Two years after his manifesto, The Cathedral and the Bazaar, caused a stir in the IT community, Eric Raymond gathered together his thoughts on open software development in a book of the same title. Eleven years later, we can see how so much of the philosophy outlined in the book has created a new paradigm for computing. Possibly the most influential computer book of them all.
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The Cuckoo's Egg
This is an engaging story of how an astronomer turned computer expert uncovered a cracker from another continent holds the attention from start to finish, providing useful information on security techniques and Unix programming along the way.
The administrators who failed to block Gary McKinnon could have learned a lot from this book: an absolute classic.
The Cuckoo's Egg by Clifford Stoll, 1989, Bodley Head, ISBN 0-370316258
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Showstopper
This tells the compelling story of the development of Windows NT, the software that was to drive Microsoft's dominance on the server, just as it had dominated the desktop.
This is a gripping tale of how the project came together, starting right from the start. It also made a geek star of earthy, no-nonsense hacker Dave Cutler who led the project - the author does well to bring out the personalities involved without losing sight of the focus.
Showstopper! by G.Pascal Zachary, 1994, Warner Books, ISBN 0-751516295
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Colossus Bletchley Park's Greatest Sercet
The code-breaking work at Bletchley Park still holds a fascination for us today - the work has a resonance too in the way that intelligence agencies use some of the same techniques to crack terrorist cells. It's a shame that the government doesn't recognise this and support the development of the Bletchley Park site - this book explains exactly why we should treasure this site.
Colossus by Paul Gannon, 2006,Atlantic Books, ISBN 1-843543303
Colossus by Paul Gannon, 2006,Atlantic Books, ISBN 1-843543303
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Accidental Empires
If you ever wondered how the PC and its software world came to seem so important to so many people, this sardonic (and strangely out of print) masterpiece sets out to explain it.
Noyce, Jobs, Wozniak, Gates, Manzi, and many others are all here. If some of these names and stories behind them have faded a bit for a world wowed by the Internet, none of it would have happened without the "bunch of boys who banded together to give themselves power." What made some more successful than others turned out to be the speed at which they left behind technology for its own sake and got into bucks and business. Apart from being informative, it's very funny.
Accidental Empires by Robert X. Cringely, 1996, Penguin, ISBN 978 0140258264
Noyce, Jobs, Wozniak, Gates, Manzi, and many others are all here. If some of these names and stories behind them have faded a bit for a world wowed by the Internet, none of it would have happened without the "bunch of boys who banded together to give themselves power." What made some more successful than others turned out to be the speed at which they left behind technology for its own sake and got into bucks and business. Apart from being informative, it's very funny.
Accidental Empires by Robert X. Cringely, 1996, Penguin, ISBN 978 0140258264
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The New New Thing
The New New Thing is really an old old kind of book, with more in common with biographies of 19th century adventurers and soldiers of fortune than with books about Internet startups and the new economy.
It relates the wild and unlikely tale of Jim Clark, with lots of gossipy detail and no useful information. His ability to guess what the "new new thing" will be and to make billions from it, is presented as an unaccountable, almost magical power. Wow! he sets a record by starting three multi-billion-dollar companies -- Silicon Graphics, Netscape, and Healtheon. And our sense of wonder is heightened by the lack of any connection to practical reality, any lessons of experience that someone could learn from this.
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