Author: Jeffrey D.Sachs
Publisher: Penguin Press
Publication date: October 1, 2006
http://www.earthinstitute.columbia.edu/endofpoverty/
Last weekend I finished reading this book and watched Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth, all in the span of 24 hours. Thoughts of global warming, the threat of a permanently altered planet, and extreme poverty killing thousands every day were swimming in my mind. While I felt a sense of urgency, I also felt conflicted. Because it’s hard to feel urgent about both. In fact, history shows it’s hard for the US government to give urgent attention to more than one crisis at a time. So what to do in the face of such cultural monsters?
As you might have guessed from our book reviews, we like to read. And there’s no better time than during a hot, hazy summer. Not that these won’t do by a cozy fire or during a spring rainshower (so long as you’re inside). After all, books are pretty all-purpose companions. Whatever the season, when you feel the itch to hit the bookstore or local library, maybe you’ll take our suggestions.
Don’t see your favorite? Leave us a comment and let us know what you’ve been reading–just be sure to include author and title information, in case we just have to have it. And if you can’t get enough? Most of our editors can be found occasionally hanging out at Good Reads (it’s like heaven for bookworms). » Read more
The Linux Programmer’s Toolbox
Author: John Fusco
Publisher: Prentice Hall Open Source Software Development Series
Publication date: May 6, 2007
The Linux Programmers Toolbox provides a thorough introduction on the essential C and C++ development tools packaged with common
modern Linux distributions. It is predominantly geared towards programmers who are new to the Linux platform, but power users and systems engineers perk up–there is enough cross-discipline information to absolutely warrant a closer look.
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Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 Administration Unleashed
Author: Tammy Fox
Publisher: Sams
Publication date: April 20, 2007
Disclosure: Tammy Fox was the founding editor of Red Hat Magazine.
I’m a 32-year-old software engineer working for Red Hat. The last time I did a book review, I was reading The Great Gatsby when I really wanted to focus on the upcoming seventh grade spring dance. Fortunately I can now read (and review) books that I find interesting. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 Administration Unleashed by Tammy Fox fits the bill. It is, as its name implies, an admin guide and reference guide. It provides useful information on a subject that I am perpetually interested in, is well written, and there are no subtle interactions between characters that the author uses to display his dissatisfaction with the behavior of the nouveau rich (or whatever it was The Great Gatsby was about). So when I was offered the opportunity to review Fox’s new admin guide, the “easy-A” opportunist in me jumped at the chance.
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A bane of the system administrator’s (SA) job is on-call work. You either end up lugging a laptop or making a dash for the nearest machine when things go wrong. . It would be nice to have something that was a bit more portable but had enough tools to fix most issues. The Nokia Internet Tablets (N770 and N800) offer a mostly complete Linux environment and are quite portable, but can they really offer SA’s more freedom?
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Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything
Author: Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams
Publisher: Portfolio Hardcover
Publication date: December 28, 2006
http://wikinomics.com/
I feel like I should have enjoyed this book more. After all, it has gotten lots of press and is very popular.
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The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals
Author: Michael Pollan
Publisher: Penguin Press
Publication date: May, 2006
http://www.michaelpollan.com/omnivore.php
If you are looking for a truly thought-provoking book to give you new insights into the nature of open source software, I recommend reading The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals, by Michael Pollan.
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I’ve always liked Trolltech. They make Qt, the cross platform application development framework that forms the basis of the K Desktop Environment (KDE–my desktop of choice). While I don’t normally work in the world of GUI application development, I did like that they provided the embedded Qtopia product, so they definitely kept my interest. (Embedded development was my career in a former life). Recently, they’ve showcased Qtopia in their Greenphone SDK, a fully functional GSM phone with a big video touchscreen, running an embedded Linux kernel. Its a nice looking platform from the marketing glossies, so when Trolltech contacted Red Hat to get us to review their SDK, I jumped at the chance.
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