From timc+perl at divide.net Tue Feb 3 22:28:01 2004 From: timc+perl at divide.net (Tim Chambers) Date: Thu Aug 5 00:18:30 2004 Subject: Fw: Newsletter from O'Reilly UG Program, February 3 Message-ID: <006701c3ead7$4ba8ae80$458bf044@CEPHAS> ---------------------------------------------------------------- Book News ---------------------------------------------------------------- -Hardware Hacking Projects for Geeks -C# Cookbook -Security Assessment -Wicked Cool Shell Scripts ---------------------------------------------------------------- Upcoming Events ---------------------------------------------------------------- -Darryl Le??n, Ph.D. ("Sequence Analysis in a Nutshell"), San Diego Bioinformatics Forum, San Diego--February 10 -Jesse Liberty ("Programming C#," "Programming Visual Basic .NET"), .NET Face to Face, Atlanta, GA--February 20-22 ---------------------------------------------------------------- Conferences ---------------------------------------------------------------- -Joe Trippi keynote added to Digital Democracy Teach-In -O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference -OSCON 2004: Call for Participation--Last Chance ---------------------------------------------------------------- News ---------------------------------------------------------------- -Wireless Mesh Networking -Interviews with Digital Democracy Activists -The Ideal Digital Photographer's Workflow, Part 2 -The New Breed of Version Control Systems -Why Run Free Software on a PDA? -Troubleshooting with Postfix Logs -What's New in Tomcat 5 -Effective Forms Authentication, Part 1 -Serialization in .NET, Part 1 -The Macintosh's Twisted Truth -Smart File Sharing Between Macs and PCs ---------------------------------------------------------------- News From Your Peers ---------------------------------------------------------------- -San Gabriel Valley Linux Users Group Meeting, Pasadena, CA--February 12 ================================================ Book News ================================================ Did you know you can request a free book to review for your group? Ask your group leader for more information. For book review writing tips and suggestions, go to: http://ug.oreilly.com/bookreviews.html Don't forget, you can receive 20% off any O'Reilly, No Starch, Paraglyph, or Syngress book you purchase directly from O'Reilly. Just use code DSUG when ordering online or by phone 800-998-9938. http://www.oreilly.com/ ***Free ground shipping is available for online orders of at least $29.95 that go to a single U.S. address. This offer applies to U.S. delivery addresses in the 50 states and Puerto Rico. For more details, go to: http://www.oreilly.com/news/freeshipping_0703.html ---------------------------------------------------------------- O'Reilly New Releases ---------------------------------------------------------------- ***Hardware Hacking Projects for Geeks ISBN: 0596003145 >From building a home arcade machine to creating a cubicle intrusion detection system, "Hardware Hacking Projects for Geeks" offers an array of inventive, customized electronics projects for the geek who can't help looking at a gadget and wondering how it might be "upgraded." The book begins with less complex hacking projects then moves into more advanced hacks. Clear step-by-step instructions allow even those with no formal electronics- or hardware-engineering skills to hack real hardware in clever ways. http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/hardwarehks/ Excerpts are available free online: http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/hardwarehks/chapter/index.html ***C# Cookbook ISBN: 0596003390 "C# Cookbook" provides practical answers to day-to-day C# programming questions, using code recipes collected especially for developers working on the .NET platform. In addition to the complete, documented code samples showing how to solve hundreds of specific problems, you'll find discussions of how the underlying technology works as well as material on alternatives, limitations, and other considerations where appropriate. This definitive collection of recipes will help developers of all levels solve problems now. http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/csharpckbk/ Chapter 8, "Regular Expressions," is available free online: http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/csharpckbk/chapter/index.html ---------------------------------------------------------------- Publishing Partners New Releases ---------------------------------------------------------------- ***Security Assessment Publisher: Syngress ISBN: 1932266968 The National Security Agency's INFOSEC Assessment Methodology (IAM) provides guidelines for performing an analysis