbount port 80 traffic to one of thier own web servers, preventing you from running on port 80. That would be the _smart_ way to do it if you ask me. Then again, I don't think thier too smart.
Bottom line is unless they get a complaint or your using an unreasonable amount of bandwidth, they have no reason to kick you off. Your paying you monthly bill and they probably don't want to spend the man hours enforcing some stupid TOS.
LiNT
You should also check out alt.binaries.news-server-comparison or something like that (do a search on *news*server*). You can good some good recommendations in there as well as see some the problems usenetserver.com has been facing lately. Despite all the complainers in the group, overall, usenetserver.com is a pretty good service.
Hope it helps,
LiNT
It's not the fact Africa needs food and shelter more than they need internet access. It's the fact that people want to use thier skills to make a difference. True, maybe it's not the best way to help out others but it will help none the less. The fact that you sit there and berate them for trying to help is disgusting.
LiNT
"First they came for the hackers.
But I never did anything illegal with my computer,
so I didn't speak up.
Then they came for the pornographers.
But I thought there was too much smut on the Internet anyway,
so I didn't speak up.
Then they came for the anonymous remailers.
But a lot of nasty stuff gets sent from anon.penet.fi,
so I didn't speak up.
Then they came for the encryption users.
But I could never figure out how to work PGP anyway,
so I didn't speak up.
Then they came for me.
And by that time there was no one left to speak up."
-- Unknown
A couple months ago there was an article in one of the Linux mags about a guy who wrote some perl code that interfaced with IBM's via voice and a MySQL database so you could play mp3's by voice. Pretty damn cool if you ask me.
No I don't have a link or issue number. I'm too damn lazy. If it interests you enough put a post through and I'll look it up when I get home.
LiNT
I've read all of the books mentioned so far and I'd have to say first place goes to Orielly's even though it's a tad out of date. Second goes to Ziegler's book even though it's for Linux. It explains some important info in a very easy to understand layout that you need to get your firewall running.
Most importanly, don't forget the indespensable IPFilter FAQ someone mentioned above.
Good luck, LiNT
-- Eugene H. Spafford
LiNT
They have a great NT Security book online as well as a bunch of great articles, tools and links.
LiNT
Wanting to gain some experience with networking I decided to build a LAN in my room. It's not a small room, but it's not a large one either. My requirements were to keep the noise and heat down as well as have an aesthetic appeal to it.
I started by trying to build a desk with integrated rack mount cabinets on the side. It worked but it was huge and became a pain to work with. I eventually gave up on that design when I ran out of money to do the air conditioning and switch to a seperate power circuit. My cabinet/desk had a good design to it but in the end I decided it wasn't what I wanted. Too much money and even though I thought it would save money to build it myself, in the end I could have saved money going with rackmount retail products.
Next design....rackmount everything! I thought about this one for awhile and eventually this is what I would like to do. But for now it's not feasible. The cost for 3 cabinets, 10 cases, seperate power circuit, UPS's, etc, was something I couldn't afford. Besides, the majority of my computers were P2 233's or P133's. Why spend $250 on a case for a computer that was only worth $100-200 to begin with?
My current decision, wire racks. I've found these for around $300 for a 72" wide by 24" deep rack. They offer excellent cooling, they're sturdy (600lbs per shelf) and they're relativly cheap. I still have to bring in another power circuit as well as UPS's and Air condition the entire room, but in the long run, this is the only feasible option for me. The only problem is the noise. So far I'm not too worried about it, I've been putting up with a few computers sitting out in the open for awhile now. Lately I haven't even noticed. Besides sometimes it nice to have some computers humming while I sleep, it keeps me dreaming about my next hairbrained idea.
What I've learned from all of this:
Just be prepared if you decide to do this yourself. It takes a long time and a lot of money.
LiNT
I see a lot of similarity with some of the above posts. I can play Command and Conquer or Rainbow 6 for days on end but within 5 minutes of playing Quake or Halflife I get all dizzy.
