Which book do you plan to read.

Cool man, the truth is in the Bible, check it out. Let's keep this about books though and not derail this thread anymore though okay?
 
Any book put out by John Sandford specifically in the Prey series. Lucas Davenport and Virgil Flowers for the win!
I've read every book in the series. If you start with the first one, it's more grizzly, more fun, better jokes and great adventures that will capture you on the first page, though the first books are somewhat dated (such as floppy disks for the computers).

For those who are aware, the Letty book sucked.
 
I've also read Hacking: The Art of Exploitation and I was a bit disappointed because, well, true to its title I guess, it is more about thinking like a hacker and finding one's own exploits, than about practical use of the available tools.
I can't help thinking that in a professional environment, where one employee compromises or secures the system, and the other sits and reads source code in the hope of a eureka moment, the former employee is going to get the promotion.
But i guess that was really to do with my faulty expectations and how I like to learn.
 
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I'm about a third of the way through this book and it's really good. The explanation of linear classifiers (algorithms to tell apart dog and cat photos for example) was actually a lot better than some university course materials i read. Unfortunately my brain is a LIFO structure with limited RAM so it's already discarded a lot of the material. I'm soldiering on with it though.
 
ProphetOfDoom said:
I've also read Hacking: The Art of Exploitation and I was a bit disappointed because, well, true to its title I guess, it is more about thinking like a hacker and finding one's own exploits, than about practical use of the available tools.
I can't help thinking that in a professional environment, where one employee compromises or secures the system, and the other sits and reads source code in the hope of a eureka moment, the former employee is going to get the promotion.
But i guess that was really to do with my faulty expectations and how I like to learn.
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It explains what type of book it is within the first few pages. You don't have to read through 450+ pages to know that. Most companies don't pay their employees to read source code all day. They want results, which is why employee #1 is more valued.

I'm not going to get disappointed if I read an entire book on cooking, if I have no interest in cooking or don't have any plan to make any of those recipes, just because the book doesn't give me any tips on fixing problems with my car. I knew what I was getting into, and they are two different books.
 
Well yeah, I already said my expectations were wrong, so there was no need to tell me my expectations were wrong. I thought the book would teach how systems are exploited generally. Instead it teaches about crafting exploits, which is is a pretty niche kind of playful puzzle-solving (that most people are not very good at) and brittle-ly relies on someone else having made a mistake that no-one else but you has spotted. I just think that that topic (crafting exploits) has a much more narrow appeal than the broader topic of actually getting this stuff done. And I mistakenly thought that the book was about the one topic, when it was about the other. I remarked on it because I think most people would see the title of the book and think it would make them a hacker.
 
ProphetOfDoom said:
I thought the book would teach how systems are exploited generally. Instead it teaches about crafting exploits
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How does learning to write exploits NOT make you a hacker but learning to run tools does ? (lol) I think you're confused on what hacking actually is. You don't seem that into programming. After mastering the concepts and techniques in this book, reading something like "Hacking Exposed" is a walk in the park. I don't think people are that naive, where they think they can read a single book and it will make them a hacker. Teenagers maybe. Again.. the entire book is about programming in C / asm and I don't understand how you couldn't realize that halfway through the book... That you had to read up until the last page to come to the realization "oh this wasn't what I thought it was going to be." That just makes me think you didn't actually read the book.
 
ProphetOfDoom said:
which is is a pretty niche kind of playful puzzle-solving (that most people are not very good at) and brittle-ly relies on someone else having made a mistake that no-one else but you has spotted.
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Crafting exploits.. that could get you root access on a server. "Playful". harmless. Can you stop downplaying the book now with this drivel ? It doesn't really make any sense and it's misleading to anyone reading this thread that might be interested in reading a great book on serious hacking. It's not going to appeal to script kiddies but who really cares about that? Let them read "How to be an 31337 Hax0r in 7 days without learning programming".
 
chessguy64 said:
Most companies don't pay their employees to read source code all day. They want results, which is why employee #1 is more valued.
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They also want staff to remain easily replaceable. And your company should not be too dependent on one person, if that person disappears, your company should not get into trouble. Which is why you often have work that is done by several people when it could actually be done by one person. The current system of bonuses for people who work hard is purely artificial. Ultimately, the reasoning is that people who are more productive would be more entitled to financial compensation. But if you analyze this a little deeper, you see that it is not really about productivity at all.

For example, look at the popularity of Java, Lua, JavaScript, PHP, Visual Basic, Ruby, Ada and Python.
Is any of the above languages as expressive as Clojure, Vala, Emacs Lisp, Racket, Groovy, Rebol, Prolog, CoffeeScript, etc. ?

How can you be equally productive and useful in a programming language that is much less expressive?
You often also see that there are people who are intellectually at a completely different level than 99.9% of the university professors. Think Nikola Tesla and Ernest Lawrence.

If I remember correctly, Nikola Tesla struggled to find a job in the early years of his career. Doesn't this say enough? It means that most people get paid even though their work could very easily be done much more efficiently with more qualitative and advanced results.
 
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Probably the least highbrow book featured so far but I live in a small town with one small bookshop and this was the only book they had on Chinese. I can introduce myself in Mandarin now, if I'm allowed a few moments to think. :D
 
I foresee these four books in respective order (maybe some of you might know them/ (in good or bad way) ),
1) How to design programs
2) Structure and interpretation of computer programs
3) Programming languages : application & interpretation
4) Essentials of programming languages
 
_al said:
I have the second edition (in Russian). Excellent book. It helped me a lot while writing a special C preprocessor for the needs of our programmers.
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I would consider one learning their first computer language through a foreign book to be quite an impressive intellectual feat.

Grell said:
I don't think it is appropriate to bash religion on this forum. Not everyone has the same views as each other. You may hate Christianity, that doesn't mean your views apply to everyone else. I for one am a Christian and I remember making my avatar a picture of the Bible and I was forced to change it. I don't think religion (or opposition to it for that matter) has a place on these forums.
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Grell said:
Cool man, the truth is in the Bible, check it out. Let's keep this about books though and not derail this thread anymore though okay?
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I didn't read what anybody else wrote about your religion, but I have a hard time thinking that anybody's forum posts are going to change whatever your faith promises.
 
I'd rather keep this thread about books than go back to talking about religion again. But, I was just sharing my beliefs, that's all. I should be allowed to do that on an open forum. I don't want this thread to go down the rabbit hole of religion again and I don't think most other people do either. If you have any questions you can send me a private message.
 
BobSlacker said:
Guys, how much behind is it the Absolute FreeBSD 3e really is?
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I have the 2nd edition and I won't buy the 3rd edition because I think the gaps in knowledge can be filled pretty easily once you know the general concepts. So, not really behind much on general FreeBSD config / use.
 
chessguy64 said:
I have the 2nd edition and I won't buy the 3rd edition because I think the gaps in knowledge can be filled pretty easily once you know the general concepts. So, not really behind much on general FreeBSD config / use.
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So, this would apply for me when the 4e will be released?
 
BobSlacker said:
So, this would apply for me when the 4e will be released?
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Pretty much, yeah. He's probably thinking "do I really need to write a 4th edition of this book?" Anything new new you check changes from release to release in the site notes, but I don't think there's going to be any radical changes from 3e to 4e if it even ever comes out.
 
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