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O'Reilly UG Program News--Just for User Group Leaders
October 15, 2003
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-User Group Discount Coupons for O'Reilly Available Online
-Do You Have a Tip, Suggestion, or Question to Share?
-Put Up an O'Reilly ThinkGeek Banner, Get a Free Book
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General News
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***Need more user group discount coupons for O'Reilly 
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O'Reilly News for User Group Members
October 15, 2003
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Book News
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-Windows Server 2003 in a Nutshell
-ADO.NET Cookbook
-Excel Pocket Guide
-Active Directory Cookbook
-Mastering Perl for Bioinformatics
-Flash Remoting: The Definitive Guide
-Programming ASP.NET, 2nd Edition
-J2EE Design Patterns
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Upcoming Events
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-Brent Chapman ("Building Internet Firewalls"), BayLISA Author Event, 
Cupertino, CA--Oct 16, 2003
-Louis Rosenfeld ("Information Architecture for the World Wide Web"), 
Enterprise Information Architecture Seminar, San Francisco, CA--
Oct 20, 2003
-David Jordan ("Java Data Objects"), Colorado Software Summit, 
Summit County, CO--Oct 26-31, 2003  
-USENIX LISA Conference, San Diego, CA--Oct 26-31, 2003
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Conferences
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-Virginia Tech Building Power Mac G5 Supercomputer
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News
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-Enter the Great TiVo Giveaway
-Fall Sale: O'Reilly CD Bookshelves
-Take an O'Reilly Poll
-Sending SMS Messages Using Windows XP
-Adding System Calls
-PHP Survey
-Denial-of-Service Attacks
-XML Parsing in a Producer-Consumer Model
-SearchAssist: A Portable Search Engine in Java
-.NET Serialization, Part 1
-Understanding Reflection, Part 1
-Cooking with ActionScript
-Apple Wireless Mouse and Keyboard Tips and Tricks
-Ten Things I Dig About Panther
-Fast Picture Previews

================================================
Book News
================================================
Did you know you can request a free book to review for your
group? Ask your group leader for more information.

For book review writing tips and suggestions, go to:
http://ug.oreilly.com/bookreviews.html

Don't forget, you can receive 20% off any O'Reilly book you 
purchase directly from O'Reilly. Just use code DSUG when 
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***Free ground shipping is available for online orders of at least 
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that go to a single U.S. address. This offer applies to U.S. delivery
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***Windows Server 2003 in a Nutshell
Order Number: 4044
"Windows Server 2003 in a Nutshell" is the most thorough and practical
reference to Microsoft's new server, with complete coverage of both the
GUI and command-line features, functions, and commands. Each topic 
begins
with a description of basic concepts, followed by a description of 
tools
used to administer the feature, instructions on how to perform common
administrative tasks, and notes detailing subtle points and potential
gotchas. This comprehensive guide is ideal for administration and
deployment, as well as deeper issues such as planning, configuring, and
troubleshooting.
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/winsvrian/

Chapter 2, "2000-2003," is available online:
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/winsvrian/chapter/index.html


***ADO.NET Cookbook
Order Number: 4397
"ADO.NET Cookbook" is a comprehensive collection of over 150 solutions
andbest practices for everyday dilemmas. For each problem addressed in
the book, there's a recipe--a short, focused piece of code that
programmers can insert directly into their applications. The book
provides clear explanations of how and why the code works, warns of 
potential pitfalls, and directs you to sources of additional 
information,
so you can learn to adapt the problem-solving techniques to different
situations.
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/adonetckbk/

Chapter 8, "Working with XML," is available online:
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/adonetckbk/chapter/index.html


***Excel Pocket Guide
Order Number: 5342
If you're new to Excel, this compact reference will get you up to speed
quickly. The book covers such basics as creating workbooks, entering
data,printing, cell formatting, and spell checking. If you consider
yourself an advanced user, you'll be surprised and pleased with some of
the new Excel tricks this book will teach you. It provides you with 
handy
information on formulas, pivot tables, collaboration, and 
customization.
This quick reference will help users at all levels of expertise become 
Excel
experts.
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/excelpg/


***Active Directory Cookbook
Order Number: 4648
"Active Directory Cookbook" contains hundreds of step-by-step solutions
for problems you might encounter with Active Directory, as well as
recipes to deal with features such as the Lightweight Directory Access
Protocol (LDAP), multi-master replication, Domain Name System (DNS),
Group Policy, and the Active Directory Schema. Each recipe includes 
a discussion of how and why the solution works, so you can adapt the 
problem-solving techniques to similar situations. This unique guide 
offers quick answers for both Windows Server 2003 and Windows 2000. 
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/activedckbk/

Chapter 8, "Computers," is online now:
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/activedckbk/chapter/index.html


***Mastering Perl for Bioinformatics
Order Number: 3072
"Mastering Perl for Bioinformatics" covers the core Perl language and
many of its module extensions, presenting them in the context of
biological data. This book starts where "Beginning Perl for
Bioinformatics" leaves off, covering references, complex data 
structures, object-oriented programming, and module use. The book 
then presents advanced topics, including gene finding, string 
alignment, data storage and retrieval, and biological computation 
models. Full of real-world biological problem solving, this book 
is a must for anyone wanting to move beyond beginner-level Perl 
for bioinformatics. 
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/mperlbio/