My worst case came after watching my buddy play Team Fortress Classic for less than 15 minutes. I had a splitting headache and the worst case of dizziness for the entire weekend. The strange thing is he was on a brand new Athlon 800 with a 32MB DDR GeForce video card, 512MB ram and a 21" moniter. Top of the line everything. That makes me wonder if the effects are the cause of hardware. It's sounds very plausible but seems a bit odd im my circumstance.
My worst fear is about the future. Most sci-fi techno books paint a picture of a future with "virtual worlds" (i.e. Snowcrash). I'm just worried that I won't be able to participate because of my motion sickness.
Suffice to say, I'm glad other people are having this problem. Up until now I thought I was the only one.
LiNT
Damnit I love that line. What was it from? I'm thinking the Simpson's but I'm not sure. Family guy maybe?
LiNT
Why did you choose the name "thebarbies"? My guess is because it's something you associate with girls and girliness (is that a word?). Something that Mattel has spent millions if not billions of dollars to achieve. The fact that you think you can use thier trademarked name without retort from them is mind numbing to say the least.
On the other hand, I kind of hope you win. I hate Mattel for what they did to Sorehands.
LiNT
I've been planning on doing this when I move real soon. If you get something together please email it to me @ Lint@hungover.com
LiNT
"but then I feel Metallica does have a legitemate beef with Napster since it's quite obvious that Napster was not making an effort to enforce its T&C by shutting down users trading copyrighted mp3's."
Napster has complied. A list of over 300,000 users was given to Napster. Napster banned thier nick and thier IP. What the hell do you expect them to do? Because ISP's use dynamic ip's for most of thier users is not the fault of Napster.
"In not enforcing its ban on pirated material, Napster was assisting in the crime of pirating"
They did enforce the ban! Napster has never assisted in piracy. They built a tool, a popular tool, one that would have been created by someone else if they didn't. The fact that it's users use it for piracy is not thier fault. The fact that someone used a Glock to go blow someone's brains out does not make it Glock's fault.
"They DO have the necessary information to track down a user and ban them since they collect the personal info when you register"
And I'll bet $100 that less than 2% of Napster users use thier real info. Napster doesn't verify names and addresses. If you were unscrupulous and signing up for Napster to pirate songs, would you use your real info?
"Napster should have complied with the lawyers instead of fighting them tooth and nail"
In essence, bending over and saying, "do what you want with us, we'll do whatever you say". Someone needs to stand up to these companies and let them no that the threat of a lawsuit is NOT the way to get your way!
I'm not saying Napster is the holiest of the holies. Sure thier morals could use a little fine tuning. It still does not make thier program illegal. Where does it stop? First Napster, than what? Usenet? IRC? WWW?
The RIAA had the oppurtunity awhile ago to embrace the technology and create a new and exciting business model. One that could posssibly renew thier strength is this exciting new world. Instead, they fight the technology and sue everyone who has a vision of the way this new technology could be used.
The RIAA has one interest and one interest only, to keep thier aging business model alive as long as possible. They had the oppurtunity to start something new. They failed. Now they're just prolonging thier fate in an attemp to line thier pockets just a little bit more.
LiNT
Most would agree this was meant as a deliberate scare tactic to try and bully slashdot.
The original letter from MS demanded that the offending posts be withdrawn within 48 hours as called for by the DMCA. Since it's been well over 48 hours and we haven't heard of anymore threats from the MS camp I'm guessing they realized they don't have a leg to stand on.
Good for Slashdot and good for Andover!
LiNT
I've seen you argue in no less than 5 of the above comments. You refuse to admit your even partially wrong.
"Several people have asserted that a firewall somehow magically has more resources to deal with an attack. Sorry, no. If you have N+1 hosts, calling the one a firewall doesn't create more resources to deal with an attack."
Well considering that according to the article a large number of attacks were coming from nonroutable ip's......
block in quick on fxp0 from 10.0.0.0/8 to any
Hmmmm. looks like you just stopped a lot of the nasty traffic.
"If you can secure a Unix firewall, you can secure a Unix server."
Yes, they should have secured _all_ the boxes. Given the fact that they had already been extremely stressed with little sleep. The time needed to secure one box is far less than that to secure many.
I'm not arguing that they shouldn't secure the boxen behind. But your argument that they wasted time with a firewall is simply moronic.
