🚀 go-pugleaf

temp@or.ary (temp) wrote:

>Hi!  I'm the original poster.  I have already received a few
>replies(thanks!), and I just wanted to add that my cousin does *not* have
>access to the Internet yet, so he can't access any helpful information that

Get access. Reading about something and actually playing with it are
two totally different things.

That said...

>is on the 'net.  I have received a few WWW sites, and I'm going to keep them
>for future reference, but for now I'd really appreciate advice on which
>books/magazines are best.

Read. Anything. It doesn't matter that much when you start - heck, if
he's really a novice then even Computer Shopper can be informative
(for, oh say, about a day. Then the massive inaccuracies take over).
If PC Magazine still runs their Tech columns (argh, can't remember the
names of any of them - but they covered topics like the
286/386/486/Pentium architecture as each chip was released, the
low-down on the architectures of various OS's, had good programming
columns in a variety of languages, etc) it's a good start. Byte is
also well known for such, and from their covers it looks like they've
managed to stay a little bit more true to the high-end computer users.
For BBS/Networking, Boardwatch isn't bad. Or at least it didn't used
to be.

Now note, I haven't read a "mainstream" computer magazine in several
years. I started reading PC Week and Infoworld a few years ago, and
while they lack the true technical articles, they do cover the
industry as a whole fairly well. There are similar weeklies for
Networking in particular as well.

As for books - I dunno any beginner ones. Middle to high end is
largely dominated by O'Reilly & Associates (aka Nutshell books).
They're reasonably priced, well written, humorous, and pack about 3x
as much information as the other books. For TCP/IP, I highly recommend
the Steven's books (I think that's the author). My copy is out on loan
right now, so I can't give an ISBN. It is a very high-end, technically
detailed overview of the TCP/IP stack and many of the application
level  protocols which use it. Of course, no overview of networking is
complete without a book on the OSI networking architecture.
Unfortunately, I don't remember a good one to suggest.

One good way to get good books is to write to the computing
departments of well known colleges & universities and find out what
they use for coursework in networking and operating systems. I'd
suggest contacting schools such as MIT, CalTech, Georgia Tech,
Carnagie Mellon, and so forth.

--
Tom Sorensen * toms@why.net * http://www.gt.ed.net/sorensen/computer2ir.html
"I was told I had a lot of repressed anger." "And now?" | Fight the CDA |blue|
"And now it's not repressed." -- Marcus Cole and        |Responsibility | () |
  Lennier, "Ceremonies of Light and Darkness", Babylon 5|starts at home | /\ |