Reviews and links for August 2011
RESTful .NET by Jon Flanders
4/5
Great coverage of exposing and consuming a RESTful service using WCF. Note that you'll need the services of a good WCF book, this builds on existing WCF expertise and doesn't try that hard to bring you up to speed. Which isn't a bad thing, it keeps the book relatively short and focused. I'll be referring back to this one often.
Rule 34 by Charles Stross
4/5
Stross flips out concepts in a sentence that many SciFi authors would build an entire book around. It's a near-future police procedural set in Edinburgh. Twisted, tongue-in-cheek, profane and most excellent. The only miss is the assumption that people will use Wave in the near-future, let alone now. It's the first book of his that I've read... will be seeking out more soon.
The Information: A History, A Theory, A Flood by James Gleick
4/5
Epic. A must read for cybernauts who may have forgotten their roots. Good for anyone else interested in what information actually is, and how pervasive information theory has become.
Links
- Password Strength from xkcd.com (Read this now, then change your passwords!).
- Baby sex blood tests 'accurate' from BBC News - Home (Bad news for girls...).
- Microsoft Releases .NET Gadget Toolkit from TechCrunch (Want! #todo @myEN).
- Are your genes somebody else's property? from All Salon (More patent stupidity, this time genes (@myEV)).
- IE users have lower IQ says study from BBC News - Home (Highest IQ? Telnet to port 80 directly).