Open Source Books

I'm very pleased with this book. It's a great introduction to the GIMP, covering all the basics and also exploring some advanced effects you'll appreciate. It's got some great tips on drawing and photograph edition, with clear and simple examples. It's a must have for those who, like me, feel intimidated by the GIMP's unique interface.

If you're a novice at editing photos - the type of person who goes crazy trying to embed AutoCAD drawings or photos in Word documents - then this book is for you. I've been a little bit frustrated trying to find the exact page in this book that will tell me what I want to know, but overall, if you're patient, this book is great. If you haven't used the GIMP before, you should definitely have a text to help you out if you're doing more than cropping or color editing.
If you read through everything before attempting anything, I think this book may be 5 stars, but I haven't read it all.

A lot of folks don't know - or have conveniently forgotten - how daunting any technology can be, whether new or old. (If old technology, one is embarrassed in addition to being afraid: "how could I not have known this?" If new technology, one is embarrassed by falling back on the excuse of being old: "well, I come from the age of typewriters, so how could - or why should - I have known this?" Each is disingenuous.) The GIMP is no exception to those of us raised on the Royal Portable (see how easy it is!). Along comes Akkana Peck and demystifies that little Wilber. She takes me from one teachable moment to another, using the hokey-pokey approach. ("You've got knees... come on... everybody's got knees... just put them together close up tight....") And she mixes in plenty of immediate applications so you get immediate feedback and reward. And she uses clear, penetrable prose - the way real people talk when they're sitting together working through an issue. So, thank you, Akkana Peck. You really democratize technology and invention. (Thanks, von Hippel, for raising that question.)

One last thing. Real professionals, true to their calling, faithful to their foundations, never - *never* - flinch from relearning what they thought and hoped they learned when they were novices. Faith demands humility. One always learns from how a master does what you think you know. There is a difference between education and training. To criticize this book because it is 'not professional enough' merely demonstrates, I'm afraid (and you should be, too), that some of us confuse technology and technique.

David Block

This is a book about GNU Image Manipulation Program, an open source replacement for the expensive Photoshop software. I played with GIMP for a couple of years with some on-line tutorials. I didn't get very far and I was frustrated. With "Beginning Gimp, From Novice to Professional", I'm finding that the power of the software is amazing. It's also not hard to learn. Really! Now I'm doing great work and spending very little time getting it done. If you have done some photo editing, you know that getting great results quickly is a big deal.

The on-line instructions are out of date so forget it. Whether you are creating art with dazzling special effects, touching up vacation photos, adding text, making fliers and advertising copy, or all of the above, read this book. This is obviously a big endorsement of GIMP software too. [...]

This book is a must-have for anyone using GIMP for more than cropping and removing red-eye.

I've been using GIMP for about 3 months. I've been figuring out how to do different actions by trial and error, through web searches, and by reading PhotoShop books and tutorials. I tired of experimenting to understand the details of tools, and bought this book. It is OUTSTANDING. It contains clear explanations of many GIMP functions, and gives details and examples about the settings that control each one. I find the author's instructions very clearly written, well organized and complete.

Ms. Peck's technical skills and knowledge are reflected in her writing - she knows software development and software use, and communicates it well.

So far this book has greatly improved my use of many GIMP features and tools including: Layers, Clone, Selection tools, Selection Editing, Quick Mask, brushes, and paths, to name just a few.

My only criticism is that I have had a few advanced questions that are not covered, but this has been very rare. I'd welcome this book being twice as long - and I'd buy that new edition in a heartbeat. But until this outstanding author writes that book, the current edition is a great resource for learning and using GIMP.

Easily the best book on Linux that I have ever read or bought. Also one of the best computer books overall that I have ever used. That is saying a lot given that I have many computer books on the full range of computer topics and given that I am very picky in what I buy. The other reviews - all but one 5-star - give details on the book. I highly recommend it to anyone who wants to set up a Linux system or who has an interest in learning about Linux.

