Linux in a Nutshell (O'Reilly book)

[Joshua Zeidner]

On Mon, May 4, 2009 at 7:02 PM, Craig White <craigwhite at azapple.com> wrote:
> I'm not sure why I am bothering with this but I do happen to own many
> dead tree edition computer books including many O'Reilly books but truth
> be told, they are decorating my office by residing on shelves instead of
> my desk so I think your characterization is slightly too narrow.

   fact is, those books barely equip you to pass a job interview let
alone actually build software.  At this point, they act primarily as
totems of technical knowledge and tend to help convince oblivious
managers that someone is technically knowledgeable.  In general, the
print world is in crisis because their value proposal is quickly being
invalidated.  What O'Reilly has understood for some time is that what
they are selling is hardly the concert (the technical content) and
more the t-shirts.  The intent and sophistication of O'Reillys PR
machine got quite a bit of exposure during the Web 2.0 trademark
episode.  OTOH, the world is left with the issue of how to build
content networks where innovation and authorship is compensated.
Personally, I don't think that print will disappear altogether, but
its general relevance will evaporate.

 -jmz

>
> It's also hard to ignore that O'Reilly actually has contributed stuff to
> PLUG and has solicited the list for reviewers which makes me think that
> the commentaries are overly harsh.
>
> Lastly, it is obvious that both Lisa and Joshua don't seem to care that
> Gerald expressed a personal pride connection with this particular book
> and I would like to ask Gerald what his connection was to "Linux in a
> Nutshell?"
>
> Craig
>
> On Mon, 2009-05-04 at 18:39 -0700, Joshua Zeidner wrote:
>> agreed.  O'reilly = lame.  The price of those books is hardly worth
>> the information in them.  They're mainly used for decorating the desks
>> of poser developers.
>>
>>   -jmz
>>
>> On Mon, May 4, 2009 at 6:34 PM, Lisa Kachold <lisakachold at obnosis.com> wrote:
>> > Snore!
>> >
>> > Bored with the under publishing of technical books, and over blown accolades
>> > for the few available....
>> >
>> > O'Really now!
>> > I own that book BTW (and the Unix in A Nutshell it was patterned afer was
>> > well used too) but I find the actual sources of each distribution more
>> > useful (man, cat /proc/cpuinfo, ls, find) than that book, which is far from
>> > current or distro specific.
>> >
>> > big yawn with dreamy bleary eyes
>> >
>> > On Mon, May 4, 2009 at 12:41 PM, Gerald Thurman <nanofoo at gmail.com> wrote:
>> >>
>> >> Tim O'Reilly just tweeted this...
>> >>
>> >> Linux Journal Reader's Choice Awards: Linux in a Nutshell favorite Linux
>> >> book of all time. I'm honored. http://bit.ly/hhTBH
>> >>
>
>
>
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