April 2, 2014
I usually don’t start with this, but lately I had some time constraints that made me wondering if is right to use so much time reading books. The Wireshark Field Guide Analyzing and Troubleshooting Network Traffic by Robert J. Shimonski is only 149 pages long (if we cut the introduction, indexes, etc. it boils down to 128 pages). This is a really short book and I have really appreciated this fact. Wireshark is a very useful and powerful tool, but many people do not need to know everything about it. If you need to know everything about wireshark, the best option is to download the source and read it, but this is not the case for 99.99% of the people interested in Wireshark.
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May 14, 2013
As you probably know, I usually do not comment the books layout, being more focused on the contents of a book instead of it’s layout.
This time I will start this review speaking about the layout of this book since it’s REALLY peculiar. The Introduction is written in a two-columns layout, very similar to the Science magazine layout. The book itself is written in a single column layout, still with a “Science like” look. What shocked me a little bit about this is the sense of old scientific document that this book has. This is true until you read the first few pages. As soon as you do it, the sense of old scientific document disappears quickly.
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May 7, 2013
The anonymity on the web is probably one of the most debated topics on the web.
Is possible to be completely anonymous? The short answer is no.
This book tries to help the read to improve its anonymity, staying is the “real world”, as the “Practical” world in the title suggests.
In this book you will not find anything that is too complex for an average user.
Whether this is good or bad, depends on you expectations. I’ve took this book the first time with really high expectations and I was really disappointed. When I took it for the second time, with different expectations, I did found the book pretty good.
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April 16, 2013
Mike Shema speaks about a lot of different kind of attacks in his book in a real deep way, at the point that sometimes I wondered if he was planning to instruct people how to hack websites or only how to secure own websites. The book has often some code samples that allow a faster understanding of what the author is saying. Even if a coding knowledge is not required, the ability to understand HTML, JS, SQL, PHP, Python and C++ speeds up the reading.
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April 9, 2013
Logs are one of the most powerful tools in the sysadmin hands, and probably of all kind of IT roles.
This book does deep into the logs and their management.
One of the aspects that I really liked about this book is the division of the text in chapters.
The book is “only” 420 pages long, but is well split in 22 chapter, so they are (on average) 21 pages long. This is a huge advantage, since it allows the reader to stop frequently without dividing a concept in two different reading sessions. Also, this policy, allows the reader to quickly find what is more important for her 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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(Fabio Alessandro Locati|Fale)'s blog