In regard to Linux in general, it provides a superior platform to the Microsoft platforms. Also the add-on programs that are available - all of the most useful are included in any of the best-known distributions, such as Ubuntu or Red Hat/Fedora - are as good as (in the sense of user-friendly) as the comparable Windows programs and in many cases better.

What is interesting to me is that much of the Linux development occurs outside the USA. It is a great tribute to the huge Linux-oriented developer universe that those developers have developed such outstanding tools that are free of the exorbitant, monopoly-determined prices of Microsoft products. So I hereby thank you all for your fantastic contributions to computer technology. Without your programs we would all be prey to the monopoly pricing and less-than-optimal programs produced by Microsoft. Not to say that there is anything wrong with most Microsoft products, but thank god there are better products available and better yet that most are free of licensing cost and most are changeable because the source code is available.

It's been two years since I've purchased this book, and I still reference it from time to time.

This book covers many common open-source applications used in conjunction with linux (bind,samba,sendmail,etc).

The examples are well-written. It's a great book for someone who is wanting to educate themselves to use linux.

I will note that the book seems to be red-hat/fedora biased. I use fedora, so that was a plus.

Much of what I have done piecing together information from Google is concisely done in this guide. This book got my mail server setup in no time whereas in the past I gave up in frustration (and lack of knowledge).

The mail chapter alone was worth the price but this book is full of solving common system administration tasks for people with some linux experience but not the expertise of being a sysadmin.

I really enjoy the content of the Book. Since my early days using Linux consult the linuxhomenetworking website for tips & howtos.

This is surely a must have book. It's been a while since I see some book with so much content !!!.

This certainly isn't a hand holding introduction to Linux by any means (jump in at the deep end, it works!). However if you're looking for a down to earth, practical guide to a variety of everyday tasks involved in running Linux in a server environment you'll find this book very useful. The subject matter covered is useful, and the explanations are sufficient with plenty of useful examples. Certainly a good introduction although obviously for the finer points of configuration more specialised sources will need to be consulted.

This book is a must if you are learning BSD Unix. All the commands you'll ever use are covered in this book. This book is easy to read and explains important topics without being exhaustive (a skill some authors never learn). A great book for newbies to BSD Unix!

If you're looking for a place to start with FreeBSD (or with open soruce in general), this is really the book to get. I knew a little UNIX before I picked this up, but essentially I was a babe in the woods. This book helped me get my system up and running with clear, task-oriented discussions of all of the essentials. This doesn't go as deep as some of the other FreeBSD books out there (for that you'll probably want "Absolute BSD" by Michael Lucas), but it does tell you what you need to know to get started.

I bought the book after I had installed a broken FreeBSD 4.7 on my old AMD K6-II. Despite the few typos here and there, the book helped me figure out what mistakes I had made during my previous installation ! I thus re-installed from scratch, following page by page. In no time, the system was up and running, I was customizing my shell behavior, connecting to the internet through my cable modem (Roadrunner/Earthlink), etc...

With some extra hardware, my old AMD K6-II is now a router/firewall between my cable modem and my WinXP/Red Hat 8.0 dual-boot box without a glitch, and am planning to add a second box to my LAN and use it as a printer server too.

For those who still hesitate, this book is written in english, not in nerdish. That itself makes it stand out from all the computer litterature I've read. This book is very valuable.

Annelise: your book made my hardware firewall project feel like a walk in the park. Thank you so much !

I first tried to install FreeBSD 4.8 on my K6-2 500mhz machine using the FreeBSD Handbook as a guide. While this book (the Handbook) is the standard for reference on the subject, it doesn't really explain it to a newbie's needs (even someone coming from Linux). My first attempts failed. I bought Annelise's book and was able to get 4.8 up and running following her suggestions. Though my copy came with a CD of FreeBSD 4.7, I had already burned ISO images of 4.8. The processes detailed in the book applied equally well. My only complaint would be that the book needs updating to reflect areas that a lot of people (most people) are interested in these days: burning music to CD - especially ATAPI CD devices, and USB mass storage devices. Both could be covered by a chapter on how to use SCSI emulation. I still give it 5 stars.

