On Thu, Jun 03, 2004 at 11:31:40AM -0700, Jeff_W wrote:
> I agreed to review a couple of BSD books for O'Reilly and was
> wondering if anyone else in the UG has come up with a rating
> system. If not, maybe there could be a little brainstorming
> on the topic - something reflective of EUGLUG's highly
> structured and serious demeaner...
There seems not to be any real formal review ... thing ... yet, but I'm
using 0-10 scales in the ones I am working on.
The books I'm going to review at some point are:
TiVo Hacks
Google Hacks
MacOS X Panther for UNIX Geeks
I have to apologize to Marsee and the LUG for not reviewing TiVo Hacks
before now. I indeed do have a TiVo, but I have not had time to go
dismantling it, which is a prerequisite to doing any of the cool stuff. I
could have provided a review, but it would have been over information I
had not tested yet, with the exception of a couple of the remote codes.
I've done more with it now, and will write something up after I finish my
finals. Here's a synopsis of my findings:
The book tries to divide things into what works on old series 1 TiVo and
what works on the new series 2. If you have a series 2 and you pick up
this book to find out what you can do with it, the answer is probably not
much. Borrow, but don't buy, series 2 users! At least, don't buy this
edition--recent developments have made the series 2 much more hackable
once you convince yourself to take a soldering iron to it. Less scary
options probably exist, but haven't been found (yet), and that's the last
hurdle before a new edition would be quite welcome.
Series 1 users, just buy this book already! All info contained within is
available online, but you've gotta find it through all of the references
to broken links, obsolete, and sometimes completely false information. On
your own, you'll quickly find prior understanding is a prerequisite for
learning anything. The hackers understand it, and they don't feel they
should have to explain it to the likes of _you_, a non-developer, so you
are left to piece together bits of information on your own. Save yourself
the trouble, Raffi Krikorian has already pieced together most of it.
I'll write up a more in-depth review of this book after finals, and I
would then be quite happy to pass it on to the next interested party, or
continue to hang on to it until someone else needs it. The book is not
without flaws, even for series 1 users, and I'm tempted to put something
online to help suppliment the book a bit. I realize, however, that this
takes effort, motivation, and time. Quantities of these things are not
infinite. ;)
Google Hacks is available at the Eugene Public Library, and the copy I
mostly skimmed came from there. If you don't really consider yourself to
be able to easily find what you're looking for online, you might consider
buying a copy of this book. If you consider yourself pretty adept at
finding what you want with some effort, I'd suggest borrowing it--you will
find something you didn't know about and it will help you.
How to know if you don't need this book: Do you grok web forms? Do you
know how to do all of the things in the advanced search page without using
it? Do you know how to make use of Google's cache? Wildcard searches?
Boolean expressions in your search terms? If you see no mysteries here,
the book probably contains nothing you couldn't figure out on your own.
I knew enough to fall right into the borrow it category. I didn't need to
read enough of it to give a complete review, but I may snag it again for a
few days in order to provide one, if desired.
MacOS X Panther for UNIX Geeks.. I borrowed Larry's copy of the previous
(Jaguar) version of this book, and he had to threaten physical harm to get
it back. ;) I haven't spent more than about an hour with the new
edition, but half of that time was spent while in the bookstore, and I
bought the book on *my* budget, so that should speak volumes about its
usefulness to someone who knows their way around UNIX. I've used many
Linux-based OSes, FreeBSD, SunOS, and Solaris. I've adminned BSD systems
and built at least one installer for (Debian) Linux, from scratch, before
the LFS book was written to document how to do such things.
The book's first chapter apparently assumes that the reader bought a mac
because he/she has suffered brain damage and therefore needs handholding
even to use Terminal.app. Don't get the wrong impression from this, it's
not a book for complete novices. It's quite usable by graduates of the
BAFB school of UNIX/Linux administration if they've majored in Running
Linux, ${DIST} in a Nutshell, Absolute BSD, or similar degree options,
once they determine that they need a good workstation OS that can be used
to accomplish real world tasks and buy a mac so they can just do stuff
without having to dink around with config files and system internals too
much first. (Okay, enough evangelism for now...)
The stated purpose of the book is to explain the difference between the
Mac and whatever UNIX you're used to using. It does a pretty good job of
that, assuming that the UNIX you're used to using isn't too bizarre. The
obvious differences are covered, such as netinfo, StartupItems, and the
use of XML renditions of NeXT property lists. There is, however, not as
much coverage of some things I'd call Linuxisms as some might like. There
isn't much talk about xinetd or postfix, for example, but there is enough
to get you started.
Unix people with Macs should probably buy this book.
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