Chapter 9, "Introduction to Bioperl," is available online:
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/mperlbio/chapter/index.html


***Flash Remoting: The Definitive Guide 
Order Number: 401X
"Flash Remoting: The Definitive Guide" begins with the Flash Remoting
basics, and goes on to look at the server-side environment, covering
Flash Remoting with ColdFusion, Server-Side ActionScript, Java, 
ASP.NET,
and PHP. Then the book delves into more advanced Flash Remoting
techniques, such as calling web services, extending objects and UI 
controls, best practices, and debugging. This book is rich with 
examples 
that you can run on your own system, and concludes with a Flash 
Remoting 
API reference.
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/flashremoting/

Chapter 1, "Introduction to Flash Remoting," is available online:
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/flashremoting/chapter/index.html


***Programming ASP.NET, 2nd Edition
Order Number: 4877
"Programming ASP.NET, 2nd Edition" covers everything you need to know 
to
be effective with ASP.NET. The book includes a comprehensive tutorial 
on
Web Forms, which, in conjunction with Visual Studio .NET 2003, allows 
you
to apply Rapid Application Development techniques (such as 
drag-and-drop
control placement) to web development. Programming ASP.NET has 
extensive
coverage of each type of server control, including web server controls,
HTML server controls, and custom controls. New material covers creating
ASP.NET pages for mobile devices.
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/progaspdotnet2/

Chapter 6, "Programming Web Forms," is available online:
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/progaspdotnet2/chapter/index.html


***J2EE Design Patterns
Order Number: 4273
Rather than simply presenting another catalog of design patterns, this
book broadens the scope by discussing ways to choose design patterns 
when
building an enterprise application from scratch, looking closely at
real-world trade-offs Java developers must weigh when architecting 
their
applications. Once design pattern choices are made, the book shows how 
to
apply them when writing software. J2EE Design Patterns also extends
design patterns into areas not covered in other books, presenting
original patterns for data modeling, transaction/process modeling, and
interoperability.
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/j2eedp/

Chapter 5, "Presentation Tier Scalability," is available online:
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/j2eedp/chapter/index.html

================================================
Upcoming Events
================================================
***For more events, please see:
http://events.oreilly.com/

***Brent Chapman ("Building Internet Firewalls"), BayLISA Author Event, 
Cupertino, CA--Oct 16, 2003
Author Brent Chapman answers the question "MBAs for Sysadmins: Why 
would
a hard-core techie like me get an MBA?" for members of the Bay Area 
Large
Installation System Administrators.
http://www.baylisa.org/events/


***Louis Rosenfeld ("Information Architecture for the World Wide Web"), 
Enterprise Information Architecture Seminar, San Francisco, CA--
Oct 20, 2003 
This author leads a daylong seminar to help managers and web
professionals tie together content in a rational, user-centered way and
develop a unified web site or intranet. 
http://louisrosenfeld.com/presentations/seminars/eia/


***David Jordan ("Java Data Objects"), Colorado Software Summit, Summit
County, CO--Oct 26-31, 2003  
Author David Jordan is speaking at this conference focusing on Java and
XML programming. 
http://www.softwaresummit.com/


***USENIX LISA Conference, San Diego, CA--Oct 26-31, 2003
Authors David N. Blank-Edelman ("Perl for System Administration"), 
Gerald
Carter ("LDAP System Administration"), D. Brent Chapman ("Building
Internet Firewalls"), AEleen Frisch ("Essential System Administration,
3rd Edition"), Jeff Sedayao ("Cisco IOS Access Lists"), and Elizabeth
Zwicky ("Building Internet Firewalls") are speakers at the 17th Systems
Administration Conference.
http://www.usenix.org/events/lisa03/

================================================
Conference News
================================================
***Virginia Tech Building Power Mac G5 Supercomputer
The director of this Virginia Tech project, Srinidni Varadarajan, will
take you inside the G5 supercluster to show you the challenges,
opportunities, and rewards resulting from building the world's most
impressive Mac cluster, at this year's O'Reilly Mac OS X Conference.
http://www.technewsworld.com/perl/story/31485.html

O'Reilly Mac OS X Conference
October 27-30, 2003
Westin Santa Clara, Santa Clara, CA
http://conferences.oreilly.com/macosxcon/

To register for the conference, go to:
http://conferences.oreillynet.com/cs/macosx2003/create/ord_mac03

================================================
News From O'Reilly & Beyond
================================================
---------------------
General News
---------------------
***Enter the Great TiVo Giveaway
Answer these questions for your chance to win an upgraded Philips HDR
Tivo from WeaKnees with two 160GB hard drives for a total capacity of 
344
hours. Ready for hacking!
(Sorry, Available to U.S. residents only.)
http://www.oreilly.com/promos/tivo_quiz.csp