of how information is handled within an organization: looking at the systems that store, transfer, and process information. It also analyzes the impact to an organization if there is a loss of integrity, confidentiality, or availability. This book shows how to do a complete security assessment based on the NSA's guidelines. http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/1932266968/ ***Wicked Cool Shell Scripts Publisher: No Starch Press ISBN: 1593270127 101 useful, customizable, and fun Linux, Mac OS X and UNIX shell scripts that you can use to solve common problems and personalize your computing environment. Includes an interactive calculator, a spell checker, a disk backup utility, a weather tracker, a web logfile analysis tool, and much more. The cookbook-style examples are all written in Bourne Shell (sh) syntax. http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/1593270127/ ================================================ Upcoming Events ================================================ ***For more events, please see: http://events.oreilly.com/ ***Darryl Le??n, Ph.D. ("Sequence Analysis in a Nutshell"), San Diego Bioinformatics Forum, San Diego--February 10 Darryl will discuss "Bioinformatics: What is commercially viable and what is not." 5:30-8:00pm Diversa Corporation 4955 Directors Place, San Diego, CA 92121 http://www.sdbioinfo.org/next.html ***Jesse Liberty ("Programming C#," "Programming Visual Basic .NET"), .NET Face to Face, Atlanta, GA--February 20-22 Jesse is a featured speaker at this weekend conference for programmers working in .NET. Marriott Atlanta Century Center, Atlanta, GA. For Registration and information go to: http://www.mentor-network.com/ ================================================ Conference News ================================================ ***Joe Trippi keynote added to Digital Democracy Teach-In Joe Trippi, the man whose ground-breaking use of Internet-based campaigning propelled Howard Dean from obscurity to early front-runner, has just signed on as keynoter at the Digital Democracy Teach-In. Former Dean campaign manager Trippi will take Teach-In participants inside the campaign's unconventional experiment in Internet politics, and look at both victories and lessons learned. While Dean may no longer be leading the pack, the other candidates are rushing to emulate Trippi's Internet strategy--as "Wired News" declared recently, "Internet politics is dead. Long live Internet politics." Trippi will kick off the Teach-In at 8:30 am this coming Monday, February 9, in San Diego, CA. Digital Democracy Teach-In February 9, 2004 Westin Horton Plaza, San Diego, CA http://conferences.oreillynet.com/et2004/edemo.csp Co-located with the O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference To register, go to: (Sorry, no user group discounts apply.) http://conferences.oreillynet.com/cs/et2004/create/ord_et04?x-t=edemo.create.form ***O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference February 9-12, 2004 Westin Horton Plaza San Diego San Diego, CA 92101 http://conferences.oreilly.com/etech/ Use code DSUG when you register, and receive 20% off conference pricing. To register for the conference, go to: http://conferences.oreillynet.com/pub/w/28/register.html ***Last Chance--OSCON 2004: Call for Participation Individuals and companies interested in making presentations or giving tutorials at next summer's O'Reilly Open Source Convention in Portland, Oregon are invited to submit proposals. This year's theme is "Opening the Future: Discover, Develop, Deliver." Tracks of interest run the open source gamut from Apache to XML, and we're also looking for proposals for sessions that help attendees add open source to their companies. The deadline for submitting proposals is February 9. To submit a proposal, go to: http://conferences.oreillynet.com/cs/os2004/create/e_sess ================================================ News From O'Reilly & Beyond ================================================ --------------------- General News --------------------- ***Wireless Mesh Networking Tomas Krag and Sebastian Buttrich take a look at some of the principles of wireless mesh networking and they demonstrate how to install and run a mesh network on a Linux-based computer. http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/wireless/2004/01/22/wirelessmesh.html Tomas will discuss how wireless technologies can bring Internet and Intranet connectivity to the developing world at O'Reilly's upcoming ETech 2004. http://conferences.oreilly.com/etech/ ***Interviews with Digital Democracy Activists On a recent NPR "Fresh Air" program, Terry Gross interviewed William Greene of RightMarch.com, as well as Wes Boyd