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The Internet Books Media Book Reviews

Online! The Book 210

Posted by timothy from the don't-hold-back-now dept.
honestpuck writes "Titling a volume 'Online! The Book' and putting "The perfect gift for any computer user!" amongst other hyperbole on the back cover must rank as this years greatest act of hubris." Honestpuck has a strong opinion of whether this hubris is justified or insane -- read on below for his review.
Online! The Book
author John C. Dvorak and Chris Pirillo (with Wendy Taylor)
pages 701
publisher Prentice Hall PTR
rating 3
reviewer Tony Williams
ISBN 0131423630
summary Padding, information and errors all in the one volume. Could be worse, but not by much.

If only John C. Dvorak and Chris Pirillo (with Wendy Taylor) had been able to deliver. If only they had not strewn the book with error, verbiage and irrelavancy. Ah, well.

This volume in its 700 pages (divided into 28 chapters) tries to cover everything from hardware basics to voice over IP, in between touching on e-commerce, security, web programming, networking, content management and business websites, to name just six of the topics perhaps each better suited to a volume of their own.

This book skims, and skims fast, over a number of important and vital topics while dwelling on others that many will find useless. Chris Pirillo seems to be an expert on marketing, so that gets thirty pages, while web programming languages get ten. We get forty pages of 'Hardware Basics,' which cover information vital to getting online such as operating systems, varieties of Intel chips, video cards and gaming audio drivers. I know that if I wanted to find the perfect spot to put breakout boxes about Babbage and von Neumann (essential to any book about getting online) I'd put them in the chapter on viruses. It seems as if the three authors said "we're contracted to seven hundred pages so let's just throw in topics we know a lot about until we get to seven hundred pages -- then stop."

Then there are the errors. We get editing errors like the text that tells us a 'geostationary satellite' orbits at 'about 22,300 miles,' next to a diagram showing the number 20,300 miles. We get errors in logic like the breakout box that has "DNS servers may run Apache, which is an open source Web server program" and goes on to imply that all DNS servers will run a web server. We get errors in grammar. We get paragraphs like "Although there are dynamic Web page URLs (meaning they change, or at least part of it does), most are static (stay the same). These can be dynamic by use of a programming error or dynamic because someone named the URL extension without adding a link elsewhere on the web site." With sentence construction like that I'm still not sure if the claim intended is true or not.

Did I like anything about this book? Sure, the chapter on 'How A Modem (Really) Works' was full of good solid information. Other chapters were similar, particularly the two following on networking and handhelds, phones and PDAs. Others did contain some good information, just surrounded by dross.

You can go to the book's website, which is basically just a single page with yet more hyperbole ("Everything is here. Well-written. Comprehensive.") or visit the Prentice Hall page, which actually gives you a table of contents and a sample chapter. Just don't go straight to the Prentice Hall PTR home page and search for books with "Online" in the title, as that won't find it. Instead search for books with "Book" in the title.

I'd only recommend this book to those who want to spend a lot of time finding the good bits, a few minutes chuckling over some of the errors, and thirty dollars on a paperweight. If you're really looking for a 'perfect gift' for people new new to the net, then find something cheaper covering just the essentials, and for those more expert, find a volume that actually covers a topic of interest well.

You can purchase Online! The Book from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
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Online! The Book More

Online! The Book

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  • duh (Score:5, Funny)

    by grub ( 11606 ) <slashdot@grub.net> on Wednesday December 03, 2003 @01:15PM (#7619483) Homepage Journal

    ...and putting "The perfect gift for any computer user!"

    Gee, and it's just out in time for Christmas. What a coincidence. No wonder they didn't have time to get their facts straight, December was coming.

    • Re:duh (Score:5, Funny)

      by Trigun ( 685027 ) <evil@evil e m p i r e . a t h .cx> on Wednesday December 03, 2003 @01:19PM (#7619524)
      "The perfect gift for any computer user!" points obviously to "A new computer".

      This should be a "Perfect gift for people who read computer books".