***Fall Sale: O'Reilly CD Bookshelves
For a limited time, we've put four of our most popular O'Reilly CD
Bookshelves on sale. Each CD Bookshelf contains a searchable,
cross-referenced O'Reilly library of 5 to 7 books, as well as a bonus
print book. Order a Unix, XML, Networking, or Web Design CD Bookshelf,
and save up to $70. (User Group discount does not apply.)
http://cdbookshelves.oreilly.com/


***Take an O'Reilly Poll
We have a fun new poll available on our home page that changes
frequently. Check it out!
http://www.oreilly.com/


***Sending SMS Messages Using Windows XP
Wei-Meng Lee writes about the recent release of the free SMS Sender,
which lets cell phone users send SMS messages from the comfort of their
Windows XP computers. You need not envy Mac users anymore.
http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/wireless/2003/10/10/sms.html
---------------------
Open Source
---------------------
***Adding System Calls 
Kernel programming sometimes feels like a dark art where application
programmers should never venture, but sometimes it's the right way to
solve a problem. (Oh, and it's also very interesting.) One of the 
easiest
places to start is by adding a new system call to a kernel. Kevin Lo
explains how and why, with the OpenBSD kernel.
http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/bsd/2003/10/09/adding_system_calls.html


***PHP Survey
Are you currently using PHP? What do you use it for? What database do 
you
use most frequently with PHP? Please take a few minutes to tell us in 
our
PHP Survey. Your answers will help us shape both our online and book
publishing programs. 
http://www.zoomerang.com/recipient/survey-intro.zgi?ID=3Y1XRB4LBP95&PIN=7RNG1N74P7F4&PANEL=


***Denial-of-Service Attacks 
Noel Davis looks at denial-of-service attacks against Apache, OpenSSL,
and FreeBSD, and problems in Perl, lsh, Teapop, ProFTPD, TclHttpd,
MPlayer, Node, mpg123, and Freesweep.
http://linux.oreillynet.com/pub/a/linux/2003/10/06/insecurities.html
---------------------
Java
---------------------
***XML Parsing in a Producer-Consumer Model 
Decent APIs such as SAX have made XML parsing much easier than in the 
old
DOM and pre-DOM days. That doesn't mean it's completely natural, 
though,
in all circumstances. Throw XML parsing into a multithreaded 
application
and things can get weird quickly. That's where a different approach can
help. Prabu Arumugam demonstrates the producer-consumer model, which 
can
allow multithreaded XML processing.
http://www.onjava.com/pub/a/onjava/2003/10/08/multithreaded_xml.html


***SearchAssist: A Portable Search Engine in Java
While server-side Java solves many problems, it's not always available.
Besides, there's more to a good UI than HTML can provide. Sometimes an
applet can fit the bill. Ashwin Jayaprakash demonstrates a search 
engine
applet designed for portability and power.
http://www.onjava.com/pub/a/onjava/2003/10/01/searchassist.html
---------------------
.NET
---------------------
***.NET Serialization, Part 1 
Many a time, you may need to persist the value of an object to 
secondary
storage. For example, you may wish to save the values of a couple of
Point objects, representing the positioning of an item on screen, to
secondary storage. The act of "flattening" an object into a serial 
form is known as serialization. Wei-Meng Lee discusses serialization
as supported in the .NET framework--Binary and SOAP serialization.
http://www.ondotnet.com/pub/a/dotnet/2003/10/13/serializationpt1.html


***Understanding Reflection, Part 1
Sometimes it is useful to be able to examine information about the
objects in your applications. In this article, Nick Harrison starts you
out with the basics of reflection.
http://www.ondotnet.com/pub/a/dotnet/2003/10/06/reflectionpt1.html
---------------------
Web
---------------------
***Cooking with ActionScript
In part one learn how to format currency amounts, create timers and
clocks, and use a unique depth when creating a movie clip.
http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/javascript/excerpt/ActionScriptCkbk_chap1/index.html

In part two learn how to pause and resume a sound, save a local shared
object, and search XML, in these sample recipes.
http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/javascript/excerpt/ActionScriptCkbk_chap1/index1.html
---------------------
Mac
---------------------
***Apple Wireless Mouse and Keyboard Tips and Tricks 
The new Apple Wireless Mouse and Keyboard and two great peripherals 
that
can spice up your computing life; here's how to make the most of them.
http://www.macdevcenter.com/pub/a/mac/2003/10/14/wireless.html


***Ten Things I Dig About Panther 
Now that the release of Panther is officially announced, it's time to
take a close look at its key features. O'Reilly author James Duncan
Davidson shows you the aspects of Panther that he really digs.
http://www.macdevcenter.com/pub/a/mac/2003/10/10/panther.html


***Fast Picture Previews
Many photographers like to peek at their digital photos before 
uploading
them into their digital shoebox. If that appeals to you, here's an easy
to use procedure to preview and sort in the Mac Finder--even while the
pictures are still on the memory card!
http://www.macdevcenter.com/pub/a/mac/2003/10/07/picture_preview.html

Until next time--

Marsee