honestpuck writes "Linguistics has long been an interest of mine, and one of my fields of study, and I've recently read two good books that combine linguistics with other topics. The Keys of Egypt is the tale of history's most famous decoding task, the translation of Egyptian hieroglyphics and In The Beginning is the story of the King James Bible, the history, theology, politics, linguistics and technology that surrounded Bible translation and printing in Renaissance Europe and England." Read on for his combination review of two books that might inspire your curiosity, no matter how far from the usual Slashdot fare.

objectboy writes with a review of Chris Fehily's SQL: Visual QuickStart Guide, writing "This book teaches ANSI SQL-92 programming to database beginners and intermediates. The publisher, Peachpit Press, publishes mostly end-user and novice titles that usually go unnoticed by professional programmers. Its Perl and PHP books, for example, are of little practical or tutorial use to an experienced developer. In fact, I noticed this SQL book only because a junior developer was using it for a course. The book's table of contents, index, and a sample chapter are posted on Amazon.com. The book's official web site contains errata and other information." Objectboy's review continues below.

Spencerian writes with a review combining two things you might not expect in one volume: the "For Dummies" label and Sun Solaris. (Raise your hand if you've never, ever looked through a "For Dummies" book.) Read on for Spencerian's summary of Solaris 9 For Dummies, which he says is a good book for the Solaris newbies, but not for everyone.

honestpuck writes " I am a big fan of the written word on dead trees, but sometimes I like to have the written word where I can easily search it, or cut and paste from it. That's why I like PHP.net and why I decided to get a copy of O'Reilly's Web Programming CD Bookshelf. And I am pleased with it, though not ecstatic." Read on to see what honestpuck liked about this collection, and what drawbacks it may have for you.

hmobius writes "In a world where developers are baying for customers' attentions, very few people can claim to command that of the developer. Their blogs may be the only clue to the higher level of thinking that they operate at, creating the answers to why and when code works in addition to the perennial how. Whether he likes it or not, Don Box is one such system-meister. He may dislike writing books, but when one comes out, people pay attention and read. His first foray into text, Essential COM, was the book to explain how COM worked, and his latest, Essential .NET, takes the .NET Framework's Common Language Runtime (CLR), and does exactly the same." Read on for the rest of hmobius' review.

More Sci-Fi reading for your summer weekend: Javed Ikbal writes "Decipher by Stel Pavlou is a mind-blowing work of science fiction. If you thought Stephenson's Snowcrash did a great job of bringing myth and science together, bite into this. I am still shaking my head over the amount of research that must have gone into this book." Read on for Javed's review. Warning -- spoilers within.

JayBonci writes "It may come as a surprise that within the pages of 'Perl 6 Essentials' lies what could be two books, despite its length. If not for lack of cover space, it could easily bear the names "Perl6 for Perl5 programmers" and "Parrot in a Nutshell". Both topics are concise and clearly covered, despite their relatively different audience." Read on for the rest of Jay's review.

Jeff Carroll writes "Developers building Java applications for wireless handheld devices have been looking forward for some time now to the release of devices supporting version 2.0 of the Connected Limited Device Configuration (CLDC), and version 1.1 of the Mobile Information Device Profile (MIDP). These new releases contain support for features demanded by developers that didn't make the original releases. In support of CLDC 2.0 and MIDP 1.1, Roger Riggs and his team of authors from Sun, Nokia, and Motorola have released Programming Wireless Devices with the Java 2 Platform, Micro Edition, Second Edition (since I don't have a copy of the first edition, I can only evaluate the new edition on its own merits)." (Read on for his review.) Update: 07/23 16:31 GMT by T : Whoops -- that's CLDC 1.1 and MIDP 2.0, not the other way around.

Charles McColm writes "As one of the flock of Linux desktop users I have always taken it for granted that Linux is inherently more secure than Microsoft Windows. The truth is, I've never really paid much attention to Linux security, even on the Linux router I had running for a year. I always knew I should be concerned about security, but I never found a good starting point until I decided to review O'Reilly's Linux Security Cookbook (LSC)." Read on below for Charles' review.

Simon P. Chappell writes "The Eclipse IDE has thundered into the collective consciousness of Java developers since its release by IBM as Open Source Software. Up until this time, the majority of available documentation at the Eclipse website has been for plug-in developers, with scant attention given to the rest of us that actually want to use the tool for anything else. This book restores the balance and brings much needed help to those interested in this IDE." Read on for the rest of Simon's review, about which he says "Full Disclosure: I received a free, review copy of this book, so feel free to assume that I've been bought off and have traded my technical integrity to put about an inch of dead tree on my shelf."

