March 26, 2013
Ganglia is the most robust and scalable tool for performance monitor I’ve tried or heard of.
This book, written by some of the top contributor of the project, is an awesome guide to Ganglia.
Due to its organization and the authors writing style, the book is easy to understand and can be read as a “full-guide” reading it from the first page to the last one, or a reference book reading only the parts that are relevant to you in that specific moment.
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March 19, 2013
When someone says the word “wireless”, 99.9% of the audience thinks at the Wireless Networking Technologies (802.11 family).
Very few think to the Bluetooth.
Even fewer people think to all the other technologies that use wireless technology to work, such as cordless phone, guard radios, headsets, wireless camera etc.
This book embrace the last point of view.
The first chapter provides basic information and motivation for Wireless Profiling.
The chapter 2 provides the reader with all the information she needs to be able to understand the wireless technology and it’s usage.
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March 12, 2013
Metasploit is the most common and complete framework for testing security.
Metasploit is an entire suite of tools and methodologies designed for testing the security of computers and networks.
The book is written for both experienced penetration tester and people new to the security field. For the first group, one of the most interesting thing is the explanation of the rules and ideas that formed the Penetration Test Execution Standard, while for users new to the field, is really interesting what can be done and how.
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March 5, 2013
After Microsoft’s CompTIA A+ Training Kit, here I am reviewing the Microsoft’s A+ Rapid Review.
This book is really similar to the book CompTIA Security+ Rapid Review (this too by Microsoft Press).
Darril Gibson, the book’s author, have compressed a huge amount of contents in a (relatively) small amount of pages (411). This is the first big difference in respect of the Security+ Rapid Review, since this book has more contents per page (and about the double of pages).
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February 26, 2013
This book does cover one of the hardest topic that are present in digital photography.
In fact, the photographies in the dark are the are the ones which are more frequently bad looking.
The book provides with a big amount of techniques and tips covering equipment, the actual taking of the image, and post-production.
A lot of these techniques and tips are easily found on photography specific magazines and articles, but a book grouping all these techniques is really good since it’s an organic and easy to found and read collection.
Also, unlike many articles, the book contains a lot of reasoning on the techniques so it’s not a mere how-to book.
Despite usually the author does provide this kind of enhancements over the how-to techniques, this is not always true, and - I think - this should be corrected/improved in the next version of the book.
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February 19, 2013
It’s Make! I think Make is one of the greatest, if not the greatest magazine available worldwide.
I think that this is a really cool number of Make.
As it usually happens to me, the part I like the most i the “Projects part”, in which I always find awesome ideas.
The article I liked the most is “Growing the Ghost” by Gabriel Nagmay.
This article speaks about the growing of the Bhut Jolokia, one of the world most powerful chili flavour.
I really liked it since I really like peppers and the author gave me a lot of ideas and tips on how to feed the peppers properly.
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February 12, 2013
This book initially shocked me. When I downloaded it, it was a 140 Mb so I thought it was full of drawings and comics. As soon as I opened the file I saw it was nothing I thought it would have been.
The book is mainly written (it can seem tautological but I think that’s right to point it out) with a lot of photos. I think the reason of the “hugeness” of the file is given by the photos. Speaking of them, I think that some of them are really useful to understand the concepts that are being explained in the text, while others can be removed without removing any value from the book.
Speaking of the authors, it’s really interesting to spend a few words on their biography. James H. Carrott is really interested in history, while Brian David Johnson is a futurist at Intel. Two people with such a different background have been able to create a very high-level book.
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February 5, 2013
When I read the first lines of the description “Ready to give your design skills a real boost? This eye-opening book helps you explore the design structure behind most of today’s hit video games. You’ll learn principles and practices for crafting games that generate emotionally charged experiences—a combination of elegant game mechanics, compelling fiction, and pace that fully immerses players.” on the O’Reilly website I thought it was a very well thought eye-catcher phrase to sell more books. Reading the book I understand that the phrase is 100% truthful.
This is a must-have book to anyone interested in the Theory of Games and in designing a game of any kind (not only computer game).
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January 29, 2013
I come to this book less than a month after reviewing the 70-410 Exam Ref.
As the title may suggest, this book is tailored to the preparation of the Microsoft 70-413 exam.
Speaking of the exam, I have to advice that the book does cover any exam objective, but does not cover every exam question.
The book is split into an introduction, 5 chapters and the index.
The first chapter helps to understand how to plan and deploy a server infrastructure. The other four are focused on the designing and implementation of the various components: network infrastructure services (chapter 2), network access services (chapter 3), Active Directory logical infrastructure (chapter 4) and Active Directory physical infrastructure (chapter 5).
A thing I liked about this book is the presence of questions (with detailed answers).
What is improvable for these question is the number.
I think they should put way more questions.
So, the questions, are a good idea not well implemented.
The only thing I hoped to see on this book but is missing is the emphasis on the security.
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January 22, 2013
When I’ve seen this book I had no idea about what I was going to find inside it.
As the title suggests, the book is pretty short (the PDF version count 161 pages) and so it’s really a few reading hours.
The book is divided in 5 chapters:
- Planning: this chapter covers the Business Plan and all the accessories planning. From my experience (and the author too) a good plan is mandatory if you don’t want see your great idea failing.
- Getting Financed: this short chapter (only 12 pages long) gives you some information and advice about the financial part of the company.
- Getting started: here you can find a lot of good advice and general information about marketing, patenting, copyright and other important things you should know.
- Staying alive: here you’ll find information and advice on taxes, press releases and other things that will keep your company going.
- When tomorrow becomes today: in this short chapter (only 5 pages long) are highlighted some differences between ordinary business and web business.
The book is written with no specific sector in mind. This book can be read and found useful to a person that wants to open a pub or a person that wants to open an IT start-up. If this is good because anyone will find something for him, is bad because no one will find all information she needs.
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(Fabio Alessandro Locati|Fale)'s blog