Print Media.

A few days ago, Slashdot ran a story about technical book publisher O’Reilly laying off people. Frankly, this isn’t a big surprise considering that everyone and their brother seem to be cutting jobs.

Even though I don’t care for the man because of a lot of the things he says, I’ll give Tim O’Reilly credit for one classy thing he’s done in the midst of this. He has posted that, if anyone has a position that they think one of O’Reilly’s laid off employees would be a good fit for, they can email him and he’ll see what he can do about referring one of them.

For that he gets some respect. That’s a genuinely decent thing to do. It’s also good business (contrary to what a lot of people seem to think).

The thing that gets me is that everyone on Slashdot was basically saying “duh. O’Reilly realizes print is dead.” They apparently think that the internet is the answer to all of life’s problems (not surprising with that crowd).

Even Bruce Perens, the man I love to hate (though not as much as RMS), got on the bandwagon, claiming that you can find all the answers on the internet and asking when the last time anyone cracked open a reference book was.

The honest answer to his question? This afternoon.

I like the internet to look up something random quickly, and I carry electronic copies of most of my books with me when I’m out since it’s a little impractical to keep a bookshelf in my messenger bag, but sitting at my desk, I really prefer paper - it's easier on the eyes, it doesn't take up screen space, I like the tactile sensations, you don't have to worry about the batteries running out, you can take it to the bathroom...

The reasons for my preference go on for a while.

The truth is that, while the internet is great for quick answers to little problems, it tends to suck for in-depth knowledge – a place where a good book excels. There are, however, a couple of problems with this:

1) A lot of people code in snippets, not knowing or really caring what’s going on other than “it looks like it works,” which is why they prefer the quick and dirty answer. They don’t care about why, just that they can plug in some code.

They are, at best, mediocre, and it shows when they run into non-trivial problems.

2) A lot of technical books suck.

As far as #2 goes, I can remember when O’Reilly was basically the gold standard of technical books. Now, however, they tend to be horrible. In fact, their Nutshell series has basically devolved into a printed version of the documentation for the technology that it covers.

The sad thing is that the last O’Reilly book I purchased, Ruby in a Nutshell, was written by the *creator* of the language and still wasn’t very good. In fact, in the notes, he admitted that it was a slightly expanded version of the Pocket Reference.

I bought two books on Ruby when I started with it – Ruby in a Nutshell and Programming Ruby by the Pragmatic Programmers. I’ll let you guess which of them is sitting by my computer right now and which of them is in a box in storage.

In fact, looking around the room, I see books by the Pragmatic Programmers, a couple of decent ones from Wrox, a few from MS Press, some from Sams, and a few others.

There is exactly *one* O’Reilly book in this room – XML in a Nutshell, and I’m using that to elevate my DVD burner off of my desk so that it’s easier to hit the eject button.

I will admit that there is an O’Reilly book that I want to pick up because it’s actually useful, but it’s been around for a while. What’s that, you ask? Mastering Regular Expressions.

Other than that, in my opinion at least, O’Reilly has been a disappointment for quite a while. Then again, there are a lot of crap technical books out there from other companies as well so it’s not just a problem with O’Reilly.

Current mood: Tired
Current music: Default – Wasting My Time

Hello and welcome to last week.

After more than a little pestering, I mean encouragement, from a few people, I've finally set up a twitter account.

I thought I should put it on the sidebar for my blog and on my site so people could, you know, actually find it. If you're wondering about the username, it's an old nickname that I use on a few different accounts (slashdot, among others).

Feel free to follow my feed, but be sure to check your sanity at the door. =]

Current mood: tired
Current music: They Might Be Giants - We Want A Rock

Back on-line.

Well, my site and email are now back up.

However, I have to apologize.

If you sent me anything in the approx 36 hours that the site was down, I didn't get it.

Please feel free to re-send any emails, and I will do my best to get back to you.

Current mood: tired
Current music: Three Dog Night - Mamma Told Me

They Just Never get it Right

It seems that my alma mater is “cracking down” on file sharing.

Citing bandwidth issues and the amount of John Doe lawsuits that they are getting from the RIAA, they have decided to outlaw all p2p applications.

I find this ironic considering that, in my software dev class (2003, I believe), one of the projects available to the teams of students was to create a p2p application with a gui.

I’ve never been a big fan of their network services people, because, on the whole, none of them knew what the hell they were doing. There were, of course, exceptions, but they were few and far between.

With that said, it makes me wonder just how far they’re going to take this. Are we just talking things like uTorrent (which a lot of people in the engineering dept use to get things like linux distros) and eMule or are they going to try to kill any distributed applications that they run across for fear that they're p2p apps they've never heard of before?

If it’s the latter, they’re going to have a whole lot of trouble from the engineering college, because we did a great deal of distributed apps. Hell, even my fish tank was running on 20+ machines both on and off campus as a test at one point.

First they have the security fiasco where multiple machines with personal information, including social security numbers, were compromised for over a year without anyone noticing (and, in one case, the machine was supposed to have been decommissioned over a year before). Now they’re trying to be draconian with the network?

Sorry, folks, but you get no donations from me. I know the same goes for a lot of the other people I went to school with.

Current mood: annoyed
Current music: Ayumi Hamasaki – Evolution

Dear Tim O’reilly,

Having seen your proposed Blogger’s Code of Conduct, I have the following to say to you:

Get stuffed.

You’re not as important as you seem to think you are despite the fact that your publishing company generally makes decent technical books. Your propositions in this area will largely fall on deaf ears because we speak in the manner that we wish to and, should you try to force the issue (though, on the web, I fail to see how you could unless you tried to get legislation passed), I foresee a wonderful backlash.

I (and, I suspect, most of the other people out there in the great ever-changing place called the Internet) will continue to speak in the same manner that I always have ever since I first signed onto a BBS all of those years ago.

As for comments on my blog or any other forum that I moderate, the only things that will be deleted are link spam.

If someone threatens me, they are perfectly welcome to try it on me in person. If they threaten a friend of mine, they go through me first. The same rules apply to “real life”.

Yes, I really am the same here that I am in person. In fact, I tend to be a bit more reserved on here with regard to certain subjects because of the larger audience.

Unlike you and your friends, half-baked threats of physical violence and death don’t phase me. I’ve been out into the world, boys and girls, and have seen both the very good and the very very bad. Someone at the other end of a piece of cable just doesn’t frighten me.

The world is a very big place full of a lot of different kinds of people. Either grow a spine and learn how to deal with the rest of the world or take your bat and ball and go home, Tim. Either way, stop trying to tell the rest of us how we should all be.

Regards,

James

Current mood: annoyed
Current music: Elton John – Crocodile Rock