[oak perl] Review of "Evil Geniuses in a Nutshell"

George Woolley george at metaart.org
Thu Sep 25 22:11:29 CDT 2003


Usually I put reviews on the Website and inform you about them.
But currently I'm unable to access the website and the review is short,
so I'm posting it on the mailing list.

What follows is a cut and paste from the page I created
for the website (with one annotation to supply a link).

========================================================
Oakland.pm
Reviews
Review of "Evil Geniuses in a Nutshell: A Guide to World Domination"
reviewed by George Woolley


Evil Geniuses in a Nutshell
By Illiad
April 2000
1-56592-861-X, Order Number: 861X
132 pages, $12.95 US, $18.95 CA, £8.95 UK

The above is taken from the O'Reilly online catalog entry
[   at   http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/evilgenius/   ]
which contains more information about the book.





Good. (3 owls of 5 in O'Reilly terms)


The User Friendly (UF) Comic Strip is about the saga
of a cast of characters who work at or are somehow involved
with Columbia Internet, a fictional Internet Service Provider.
This is the second of four (so far) book compilations
of the User Friendly comic strip.

What did you expect from the book?
Based on the title of the book,
I expected a humorous guide to world domination
in something like the format of an O'Reilly Nutshell book.
I also expected lots of User Friendly strips
and especially ones involving Cthulhu, Pitr and Crud Puppy,
who are all evil geniuses.
I expected to encounter some other evil geniuses as well,
for example, Bill Gates.

 Did you get what you expected?
Well:
* The book is geeky funny.
* The book contains plenty of UF strips,
  actually more than I expected.
* Pitr appears often.
However:
* The book doesn't focus on world domination.
* Cthulhu does not appear at all.
  We don't see much of Crud Puppy either. Darn! :(
* The format is not that of a Nutshell book.
  For example, there is no table of contents or index.

The book is very funny,
but it does not deliver fully on the title of the book.
I think it's time for a second edition
with more focussed content
and following, more closely, the format
of a typical O'Reilly Nutshell book.

 Who's the book for?
The book is appropriate for geeks
and people interested in learning about geeks and geek culture.



George Woolley of Oakland.pm



written: 2003-09-24

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