1. Ruminations on C++ by Koenig and Moo.
I was wrong. Put it back. (also, copyright 1996)
2. Ruby Phrasebook by Clinton
Wins best of show. I'm considering stealing it. http://www.amazon.com/Ruby-Phrasebook-Jason-D-Clinton/dp/0672328976
3. Object Solutions by Booch
Good narrative style, but you could find as much content by reading blogs for a while. There are some fun sections, including a discussion on how easy it is to build the wrong thing if management is being stubborn. Very dated discussion of project management. (i.e. waterfall is assumed, rather than agile dev)
4. Mastering Perl by Foy (O'Reilly book)
Obviously, anything O'Reilly is more or less worth reading. http://www.amazon.com/Mastering-Perl-brian-d-foy/dp/0596527241
Verdict: I think I'm in love.
Advanced regex, untainting data, debugging perl, benchmarking, strictures, Pod (documentation), perltidy ftw, ...
Obviously I'm not a Perl Master. I should probably be reading an introductory text, if anything. But I'm impatient. :) Besides, I'm playing too hard with Ruby.
Lol, "talk to the bear" - the practice of explaining your code aloud to someone- coworker, bear, rubber ducky... usually leads to you saying "Oh, nevermind, I got it."
"Coding is where laziness meets impatience... oh, and competence."
5. Computer Forensics for Dummies by Volonino and Anzaldua
It's very basic. Chapter one will dispell your ignorant ideas (if you had any) about privacy. It has some fnu details. Ch. 2-6 are legalese. Ch. 7 is a transition to Ch. 8, which has some good stuff for people new to the realm. 9-11 are mirros of 8, but about email, docs, drives. Ch. 12 = cell phones. The rest of the book is mostly legalese.
Anyone who thinks that this books qualifies them for something is, indeed, a dummy. But it would be a good starter text for a scifi author trying to branch out into soft cyberpunk. And it might serve to intrigue teenagers (or careerchangers) into giving the profession a deeper look.
"World War Web: The Big One" should be a short story about crypto, legislation, and privacy.
6. Innocent Code by Huseby (Copyright 2004)
Not as dated as some, but the section on SQL injection is a a little old (I should blog about that, hmn), and the bit about sending email with a false address, while fun, is generally protected against nowadays.
p.193-195 is basically the summary of a class I took last year. Yay, packets.
7. Crypto by Levy.
This one, oddly, (none of the others have) has been checked out. Seven times. The most recent one was in 2003, though. So... meh. Makes you wonder why libraries even bother to have books, right?
It actually looks somewhat interesting- humanizing tales of the creation of DES and other crypto firsts.
8. Open Source 2.0 edited by DiBona, Cooper, and Stone.
Glossy and orange, this book actually looks "modern." It's an O'Reilly, although it's not in the traditional visual format.
It mentions Mozilla and Slashdot by name in the index. In one of the appendixes, it provides the text of a few of the most common open source licenses.
I wouldn't call it worth buying, but here it is if you want it. http://www.amazon.com/Open-Sources-2-0-Continuing-Evolution/dp/0596008023
Right. Enough of that.