Craig Habeck writes "As a Dilbert aficionado, I was intrigued when a colleague handed me a book that he described as 'like Dilbert written from the point of view of the Pointy-Haired Boss.' I read it over the weekend and came into work on Monday with my sides still sore from laughing." Read on for the rest of what sounds like a good antidote to the plague of management/motivational airport books.

Eater writes "With a 1.1 release imminent, this review may be of interest to users of Linux on the desktop. OpenOffice.org is a group of small projects that collectively make up the open source community's premier office suite. Based on code from Sun's StarOffice and maintained by a worldwide community of developers, the OpenOffice.org project provides a full-featured office application suite. It includes a language independent API and open XML-based file formats." Read on for the rest of Eater's review.

honestpuck writes "Earlier this year I decided to learn Java. I'd spent some time using JavaScript without really getting my hands too dirty but I'd pushed it way to far and realized I needed a bigger hammer. Grabbing a copy of Learning Java, 2nd Edition from O'Reilly I started learning. First problem, I have to admit I've stayed away from object-oriented programming; after all, I've been writing software for nigh on twenty years without it - why make life hard? Sure, I understood the concepts and I'd done a little but never in a language so strongly committed to OO as Java." Read on for honestpuck's review of Head First Java, which he compares in style and content to Learning Java.

livegoats writes "No self-respecting culture maven can deny their love affair with Napster. If you weren't spending your spare time in the years 99-00 downloading MP3s like a champ, it's likely you were still in diapers or dancing with wolves. Oh, Napster, we loved ye when. Joseph Menn's All The Rave: The Rise and Fall of Shawn Fanning's Napster carefully chronicles the life of the company -- from its age of innocence, though its battle with the powerful music industry, to its slow unraveling in 2001, a foreshadowing event for the rest of the dot-com world." Read on for Livegoats' review.

Peter Wayner writes: "When I mentioned the Mad Scientist Club short stories to a co-worker, he rolled up his sleeve and showed me the burn scars on his arm. The books, he said, did this to him. Not literally, but by misguided inspiration. In one of the tales, the boys in the Club launch a fleet of fake flying saucers to frighten their hometown of Mamouth Falls. The scars came when the colleague tried to imitate the book, but used real gasoline to add a bit of zip to plastic cleaner bags turned UFOs. Now, that the rediscovered full-length novel about the Club, The Big Kerplop is being republished with a bit of a splash, some adults may look at stories like this and decided that there's a danger that kids might start imitating the novels. The bigger danger, though, may come if they don't." Read on for the rest of Peter's review.

XenonOfArcticus writes "I first came upon Matt Ridley when Slashdot reviewed Genome: The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Parts (here and here ). Ridley's finely-honed technical writing style could make a treatise on the Boston White Pages intriguing and enlightening, and his treatment of the human Genome was simply eye-opening. I had to have more, and went out immediately to order every Ridley book I could find. Luckily, The Red Queen and The Origins of Virtue were already available and his latest, Nature via Nurture was just hitting shelves. Prepare yourself for my ongoing Overview of Ridley in Three Parts." Read on for the rest of Xenon's review.

Grant Willey writes "Deploying a License-Free Wireless Wide Area Network? Want to learn the intricate details from an authoritative expert who has personally designed and installed hundreds of license-free outdoor broadband wireless networks? This book isn't just for WISPs (wireless Internet service providers), this book is for you!" Read on for Grant's review of Deploying License-Free Wireless Wide-Area Networks from Cisco Press.

dbc15 writes "A timely and much needed update to the first edition, Fwais 2.0 is an excellent overview of the current landscape and psychology involving intranet, vpn and Internet host security while correctly addressing the positives and negatives of firewall / internet security and the techniques used by hackers."

PotPieMan writes "I recently finished reading JSP and Tag Libraries for Web Development, a book for JSP developers wanting to improve their skillset. Read on for my review." It's not a new book, but still relevant.

Ursus Maximus writes "If you have read an introductory book or two about Python programming, but you are far from being an expert, then you will benefit a lot from reading this book. If you are a competent programmer in any other language, you will benefit from this book. If you are an expert Python programmer, you will also benefit from this book." Ursus Maximus's review continues below.