  • What were you expecting? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by belgar ( 254293 ) on Wednesday December 03, 2003 @01:20PM (#7619535) Homepage
    It's Dvorak we're talking about here. The guy's too busy writing his Trolltech columns to actually learn anything new. I mean, thanks for explaining how a modem (really) works, guys. The 90's called -- they want their chapter back.
    • I have a wonderful book by Reader's Digest (go figure)that explains how an automobile works better than any popular book on the subject I have ever seen.

      Should I continue to recommend it or send a note to Reader's Digest that the 1890s called and want their book back?

      KFG
      • I think the point might have been that modem usage is in such sharp decline that the information is fairly irrelevent. The same is not true of cars.
        • Perhaps you mean that dial up usage is declining. I suspect that such is not the case, but even if it were that would still leave tens of millions of users the book is directly aimed at using dial up modems. Not to mention the vast majority of users outside the books target market.

          Surely you can't be suggesting that most home users (to whom the book is aimed) simply plug an RJ-45 cable directly into their NIC without a modualtion/demodulation device acting as an intermediary to the raw signal?

          http://www.c
          • All I was pointing out was that the original comparison between a Readers Digest book on cars and an end-user in-depth discussion of modems is not appropriate.

            Regarding the other issues you raised:

            Everything I have read indicates that modem use is giving way to either DSL or Cable modem for accessing the internet. I have not read the book either, but if the section on modems includes DSL and Cable modems that would be an odd conglomeration.

            The point made by the review was that there was sparse coverage
            • And I was using modems before Prodigy, GEnie and their ilk existed. I could still hack AT codes if I had to.

              The fact that one no longer necessarily (although occasion can still crop up)has to understand how a modem works sometimes people just like to know how things work. See the popularity of How Things Work in print and on the web.

              Criticizing a book for explaining how things work is just gratuitous anti-intellectualism. People who couldn't care less can skip it and those that do have it available to the
    • Ok, not beeing picky here but I guess he also stole the phrase from this article [slashdot.org].

      Quote from the article:
      "Upcoming features? PAM. files larger than 2 gigs. NFS over TCP. The 80's called, they want their features back. NTPv4 was a listed big feature on a slide of 10 to 15 upcoming enhancements. How does an NTP enhancement get mentioned as a 'big' feature? Wow."

      Actually I remember this because that quote IS in fact quite funny.
      • Learning english is fun. ;-)
        Since I am german I didn't recognize this as a common phrase until the named article. It's a true shame that it translates so badly into german it ruins the fun of it:

        "Hey, die 80iger haben angerufen, sie wollen ihre Features zuruck!" oder "Hey, das Smithsonian hat angerufen, sie wollen Ihr Studio 54 Ausstellungsstuck zuruck." just sounds kinda lame...

    • ...and it may never be. I still help out at a dial-up ISP that's been open for business since 1989. We're a local mom and pop shop.

      We have a lot of customers. There's seniors who don't do anything but email, so our "PAYING" rate [grnet.com] works well, at $5 for 20 hours of connection time, tracked by the second. (Who'd have thought $5 could last you six months?) Then there's joe and jane parent who don't want their kid on Kazaa all the time.

      All in all, dial-up still fills a niche. The low-bandwidth, low-cost n

  • If wishes were fishes ... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Rudisaurus ( 675580 ) on Wednesday December 03, 2003 @01:21PM (#7619549)
    If only John C. Dvorak and Chris Pirillo (with Wendy Taylor) had been able to deliver. If only they had not strewn the book with error, verbiage and irrelavancy.
    If only I had run a spell-checker before posting ... (it's irrelevancy).

  • I think I'll wait.... (Score:5, Funny)

    by DickBreath ( 207180 ) on Wednesday December 03, 2003 @01:22PM (#7619556) Homepage
    I think I'll wait for the movie adaptation of the book.

  • Say what you want about Dvorak... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 03, 2003 @01:23PM (#7619572)
    but I really love his keyboards.

  • Table of Contents (Score:5, Funny)

    by MagicDude ( 727944 ) on Wednesday December 03, 2003 @01:24PM (#7619578)
    If every chapter has information about the internet and technology, I guess the table of contents sould be titled "Slashdot" :)
    • A chapter on security and a chapter on viruses? A chapter on downloading content and a chapter on music? Chapters on corporate IM, P2P IM, and VOIP?

