O'Reilly User Group Program NEWSLETTER March 1, 2002
HIGHLIGHTS THIS WEEK: NEWS: -Steven Johnson on "Emergence" -The O'Reilly Community Press Publishes Essential Grassroots Documentation -Report from TED: Geeks and Movie Stars -Hierarchical Menus with the Underrated style.display Object -Perl Golf Challenge -Learning the Mac OS X Terminal, Part 3 -The Visual Display of Quantitative XML -A Quick Tour of .NET Web Services UPCOMING EVENTS -Tim O'Reilly on Emerging Tech Trends -Jesse Liberty on ASP v. ASP.NET -Eric Ray on Perl and XML -Noel Rappin on Jython BOOK NEWS: -Web Services Essentials -Hardening Cisco Routers ================================================ NEWS FROM O'REILLY & BEYOND ================================================ Spread the word to your members.... ------------------------------- GENERAL NEWS ------------------------------- STEVEN JOHNSON ON "EMERGENCE" At the beginning of the Web era, Steven Johnson wrote "Interface Culture," a book that found an enthusiastic reception among web folks, who appreciated its theme that wired culture is creating new metaphors for ways to see the larger world. Now Johnson, the founder and editor of one of the Web's earliest magazines, FEED, has written "Emergence," which takes up the theme of bottom-up organization of complex systems. David Sims and Rael Dornfest talked to Johnson about emergent theory and its relationship with the Web. Read the interview: http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/network/2002/02/22/johnson.html THE O'REILLY COMMUNITY PRESS PUBLISHES ESSENTIAL GRASSROOTS DOCUMENTATION Since the advent of computers, do-it-yourself documentation has been a foundation of grassroots technology development. FreeBSD, Linux, Perl, Apache, MySQL, and other core Internet technologies have flourished with the help of documentation created by dedicated members of their technical communities. The O'Reilly Community Press, a new series from technical publisher O'Reilly & Associates, publishes essential community-generated documentation. Thanks to that classic user interface, the book, hackers can now access the wisdom of their community on the bus, at the beach, or in the bathroom. Read the press release here: http://press.oreilly.com/commpress.html REPORT FROM TED: GEEKS AND MOVIE STARS Why does Walter Mossberg receive more passionate mail about Mac vs. PC than he ever received about the Gulf War? Jimmy Guterman reports from the Technology, Entertainment and Design conference in Monterey, where techies mix with artists and authors. The whole story: http://oreillynet.com/pub/a/network/2002/02/25/ted.html --------------------------------------------------- UPCOMING EVENTS AT SOFTPRO BOOKS IN BURLINGTON, MA --------------------------------------------------- TIM O'REILLY ON EMERGING TECH TRENDS Tim O'Reilly will talking about emerging tech trends that O'Reilly is following. Topics will include bioinformatics, community wireless, web services, and the evolution of what he's calling "the internet operating system." Wednesday March 13--6:30 PM JESSE LIBERTY ON ASP V. ASP.NET The principal difference between ASP.NET and ASP is that the new programming model is more object-oriented and more event-driven. This will be illustrated by extracting records from a database and filling a DataGrid in a web form, coloring some records based on their content, and responding to the ItemDataBound event. Along the way Jesse will also explain how to create code-behind pages for Web forms, how to retrieve data from a database and how to populate the DataGrid. Wednesday, March 20--6:30 PM ERIK RAY ON PERL AND XML Erik Ray is coauthor of the upcoming book "Perl & XML." More powerful than HTML yet less demanding than SGML, XML has proven itself to be flexible and resilient. XML is the perfect tool for formatting documents with even the smallest bit of complexity, from Web pages to legal contracts to books. However, XML has also proven itself to be web services like SOAP and XML-RPC. As the Perl programming language was tailor-made for manipulating text, few people have disputed the fact that Perl and XML are perfectly suited for one another. The only question has been what's the best way to do it. Wednesday, April 3--6:30-8:00 PM NOEL RAPPIN ON JYTHON Noel Rappin is coauthor of "Jython Essentials." Jython is an implementation of the Python programming language written in Java, allowing Python programs to integrate seamlessly with any Java code. The secret to Jython's popularity lies in the combination of Java's libraries and tools with Python's rapid development capabilities. Wednesday, April 24--6:30-8:00 PM All events to be held at: Softpro Books 112 Mall Road Burlington, MA 01803-5300 For more information see: http://www.softpro.com/events.html --------------------- JAVASCRIPT --------------------- HIERARCHICAL MENUS WITH THE UNDERRATED STYLE.DISPLAY OBJECT You can better manage your Web real estate using hierarchical menus. Learn how with these