I had been getting fed up with using Windows and wanted to learn a new operating system. I bought Anderson's book and installed FreeBSD 4.6 on an extra hard drive in my computer. The book covers a broad range of topics and I found it very helpful during the installation process. The first 10 chapters are great. I started to get annoyed with Chapter 12 on connecting to the internet. I used PPP and something kept going wrong. I still do not know what it was but the errors I got were endless. The chapters little sidenotes on troubeshooting were of no help and I eventually gave up. Then I tried to install the printer daemon and also recieved errors. I followed the book as best I could and eventually gave up and moved on. Chapter 14 on the X window system is great. Other than the printer and PPP problems (which could have just been my misunderstanding of the book), I would recommend this book to someone else

I found this book to be excellent. It clearly defines areas to be researched, how to do that research, where to find the resources and how to make sure the package will meet the needs of the users. It is well written, easily understood by all levels of users and extremely, extremely helpful. If only users of open source software went through these steps, open source would be far more successful than it already is.

Bernard Golden's book offers one of the most comprehensive analytical tools for evaluating open source software projects, his Open Source Maturity Model (which is also featured on his website, www.navicasoft.com.) The book starts with a general overview of open source software, open source business models, and key legal issues, and then discusses the OSMM in depth. It also offers a very detailed and fair evaluation of a major open source project, JBoss.

Whether you are a developer creating an open source project, a user evaluating an open source project, or an investor doing due diligence, this book is a very valuable resource.

This book is perhaps the best resource I've run across on the subject of evaluating open source.

In this book, Golden explains the methodology of applying his Open Source Maturity Model (OSMM). OSMM is a framework for evaluating the maturity of an open source project and its usefulness, specific to an organizations software requirements. The book provides excellent insight into the organization and culture of open source projects and provides a wealth of recommendations for investigating and evaluation open source software.

I was really blown away by the accessibility and accuracy of Golden's writing. Having been involved in open source for about 6 years in one context or another, I found his analysis of open source software to be spot-on. If you are looking for a simple, guided, and clear methodology for evaluating the usefulness and maturity of a specific open source project, you should read this book. It's a goldmine.

Any IT Manager with their eye on the radar knows that open source software is rapidly maturing into a viable alternative to expensive commercial software packages. However, there are still some barriers to entry into the OSS world, especially for IT Managers within large, traditional, non-IT companies.

The OSMM evaluation method described in this book is a perfect fit for an IT Manager trying to find a way to justify their use of open source software inside the software stack of one of those traditional, non-IT companies.

The real-world examples provided by Bernard throughout the book are very interesting and can be used as additional "weight" to your arguments if you are trying to convince your boss that your use of OSS is no longer the pioneering adventure that it once was.

This book not only provides OSMM evaluation method, but also a well-written overview of the current status of OSS in the first three chapters.

I was not able to find blank worksheet templates on www.navicasoft.com although the book indicates that these are located somewhere on the website. I also could not find a way to upload an assessment to share with the OS community. This is a something that should be considered as it would really be a tactical advantage for IT Manager's efforts if there was a section of Navica's website dedicated to sharing OSMM assessments of the different OS packages. I can imagine that a user community would quickly spring up in response to such an portal.

Truly an excellent book!

Have you been wondering how to extend the use of open source software in your organization, but would like to know how to find the right software and do pro-quality evaluations of alternatives effectively? This excellent book by Bernard Golden will show you what's different about open source in detail, how you might make those differences work in your organization, and how to use a simple, effective model that summarizes the necessary elements to compare different apps that might fit into your environment. Using Golden's methods will educate your choices, reduce your risks, and help you to succeed with open source.

This is a "How-To" book for IT managers, but it's also very suitable for beginners. The concepts don't require technical knowledge, and the explanations are clear and concise.

