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.
» Read more
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.
» Read more
Worldchanging: A User’s Guide for the 21st Century
Author: Alex Steffen and others
Publisher: Abrams
Publication date: 2006
http://www.worldchanging.com
Have you heard of the pot-to-pot refrigerator in Nigeria or the Rural Studio project in Alabama? What about the People’s Grocery project in West Oakland or South Africa’s social defining Mont Fleur Scenarios? Insightful stories of real people doing real things. All of these projects and ideas are introduced in Alex Steffen’s WorldChanging: A User’s Guide to the 21st Century.
» Read more
Author: Chris Tyler
Publisher: O’Reilly Media
Publication date: October 1, 2006
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/fedoralinux/index.html
Walk into any bookstore and you’re sure to find several books about Fedora, the community-oriented and totally free Linux distribution that’s completely cutting-edge without all the messy bleeding. Just in case you missed it, some of those books were reviewed here in November of ‘05. Many of these books are incredibly detailed and informative, but can make for difficult reading for beginners. O’Reilly has found a unique “sweet spot,” though, for one of its newest volumes, Fedora Linux.
» Read more
Author: Ori Brafman, Rod Beckstrom
Publisher: Portfolio Hardcover
Publication date: October 5, 2006
http://www.starfishandspider.com/
Intelligent people can and should disagree. So when we read The Starfish and the Spider, it’s no surprise that we had varied opinions. And when it was time to publish a review, no one could quite agree on which review we should publish. In the spirit of intelligent discourse, here are two reviews of the same book.
» Read more
Normally, a computer has an operating system installed on the hard drive. When the computer powers up, the hard drive reads the operating system, loads it into memory, and the system is ready to go.
With a live CD, the operating system is on the CD-ROM, and the system boots from that, completely bypassing the hard drive.
Written by the same set of authors who brought you the Unix Systems Administration Handbook (USAH), the Linux Administration Handbook (LAH) provides a detail-rich, Linux-centric approach to system management. It limits its focus to the 5 most commonly installed distributions in the market today.
» Read more
