O'Reilly User Group Program
Newsletter
February 21, 2003


Please share this information with your members...


Highlights This Week:
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Book News
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-Oracle PL/SQL Language Pocket Reference, 2nd Edition
-What books does O'Reilly have coming up?
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Upcoming Events
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-Feb. 25, Adam Trachtenberg & David Sklar ("PHP Cookbook") at NYPHP
-Visit O'Reilly's booths at the XML Web Services One Conference 
(Mar 3-6) and South by Southwest (Mar 7-11)
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Conference News
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-Registration is open for the 2003 O'Reilly Emerging Technology
Conference
-Put Up A Conference Banner, Get A Free Book-O'Reilly Emerging
Technology Conference
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News
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-Create a T-shirt Slogan That Any Geek Would Love 
-Don't Forget to Vote for Your Favorite O'Reilly Java Book 
-Oracle Cross Tab Views: A Case for Code 
-Christoph Reichenbach and Lars Skovlund on FreeSCI
-ONJava.com Survey-Got a Minute?  
-Parsing and Writing QuickTime Files in Java 
-Plumbing the Depths of the ThreadAbortException Using Rotor
-Five Quick Tips for Using XSLT 
-FreeBSD Basics 
-Securing Your TiBook (or Any Other Mac OS X Machine) 
-Introduction to FileMaker Pro 
-Six Great Tips for Homemade Dot Mac Servers
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Announcements From Your Peers
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-Attention Java and Sun ONE users 
-Biotechnology discussion group looking for members 
-LinuxFest Northwest--Bellingham, WA--April 26

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Book News
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Review books are available--email me for a copy.

***Please include the book order number on your requests.

Let me know if you need your books by a certain date.
Allow at least four weeks for shipping. 
Send or email me copies of your newsletters and book reviews.

Don't forget, your members get 20% off any O'Reilly book they purchase
directly from O'Reilly. Just use code DSUG when ordering.
http://www.oreilly.com/

***Group purchases with better discounts are available***
Please let me know if you are interested.

Press releases are available on our press page:
http://press.oreilly.com/


***Oracle PL/SQL Language Pocket Reference, 2nd Edition
Order Number: 4729
This new edition boils down the most vital information from "Oracle
PL/SQL Programming," the bestseller that many consider "the Bible" for
PL/SQL development.  
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/orplpr2/

A Sample Excerpt, "Bulk Binds," is available online:
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/orplpr2/chapter/index.html


***What books do we have coming up?
Visit our New & Upcoming books:
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/new.html

Let me know if you would like to see any of these. I can preorder them
for you.

For a complete list of all O'Reilly books, go to:
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/prdindex.html


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Upcoming Events
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***Adam Trachtenberg and David Sklar ("PHP Cookbook") will be at the
New York PHP User Group meeting February 25.  
They will discuss two important PHP programming topics: "Implementing
Web Services" and "Web Application Security Vulnerabilities." 
Please RSVP at http://nyphp.org/rsvp

Tuesday, February 25th, 6:30pm
Digital Pulp, Inc.  
220 East 23rd Street, Suite 900 (9th floor)
New York, NY
http://nyphp.org/


***Visit O'Reilly's booth at the following events:

XML Web Services One Conference
Mar 3-6, 2003,
Santa Clara Marriott
Santa Clara, CA
http://www.xmlconference.com/

South by Southwest
Mar 7-11, 2003
Austin Convention Center
Austin, TX
http://www.sxsw.com/


For more events, please see:
http://events.oreilly.com/

================================================
Conference News
================================================
***Registration is open for the 2003 O'Reilly Emerging Technology
Conference
Join the leaders from the many worlds of pervasive computing to explore
and invent the new internet infrastructure and culture. Speakers
include: Howard Rheingold, Alan Kay, Clay Shirky, Eric Bonabeau, Tim
O'Reilly, David S. Isenberg, and many others.
http://conferences.oreilly.com/etcon/

Early Bird Discount--
User Group members who register before March 14th, 2003, get a double
discount. Use code DSUG when you register, and you'll get 20% off the
"Early Bird" price.

To register, go to:
http://conferences.oreillynet.com/pub/w/22/register.html


***Put Up A Conference Banner, Get A Free Book***
Ready for the next conference banner promotion? Here it is:
We are looking for user groups to display our conference banners on
their web sites. If you send me the link to your user group site with
our O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference banner, I will send
you the O'Reilly book of your choice.