Part I is an overview of everything you wanted to know about open source. It dispells myths, and helps you to understand why open source works at all. Best of all, each chapter has an executive summary, and most paragraphs have a margin note that summarizes the paragraph's concept. This really makes the book easy to read or review. You can skim down the page reading the concept notes until you come to the areas where you want more in-depth knowledge. The overview is excellent.

Part II (which also includes the great paragraph notes) introduces Golden's Open Source Maturity Model, the framework for applying what you learned, or knew, from Part I, and more that you will learn later in Part II. The model is a template that grids the elements for software assessment and weighting factors. When you do the math you get the product maturity score, maturity being how full-featured and ready for production use the product is. Of course, your weighting factors will affect the score to make it useful in light of your organization. Formally scoring a number of products will pinpoint the products you should and should not be considering. This part is pretty simple.

The devil, of course, is in the details. Golden discusses different types of organizations, how they should set up their reviews, weightings and interpret scores. Then he applies this process to a real-world example using JBOSS, a significant open source product. Each element is fully explored in its own chapter, and this is where the rubber meets the road. Golden compares how commercial products provide the elements, then he discusses how open source provides the elements, many times by using different mechanisms. He gives great guidance on how to find and use these resources when they differ from the single-point solution of commercial software. If differences between open source and commercial software implementation weren't clear to you before, they will be after these chapters, and you'll begin to know how to get the most out of them, too. Open source may not be the right answer for your environment, but now you'll know exactly why, and what has to change before it is.

This is a well-written and thorough book, good for initiates and decision makers, made easy to use by the paragraph notes. If open source is on your radar, I highly recommend it.

If you are thinking of starting/managing a project in an "open-source" model, this is the book you MUST read.

The book is very well written and goes over lessons learned of others that created their own open-source projects. Believe me... every step so you don't have to guess anything!

How to start, how to document, where to deploy the project, what people to invite, whether or not coding standards are necessary, democracy versus dictatorship, all of these questions are answered inside.

A friend of mine has told me that much of the information in this book can be seen for free in video in Google. It's worth looking for.

I read the book in 5 hours and i think my time was very well invested. I now believe that this model is not only suitable for small projects but to larger projects. The complexity of the system will not the an issue if you apply the rules in the book. I still have to try it though... ;-)

Just yesterday I was talking to a friend about this book and we discovered each other very glad with it. First of all, the author has a lot of experience with the theme in question. Furthermore, Karl Fogel is very compelling with words. He knows how to write down his experience in a way that is pleasant, certainly due to a lot of writes he had made through plenties of open source projects.

With this book you will be in touch with topics like the needed infra-structure to setup open source projects, the dinamics of the open source community, strategies for packaging and releasing software, common issues that arise in open source daily development and how to workaround then, a brief about licenses (with properly links for more information on this topic); just to highlight some aspects.

This book was the first hand someone land me into the open source world. It's helping me in three ways: to extract more from open source softwares that already exist, to start my own open source project, and to look at software development through a new, different, and till now better perspective.

Hope this review helps you!

If you have already read pretty much everything that there is to be read about why you'd want to start, manage, fund or participate in an Open Source project, but want to know everything about how best to do it, then Karl Fogel's Producing Open Source Software is the book for you.

Drawing from his extensive experience with the Subversion project, Fogel provides in this book a comprehensive overview of all aspects of Open Source software development, covering technical, social, political, economical, legal, and managerial aspects.

While the book is more aimed at medium-to-large scale projects, especially those involving some kind of corporate entity, there is much in it that is applicable to most projects, excluding maybe only those little, one-man efforts that rarely become successful. But if you are the originator of one of the latter and, should it suddenly attract a wide following, you'd better be prepared to face the unavoidable problems that popularity brings.This book will come in handy in this case.

Here are, in my opinion, the strong points of the book:

* Providing a concise, yet comprehensive, overview of all aspects of Open Source development. This is really the manual of open development.