and Eli Pariser of MoveOn.org. William and Wes will both be featured speakers on February 9 at O'Reilly's Digital Democracy Teach-In. http://freshair.npr.org/day_fa.jhtml?display=day&todayDate=01/21/2004 ***The Ideal Digital Photographer's Workflow, Part 2 Ken Milburn follows up on suggestions he made in Part 1 of this two-part series about creating a minimally destructive workflow for the work you do inside image-editing software. Here he offers five nondestructive editing steps to take once you've downloaded your images. Then he provides some second-stage editing techniques to enhance the impact your images will have on your clients, or your friends and family. Ken is the author of the upcoming "Digital Photography: Expert Techniques." http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/javascript/2004/01/21/digital_photography.html --------------------- Open Source --------------------- ***The New Breed of Version Control Systems CVS, part of the glue that holds open source development together, is showing its age. Many competitors have emerged recently, fixing misfeatures and adding new ideas. Shlomi Fish explores several current open source version control systems that may be better for your needs than CVS. http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/onlamp/2004/01/29/scm_overview.html ***Why Run Free Software on a PDA? As PDAs gain power and capabilities, embedded Linux is more and more attractive. Sharp's Zaurus is a popular Linux PDA. Why aren't more palmtop computers running free software? Guylhem Aznar explores and evangelizes Linux on small devices. http://www.linuxdevcenter.com/pub/a/linux/2004/01/29/zaurus.html ***Troubleshooting with Postfix Logs Kyle Dent, author of "Postfix: The Definitive Guide," discusses Postfix logging in general, how to find all relevant information in the logs, and how to increase the amount of logging when more information is needed. He also suggests a few configuration guidelines that might help prevent problems from the start. http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/onlamp/2004/01/22/postfix.html --------------------- Java --------------------- ***What's New in Tomcat 5 In December 2003, the Apache Tomcat developers released version 5.0.16 as the first stable release of Tomcat 5. Jason Brittain looks at the latest features and offers insight into the goals established for version 5.0, which had a direct impact on development. http://www.onjava.com/pub/a/onjava/2004/01/28/tomcat5.html Jason is a coauthor of "Tomcat: The Definitive Guide." ISBN: 0596003188 http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/tomcat/index.html --------------------- .NET --------------------- ***Effective Forms Authentication, Part 1 ASP.NET offers several possibilities for authenticating users, but when you come right down to it, there's only one reasonable alternative for most applications: forms authentication. Mike Gunderloy takes you step-by-step through creating a forms authentication project and helps you avoid the potholes. http://www.ondotnet.com/pub/a/dotnet/2004/02/02/effectiveformsauth.html ***Serialization in .NET, Part 1 Serialization of data using built-in .NET support makes persistence easy and reusable. Dan Frumin reviews the support available for serialization and look at a couple of scenarios for using it. http://www.ondotnet.com/pub/a/dotnet/2004/01/26/serializationpt1.html --------------------- Mac --------------------- ***The Macintosh's Twisted Truth Here's a recent "Wired News" article abridged from Owen Linzmayer's new release, "Apple Confidential 2.0: The Definitive History of the World's Most Colorful Company." http://www.wired.com/news/mac/0,2125,61795,00.html Apple Confidential 2.0 No Starch Press ISBN: 1593270100 http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/1593270100/ ***Smart File Sharing Between Macs and PCs There are lots of ways to share files between Macs and PCs, and most of them are aggravating at best. Wei Meng Lee shows you a method that's much easier and cleaner than just about every other solution. http://www.macdevcenter.com/pub/a/mac/2004/01/30/pc_share.html ================================================ News From Your Peers ================================================ ***San Gabriel Valley Linux Users Group Meeting, Pasadena, CA--February 12 Come to the next meeting of SGVLUG to see "Hacking TiVo" by Claude Felizardo. This presentation will cover Tivo hacks, selection criteria, and enhancing one of today's most popular consumer electronics gadgets--the TiVo. Time: 7-9pm Location: Guggenheim Building, Room 101 on the Caltech Campus in Pasadena, CA For directions and more information, go to: http://www.sgvlug.org/ Until