Conference Banners:
http://ug.oreilly.com/banners/etech2003/

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News From O'Reilly & Beyond
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General News
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***Create a T-shirt Slogan That Any Geek Would Love
Enter your slogan on our site. We'll sort through the entries and,
using our in-house panel of geek writers, editors, programmers, and sys
admins, we'll choose a winner, based on our own biased criteria for
cleverness, creativity, and general geek appeal. The winner will
receive a $50 shopping spree at ThinkGeek--and a T-shirt with the
winning slogan.  The deadline for submissions is March 10, 2003.
http://www.oreilly.com/contest/tshirt_0203.html


***Don't Forget to Vote for Your Favorite O'Reilly Java Book
The 2003 "Java Developer's Journal" Readers' Choice Awards
http://www.sys-con.com/java/readerschoice2003/

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Oracle
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***Oracle Cross Tab Views: A Case for Code
Tom Birch makes a case for coding when he explores both the power and
the limits of Oracle's Cross Tab query for turning data in a report
from vertical to horizontal.
http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/network/2003/02/19/tombirch.html

For coverage on the full range of Oracle SQL features, check out
O'Reilly's "Mastering Oracle SQL." 
Order Number: 1290
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/mastorasql/

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Open Source
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***Christoph Reichenbach and Lars Skovlund on FreeSCI
The FreeSCI project seeks to bring life back to Sierra On-Line's
adventure games. What kind of pitfalls have the developers faced in
reverse engineering the engine?
http://linux.oreillynet.com/pub/a/linux/2003/02/20/freesci.html

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Java
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***ONJava.com Survey-Got a Minute?
We could use your help. We'd like to hear what topics you like, what
you'd like more of, and what you're working on. Give us a hand on our
survey and you'll be eligible to win in our survey drawing. The winners
get to choose three O'Reilly books and get a T-shirt to boot.
http://www.zoomerang.com/recipient/survey-intro.zgi?ID=B2424QF5BX35&PIN=TAXE2M15FP5P


***Parsing and Writing QuickTime Files in Java
QuickTime files in Java is easy, if you understand the file format.
Chris Adamson argues that it makes a lot of sense. This article
explains how the file format works, demonstrating how to read and write
to QT files.
http://www.onjava.com/pub/a/onjava/2003/02/19/qt_file_format.html

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.NET
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***Plumbing the Depths of the ThreadAbortException Using Rotor
Chris Sells was asked the other day how calling Thread.Abort could
raise an exception in a completely different thread. Finding the answer
led him on a merry chase.
http://www.ondotnet.com/pub/a/dotnet/2003/02/18/threadabort.html

Chris is coauthor of the upcoming "Mastering Visual Studio .NET"
Order Number: 3609
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/mastvsnet/


***Five Quick Tips for Using XSLT
Like so many acronyms before it, XSLT (eXtensible Stylesheet Language
Transformations) comes across as YAOT--Yet Another Obfuscated
Technology. But it doesn't have to be that way. XSLT promises many
advantages when applied to the right problems. All you need is a quick
guide on using the XSLT basics.
http://www.ondotnet.com/pub/a/dotnet/2003/02/10/xslttips.html

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BSD
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***FreeBSD Basics
Dru Lavigne provides practical advice for completing common tasks under
FreeBSD.  
http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/ct/15

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Mac
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***Securing Your TiBook (or Any Other Mac OS X Machine)
Here's how to make your Mac OS X laptop just a bit more secure by
enabling a BIOS password, and by plugging some of the local and network
openings. Ian Darwin takes you deep into your Mac's firmware and shows
you how.
http://www.macdevcenter.com/pub/a/mac/2003/02/18/secure_tibook.html


***Introduction to FileMaker Pro
In this first installment in our new FileMaker Pro series, we introduce
you to this polished, powerful relational database. Alan Graham sets
the table for things to come.
http://www.macdevcenter.com/pub/a/mac/2003/02/14/filemaker.html


***Six Great Tips for Homemade Dot Mac Servers
Now that you have your own Dot Mac server up and running, here are six
new things you can do with it -- including "iTunes Central," "iPhoto
online," and the "Safari Rendezvous mod."
http://www.macdevcenter.com/pub/a/mac/2003/02/04/homemade_dot_mac.html

Alan Graham is a contributor to the upcoming "Mac OS X Hacks"
Order Number: 4605
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/mcosxhks/

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Announcements From Your Peers
================================================
***Attention Java and Sun ONE users
Sun Microsystems, Inc. offers a free bulletin board for Java User
Groups. Post information about your group and upcoming meetings, or
search for a group to join. You can also look up information about
upcoming Sun sponsored JUG events, the JUG Ambassador program, and
other JUG resources.  Just visit the JUGs web site at
http://java.sun.com/jugs

Did you know that Sun Microsystems, Inc. sponsors regional User Groups
for several Sun ONE products? Visit the Sun Software User Groups web
site for membership details:
http://sunonedev.sun.com/community/usergroups


***Biotechnology discussion group looking for members-- St. Louis, MO
The St. Louis Section of the American Chemical Society
(http://www.umsl.edu/~acs/) is forming a biotechnology discussion
group, to meet occasionally and discuss computational biology, analysis
of genomic and proteomic data, and biomedical information and related
topics.  Anyone interested in participating should contact Lisa Balbes
at lisa@balbes.com for more details.


***LinuxFest Northwest--Bellingham, WA
This regional exposition for computer users interested in the Linux
operating system and other Open Source software, will be held on April
26 at Bellingham Technical College (BTC) in Bellingham, Washington.
This event is being organized by Linux User Groups from Bellingham,
Kitsap Peninsula, Seattle, and Tacoma, and hosted by BTC. Admission to
the event is free.  John "Maddog" Hall will be featured as the keynote
speaker. Events will include  introductory to advanced lectures and
tutorials presented by Open Source experts.  For more info go to:
http://www.linuxnorthwest.com.

Until next time--

Marsee