Archive for the 'Books' Category

I just finished reading Leinad Zeraus’s book Daemon.

In short, it computer oriented, current themed, science fiction that is the polar opposite of Digital Fortress.

The book strikes an excellent balance between depth of plot and sheer unadulterated action.

I would like to say “fun read”, but that isn’t correct. The store is often brutal, but such brutality makes sense in context.

And the technical side of the book pretty close to dead on without being overwhelmingly pedantic in detail. Where Brown’s Digital Fortress dove into incredible detail of ludicrously incorrect descriptions of technology, Daemon provides fast paced use of network and social hacking terms that the knowledgeable will find appropriate and the ignorant will be able to gloss over without being lost in the story.

The book also does a brilliant job of tieing together various memes from modern computing; bots, DDOSes, MMORPGs and the pervasiveness of databases throughout the modern world.

Great book. If you liked Neuromancer, Snow Crash or Shockwave Rider, you’ll probably dig Daemon.

I’m looking forward to the sequel in November.

I just finished reading the Young Widow by Cassandra Chan. It is a murder mystery set in London and the surrounding countryside. A quick read without a huge amount of complexity, though the characters are well developed. Overall, it was an enjoyable book if completely out of character with the typical horror, fantasy, or science fiction that I enjoy.

So, why the heck did I read it?

It was Ms. Chan’s first full length novel. She is a friend of a friend and I helped her buy and configure the iBook she used to write the book. She was kind enough to thank me in the acknowledgments.

Google, being the ever efficient beast that it is, has already scanned the book, including the acknowledgments. Kind of amusing to be able to search for “Bill Bumgarner” and come up with a murder mystery along side a couple of technical books.

I just finished Digital Fortress by Dan Brown. Same guy who wrote Da Vinci Code.

The book is a techno-thriller set in the NSA and centered around cryptography.

It sucks. Awful. Barely good enough to light a charcoal grill.

What kills it isn’t the writing or, even, the story line, but the technical details surrounding the NSA, cryptography, computer security, and related technology.

I like techno-thrillers (along with many other genres) and can overlook the occasional bit of techno-stupidity in an otherwise well told tale.

Digital Fortress is just too technically moronic. In particular, the stupidity is at the center of the plot.

How stupid? Passwords in the NSA are only 5 letters… and never have spaces in them but are still super-secure. The NSA uses FTP as a secure means of transferring files. The NSA uses wireless keyboards and allows employees to come and go with equipment at will. Random computer viruses will infect custom system architectures and OSes that exist nowhere else in the world. All of this while portraying the NSA as the most advanced computing center in the world. It was so poorly done that even my Mom saw through it (she is not technically inclined).

Sadly, one of the key characters within plot is an expert in romance languages and that particular angle is played well within the book. But not well enough to overcome the rest of it.

Don’t waste your time on this book.