      "Slashdot" wouldn't be a bad title, with this many dupes.

    • If every chapter has information about the internet and technology, I guess the table of contents sould be titled "Slashdot" :)

      There're only so many times a publisher will erroneously reprint the same chapter without lobbyists getting in the way of their tree consumption :-x

  • God.... (Score:2, Funny)

    by Kirk Troll ( 729217 )
    When I first saw it, I thought it was some attempt to be a hard copy of the internet.

    *remembers Dilbert boss joke.*

    Heh heh...

    • Re:God.... (Score:3, Funny)

      by Chalybeous ( 728116 )

      Reminds me about a joke about computer-illiterate people that started doing the rounds when British libraries began to introduce cheap (later free) internet access:

      Customer: Excuse me, do you have the Internet here?
      Librarian: Yes, sir - the computer suite is over there, I'll be along to help you in a moment.
      Customer: Oh, I didn't want to use a computer. Do you have it in book form?

      Sounds rather like it could be a PHB [dilbert.com] or BOFH [theregister.co.uk] situation here... lusers, anyone?
      (Then again, for several years you've been

  • Mel Brooks, eat your heart out... (Score:5, Funny)

    by shadowcabbit ( 466253 ) * <cx AT thefurryone DOT net> on Wednesday December 03, 2003 @01:25PM (#7619588) Journal
    Merchandising, merchandising! Online! The Book, Online! The Movie, Online! The Breakfast Cereal... Online! The Flamethrower! (The kids love that one.)
  • A 3? I think the Slashdot Universe is going to implode! Run for your lives!!!

  • Why only computer books? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Felonius Thunk ( 168604 ) on Wednesday December 03, 2003 @01:26PM (#7619598) Journal
    Junk, all in one books like this have always been quite common. It seems that computers have been around long enough that even the completely uninitiated know that computing is reasonably complicated. Do they try to sell "the only book you'll ever need" style books for business? Construction? Medicine? Maybe they don't feel there are quite enough fearful dupes to be had in those topics.
    • I can't remember the last time I found myself wandering around Home Depot looking for the perfect book to give me all the advice I'd need to build my own home. People wander around Best Buy looking for books on how to do things with their computer all the time.

  • Hardly Suprising (Score:5, Interesting)

    by JSkills ( 69686 ) <jskills@goofball . c om> on Wednesday December 03, 2003 @01:26PM (#7619600) Homepage Journal
    It doesn't surprise me at all that this is light on any real technical details. John C. Dvorak, although obviously a pretty astute individual, has been part of PC Magazine or some other end-user (i.e. barely technical) related publication for quite some time. Although I have found some of his positions on technical and business ethics of interest, his technically oriented editorial contributions have typically been geared for the person who is just getting into understanding a PC, certainly not people in the /. community.

  • Great!! (Score:3, Funny)

    by Cap'nMike ( 631536 ) on Wednesday December 03, 2003 @01:26PM (#7619603)
    Now I don't have to keep paying those damn ISP fees every month. I can just buy the book. What? You mean they haven't just printed out the internet? Crap!
  • Forget the book then, I'll be giving out AOL 9.0 CDs! It's faster, more secure, and has an assload of ads!

    What a way to introduce someone to the World Wide Wow!

  • this book is too long... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Savatte ( 111615 ) on Wednesday December 03, 2003 @01:28PM (#7619628) Homepage Journal
    I'll just wait for Online for Dummies.

  • The sequels are even better (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 03, 2003 @01:29PM (#7619639)
    Coming soon from PTR:

    Offline! Tales of slashdotting

    Spelling! Secrets of the Slashdot editors

  • Speaking of hubris; try THIS on for size: (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    "news for nerds, stuff that matters"

  • Time warp? (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 03, 2003 @01:29PM (#7619646)
    1999 called, they want their book back.
  • What does it cost? What I really mean is, can we get the book, online? :P

  • Destined to be... (Score:5, Funny)

    by ii-v-i-head ( 635487 ) on Wednesday December 03, 2003 @01:33PM (#7619679)
    On sale for $2.99 by mid March 2004

  • This is the same Dvorak... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by jpellino ( 202698 ) on Wednesday December 03, 2003 @01:36PM (#7619705)
    ... who's been predicting the imminent death of Apple for 20+ years.

