Authors: Thomas Limoncelli, Christina J. Hogan, Strata R. Chalup
Publisher: Addison Wesley
Publication Date: June 2007 (2nd Edition)
http://everythingsysadmin.com
Buy it. Buy it. Buy it.
If you are a systems or network administrator and you do not own a copy of this book, stop reading this right now and go get one. If you are a manager responsible for the care and feeding of a technical team, purchase copies for yourself and each of your team members. Heck, even if you’re unfortunate enough to be married to a systems administrator (*gasp*), buy a copy for your significant other and steal it when they aren’t looking. It’s that good. You’ll get a better understanding of what he or she does on a daily basis, as well as be able to finally explain it to your mother-in-law. (True story!) Here’s why. » Read more
If you understand Business process management (BPM), you know it is more than another TLA. In the end, it is about the tooling — real tools in the hands of your business analysts and programmers. Being able to build programmatic workflows customized to your business. Sounds like something nice to have as part of a middleware solution.
No surprise that a new book about the JBoss jBPM product caught Tom Baeyens attention. Tom is the founder and leader of jBPM, and in his short review Great Book About JBoss jBPM wrote:
The book targets architects, analysts and developers that want to get started with jBPM. Matt succeeded in bringing great value for all three target groups. It starts with a fresh look at the value of BPM and practical guidelines on how to start a BPM project. Installation of every required piece of software is explained in detail. Even less technical people will have no problems to get the software up and running with these very simple step by step instructions.
The full review is at http://processdevelopments.blogspot.com/2007/08/great-book-about-jboss-jbpm.html.
Author: Carl Albing, JP Vossen, and Cameron Newham
Publisher: O’Reilly Media
Publication date: May 2007
http://www.bashcookbook.com/
One of the reasons I love cookbooks, of all kinds, is because cookbooks have a clarity and simplicity of purpose. Whether it’s a cookbook for code geeks or for food geeks, its raison d’etre is the same: the “cook” has a job to do, and not a lot of time to do it. If a home chef wants to whip up a nice dinner for guests, he don’t want to have to understand the entire history of French cooking; he just wants a simple, well-written recipe for coq au vin. Similarly, if a sysadmin wants to receive an hourly email with a list of zombie processes on the new test server down the hall, she probably wants to hack together a quick bash script, and she doesn’t want to read the collected works of Grady Booch to do it.
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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