* Demonstrating that there is much in open development that is similar to more traditional, corporate-style software development (you cannot always rely on good will and volunteers), but also much that is different, in motivation, rewards and objectives.

* Putting the accent on the human aspect of development: mutual respect between participants is often the deciding factor in determining whether a project will thrive or fail. Since even the best of intentions sometimes are not enough to foster a peaceful, productive and collaborative environment, Producing Open Source Software contains a lot of useful, practical advice that you can follow if you want to keep developers happy and motivated.

It's easy to make the mistake of viewing this book as "too fluffy" or perhaps too soft to be of any use to the practical user or developer of open source software. Nothing could be further from the truth: in a classic open source way, the author has compressed man-centuries of OS community experience into a practical working guide for anyone who wants to do something serious in this area.

The book impressed me by the breadth and depth of the thinking that must have gone on before it was written. Mr. Fogel being an active open-source developer, I was at first suspicious that he might just be presenting his way of doing things as gospel. Quickly, though, he convinced me that he reflects his ways more profoundly than most other people I know, myself included. Maybe that, in itself, is a consequence of open-source development processes?

I loved this book. It covers the history of Open Source and explain WHY people do open source and HOW they make it happen!

The Success of Open Source in a not a just wistful paean to Linux as the title would suggest. Rather, it is two books in one.

The first book is one of the very best recapitulations of the open source movement and all of its predecessors. The second book is about how something that just seemingly shouldn't work, works so well, and how those principles behind its working extend to more than just the open source movement.

The author, a university professor, draws liberally from the traditions of historians, economists, sociologists, and psychologists to paint a compelling picture of why the forces behind open source are not going to go away any time soon. Read in best companion with The Cathedral and the Bazaar, which IS a bit of a wistful paean to Linux, it illuminates its subject wonderfully.

Steven's book brings a rich articulation of the social practices innovations unleashed by the Open Source collective: a new understanding of private property that better fit the tech forces and the challenges of the present. His book it is not a model; it is not the list of the 10 reasons why...; it is not the defense of an emerging theory; but an historical account in which anecdotes, facts, historical moment, tentative hypothesis, set the background to allows the reader to reshape her/his own questions. The book gave me a perspective I have been testing with IT architects, programmers, software designers...I feel myself much more prepare to engage in conversations about the future in a meaningful and effective way. Thanks to the author!

For the serious reader (and who indeed thinks open source is hilarious?), Weber provides a detailed history of how this idea developed. He traces it from the advent of unix in the 1970s, and the generous (ie. low fees) licensing terms by ATT. Which led to the BSD Unix that flourished in the 80s. Also during this time, GNU took off.

But the bulk of the book deals with the 90s onwards. Especially as linux grew from Torvalds' seminal contribution. Its intellectual roots in unix and GNU are studied. We also see the rise of the Free Software Foundation and Apache, as articulate enablers and promoters of open source. All of which was aided by the invention and meteoric growth of the Web. This played a vital role in enabling a global audience of programmers to hear of and contribute their efforts.

I'm a commercial software developer, and found the author's history of the UNIX culture and the story of its evolution into what we now call Open Source to be fascinating. That alone made it a good read for me. Add in the thought provoking analysis of the "whys" (the real point of this book), and it's a killer combo.

Warning: the book is *full* of sentences like "Pluralism at many different levels is being enabled by communications technologies and by experimentation with property; together, these are reducing the marginal cost of adding voices toward an asymptote of zero." Despite that, I've been able to read it at the pace of a thriller, not a textbook.

This is a very moving account of a heartbroken man who was betrayed by a person he loved dearly. The pain, the trauma, the love, the anger, the frustration is evident in every single well-written sentence. This book is not only a window into the mind of one of the best British writers of the late 19th century. It is also a timeless lesson on what can happen when one falls in love with someone who doesn't truly appreciate what they have before them. Of course there are other lessons to be learned in this book but rather than point them out here, I'd much prefer you pick up a copy of "De Profundis" as soon as you can.