    And now he claims "...no more junk email"

    OK. That's quite simply not possible, and he must know it.

    "Packed with secrets never before revealed"

    You're telling me there's a lot (wnough to "pack" a book this size) important useful things about the internet that only these three people knew until now?

    Hogwash.
    • John Dvorak is a professional troll. What various slashdotters only dream of, he lives. What is a troll? Someone who writes something deliberately provocative to make people angry and respond. Accuracy doesn't even show up on the list of priorities. Dvorak has figured out how to make a living as a troll. Instead of trolling in forums, he trolls in his columns and books. Even though everybody knows that what he writes is crap and has no connection with reality, it still pisses people off enough that they rea

  • But I thought geostationary satellites are at an elevation of about 22,239 miles. It is important to get this right, otherwise your geostationary satellite isn't stationary.

    Both figures in the book are wrong.

    • 1) Anyone using a book like this for numbers to put up a geostationary satellite will probably have one that is stationary.. after it crashes back to earth (or hits some other body in space)

      2) Many people would think 22,239 miles is close enough to satisfy 'about 22,300 miles'.

  • Quote makes it sound authentic. (Score:5, Funny)

    by Performer Guy ( 69820 ) on Wednesday December 03, 2003 @01:37PM (#7619719)
    ...."If only they had not strewn the book with error, verbiage and irrelavancy."....

    Hmm... sounds exactly like being online.
    • "Hmm... sounds exactly like being online."

      To sound exactly like being online it would have to include hardcore photos of the authors and ads for penis enlargement.
  • Where is Ed Kroll when you need him?

  • Metacomment (Score:3, Funny)

    by Azghoul ( 25786 ) on Wednesday December 03, 2003 @01:42PM (#7619775) Homepage
    So, I guess this will shut up the morons who complain that every Slashdot review is positive...

    (since this is a comment about comments, but on-topic because it's about reviews, does this count as a "metacomment"? My guess is I'm just an ass...)
    • My guess is I'm just an ass...

      No, but certainly an optomist if you think it will shut someone up around here.
      "This book is pure hogshit! How can you sleep at night, rating it a three?!?!"
  • what? no e-book format?
  • ...i dont trust anyone who uses so many bevels, saturated colours and drop shadows on their site, so i wont be buying this book

  • Dead tree internet directories (Score:3, Interesting)

    by British ( 51765 ) <british1500@gmail.com> on Wednesday December 03, 2003 @02:10PM (#7620050) Homepage Journal
    I always thought those "white pages" and "yellow pages" Internet directory books were funny. With the ever-so-changing web, you would end up with a book containing a bunch of URLs to nonexistant pages within a few months. Why bother with such a book when a search engine would do?

    Oh yeah, marketing. Of course, you could just make annual editions of internet "yellow pages" with corrected links, etc.

    It's like going to the mailbox outside the post office to mail a letter.

  • P Is For Pirillo, P Is For Pathetic. (Score:4, Funny)

    by DoctorScooby ( 669432 ) on Wednesday December 03, 2003 @02:11PM (#7620064) Journal
    According to his webblog [pirillo.com], in the last few months, this poor bugger got his ass fired from TechTV, only to be replaced by the uber-knowledgeable (*snicker*) Leo Laporte; gotten sick; gotten food poisoning; has a conspiracy theory that Doc Searls is actually Colonel Sanders; has a beef with hydrogenated oils in soda crackers; has sunk to the oh-so pathetic level of doodling on his own body [lockergnome.com] in order to get hits to his website, "C:\PIRILLO.EXE -- Getting Screwed While Everybody Else is Getting Laid".

    And to top it all off, he writes a newsletter called "Windows Fanatics". I feel so bad for this guy. World Vision should add this guy to their client list, he's at least as pathetic as the starving AIDS-ridden African child with flies crawling on his face.

    BSD isn't dying, this guy is.
  • Maybe they are trying to mimic the rise and fall 1999-2000. You know when people still thought they would make their fortune on the internet.