next time-- Marsee From timc+perl at divide.net Fri Feb 6 15:34:31 2004 From: timc+perl at divide.net (Tim Chambers) Date: Thu Aug 5 00:18:30 2004 Subject: Fw: Excel Annoyances Needed for New Book Message-ID: <010e01c3ecf9$058acc20$4906ee0f@CEPHAS> Hey User Group Leader, O'Reilly is pulling together a new book called "Excel Annoyances" and we'd like your help! As you might guess from the title, this book aims to identify the problems, snarls, quirks, bugs, and just dumb things about Excel that drive users nuts. Oh yeah--it also aims to solve these annoyances, too. If any members of your group use Excel--be they newbies or Excel masters--and they have annoyances they'd like to see solved, have them email me (marsee@oreilly.com) with "Excel Annoyance" in the subject line. Just have them note what version of Excel and Windows (or Mac OS) they're using. Thanks for sharing. We'll make sure to get copies of "Excel Annoyances" sent to your group shortly after publication. --Marsee *** An example: LET ME COUNT THE DAYS THE ANNOYANCE: I know you can do date calculations in Excel, whether it's to find how many days late I am on a car payment or to see how long it's been since my last haircut. It's pretty easy to determine the number of days between two dates; just subtract one from the other. But when I do that, the result is another date! Huh? THE FIX: In a blank worksheet, try this little exercise, which should show your age in days: 1. In cell A1, enter your birth date in MM/DD/YYYY format. 2. In cell B1, enter the formula =today() to display the current date. 3. In cell C1, enter the formula =b1-a1. You'll notice that the result of the formula in C1 is some other date, which appears to have no correlation to either of the first dates. How come? When you enter a formula, Excel matches the formatting of the formula's inputs. This works well when you're doing calculations on dollar amounts or percentages; the result comes out formatted just the way you'd want. But in our example, Excel formatted the formula result--a number of days--as a date. *** From dave.waddell at mci.com Mon Feb 9 10:16:15 2004 From: dave.waddell at mci.com (David R. Waddell) Date: Thu Aug 5 00:18:30 2004 Subject: Excel Annoyance: No Save a Copy as... functionality In-Reply-To: <4.3.2.7.2.20040206154301.00cb7f28@pop3.west.ora.com> References: <5.2.0.9.0.20040206150511.00b16048@pop.mcilink.com> Message-ID: <5.2.0.9.0.20040209091422.03094e98@pop.mcilink.com> Hi Marsee, I belong to the: Pikes Peak Perl Mongers all the best, david At 16:44 2/6/2004, Marsee Henon wrote: >Hi David, > >Thanks for passing this along. What user group do you belongto ? I want to >make >sure I send them a book when it is available. > >--marsee > > >At 03:16 PM 2/6/2004 -0700, you wrote: >>Hi Marsee, >>I have a whole bunch of them. Here is one for which there is >>only an awkward work-around for us: >> >>We need to save a copy of our sheets in tab-delimited format for >>a script to run on the data in the sheets. Ideally, one would >>just choose a menu command Save Copy As ... which would leave the >>format of the workbook on the screen in Excel format. It is possible to write >>a macro and assign it to menu. However, macros of this sort fail >>on Workbooks in Excel97 or later. Since we need DataValidation functionality >>we cannot use Excel95 format for the spreadsheets. >> >>I've reported the problems with macros to Microsoft several years ago. >>They never reply or attempt to fix the problem. >> >>...so >>Every time we want to save a copy in tab-delimited format we must use >>Save As and then go through a bunch of silly dialogs about whether you >>really want to save in this format, and eventually save the spreadsheet >>a second time in Excel format to get back to the Workbook format. >> >>As soon as OpenOffice's spreadsheet has pop-down lists for choosing >>values for a cell, we will move to it. >> >>Excel97/Excel2000 under Win98 or Win2000 > > > > >~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ > >Marsee Henon >O'Reilly & Associates >1005 Gravenstein Highway North Sebastopol, CA 95472 >707-827-7103 800-998-9938 Fax 707-829-0104 >marsee@oreilly.com >http://ug.oreilly.com/ http://www.oreilly.com/ >http://conferences.oreilly.com/ > >~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ From timc+perl at divide.net Wed Feb 11 17:37:44 2004 From: timc+perl at divide.net (Tim Chambers) Date: Thu Aug 5 00:18:30 2004 Subject: tree.pl Message-ID: <020e01c3f0f8$0efca5a0$4906ee0f@CEPHAS> I just saw this and mirrored it. Normally, I don't care about obfuscation, but this is just, well, beautiful. :-) http://home.pcisys.net/~tbc/misc/tree.pl <>< Tim From timc+perl at divide.net Sat Feb 21 10:46:43 2004 From: timc+perl at divide.net (Tim Chambers) Date: Thu Aug 5 00:18:30 2004 Subject: Fw: Newsletter from O'Reilly UG Program, February 20 Message-ID: <00c201c3f89a$7c525b50$fe07ee0f@CEPHAS> ================================================================ O'Reilly UG Program News--Just for User Group Leaders February 20, 2004 ================================================================ ... ---------------------------------------------------------------- General News ---------------------------------------------------------------- ***Add your group listing to the new O'Reilly User Group Wiki Promote your events, projects, and yourselves to your fellow O'Reilly User Group Program members. http://wiki.oreillynet.com/usergroups/view?HomePage [I did this. Feel free to edit http://wiki.oreillynet.com/usergroups/view?PPPM -- that's what a wiki is for. - tbc] ***Do you belong to Orkut? I have started an O'Reilly User Group Community if you would like to join.(Special thanks to Andy Lester and Bill Kendrick for "inviting" me as their friend. Orkut has been a blast!) http://www.orkut.com [If you want me to invite you, just send me the e-mail address you want me to use. - tbc] ================================================================ O'Reilly News for User Group Members February 20, 2004 ================================================================ ---------------------------------------------------------------- Book News ---------------------------------------------------------------- -Linux Pocket Guide -Ethereal Packet Sniffing -Getting Started with LEGO Trains -iPod & iTunes: The Missing Manual -Check Point Next Generation with Application Intelligence Security Administration -Hardware Hacking: Have Fun While Voiding Your Warranty -Oracle Essentials, 3rd Edition: Oracle Database 10g -Squid: The Definitive Guide ---------------------------------------------------------------- Upcoming Events ---------------------------------------------------------------- -Tony Stubblebine ("Regular Expression Pocket Reference"), Oakland, CA--March 9 -Mac User Group Day at O'Reilly in Sebastopol, CA--April 24 ---------------------------------------------------------------- Conferences ---------------------------------------------------------------- -O'Reilly's Digital Democracy Teach-In a Success -Annotating Everything: Marc A. Smith at ETech ---------------------------------------------------------------- News ---------------------------------------------------------------- -Happy Hacking! -Finalists for the 2004 Jolt Awards -Safari Gets Bigger and Better -Things Squid Administrators Should Know -A Ticketing System for a Three-Tiered Architecture -Home Automation with Mac OS X, Part 1 -Automated Backups with Existing Tools -Protect Yourself Against Denial-of-Service Attacks -Book Preview: Eclipse -Six Cool New JSP and Servlet Features -O'Reilly Network Is SXSW Web Awards Finalist -Cooking with C# -ADO.NET Connection Pooling Explained ---------------------------------------------------------------- News From Your Peers ---------------------------------------------------------------- Check out the new O'Reilly User Group Wiki for the latest news ================================================ Book News ================================================ Did you know you can request a free book to review for your group? Ask your group leader for more information. For book review writing tips and suggestions, go to: http://ug.oreilly.com/bookreviews.html Don't forget, you can receive 20% off any O'Reilly, No Starch, Paraglyph, or Syngress book you purchase directly from O'Reilly. Just use code DSUG when ordering online or by phone 800-998-9938. http://www.oreilly.com/ ***Free ground shipping is available for online orders of at least $29.95 that go to a single U.S. address. This offer applies to U.S. delivery addresses in the 50 states and Puerto Rico. For more details, go to: http://www.oreilly.com/news/freeshipping_0703.html ---------------------------------------------------------------- New Releases ---------------------------------------------------------------- ***Linux Pocket Guide Publisher: O'Reilly ISBN: 0-596-00628-4 "Linux Pocket Guide" gets you up to speed quickly on day-to-day Linux use. The book begins with general concepts like files and directories, the shell, and X windows, and then presents detailed overviews of the most essential commands. You'll learn each command's purpose, usage, options, location on disk, and even the RPM package that installed it. Throw in a host of valuable power user tips and a friendly, accessible style, and you'll find this practical, to-the-point book a small but mighty resource for Linux users. http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/linuxpg/ Sample excerpts are available online: http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/linuxpg/chapter/index.html. ***Ethereal Packet Sniffing Publisher: Syngress ISBN: 1-932266-82-8 "Ethereal Packet Sniffing" is the first book available on Ethereal, the premier open source protocol analyzer for Windows and Unix. Ethereal offers more protocol decoding and reassembly than any free sniffer out there, and this book will show you how to make the most of it. You'll learn how to use Tethereal, the command-line version of Ethereal; install and build Ethereal from source; pinpoint network problems using filters to manage network operations and traffic; import and export files between Ethereal and various compatible products; and so much more. http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/1932266828/ ***Getting Started with LEGO Trains Publisher: No Starch Press ISBN: 1593270062 Learn to build LEGO Trains, from setting up train tracks to building custom freight cars. Jacob H. McKee, an authority on LEGO Trains, teaches basic building techniques and shares some of his most fascinating and original train designs. You'll learn how to build a North American-style locomotive, a 1940's refrigerator car, and an intermodal container car, plus you'll gain the skills to create your own designs. Four color throughout. http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/1593270062/ ***iPod & iTunes: The Missing Manual Publisher: O'Reilly ISBN: 0-596-00658-6 iTunes and the iTunes music store aren't just for Mac fans anymore. Anyone running Windows XP or 2000 can now cash in on all the capabilities of this music store jukebox. Our new version of "iPod & iTunes: The Missing Manual" has been thoroughly updated to reflect these changes. No matter what kind of music moves you, this book will help you get much more out of your iPod--and much more into it. http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/ipodtmm2/ ***Check Point Next Generation with Application Intelligence Security Administration Publisher: Syngress ISBN: 1-932266-89-5 >From the authors of Syngress's best-selling "Check Point NG Security Administration" comes the definitive work on Check Point's latest product release: Check Point NG Feature Pack 4. No competing book covers every product contained within FP 4 (SMART, SecurePlatform, SecureXL, ClusterXL, and Performance Pack). Although not a study guide, this book will cover all objectives on Check Point's CCSA exam and a free exam simulator will be available from syngress.com http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/1932266895/ ***Hardware Hacking: Have Fun While Voiding Your Warranty Publisher: Syngress ISBN: 1932266836 "Hardware Hacking" is for people who dream of running Linux on an Xbox and opening a garage door with a PDA. To successfully hack consumer and SOHO electronic devices, you need knowledge of electrical engineering, operating systems, software coding, and mechanics; the first part of this book is a primer on these topics. Then the real fun begins. You'll learn how to hack mobile devices (PDAs, cell phones), gaming systems (Xbox, PS/2, Atari), audio/visual equipment (TiVo boxes, home theater PCs), computer equipment (iMacs, laptops, mini-motherboards), and much more. http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/1932266836/ ***Oracle Essentials, 3rd Edition: Oracle Database 10g Publisher: O'Reilly ISBN: 0-596-00585-7 "Oracle Essentials, 3rd Edition: Oracle Database 10g" distills a vast amount of knowledge into an easy-to-read volume. The new edition of this classic book covers the full range of Oracle's features and technologies, including the product line, architecture, data structures, networking, concurrency, and tuning. With a new overview of Oracle 10g, as well as coverage of recent releases 9i and 8i, this book provides everything you need to install and run Oracle databases. If you're new to Oracle or upgrading to Oracle 10g, you'll find this comprehensive guide essential. http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/oressentials3/ Chapter 1, "Introducing Oracle," is available online: http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/oressentials3/chapter/index.html ***Squid: The Definitive Guide Publisher: O'Reilly ISBN: 0596001622 Squid is the most popular web caching software in use today, and it works on a variety of platforms including Linux, FreeBSD, and Windows. Written by Duane Wessels, the creator of Squid, this book will help you configure and tune Squid for your particular situation. Newcomers to Squid will learn how to download, compile, and install code. Seasoned users will be able to dive into advanced