pankaj_kumar writes "'Tools are an aid to productivity, but you only get the benefits of the tool by using it for the right task; hammers bang in nails and screwdrivers are for screws.' This quote from chapter 9 ("Scripting") from Alan Monnox's Rapid J2EE Development applies not only to the choice of the programming language but to the whole array of software development activities thoroughly and eloquently covered in the book." Read on for the rest of Kumar's review.

norburym (Mary Norbury-Glaser )writes "Carla Schroder's Linux Cookbook (O'Reilly) is an extremely dense volume packed with valuable information. The author writes with precision and detail and with a conversational style that handles the topic with a wry humor making this book a pleasure to read. The Linux Cookbook is command-line based so some familiarity with a Linux system, the inherent power of using the command-line and the dangers of using root are necessary." Read on for the rest of Norbury-Glaser's review.

nazarijo (Jose Nazario) writes "Continuing in the new theme of fiction and technical how-to, Aggressive Network Self-Defense brings together several authors to provide a wide range of material. Syngress' niche in this space seems to be breaking new ground -- and for the most part, it works. While you don't get as in-depth a treatment as a typical technical book gives you, there is an added dimension: namely, a more realistic scenario of how these tools fit together in a real, live series of actions." Read on for the rest of Nazario's review.

r3lody (Raymond Lodato) writes "Novice users and power users of *nix will enjoy reading From Bash to Z Shell: Conquering the Command line by Oliver Kiddle, Jerry Peek, and Peter Stephenson. In this moderate-sized book from Apress, the authors delve into both bash (the Bourne Again Shell) and zsh (Z Shell) to enable you to use them to their fullest advantage. Topics range from the simple editing of the command line to redefining key sequences, down into creating functions for editing and command-line completion. Some areas are covered in other books, but this one goes into some little-seen side streets and alleyways to show you the shortcuts to more efficient use of the shell." Read on for the rest of Lodato's review.

danila (Danila Medvedev) writes "'Gnothi seauton' was the precept inscribed in gold letter upon the temple of the Oracle of Delphi. The authorship of this famous maxim was ascribed to every great Greek philosopher, from Pythagoras to Socrates. According to Juvenal, this precept descended from heaven. It is immensely strange, then, that most people, including you, my dear reader, never really make the effort to 'know thyself.' The number of misconceptions, superstitions and myths that we spread about ourselves is indeed astonishing. Fortunately for you, someone else has already taken the time to understand you and present the results in entertaining, easily digestible, but at the same time scientifically rigorous format. Let me introduce Mapping the Mind by Rita Carter, an illustrated user manual to the software that runs inside our skulls -- the human mind." Read on for the rest of Medvedev's review.

Corey Nachreiner writes "Until recently, I considered myself a Google power-user; so much so that I often call Google my "second brain." Whenever I stumble upon a computing dilemma I can't solve, I submit an advanced query to my second brain, Google, and let it supply the answers. That's why I was So There when Johnny Long released his recent book, Google Hacking for Penetration Testers . I heard Johnny's lively, light-hearted presentation to a packed house at the BlackHat Briefings last summer in Las Vegas. It was the hit of the show, but in one hour he could only present a few of his startling findings about Google hacking. After reading Johnny's book, I've learned a ton more and realized I wasn't quite as Google-savvy as I thought. As with my real brain, I've only been using about ten percent of my Google-brain's capacity." Read on for the rest of Nachreiner's review.

Aeonite (Michael Fiegel) writes "The title of Planet Simpson: How a Cartoon Masterpiece Defined a Generation says it all. In its exploration of the first 15 seasons from The Simpsons, the book does much more than relate funny moments, reprint favorite quotes and point out trivia that you might have missed in your first (or fifteenth) watching of any particular episode. To be certain, those things are there, but they're really secondary to the overall 'mission' of the book, which is to relate the rise of the cartoon to the political, social and cultural realities of the 1990s and early 2000s." Read on for the rest of Fiegel's review.

Simon P. Chappell writes with a review of the Addison Wesley-published Hibernate - A J2EE Developers Guide. "To quote the project website: 'Hibernate is a powerful, ultra-high performance object/relational persistence and query service for Java.' To quote the back cover of the book: 'Now there's a practical, hands-on guide to using Hibernate's flexible, fast object/relational persistence and query services.' Phew! What a lot of spin packed into two sentences. Let's take a look and see if it delivers." Read on for the rest of Chappell's review.

nazarijo (Jose Nazario) writes "As a biochemist by training, Jeff Augen's Bioinformatics in the Post-Genomic Era was very interesting to me. Though I left the field some years ago, I was using the bioinformatics tools that are covered in the book daily and still look in from time to time. Naturally I was curious to see a larger perspective, as well as any progressions, that have occurred in the past few years. Augen's book gave me part of the larger picture, but it could have done more." Read on for the rest of Nazario's review.

Michael Gracie writes "Spamroll is a recently launched blog and information resource on spam, phishing, and other internet security issues, the purpose of which is to bridge the gap between information and discussion among technical professionals, and that targeted for end users. As part of the research for Spamroll, I picked up Spam Kings - The Real Story Behind the High-Rolling Hucksters Pushing Porn, Pills, and @*#?% Enlargements, written by Brian McWilliams and recently released by O'Reilly. , With Spam Kings, Mr. McWilliams has put together a book suitable for shelving next to The DaVinci Code and the Bat Book (Sendmail 2nd edition, by Brian Costales and Eric Allman). It is a compellingly detailed account of the burgeoning of spam, spammers, their foes, and the intricate community that intertwines them." Read on for Gracie's review.

honestpuck (Tony Williams) writes "If there is an application I run more often than my Web browser, particularly since I also use it as my email client, then I don't know what it might be. As a Firefox convert, that made the arrival of Firefox Hacks from O'Reilly a wonderful surprise." Read on for the rest of Williams' review.