Not actually a "letter," though it had to be originally presented as such for him to be allowed to write it while in prison, *De Profundis* is Wilde's masterpiece--one has to have really lived and really, really suffered to have written it and it's amazing that he achieved it.

I only very recently read it--and "got" it. It rings true to me, and is very, very moving and "profound." It ain't summer beach reading.

Wilde is still and will probably always be best known as a "Personality"--that and the author of a couple of decent period plays, a short novel, a few stories, and lots of forgettable poems and such. But THIS--THIS is IT.

He really WAS a great writer, it turns out, after all.

So many people concentrate on De Profundis' accusations cast towards Alfred Douglas. Yes, it's true that the letter was written to him and that Wilde is ruthless in letting Douglas know exactly what he thinks of him but that's not why De Profundis is a great piece of work. It is great for three reasons. Number one - It contains the best account of the life of Christ. Christ as the romantic artist is the only account that has moved me to tears and the only account I can personally embrace. Number two - it is chock full of the Oscar Wilde voice and wit and as a result it reverbates as a true work of art and number three - It is ultimately a work that celebrates the things in life worth feeling - failure, love, injustice, strength and forgiveness.

Don't waste your time with the accusations towards Douglas. He is unimportant. Oscar Wilde is what's important and De Profundis is Oscar Wilde bare.

Ah, me...one doesn't know which to be more irritated
and exasperated with: whether it be Walt Whitman doing
his dissembling shuck-and-shuffle about the children
he had sired (to throw off a probing, serious John
Addington Symonds) -- or Oscar, in this "j'accuse," which
he should have spoken while looking in a mirror, rather
than writing it on paper to Lord Alfred.
This is without doubt a fascinating, horrifying,
and yet in places humorous, "piece de Miserere mei"
(to combine a bit of French with Latin).
If one chooses to believe Oscar, his only fault
was weakness in "giving in" to Lord Alfred. Oh,
come now. Blinded by Eros, reason flies out the
door...if ever reason was in control. There are
some sentences which are devastatingly revealing,
but Oscar doesn't seem to see it. "The trivial in
thought and action is charming. I had made it
the keystone of a very brilliant philosophy expressed
in plays and paradoxes." Ye gods, and little fishes!

And this man dared to call himself a "Classicist?!"
Yikes!!!
The best exercise for the reader is to just take
many of the things which Oscar accuses Lord Alfred
of, and turn them toward the self-blind, self-
justifying Oscar, to see their devastating hitting
of the mark. Never having met the young man, but
only having the "benefit" of hearsay (mostly from
Oscar's literary defenders) Lord Alfred seems to have
been calculating, temperamental (using anger to get
his way), manipulative, etc., etc., etc. The best
description of him may be Wilde's referring to him
with the lines from Aeschylus' play AGAMEMNON,
about the lion cub being raised in a house and
being let loose to wreak havoc and ruin.
But Oscar bears his share of blame -- more than just
that of the "sin" of weakness which he constantly falls
back upon in his own justification. Even in the midst
of what purports to be some sort of penitent cry from
the depths of hell...Oscar still is ever the poseur:
"And I remember that afternoon, as I was in the railway
carriage whirling up to Paris, thinking what an impossible,
terrible, utterly wrong state my life had got into, when
I, a man of world-wide reputation, was actually forced
to run away from England, in order to try and get rid
of a friendship that was entirely destructive of everything
fine in me either from the intellectual or ethical point
of view...." Er, when was the last time that the
"everything fine" had last seen the light of day?
Was Oscar an "Artist," as he consistently claims?
Was he the wronged, harmed Artist? Perhaps only the
reader can decide that for himself. Without doubt
he was witty, acerbic, funny, cute, clever, perhaps
even charming (to some -- sort of like a Pillsbury
Dough Boy with flair and a clever tongue), perhaps
stylish (in a frumpy, velveteen sort of way). Was
he wronged by a predatory clinger and manipulator,
and a hypocritical social prudery and class power
play (Oscar is no Socrates--that's for sure!)? He
hardly seems worthy, in some ways, of being a poster-boy
for Gay Pride parades. More likely, he is a better
warning poster boy for the self-excusing, and never
take-responsibility-for-your-own-actions crowd.
But this is an incredible piece to read and think
about. There is some of it that is mordantly hilarious.

