Ubuntu Made easy: A project-based introduction to Linux, published by No Starch Press, was written for the new Ubuntu user. The authors Rickford Grant and Phil Bull deliver on the titles promise with content that covers a comprehensive range of practical topics. This book rapidly describes practical recipes for the most common and a few less common home centric tasks. The authors push the new user with increasing velocity towards a detailed understanding of the Ubuntu Unity desktop.

Sakai: Free as in Freedom, written by Charles Severance (the first Executive Director of the Sakai Foundation) is a personal view of the history of Sakai. The book is a thorough description of how the project and its software evolved. This is not a book about software configuration; it is a book that describes how a community emerged from the actions of individuals.

This article is about writing a book with the help of the free software community. The book in question is Sakai Courseware Management with the main authors being Alan Berg (Me myself and I) and Michael Korcuska, the executive director of the Sakai Foundation. In reality, around forty community members delivered valuable content, which the authors distributed strategically throughout the book.

The C language, despite the best journalistic assassins, trained monkeys on bikes, an alleged lack of fashion taste, is still alive and rocking in the building. C is, beyond dispute, recognized as a resource efficient and thus valid language to use, especially for highly effective operating systems such as GNU/Linux and for device driver creation. A good starting point for learning is K N Kings popular book "C Programming: A modern approach", published by Norton, which has just reached its second edition and hence worthy of a new review.

In the previous posts, I have written about personal use of static code reviews via a GUI, in this case Eclipse. However, for large projects with hundreds of thousands of lines of code or more, with the code base being scattered amongst project teams, we have a problem. The economics of Quality Assurance demand a more mass analyzed and factory-efficient approach. Do things quick, hit the code, find the worst bugs and repair. The white box looking out, in combination with the functional or load testing black box methodologies looking in.

Note: this is Part 3. Feel free to read Part 2!

Static code reviews aimed at eating bugs (!) are unbiased and neutral. If you spill coffee on their laps or are applying for the same job as them, the advice given back will remain the same. Static code reviews work via rules; some rules are accurate in their assessment and others are not so relevant--or even false. Before building a thorough infrastructure for large-scale deployment, it is well worth installing the tool's respective plugins. You can have a lot of fun kicking the tires of the rule sets for your own particular environment. Getting your fingers into the reality of the code is the first step in the path to Quality Assurance enlightenment. Note to self, remember to ask boss for pay rise.

Note: this is Part 2. Feel free to read Part 1!

The application server GlassFish supports all the most modern and juicy features of Java Enterprise Edition (EE), formally known as J2EE. Made by Sun, the server has a dual purpose as both the official application server reference for Java EE and as a viable and scalable piece of software that performs well under most conditions. David R. Heffelfinger's book "Java EE 5 Development using Glassfish", published by PACKT, follows both purposes by exploring the frameworks and the server deployment; thus the books details resonate vigorously with the spirit behind the tool.

Perl is an amazingly powerful and succinct language. Although not the most fashionable, Perl is consistent and supported on a vast range of platforms, probably even more than Java. Better still, it gets in and does the job quickly with very little fuss. Perl by Example written by Ellie Quigley and published by Prentice Hall is a comprehensive, example based, and thorough book.

It is grey a dull, overcast day here in downtown Amsterdam. The weather is rather oppressive, summer’s smile long gone and my wine cellar miraculously has grown to quiet emptiness. However, I know a not too-well guarded secret. Hidden in the cracks, just at the edge of your eyesight, is extra humorous functionality in your favourite free software applications. Silent professional Easter eggs are waiting stealthily to make you smile.

The stability of an enterprise-wide infrastructure depends on understanding innovative, defensive security-related software. Linux Firewalls: Attack Detection and Response with iptables, psad and fwsnort written by Michael Rash and published by No Starch Press, outlines viable approaches that enable a defensive solution in depth.