Book Errata

Any errors in the book are my own and not the fault of the publisher, No Starch Press, or my esteemed editor.

I have discovered a few myself, and others have pointed some out. However, these are just errors — not “errors of omission” or arguments against what I wrote, or new items that should be covered in the book (it was published in Sept., 2005). For new stuff, argumentative reviews, new recommendations, updates, and things I should have added, see my blog.

PAGE 34, Chapter 2, section “The Hub of Your iLife”

The first sentence includes “10.3.4, known as Tiger” and it should be “10.4.3, known as Tiger” (that was a typo).

PAGE 45, Chapter 3, section “Linux: The Holy Grail of Free Software”

Yes, I know… (sigh). The “student programmer” who invented Linux is Linus Torvalds, and he is indeed, from FINLAND, not Norway — he went to the Univ. of Helsinki. OK, sorry, I had Bergen, Norway on the brain (see page 44).

UNSPECIFIED PAGES, unspecified errors

In addition, a book review by The Jem Report insists there are multiple errors in the book. The one above is mentioned, but also the following:

The first and most egregious is the author’s amateurish lack of understanding of the terms “open source” and “free software,” which is strange considering both the Open Source Initiative and the Free Software Foundation offer very clear, detailed, quotable, and easy to find definitions of these terms. In the book, the author claims that open source software is given away for free and maintained by volunteers, both of which are untrue as statements of fact.

Whether I repeated the original definition of “open source” or wrote a more colloquial description of the term doesn’t change the value of this work. Besides, I do make the point that commercial versions (especially enterprise versions) of open source software are managed by professionals and sold profitably. I specifically write about OpenOffice.org, Red Hat, Novell, and many other commercial Open Source projects that offer free software under the GPL. In the next edition I will put in the exact definitions of these terms rather than just footnotes and links.

The other major error listed in this book review is the following:

The book also misrepresents KDE by getting its acronym wrong.

Not according to the history of KDE: it says, quite clearly, “Kool Desktop Environment” as the first version of the acronym. Yes, I realize it is usually referred to as “K Desktop Environment” but that’s just not as interesting as its original name.

PLEASE LEAVE COMMENTS AND FEEDBACK!

If you know of any other errors, please don’t hesitate to add your comments to this blog entry about my book reviews. Thanks!