Jack Ganssle writes "High Integrity Software: the title alone got me interested in this book by John Barnes. Subtitled "The SPARK Approach to Safety and Security," the book is a description of the SPARK programming language's syntax and rationale. The very first page quotes C.A.R Hoare's famous and profound statement:'There are two ways of constructing a software design. One way is to make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies. And the other way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies.' This meme has always rung true, and is one measure I use when looking at the quality of code. It's the basis of the SPARK philosophy." Read on for more of Ganssle's review of the book, and some more on the SPARK language.

Oil -- and energy in general -- has long been a big topic among Slashdot readers. Predictions about The End of the Age of Oil (about which, claims the subtitle, this book provides "all you need to know") certainly are not new -- and if civilization lasts long enough, one day they'll prove true. It's nice to consider that automobiles aren't necessarily tied to petroleum, but mine certainly runs on 87 octane gasoline, and there aren't enough turkey guts or grease to power everything that we use petro-fuels for right now (though places like Iceland are trying hard to tap other sources). Current gas prices (in the U.S. at any rate) are higher than they have been in a decade or so, but in constant dollars, gasoline prices have certainly been worse. How much to panic, and when? Read on below for Arthur Smith (apsmith)'s brief review of David Goodstein's Out of Gas for a rather gloomy look at the future of oil-based energy.

JoshuaDFranklin writes "When confronted with the reality of Open Source, academics often ask what processes allow it to happen. In his new book The Success of Open Source, Berkeley professor Steven Weber answers that question. He presents a clear, logical picture of how Open Source development works in a variety of projects, and comes to the intriguing conclusion that the process may be generalizable to other areas of production. The results, he argues, would 'make the consequences of the first-generation Internet seem quaint.'" Read on for the rest of Franklin's review.

sdedeo writes "Perhaps the only competitor of rock climbing for the canonical geek sport, cycling -- for utility or amusement -- asks for a good blend of engineering and physiological savvy. For many the hands-on tinkering of bicycle maintenance and cycling technique provides welcome relief from more abstract manipulations in the library or office. Whether you think of cycling as the ultimate open source engineering project, or as a handy metaphor for your computer-of-choice, its appeal to the mechanism-oriented mind is undeniable." Read on for the rest of DeDeo's review.

ubiquitin writes "Existence of the Secure Architectures with OpenBSD text was first made public on the OpenBSD Journal in early April 2004. The OpenBSD Journal, also known as deadly.org and now undeadly.org, recently changed hands from James Phillips to Daniel Hartmeier amid several more or less obscure references to Pogues lyrics. The peaceful transfer of the site is a good thing, as it means that the several-hundred articles posted to the journal will remain in publicly-accessible archives for the foreseeable future and the occasion gave Hartmeier, known for his development of packet filtering (pf) and network DVD playing (kissd) software, a reason to try his hand at building a content management system. Jose Nazario is both an author of the book under review here and a contributor to the OpenBSD Journal web site, which seems to be a watering hole for unix hackers, having something of the flavor that Slashdot had in the late nineties." (Jose is also an occasional Slashdot book reviewer, and a good cook.) Read on for the rest of ubiquitin's review.

daltonlp writes "The Flickering Mind deals a crippling blow to the blind faith that educators and politicians place in computers as solutions to education's woes. The level of research and breadth of evidence is tremendous. The book sums up America's past 20 years of false promises, senseless faddism, and wasted millions in attempts to computerize the nation's education system. And no, open source won't help a bit." Read on for the rest of Dalton's review of The Flickering Mind.

jmweeks writes "Neal Stephenson's The Confusion is an exhausting read--not simply in keeping track of the dozens of major characters, many with two or three names or titles or hyphenated titles; not due to its quite literal circumnavigation of the globe; not even, or at least not only, because of its interminable cycle of fortune and misfortune: Its 800-plus pages are much more taxing for what Stephenson leaves out than what he includes." Read on for the rest of jmweeks' review.

Tasha Jessup writes "The fourth edition of the OpenGL Reference Manual, edited by Dave Shreiner, provides an official command reference for the OpenGL graphics library version 1.4. Published by Addison Wesley, the text is approximately 760 pages and has a suggested retail price of $59.99." Read on for the rest of Jessup's brief review to see how well it justifies that pricetag, and for whom.

Alex Moskalyuk writes "It was supposed to be a deal of the millennium. When it was leaked to the media from the highest ranks of America Online, the journalists wanted a second source. It was just too incredible to believe, too likely to be a prank. AOL was merging with Time Warner with the terms of the deal making it more of a buyout than an equal merger. In truly Orwellian fashion, two corporations decided to treat one another as equals, although executives of newly formed AOLTW somehow always referred to the AOL part as "innovative" and thus leading into the future, while the TW was "old media" with that implies. Read on for Alex's review of a book about how that deal came to be, as well as its aftermath.