JavaScript examples by Bill Pena, coauthor of "Designing with JavaScript, 2nd Edition" Read what Bill has to say here: http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/javascript/2002/02/22/hierarchical_menus.html For more information, order a review copy of "Designing with JavaScript,2nd Edition" Order Number: 360X http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/designjs2/ --------------------- MAC --------------------- LEARNING THE MAC OS X TERMINAL, PART 3 In parts one and two, Chris Stone helped you get comfortable with Mac OS X's Terminal app. Now he provides a virtual cornucopia of cron-related goodies. Read Chris's article here: http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/mac/2002/02/26/terminal_three.html -------------------- PERL -------------------- LOS ANGELES PERL MONGER'S GOLF CHALLENGE What is Perl Golf? Perl Golf is a competition where all participants will try to create/shorten Perl code that has a certain purpose to the least amount of (key)strokes. For more information check out: http://la.pm.org/golf/ Are you interested in started your own Perl Golf challenge? talk to Samy Kamker of the LA Perl Mongers. The Los Angeles Perl monger site: http://la.pm.org/ --------------------- XML --------------------- THE VISUAL DISPLAY OF QUANTITATIVE XML Fabio Arciniegas A. shows you how to use SVG and XSLT to present your data in the most appropriate, efficient and attractive way possible. Fabio's article: http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2002/02/27/visual/index.html -------------------- .NET -------------------- A QUICK TOUR OF .NET WEB SERVICES Brian Jepson shows you some simple Web services with code examples. http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/dotnet/2002/02/25/examples.html For more information, get a copy of ".NET Framework Essentials, 2nd Edition." By Thuan L. Thai, Hoang Lam Order Number: 3021 http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/dotnetfrmess2/ ================================================ BOOK NEWS ================================================ REVIEW COPIES ARE AVAILABLE, email me for a copy. If you need your books by a certain date, please allow at least three weeks for shipping. Don't forget, your members get 20% off any O'Reilly book they purchase direct from O'Reilly. Just use code DSUG when ordering. WEB SERVICES ESSENTIALS Order Number: 2246 This concise book gives programmers both a concrete introduction and a handy reference to XML web services, first by explaining the foundations of this new breed of distributed services, and then by demonstrating quick ways to create services with open-source Java tools. http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/webservess/ Chapter 6, "WSDL Essentials" http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/webservess/chapter/ch06.html The "Web Services Essentials" press release is available here: http://press.oreilly.com/webservess.html HARDENING CISCO ROUTERS Order Number: 1665 As a network administrator, auditor or architect, you know the importance of securing your network and finding security solutions you can implement quickly. This succinct book departs from other security literature by focusing exclusively on ways to secure Cisco routers, rather than the entire network. The rational is simple: If the router protecting a network is exposed to hackers, then so is the network behind it. http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/hardcisco/ Chapter 10, "NTP" http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/hardcisco/chapter/ch10.html The "Hardening Cisco Routers" press release is available here: http://press.oreilly.com/ ================================================ ANNOUNCEMENTS FROM YOUR PEERS ================================================ Kansas - The Kansas City Java Users Group, http://www.kcjava.org, has organized an open source users group portal project named GroupHQ. Any and all developer's are welcome to help code, and all users groups are welcome to use the first release of code, due out later this year. If your users group has requirements, or you wish to volunteer with development, please contact Steve Mitchell at [EMAIL PROTECTED] We are especially interested in architects and senior developers who which to contribute design reviews and code reviews once we get under way. Watch http://sourceforge.net/projects/kcjava for details. Florida- North Tampa O'Reilly Users Group seeking new geeks for membership! Please email [EMAIL PROTECTED] for information. New Website and Virtual Meetings, as well as F2F meeting schedules forthcoming. Calgary, Canada- Next Meeting of the Calgary ORACLE Users Group Thursday March 7th, 8-10am Fifth Avenue Place Suite 202 237 4th Ave, West Tower Presentation: Oracle Workspace Manager, Jane Lockhart Check our new Portal website at http://atlas.coug.ab.ca/ -- For information on unsubscribing from this list, please visit http://rochester.pm.org