>Robert Padjen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote,
[snip]
> No book is all things to all
>readers no matter how hard an author/publisher/editor
>tries.
Total agreement here.
>I have repeatedly stated that some readers
>prefer CiscoPress
CiscoPress (and Macmillan) have an unfortunate tendency to be
politically correct. I was forbidden, for example, to use "foo" as
an arbitrary file or host name. When I referred disparagingly to
lawyers, my development editor questioned the reference, with the
comment that I might offend lawyers. My response was that if it was
not clear, in the particular context, that it had been my intention
to insult lawyers quite thoroughly, I could change the reference to
be nastier.
>- some prefer Osborne - but I do
>think that the only fair way to judge someone's work
>product is to remain objective. If one says I don't
>like X because I don't like it, well, that's opinion.
I'm thinking of a particular Cisco Press book, which is an excellent
reference. I happen to have a significant personal agenda with its
author (who does not contribute to this list), but I can separate my
feelings from my professional evaluation of the book.
>If someone says X is incomplete because it is, well,
>that's unqualified. If someone says X is incomplete
>because it does not provide 20% of the information in
>Y, including how ABC works in PDQ environments, well,
>then we have a qualified critique. There is
>verifiablity and a constructive nature - it can be
>fixed, addressed, corrected, or dismissed without
>bias. I have learned to take all with a grain of salt
>over the years, and am only frustrated when
>insufficient information is provided to correct the
>issue and the critiques continue. Many have written to
>state (for all authors, publishers, titles) that "this
>book is full of errors..." only to have it finally
>disclosed that typographical mistakes and typesetting
>led to unfortunate problems.
Amen. One of the realities of publishing is that even if it were
possible to have enough reviews to catch every error, the book would
be far more expensive and would come out too late to be useful. Even
if the book were "precise," how does the author deal with situations
where the Cisco material from which it is drawn is obsolete or wrong?
For that matter, errors do find their way into RFCs, and are
corrected in future editions.
>Wouldn't it be better to
>write - "Dear Author... I don't know if you know this
>but I think page 43 has a mistake. Could you comment
>on this?" I wrote all 13 chapters of CID, and yet I
>would never claim that it was entirely my product.
I haven't read the Sybex book, simply because I haven't needed to
read a CID review.
>
>Having written for over ten years professionally, and
>a like amount of technical/networking experience, I
>can state that the critiques of computer professionals
>are much more intense compared to aviation, journalism
>and commercial reviews.
Also agreed. General news media often contain appalling errors,
especially dealing with technical areas -- military reporting is
especially bad.
In medical writing, where lives are literally at stake, the review
and correction process still tends to be more civil.
>It was frustrating to see that the 'official'
>test and materials left off, in large part, in 1997,
>and I had hoped that CID would expand upon its niche
>by adding real-world materials, and, based on the
>overwhelming positive responses, I would do that again
>in an instant. As for x.25 and SNA - well, don't
>remember seeing them on the CID beta (they may have
>been there - NDA, you know) - and on the 640-025 exam
>I have yet to see a question that one could not answer
with the CID materials in the book.
My own feeling is that the amount of SNA in CID is like being
slightly pregnant -- enough to be confusing without being adequate to
do anything useful. Alternatively, the IBM content is like ham and
eggs, where the chicken is involved but the pig is committed.
I don't think there's enough X.25 coverage. X.25 still is a very good
protocol for certain specialized situations.
Before certification was an issue, I tried to teach CID in a manner
optimized to help students learn to design medium-sized enterprise
networks. Often, I'd skip entire sections, such as the Stratacom,
which, for reasons I've stated before -- and which were beyond the
control of the course developer -- are garbage. I would, however, add
20-50% original material to bring the content more up to date. Geof
Haviland, the first CID developer (subsequent versions by Priscilla
Oppenheimer and Kip Peterson), said the nature of the courseware is
that "50% is good stuff, 25% will be obsolete in 3 months, and 25% is
already obsolete."
With the demands of certification, instructors often back off
accuracy and focus on test-passing. It's sad.
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