    If there's one thing I know about computers and the internet, it's that fluff is a very big part of it's culture. Also, Pr0n is a very big part of the internet and computers, fluffing is even more pronounced by this.

    I feel that by your review you have exposed the book to be far more accurate in delivery then it ever could dream to be in content.

  • why not 'online for dummies'? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by butane_bob2003 ( 632007 ) on Wednesday December 03, 2003 @02:17PM (#7620124) Homepage
    This book is as perfect for every computer user as the 'Internet Yellow Pages' are. HMM, lets make a BOOK out of PAPER that lists all the websites we can find. Brilliant. These books are for people who always say,

    'One of these days, you are going to have to teach me how to use computers'.

    No, I won't.
    Teach yourself or find something else to do. Writing a book like this is obviously going to make the authors and publishers some money, which is the point. This book was written by 'internet experts', the kind of people who get fired as soon as their companies find out how useless they really are. Then they get hired to write about what they barely know.

  • What does it take to get a 1? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Dr. Evil ( 3501 ) on Wednesday December 03, 2003 @02:17PM (#7620125)

    I mean really, there should be a competition to find a book which sets new lows.

    What's the point of having a scale of 1 to 10 if nobody has a 1?

    If Dvorak put out a book with so little value that it's not worth reading, will mislead anyone who doesn't know any better, would corrupt young minds if given to a library, would shame you to admit to have read it, much less purchased it, invokes sadness to look upon -- knowing that trees died to print it, leads you to question the sanity of the publisher or the motives of the author, then by all means, give it a 1!

    • I'd bet to get a one, you'd have to print out all the links to slashdot comments, that involved stupid jokes about Hot Grits, Goats.ex, "In Soviet Russia", and "imagine a cluster of those".

      Notice, how you'd have to print URL's to it (so you have to type it in), not the actual comments. Someone might find the comments amusing for the first 5 pages. Enough to earn it a 2 by rounding error or something. So even most of all the worthless comments on Slashdot (some of which are mine), wouldn't even rate a 1

    • Well,
      It sounds like you just got yourself an itch to scratch.

      Get to it .. and I'll look forward to reading the review.
  • ...if you purchase a first edition book with spelling mistakes (particularly if you can get the authors to sign it), it will be worth more in proportion to the evidently etherous value of it's contents.
  • editing errors like the text that tells us a 'geostationary satellite' orbits at 'about 22,300 miles,' next to a diagram showing the number 20,300 miles.

    "Geostationary orbit" seems like a misnomer itself. If it's geostationary, is it really orbiting around anything besides the sun?
    • "Geostationary" refers to a satellite that appears to be stationary from a viewer on the Earth's surface. The satellite orbits once every 24 hours (actually every 23 hrs 56 mins 4 secs, but that's another story) and so stays roughly at the same point in the sky. It still orbits the Earth (which orbits the Sun).

      Travis

  • Oh the irony of it all (Score:3, Funny)

    by Hoi Polloi ( 522990 ) on Wednesday December 03, 2003 @03:30PM (#7620883) Journal
    Seems sort of ironic that they would have a website online for a book about computer and internet basics. It should have a message like those bumper stickers, "If you can read this you don't need this book".
  • I don't have time to read all that. When will the Cliff's Notes version be out?
  • 120 comments and nobody has written a compare/contrast piece between Online! The Book! and Cannibal! The Musical! yet?

    This can't be slashdot.
  • ... Imminent releases from the same author include "Stuff" and "Things," and he is currently working on "Whatyamacallit."

  • Breakout box? (Score:4, Informative)

    by Glass of Water ( 537481 ) on Wednesday December 03, 2003 @05:23PM (#7622132) Journal
    This is a breakout box. [prosoundcards.com]

    While this is an example of a page with a sidebar. [boingboing.net]

    This is only worth commenting on because I had no idea what the hell you meant.

  • Hubris (Score:2)

    by murr ( 214674 )
    On the hubr-o-meter, this does not quite measure up to O'Reilly publishing a book The Whole Internet: User's Guide & Catalog.

    Admittedly, they published it in 1992...

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