topics such as high-performance storage options, rewriting requests, HTTP server acceleration, monitoring, debugging, and troubleshooting Squid. http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/squid/ Chapter 8, "Advanced Disk Cache Topics," is available online. http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/squid/chapter/index.html ================================================ Upcoming Events ================================================ ***For more events, please see: http://events.oreilly.com/ ***Tony Stubblebine ("Regular Expression Pocket Reference"), Oakland, CA--March 9 Tony will explain how to decrease development time while increasing reliability and readability of regular expressions. March 9, 7:30-9:30pm For more information, go to: http://oakland.pm.org/ ***Mac User Group Day at O'Reilly in Sebastopol, CA--April 24 Join O'Reilly and NCMUG for a special Mac User Group Day in Sebastopol, California on Saturday, April 24 from 2-6pm. Speakers include Derrick Story ("Digital Photography Pocket Guide, 2nd Edition," "iPhoto 2: The Missing Manual"), Chris Stone ("Mac OS X Panther in a Nutshell"), Tom Negrino & Dori Smith ("Mac OS X Unwired"), and Scott Fullam ("Hardware Hacking Projects for Geeks"). For more information and a complete schedule of events, go to: http://ug.oreilly.com/banners/macugday_hi_res.pdf Please RSVP to let us know you will be attending at mugevent@oreilly.com. Mac User Group Day 2:00pm-6:00pm, Saturday, April 24 O'Reilly 1005 Gravenstein Hwy North Sebastopol, CA 95472 800-998-9938 Ext. 7103 For directions, go to: http://www.oreilly.com/oreilly/seb_directions.html ================================================ Conference News ================================================ ***O'Reilly's Digital Democracy Teach-In This year's O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference began with an impressive set of tutorials. But you also had the option to spend the first day of the conference at the Digital Democracy Teach-In, learning how to take back control of a different sort of operating system. Daniel Steinberg reports on sessions by Joe Trippi, former campaign manager for Howard Dean; Wes Boyd, co-founder of MoveOn.org; Scott Heiferman, co-founder and CEO of Meetup.com; and many more. http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/network/2004/02/10/digdemo.html ***Annotating Everything: Marc A. Smith at ETech Daniel Steinberg reports from O'Reilly's Emerging Technology Conference with an in-depth look at Marc A. Smith's session "Catalyzing Collective Action on the Net." Marc demonstrated several tools that show promise as ways to enhance online communities. http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/network/2004/02/11/etech_keynotes.html Find complete news coverage, the conference wiki, weblogs, photos, and much more on O'Reilly Network's ETech 2004 Conference Coverage page: http://www.oreillynet.com/et2004/ ================================================ News From O'Reilly & Beyond ================================================ --------------------- General News --------------------- ***Happy Hacking! Mike Langberg writes, "Most of us look at a toaster and see a kitchen appliance for crisping bread. Scott Fullam looks at a toaster and sees an engineering challenge...," in this "Mercury News" book review of "Hardware Hacking Projects for Geeks." http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/business/technology/7889687.htm Hardware Hacking Projects for Geeks ISBN: 0596003145 http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/hardwarehks/ ***Finalists for the 2004 Jolt Awards Software Development magazine recently announced the finalists for the 14th annual Jolt Product Excellence and Productivity Awards. Among the finalists are java.net and the O'Reilly Network in the category of "Websites and Developer Networks," and Head First Java and Programming .NET Windows Applications in the "Books--Technical" category. The awards ceremony will take place on March 17 during SD West 2004. http://sdmagazine.com/jolts/ ***Safari Gets Bigger and Better Safari Bookshelf, the premier electronic reference library for IT professionals and programmers, now holds more than 2,000 books from the industry's leading technical publishers. As the library grows, so does its functionality: searches are powerfully precise and as broad or specific as you wish. And now, with a Safari Max subscription, you can download chapters to read offline. Safari will help you save time, reduce errors, keep current, and save more money than ever with up to 35% off print copies of your favorite books. If you haven't yet gone on Safari, get a free trial