in gravyland

Little Brother

I’m fully intrigued and excited about my raffle prize, so I’ve been having a bit of a look about to find out more about Cory’s new novel Little Brother.  Here’s Cory explaining a bit about the book from an interview with SCI-FI Weekly:

Doctorow: I just finished a YA novel called Little Brother, about hackers who declare war on the Department of Homeland Security. Every chapter has got a real-world how-to about why homeland security does not work, and how you can defeat it. And it talks about the math and computer science and information science behind the war on terrorism, the junk science behind the war on terrorism. But it’s also meant to be an instruction kit for teaching kids to be culture jammers and technology jammers. I’ve been calling it Encyclopedia Brown meets The Anarchist Cookbook. My editor at Tor, Patrick Nielsen Hayden, called it Wikipedia Brown. So I just finished it, and finished the outline of book two. It’s a two book series. My agent is auctioning it off after Labor Day.

Sounds very cool, very useful, very interesting.

Podcasting Pocket Guide

Local blogger and gadget podcast king Richard Giles has just had his first book come out. The Podcasting Pocket Guide is being published by O’Reilly and is available on Amazon for pre-order.

Congrats Rich! Hope you sell a lot of them. I can’t wait to have a read.

Rich explains more about the book over at Gadget Lounge.

The Art of Deception

I’m tidying up my books today. I had this huge pile of books by the bed and they ended up in a box while we were away. So, now I’m sorting through the box.

Kevin Mitnick’s book The Art of Deception is all about Social Engineering — human ways of beating security systems and getting access to things you aren’t supposed to. The book is intriguing as it decribes a series of cons, a series of techniques for getting access and information that you aren’t supposed to get by convincing people to give it to you, or setting up the circumstances around the call or request so people just trust you.

The idea is not to use these techniques to go and con people, but to get an awareness of what is possible and how easy it can be to break security when there is somebody you can call up and convince them to give you the password or something

People implementing any sort of IT systems need to read this. Typically we build IT security without considering the human element much. And people who are interested in cons and tricks will enjoy the descriptions of the techniques involved and the stories.

Um, Read The Diaries

Lib picked me up a copy of The Latham Diaries this week and I’ve been reading it this weekend.

After all the criticism, all I can say is — READ THE BOOK — don’t rely on the extracts in the paper of what the commentators say. It spans ten years of his time in Parliament and it is believable, interesting and real. It shows how somebody with ideals and beliefs about policy gets more and more dissatisfied with the culture of politics.

I think there is a lot of “shoot the messenger” going on in Canberra right now. Latham is now an outsider, a whistle-blower, and he is going to be criticized a lot by those in power. Watch people play the man not the ball as they avoid answering to Latham’s words and try and assasinate his character.

Whistle-blowers always get treated harshly by the establishment. It sounds like he is telling the truth to me. But every soul has their own reality. No doubt Mark’s view of events will be different to some.

Well worth the read.

Career Break

So, how do you imagine taking a big break from work and normal life and go travelling for ages? I think you have to step outside of normailty to do it, and some help in the form of a book is great.

We got a lot of good out of a Lonely Planet book called The Career Break Book which has this evocative subtitle: Swap your briefcase for a passport and live your dream.

The book covers a lot, from how to arrange your current life and job to support a long break; things you can do on a long break; advice on working or volunteering overseas; studying; and how the break will look on your CV.