Linux in a Nutshell (O'Reilly book)

[Craig White]

On Mon, 2009-05-04 at 19:53 -0700, Joshua Zeidner wrote:
> On Mon, May 4, 2009 at 7:28 PM, Alan Dayley <alandd at consultpros.com> wrote:
> > I don't understand the negativity around dead tree media.
> 
>   The criticisms are complex.  Primarily, chopping down rain forests
> to explain to someone how to write Perl is considered wasteful and
> excessive[1].  Its obvious to anyone who is serious about development
> that a few google queries rivals what you can find in any printed
> technical manual ( for $69.95 ).
----
I can think of several examples where this doesn't work. For example,
FreeRadius, where the author implores people not to search the web for
inexhaustible out of date solutions...
http://www.mail-archive.com/freeradius-users@lists.freeradius.org/msg44033.html

or Samba.org who actually publish their manuals for download in html
form, pdf form, read it on the Internet in either but their dead tree
versions of both 'The Official Samba 3 HowTo' and 'By Example' continue
to be best sellers.

I have found that LDAP walk-throughs on the Internet confuse the
daylights out of people because each one has a different purpose and
they all differ in significant ways.

I rarely get useless information from books, I have often gotten useless
information or what I would term 'chasing my tail' activities from doing
Google searches. Samba seems to be one of those daemons where people
find something on the Internet that cause them to waste huge amounts of
time.

I find my Ruby Pickaxe book an invaluable resource to this day.

I find the O'Reilly Bash book totally useful as the man pages have
minimal information and the info pages often don't have what I want.

Besides, I need all those books to help maintain my pose as you call it.
----
> The core issue though is what I
> mention elsewhere in this thread, currently there is no dependable way
> to enforce compensation for authors other than print.  Where there is
> no compensation, there is low or no quality.  Amazon has an
> interesting initiative, the Kindle, but history has shown that all DRM
> schemes will eventually be hacked- so its just a matter of time before
> people are reading 'bootlegged' copy on their Kindles.  Secondly this
> raises the familiar issues of the excesses of copyright.  As we begin
> to rely more and more on legal authority in the realm of ideas, we
> start to encounter more and more exploitation (ie. people copyrighting
> chord progressions or yoga postures).  We have yet to find a practical
> system that works and promotes innovation and art, obviously progress
> needs to be made in understanding what factors are at stake here and
> how to effectively address them.
----
The issues of DRM really are too remote to this discussion and do
nothing to clarify simply because if books are so worthless, does it
really matter if they are dead tree or Kindle format?

Perhaps it is a generational thing but I find that my comprehension is
much better reader ink on paper than than on screen and I notice that I
am not alone because every attorney I know will final proof on paper.

Craig


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