The Bookworm

by Peter H. Salus
<peter@pedant.com>

Peter H. Salus is a member of the ACM, the Early English Text Society, and the Trollope Society, and is a life member of the American Oriental Society. He has held no regular job in the past lustrum. He owns neither a dog nor a cat.

A number of good books came my way in December and January (and several bad ones, but I won't mention those). I also flew around a decent amount, so I was able to get enough reading done.

Let me start and end with books that aren't really about computing at all.

Databases
All of us are aware that gazillions of bits about all of us are maintained in the memories of doctors, schools and colleges, credit card issuers, etc. And we assume that these bits are more or less inviolate. But they're not.

A few years ago I reviewed a book on data mining. Now I've read Simson Garfinkel's opus. Perhaps I should write "polemic." Garfinkel is out to warn us of the death of our notions of privacy: looked at a pornographic site? defaulted on a loan? been cited for DUI? late with the rent? suffering from some ailment best kept from your employer? — all such material is accessible to the assiduous data miner.

I don't want to spoil your fun, so I'm not going to detail what Garfinkel says. Suffice it for me to say that I read Database Nation straight through in one evening. Garfinkel's semijournalistic style is terrific and his content is terrifying.

A definite must-read.

NFS
Another really good book is Callaghan's on NFS. In many ways it is the ideal tribute to the late Rich Stevens, whose work on TCP/IP is cited. Callaghan has been working on NFS at Sun for about 15 years. (Sun announced NFS toward the end of 1984.) He is also one of the authors of the NFSv3 Protocol Specification (RFC 1831).

It is just about a decade since Hal Stern wrote his book on NFS. The need for a more contemporary one has been great. Callaghan has succeeded in writing a volume that "tells it all" and in which you can actually find what you need.

BASH
I have to admit that I don't use BASH. I don't use ksh, either. I generally use csh and occasionally zsh. And, of course, I resort to sh on occasion.

But I decided to be open-minded with Tansley's book. And it is a genuinely solid introduction to BASH — the shell that's available to all UNIX and Linux systems that I've come in contact with.

Tansley has organized his book around five topics:

 the shell commands and syntax
 text-filtering tools
 login environment and customization
 basic shell programming
 advanced techniques

I think it's more in tune with the beginning BASH user, or someone who knows only a few things (like grep, awk, and sort) than the advanced programmer in search of insight. Of great utility are Tansley's occasional "If it's Linux then . . . " boxes.

But it is a good book (even if Brian Kernighan's and Peter Weinberger's names are misspelled on p. 97).

Java
I thought I'd never read another Java book, but I read most of Haggar's and found it informative. This is truly a "practical guide," so those of you who aren't language mavens can now avoid The Java Language Specification, which I think is a wonderful work.

Haggar has a forthright, practical style, and Practical Java is exactly that.

A Disappointment
Having read Uyless Black's book last year, I was wary of Configuring CISCO Voice over IP. If you want the facts of a Cisco installation, here are diagrams of, for example, VIC-2E/M and VIC-2FXS. I found the two appendices on IPv6 the most interesting part of the book. For understanding, I'd go for Black.

And Another
I'm at a loss as to what to say about the Cluetrain Manifesto. First of all, I know several of the authors; second, I was looking forward to the book. Well, the basic thrust of the Manifesto is that the Internet has changed and will continue to change the very nature of markets. Secondarily, there is the insight that markets are conversations.

"Markets are conversations" is thesis #1 of the 95 the authors list at the front of their book. Of course, there are 95 because Martin Luther had 95 Theses which he nailed up on the door of the castle church in Wittenberg on October 31, 1517. Luther's 95 Theses concerned the Church's practice of selling indulgences. These theses are literally all over the map. The seven essays that follow are also diffuse and flabby.

Chris Locke's chapter is full of some of the worst rhetoric I've ever read. "Dark and stormy night" comes nowhere near:

 Dig deeper. Down to the sites that never entertained the hope of Buck One. They owe nobody anything. Not advertisers, not VC producers, not you. Put your ear to those tracks and listen to what's coming like a freight train. What you'll hear is the sound of passion unhinged. (p. 35)

Weinberger's chapter asks, "What's the Web for?" He concludes that it is "to build a new world" (p. 45).

Rick Levine tells me, "Wise companies will learn how to enter the conversation"; Doc Searls tells corporate structures, "We, the market . . . want to speak with your business in a human voice." Etc., etc. "Hyperlinked organizations," "change of historic proportions," "the revolution . . . is already well underway." As is the torrent of overwritten bombast.

I think the authors' points are valid. This would have made a terrific short article.

Another Goodie
Our species manipulates signs. Computing, graphic art, speech, etc. are all rooted in signification. Late last year I got a copy of a book by David Lidov. I knew him as a professor of music at York University in Toronto. I even own a CD of his stuff.

But this book has only a bit about music, and a great deal about everything else.

Lidov avoids philosophy while considering how things mean and how the "artifacts of mental life" are integrated in each of us.

Not about computing, but can one find meaning without inquiring what "to mean" and "to refer" mean or refer to?

Books Reviewed in this Column
DATABASE NATION: THE DEATH OF PRIVACY IN THE 21ST CENTURY
Simson Garfinkel
Sebastopol, CA: O'Reilly, 2000. Pp. 312.
ISBN 1-56592-653-6.

NFS ILLUSTRATED
Brent Callaghan
Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 2000. Pp. 511. ISBN 0-201-32570-5.

LINUX & UNIX SHELL PROGRAMMING
David Tansley
Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 2000. Pp. 504. ISBN 0-201-67472-6.

PRACTICAL JAVA PROGRAMMING
LANGUAGE GUIDE
Peter Haggar
Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 2000. Pp. 279. ISBN 0-201-61646-7.

CONFIGURING CISCO VOICE OVER IP
Elliott Lewis et al.
Rockland, MA: Syngress, 2000. Pp. 512.
ISBN 1-928994-03-2.

THE CLUETRAIN MANIFESTO
Rick Levine et al. Cambridge, MA: Perseus Books, 2000. Pp. 190. ISBN 0-7382-0244-4.

ELEMENTS OF SEMIOTICS
David Lidov
New York: St. Martin's Press, 1999. Pp. 288. ISBN 0-312-21413-8.