Used Book Review: A Life Decoded

In the late 1990's, it seemed all the science buzz was focused on the race to sequence the entire human genome. Two teams, using two different approaches, were trying to complete the genome, and unlock a new world of science. In the book A Life Decoded: My Genome: My Life , Craig Venter tells the story of his group's struggles, and ultimate triumph in the genome mapping race. The book also chronicles Venter's unusual path to genetic science from his days at a Vietnam battlefield hospital.

While the numerous players Venter mentions in the human genome effort can be hard to keep straight at times, an attentive reader is rewarded with a fascinating look at not only the science, but perhaps even more so, the politics behind arguably the most important scientific discovery in human history. 

These days Venter heads his own institute, focusing on the creation of completely artificial organisms; microscopic creatures that could help solve the energy problems/pollution around the world. The book ends without much of a conclusion, but that is in part because Venter's story continues, and the second act may prove just as momentous as the first.

Used Book Review: The Mac Hacker's Handbook

The words "hack" and "hacker" are thrown around quite a bit today. It seems a "hack" can be something as simple as using an AppleScript to auto-complete a task, which by extension would make that person a hacker. The traditional, or some would say true meaning of hacker is someone who gets to the very base levels of a piece of hardware or software, and makes it do things it was never intended to do.

Given the confusion around the term, one could be forgiven for picking up The Mac Hacker's Handbook, with the assumption that it would provide fun little tips/tricks to improve your jolly computing tasks. That assumption would be completely wrong. The Mac Hacker's Handbook is all about looking at the root level of the Mac OS, and exposes the various security issues and concerns, from open ports, to memory overflows. In short, if the thought of opening the terminal window frightens you, stay far away from this book.

If you like to get "under the hood," whether your intentions are to learn more about OS X security, or more nefarious purposes, this book is a treasure trove. I am not a "hacker" myself, but I know enough about the content to be concerned about the security of my Mac.

Having said all of that, this is, after all, a used book review, so this book focuses on exploits to the Leopard operating system. While many of the security issues have been addressed with Snow Leopard, that by no means renders the book useless.

If you are a hacker in the traditional sense, and you understand source code, stack heaps, and sandboxes, then this is a solid reference guide, especially for those coming from Windows and Linux.

Used Book Review: The Apple Way

There have been a ton of ups and downs at Apple through the years. So much so, that one would think there's has to be a compelling business lesson or lessons lurking in the halls of Cupertino. Well, The Apple Way: 12 Management Lessons From The World's Most Innovative Company tries to be that book, but not with the greatest of success.

First, the name is a bit of a misnomer. The book has 12 chapters, but each chapter tries to impart 6 - 8 business lessons. The problem with trying to learn from Apple is that often the same thinking and methods that lead to huge success, also put the company on the brink of bankruptcy. This leads to watered down lessons like, "Gross margin is a great measure -- until the day it isn't," or "innovate but don't force it." Also, although the author says in the preface that it is not his intent to create an authoritative history of the company, it does seem a majority of the pages focus on history heavily borrowed from previous books, especially Gil Amelio's On The Firing Line.

In the end, rather than a look at a dozen memorable business lessons, The Apple Way offers a Cliff's Notes of sorts to the history of the company, found in more detail in other books. 

Snow Leopard Day: CNET Weighs In

Many of you are trapped at the office today, and maybe you can't wait to get out of there and go pickup Snow Leopard. Or maybe you have a PowerPC Mac and can't install it if you want to. Either way, you probably want to learn more about it, and what better way to do that than to watch a quick video while you're at work?

Here's CNET's (or is it cnet like the logo? or c|net, or, oh nevermind) "First Look" at Snow Leopard:

Snow Leopard Day: Pogue Explains

Snow Leopard Day continues, with David Pogue's always fun video skills on display in this quick overview. For those who can't watch the video at work, Pogue's thoughts can be summed up in this quote:

"The same thing, just smaller, faster, and more polished."