One of the most famous - and infamous - letters in all of literature, De Profundis is a strange little piece of work: either much more than it appears on the surface, or much less. It is something I think everyone should read, if only for its insight into the human character, particularly that of one under great personal suffering. Wilde wrote this extraordinarily long letter from prison to Lord Alfred Douglas, his friend, lover, and the man who - by all accounts - was the reason Wilde was in jail in the first place. Despite repeated assertions in the first few pages alone to the contrary, Wilde seems reluctant to blame himself. He clearly blames Douglas to the hilt, and harbors a certain bitter resentment towards him. And yet... he clearly still hold much dear affection toward - and even loves - Douglas. He still seems to be asking for forgiveness - despite the fact that, by all accounts hardly excluding his own, he was the man wronged. It is quite clear from reading this letter that, desite the view history holds of him, Wilde was clearly a man of very high moral character. Certainly, one would not put Wilde atop a pedastal as the zenith of ethics - he himself says that morals contain "absolutely nothing" for him, and clearly admits - and is proud of - his having lived the high life to the hilt during his youth - but Wilde was a man of principles, and he stuck to those principles to the tragic, bitter end. Perhaps you might say he carried them too far. One gets the sense in reading this letter - or a biography of Wilde - that, not only could he have stopped his immiment imprisonment, but could have severed his ties with Douglas completely - had he wanted to. Apparently, he had his own utterly compelling reasons for not doing so. Whatever the case, Oscar Wilde is one of the most fundamentally and perpetually interesting characters in the whole of history. A self-described man of paradoxes - Wilde was subsequently the true essence of his time, while also being far ahead of his time - De Profundis makes for required reading by one of the most endlessly fascinating individuals you'll ever read about, and also provides a startling - indeed, perhaps too much so - insight into human nature.

De Profundis, though long for a letter, is not a long work in the conventional sense. Consequently, as many editions of Wilde's collected works are available, buying this on its own may be deemed questionable. I highly reccommend purchasing a Collected Works of Oscar if you have not done so already - it's well worth the price - but, should you desire to have more compact editions of specific works, an edition such as this will be privy to your needs.

This book is not only a history lesson on copyright, but it shows how big corporate enterprises obtain and used material, through the same methods they now want to deny the general public, in order to get to the powerful presence they are today.

Example: Disney using lots of old fairy-tales which were in public domain. And today they fight for everything never to go into public domain in order to keep profit to themselves, while at the same time going after creative use that would expand our culture and art.

This book is worth the price just to hear the constant process of American culture - be a pirate, fend off "the man" to build your industry, become "the man," then go after the pirates who are presumably cutting into your business. Money makes hypocrites of us all. Please, RIAA, don't sue me for reading this book (although I'm sure you'll find a way, if there aren't any grandmothers or poor college students you can harass).

This book is excellent. Lessig's argument is thorough and well-developed, showing why the copyright laws affect all of us, from producers of copyright material to consumers and creative innovators building off of previous work. A great, and important, read for anyone, especially those interested in learning how Big Media in bed with Congress has successfully limited the freedom of typically law-abiding citizens to empower the old corporations and enfeeble the upstarts.

Whether conservative or liberal or anything in between, the book should really "strike home" and make you understand just how important it is to have a free culture.

This is an incredible book. I agree so much with the discussions that Lawrence gives, and the material is a great look at issues related to the special interest groups and some of the things they have pushed and are trying to push through Congress.

I heard Lawrence Lessig speak at a conference earlier in 2006 and it was one of the best presentations I'd ever heard. So it will come as no surprise that his book is written in the same to the point, easy to follow and conscise style.