subscription. https://secure.safaribooksonline.com/promo.asp?code=ORAUG&portal=oreilly&CMP=BAC-TP2974244892 --------------------- Open Source --------------------- ***Things Squid Administrators Should Know New users often struggle with the same frustrating set of idiosyncrasies involved in learning Squid, the popular web caching software. Here are six things you should know about using Squid from the get-go, from Duane Wessels, creator of Squid and author of "Squid: The Definitive Guide." http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/onlamp/2004/02/12/squid.html ***A Ticketing System for a Three-Tiered Architecture Modern business apps often use a three-tiered architecture, separating the user interface from the data store from the application logic. Of course, this separation can add wait time, as users wait for their requests to process. Elena Garderman and Howard Feldman explain how adding a ticketing system can improve the process. http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/onlamp/2004/02/12/ticket_system.html --------------------- Mac --------------------- ***Home Automation with Mac OS X, Part 1 Having more control over how your home operates isn't just a geek fantasy. You can lower energy costs, improve security, and enhance the overall ambiance of your humble abode. Alan Graham shows you how to leverage your Mac OS X computer and get started. http://www.macdevcenter.com/pub/a/mac/2004/02/13/home_automation.html ***Automated Backups with Existing Tools Backing up your hard disc is the job nobody wants to do--and even more so, no one wants to spend a lot of money doing it. Fortunately, Apple gives you everything you need in Mac OS X. You just have to pull it together. Peter Hickman shows you how. http://www.macdevcenter.com/pub/a/mac/2004/02/10/backup.html --------------------- Windows --------------------- ***Protect Yourself Against Denial-of-Service Attacks The only way to defend yourself is to understand your attacker in-depth. This excerpt from the recently released "Security Warrior" by Cyrus Peikari and Anton Chuvakin details denial-of-service attacks against Windows XP. Read it and prepare yourself. http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/windows/excerpt/swarrior_ch13/index1.html --------------------- Java --------------------- ***Book Preview: Eclipse The new Eclipse Foundation was recently announced at EclipseCon, and the Eclipse project is moving toward a June release of Eclipse 3.0. O'Reilly will publish Steve Holzner's "Eclipse: A Java Developer's Guide" this summer. http://www.onjava.com/pub/a/onjava/2004/02/04/AntEclipse.html A beta preview of Chapter 5, "Building Eclipse Projects Using Ant," is available online: http://www.onjava.com/onjava/2004/02/04/AntEclipse.pdf ***Six Cool New JSP and Servlet Features Bruce Perry describes six cool new features that Java developers who use Tomcat 5.x and other Servlet-API-2.4- and JSP-2.0-compliant containers will want to use in their projects. Bruce is the author of "Java Servlet & JSP Cookbook." http://www.onjava.com/pub/a/onjava/2004/02/11/jspcookbook.html --------------------- Web --------------------- ***O'Reilly Network Is SXSW Web Awards Finalist South by Southwest (SXSW) has announced the finalists for its 2004 Web Awards, and the O'Reilly Network has been selected as a finalist in the "Classic" category. Cast your vote for your favorite finalist by March 5; winners will be announced at the Web Awards gala on March 14 in Austin, Texas. http://sxsw.com/interactive/web_awards/finalists/ Vote today: http://www.sxsw.com/vote/peoples_choice/ --------------------- .NET --------------------- ***ADO.NET Connection Pooling Explained Because the .NET managed providers manage the connection pool for us, using shared database connections is as easy as a summertime splash in the kiddie pool. But if those connections unexpectedly become invalid you could find yourself floundering in the deep end. In this new article, James Still will have you doing laps in no time. http://www.ondotnet.com/pub/a/dotnet/2004/02/09/connpool.html ***Cooking with C# Learn how to convert a string returned as a Byte[ ] back into a string and how to handle an exception that occurs within a method invoked via reflection in these sample recipes from O'Reilly's recently released "C# Cookbook." http://www.ondotnet.com/pub/a/dotnet/excerpt/csharpckbk_chap01/index.html ================================================ News From Your Peers ================================================ ***Check out the new O'Reilly User Group Wiki for the latest news You can look for a meeting, user group, or post information any time you want. http://wiki.oreillynet.com/usergroups/view?HomePage Until next time-- Marsee