Aeonite (Michael Fiegel) writes "The back cover of Game Creation and Careers says "Reading this book is like being at a round-table discussion with more than 150 of the video game industry's most successful designers, developers and publishers." In fact, it's exactly like that, for better and for worse. Mostly worse." Read on for the rest of Fiegel's lengthy review.

norburym (Mary Norbury-Glaser) writes " Beginning PHP 5 and MySQL E-Commerce: From Novice to Professional by Cristian Darie and Mihai Bucica is a valuable resource for the web developer/intermediate programmer who is preparing to create a database-driven e-commerce site and who is most comfortable learning by example. The authors have prepared a book with real-world application in a tutorial format; they give detailed instruction on how to create a fully developed e-commerce web site from design phase to deployment. This book is not for the raw beginner; some knowledge of PHP and MySQL is assumed and truthfully, this book will most benefit a professional web designer who has some experience building dynamic elements into web sites." If that fits you, or if you want it to, read on for the rest of Norbury-Glaser's review.

r3lody writes "If you spend time working writing applications that have to do pattern matches and/or replacements, you know about some of the intricacies of regular expressions. For many people they can be an arcane hodgepodge of odd characters that somehow manage to do wonderful things, but they don't have enough time (or interest) to really understand how to code them. Nathan A. Good has written Regular Expression Recipes: A Problem-Solution Approach for those people. In its relatively slim 289 pages, he offers 100 regular expressions in a cookbook format, tailored to solve problems in one of six broad categories (Words and Text, URLs and Paths, CSV and Tab-Delimited Files, Formatting and Validating, HTML and XML, and Coding and Using Commands)." Read on for the rest of Lodato's review.

AdamBa (Adam Barr) writes "Juiced is not a great book. The writing is workmanlike but not particularly entertaining, none of the stories are more than slightly amusing, and its protagonist projects an unappealing mixture of vanity and whining. There is a bit of dirt on players, and a couple of nuggets about Madonna and the sex lives of baseball players (and the intersection of those two), but as a baseball autobiography, it pales besides better competition. And yet, Juiced may be one of the most important baseball books ever written." Specifically, the book provides an insider's account of one aspect of biotech that has achieved widespread use, if not acceptance. Read on for the rest of Barr's review.

jsuda (John Suda) writes "Web Design Garage is a remarkably clear-headed, concisely-written and feature-rich book about contemporary web-design topics. It is part of a "Garage" series of hip-looking, style-laden books published by Prentice Hall (Prentice Hall Professional Technical Reference -- PH PTR) and is targeted at the "garage" level designer: small business professionals, hobbyists, and technophiles. It assumes some modest familiarity of HTML and working with Javascript." Read on for the rest of Suda's review.

norburym writes "PHP 5 Power Programming is the latest in the Bruce Perens Open Source series of technical books focusing on Linux and Open Source technologies. Prentice Hall PTR publishes each book under an Open Source book license and provides free electronic versions several months after each book's publication. This particular book also includes a link to a 90-day version of Zend Studio, an IDE for PHP which also includes a PHP debugger, code analyzer and code profiler. PHP 5 Power Programming was written by Andy Gutmans (co-creator of PHP versions 3 through 5), Stig Bakken (creator of PEAR -- the PHP Extension and Application Repository -- a framework and distribution system for reusable PHP components) and Derick Rethans (leader of the PHP QA team). The move to PHP 5 has begun and this volume will prepare power users with the necessary knowledge and tools to make the transition from v.4 easy. Gutman et al. provide PHP engineers and experienced web programmers a proficient introduction to the enhancements and improvements in PHP 5." Read on for the rest of Norbury-Glaser's review.

Dustin Puryear writes "I work extensively with LDAP as a consultant, and so I'm always reading the latest and greatest books and articles on the subject. It's just part of the business. So I was excited to see "Deploying OpenLDAP," by Tom Jackiewics and published by Apress, on Amazon's electronic bookshelf. After reviewing the Table of Contents I quickly ordered the book. This looked good. After all, Jackiewicz had some great chapter titles such as 'Implementing Deployment, Operations, and Administration Strategies.' That just sounds smart. Before giving you my feelings on the book, let me first say that I'm already well experienced with LDAP. This is especially true with OpenLDAP. With a title like "Deploying OpenLDAP" I was expecting a book that tackled not just low-level tactical issues such as installing OpenLDAP binaries, but strategic ones as well, e.g., how to design access control. So if you have never used OpenLDAP then your experience with the book may differ." Read on for the rest of Puryear's review.

Eli Singer writes "Are gamer employees different? This is the question John Beck and Mitchell Wade answer in Got Game, How the Gamer Generation is Reshaping Business Forever. They argue that yes, employees who grew up with Nintendo, TurboGrafix and Genesis approach their work in fundamentally different ways than non-gaming workers. If you grew up with games, you can use this book to teach your boss how to appreciate your gaming abilities in the workplace." Read on for the rest of Singer's review.

r3lody (Raymond Lodato) writes "Anyone who has been working on the *nix platform has had a brush with Perl, the scripting language whose acronym (depending on who you ask) could mean Practical Extraction and Report Language, or Pathologically Eclectic Rubbish Lister. In either case, there is a distinct difference between learning to use Perl, and learning to use it well. In my opinion, the best way to learn any language well is to see how others have used it to solve problems. One of the foremost experts in the use of Perl, Randal L. Schwartz, has been writing columns since March of 1995 on the use of Perl in the real world, and has provided us with 6 books and over 200 columns with many examples on how Perl is used." Read on for the rest of Lodato's review.