LiNT
How about trying to improve on the Eliza bot. I'm fairly positive Eliza bot would have been covered quite significantly in you AI class. For some more info check out http://www.msu.edu/user/gilber63/paper3 .htm.
I've always been intrigued by this bot and since (according to the above article) she was created back in 1987 I'm sure there would be lots of "updates" you could make.
OTOH, you may have covered this extensivly and this could be very unoriginal. Whatever the case, Eliza is a prime example of AI at work.
Good luck,
LiNT
Well, Defcon is held yearly in Las Vegas. A couple hundred people come. They have speakers. It's $50.
Yep, I'd have to agree it's overpriced. I'd love to go to a BSDcon but not for that kind of money. If I'm going to spend that much dough, I'd rather go to a SANS conference where I get a bunch of hard copy literature with the lectures.
LiNT
Eventually the market will evolve where they are cheaper
I have to disagree here. The record companies have promised for many years to lower the price of music, whether it be cd or cassette. To date, have you seen any relevant change? Didn't think so.
People have complained for many years about the atrocious cost of music. Finally a technology comes along that allows music to be distributed without the normal costs of production and rather than embrace the technology, they attempt to set us back.
When the greedy record companies finally realize they can't keep gouging thier customers because they have been for so many years, I'll be more than willing to purchase music from them. Unfortunately I don't see it happening. This industry has made _many_ wealthy record exec's who I'm sure have no desire to lower the cost of music just because they can. They'd much rather keep the price the same while lowering thier production costs even more, just so they can have that extra cash lining thier pockets.
When they record exec's decide to get some morals, so will I. Until then, unless I want a cd with _every_ song on it, I'll just grab the one's I want, and not from napster. If I feel the band really deserves some credit, I'd much rather take the time and send $10 to the band directly, than have them get thier $1 from the record company for the cd I bought.
LiNTI just found this the other day on some linux quotes list. Sorry I can't find the link
"The only "intuitive" interface is the nipple. After that, it's all learned."
LiNT-- Bruce Ediger, bediger@teal.csn.org, in comp.os.linux.misc, on X interfaces.
This is scary. As I lay in bed last night I was reading the book in question. After bieng sucked into the book for over an hour I finally put it down to sleep. Hmm, maybe Slashdot would be interested in a review when I finish. Doh! Oh well.
Anyways, I can't comment too extensivly on the book, I've only made it through a couple chapters.
So far this has got to be the best technical book I've ever read. Paul DuBois's writing style fit me perfect. I often have a hard time reading technical books. My mind starts to wonder and I lose track of the trail most tech books seem to lead you down.
With MySQL is was different. Everytime I started thinking about a "whatif" scenario Paul DuBois was there explaining the answer. It sort of startled me as I found my own logic following the books.
Too often I find myself struggling to keep up with some of the Orielly books. Most of thier books seem to already assume some level of proficiency with the topic on hand. I love they're books, I just have to read them a couple of times. Once to get an overview and once to put it all together.
So far I'm only a couple chapters deep in MySQL. I bought this book because it had some good reviews at Amazon (I bought it local) and I literaly had no experiences with databases. Withing this first couple chapters I find myself understanding the concept fairly good (IMO). Unless this book takes a drastic turn for the worse I can't imagine not getting my money's worth (I paid retail $59.95).
While I can't guarantee your train of thought will follow the authors like mine did. I still highly recommend this book to anyone with an interest in MySQL. Even if you have no experience with databases Paul makes it easy to start off and learn the basics.
LiNTBefore you go labeling a whole publishers books "horrible" you might want to read more than a couple.
I've only had the oppurtunity to read two of thier books (linux firewalls, MySQL), but I've found the quality of these two books to be a step above the rest. I'm sure that New Riders has put out a few books that aren't up to par, but as far as my experiences go they're great.
I'm quite fond of Orielly's books. Don't get me wrong. However most often I have a hard time reading them from front to back. More often than not, they work best as a reference. Whereas with both of the New Riders books I've read, I found it very easy and entertaining to lay down and read for a couple of hours.
LiNTI agree with you on pretty much all of your points. You comment just reminded me of a funny quote I heard:
AOL: The internet on training wheels
LiNT