It's historical research sets the foundation for a look at things to come on the Internet as new technology threatens established media, much the same way as Lessig points out it did in previous centuries. The pirates of yesteryear are the corporations of today who threaten the pirates of today. He is humble as he describes his defeat in the US Supreme Court and proactive as he puts some suggestions forward to resolve the current crisis affecting copyright on the Net.

Couldn't put it down and have already purchased Code 2 by the same author.

Linux System Security: The Administrator's Guide to Open Source Security Tools, Second Edition
by Scott Mann has advice on starting from scratch when you are setting up a machine to make it secure from attack from the outside.

It looks at everything from the filesystem upwards, and will give you a good starting point for looking at this.

Linux is better than Windows.

Actually all tools described are not Linux specific and can be used for any Unix including FreeBSD and Solaris.

The authors seems to know the subject and really used tools that they are writing about. For several popular tools the book provides some useful info that is difficult to find elsewhere. Pretty decent typography, although it's a little bit too academic and does not use icons on margins that IMHO simplify reading. 

As for the classic open security tools, the book covers PAM(36 pages), Sudo(20 pages), TCP Wrappers(24 pages), SSH(55 pages), Tripwire(24 pages), CFS and TCFS (30 pages), and ipchains.

From the first reading it looks like the chapters are *not* a rehash of existing online documentation. In addition to the chapters about classic open source security tools I like chapters about logs: a chapter on syslog (Ch.8) and a chapter on log file management (Ch.17). 

Now about weaknesses. The chapter on Tiger is rather weak. Moreover regrettably Tiger is a legacy tool, but actually information is not completely useless -- it's not difficult to switch to another tool after one understands how Tiger works. Actually Perl is superior for writing Unix vulnerability scanners in comparison with shell. May be hardening scripts like Bastille would be a better choice for this chapter in the second edition of the book.

Book is incomplete in a sense that neither Snort (or any similar intrusion detection tool), nor open source network scanners (Saint, Sara, etc.) are covered.

Of course there are some typos, but generally not that many. But what is really bad is that the Prentice Hall book page currently is pretty basic with no errata or additional links. The authors do not provide a WEB site for the book.

This book can probably be used for studying Unix security at universities along with somewhat outdated Practical Unix and Internet Security and this combination can somewhat compensate deficiencies of the latter (non tool oriented descriptive approach).

This book is well-written, thorough, and practical rather than academic. I particularly found the chapter on securing network services to be helpful, and was able to identify some potential security problems on the systems I support as a result of information provided in that chapter.

This book is incredibly thorough, and up to date. For example, Red Hat Linux 7 has just come out, and does now has xinetd as a replacement for inetd. Well, you guessed it, this book has about 27 pages on xinetd!

Want info on ipchains? This book has at least 50 pages on the subject!

I could go on and on about this book it is so good!

This book is written by experienced people, not just an author who was assigned another book to write.

You will not regret buying this book!

FINALLY... a great book on GTK+.
Easy to follow and understand, great example, great explanations...

Usually I dislike the writing styles in Apress publications, but this is a definite winner. For the first time I can say I actually understand and can effectively use GTK+.

I got this book a few weeks ago and found it to be well written and to the point.

A textview widget in python had me stumped, but no longer. Anyone wishing to tackle GTK+ programming should buy this well organized and excellent book. It is well worth it.

Andrew Krause has pulled together a wide collection of information on GTK2 and arranged it in an easy to understand format. This book is a handy reference for experienced GTK+ developers like myself and maybe the BEST introductory/beginners book available. It contains the information and explanations you are looking for when building a gtk application using existing widgets, and the details you need when writing your own widgets or extending existing widgets. I recommend this book to all comers, and consider it an essential addition to my Linux library.

James Scott, Jr.
(a.k.a. Skoona)

Given the poplarity of GTK toolkit I wonder why it took so long to get such a book. Fills the gap in somewhat dated tutorials published on gtk wb page. Really good book.