Blaine Hilton contributes this review of the Network Security Portable Reference, part of Osborne's "HackNotes" series. He writes "This book is best suited as an introductory overview to network security. Very little is covered in-depth. However, the book touches on pretty much the whole breadth of security topics. For people that are experienced with computer/network security topics, this book can be used to round out that knowledge and find weak areas." The rest of his review follows.

Simon P. Chappell writes "It used to be that a website could be standards compliant or it could be attractive and impressive to prospective customers, but it could almost never be both. Now with the rise of CSS compliant browsers, a new generation of web designers are finding that the old wisdom is ready to be retired. CSS technology allows a website to have both excellent, semantically indicated content and attractive layouts. Core CSS (2ed.) positions itself as a complete guide to all of this standards based goodness." Read on for the rest of Chappell's review.

Craig Maloney and honestpuck contribute two reviews for your almost-the-weekend reading pleasure: read below for their respective impressions of two dead-tree compendiums of online humor: Bride of the Bastard Operator From Hell and The Best of The Joy of Tech.

prostoalex writes "Advanced Unix Programming by Marc Rochkind is published by Addison-Wesley this year in its second edition. A book that has been considered a timeless classic, a title that saw its first edition back in 1985 and its second edition almost two decades later, in 2004. Where do you even start to review?" Read on below to see read prostoalex's evaluation.

Wilson Fereira writes "The Jakarta Struts framework is undoubtedly the most popular MVC framework for developing web applications in J2EE. A lot of books have emerged to satisfy the appetite of avid Struts reader including the two famous books from O'Reilly and Manning Publications. Struts Survival Guide: Basics to Best Practices (SSG) is a new addition to the already growing list of Struts books. SSG is from a new comer in the publishing business - ObjectSource Publications." Read on for the rest of Fereira's review.

Simon P. Chappell writes "Linux programming is the C Programming Language. Elaborating a little, Linux programming is C, with the GLIBC library and the POSIX standard API. Even a language as powerful as C needs libraries and to get the Holy Grail of cross-platform portability, it's necessary to have them standardised. The POSIX API is that standardisation and Linux adheres to it very well (opinions from those litigious folks in Utah aside). For those of us who already know C, Linux Programming by Example sets out to teach you the rest in a step by step, helpful, relaxed and incremental manner."

Craig Maloney writes "MySQL (love it or hate it) is one of the most popular databases for deploying websites. Perl (also love it or hate it) was almost synonymous with website programming. Arguably there are different choices for different needs in web development (PostgreSQL, PHP, Java, etc.), but there is no argument that if you are planning on putting together a website, using MySQL and Perl that MySQL & Perl for the Web will aid immensely in that development." Read on for the rest of Maloney's concise review of the book. While not new, he says it's still a valuable volume.

Blaine Hilton writes "Hardware Hacking starts by going over the basics of electronics, just enough so you can understand what is happening later in the book. This gentle beginning means the book is great for people who work with computers on the software side, or people who like to play with electronics. You do not need to be an electrical engineer to understand what they are talking about in this book. As the title suggests, the authors walk you through different methods and processes of modifying common hardware." Read on for the rest of Hilton's review of Hardware Hacking.

honestpuck (Tony Williams) writes "Many years ago I bought a second hand Ford Cortina in dubious condition. I kept it running with the assistance of a marvelous volume purchased at a specialist bookstore that was referred to as "the shop manual." It wasn't much help teaching you how to drive or how to park but if you needed to know how to perform an oil change, flush the radiator or bleed the brakes it told you all the details. Now James Duncan Davidson has given me a shop manual for Macintosh OS X Panther." Read on for Williams' review of the O'Reilly published Running Mac OS X Panther. (And for the curious, here's what google has to say about "Ford Cortina.")

ALecs writes "When I first discovered Samba, I was in heaven! I could serve my Linux filesystems to my Windows 95 desktop and life was good. Between then and now, though, Samba has gotten a lot more capabilities, and I've been struggling to keep up with the cryptic voodoo that is Windows networking. While 'The Official Samba-3 HOWTO and Resource Guide' has been a great resource, Samba seems to just be once of those packages that you just need to see in action to understand. Hearing my cries, and those of countless others, John H. Terpstra has bestowed upon the Samba community the tome of ancient knowledge sought by all: Samba 3 By Example: Practical Exercises to Successful Deployment ." Read on for the rest of Malone's review.

Matthew Morgan writes "Mozilla's strengths as an application platform often go unrecognized for lack of good documentation. Nigel McFarlane sets out to change that in Rapid Application Development with Mozilla. McFarlane describes his book as "a conceptual overview, reference, and tutorial" for building applications on the Mozilla platform. But does he have room for all three in one book?" Read on for Morgan's answer to that question.