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scottjbaxter's Reviews (585)
Fascinating subject, less than stellar execution.
This book illustrates just how difficult it is to write a first book, even if the author has a long career as a writer writing short pieces. Krebs has trouble deciding which things require longer explanation and which can be glossed over. For example, at one point he points out the importance of understanding what IP addresses are, but Krebs would have done well to spend much more time going into detail about what an IP address is, why it is important to understand their meaning, how they can be spoofed, and how much time security researchers spend trying to discover the true IP address of a server. I also thought that Krebs would have done well to greatly expand his final chapter in which he describes what one as an individual computer user can do to be safer.
There are other, less important problems, that marred the book. These include:
* trouble using metadiscourse to signal things coming in future chapters or to refer to earlier chapters. Krebs is less than elegant here.
* trouble referring to himself consistently and elegantly.
* trouble referring to published literature. Krebs seems to never be quite sure if his audience is a technical computer science security community or a more general audience.
* related to the last point, I found Krebs endnotes annoying and, at least in my opinion, the book would have been better if Krebs had integrated them into the main text. Part of my problem may have been related to reading the text in ebook format, although it was not that difficult to toggle between footnotes and main text on my kindle paperwhite.
Despite these issues, I did enjoy the book. Krebs is well positioned to inform the world of casual computer issues about a critically important subject. I , for the most part, did enjoy the book.
This book illustrates just how difficult it is to write a first book, even if the author has a long career as a writer writing short pieces. Krebs has trouble deciding which things require longer explanation and which can be glossed over. For example, at one point he points out the importance of understanding what IP addresses are, but Krebs would have done well to spend much more time going into detail about what an IP address is, why it is important to understand their meaning, how they can be spoofed, and how much time security researchers spend trying to discover the true IP address of a server. I also thought that Krebs would have done well to greatly expand his final chapter in which he describes what one as an individual computer user can do to be safer.
There are other, less important problems, that marred the book. These include:
* trouble using metadiscourse to signal things coming in future chapters or to refer to earlier chapters. Krebs is less than elegant here.
* trouble referring to himself consistently and elegantly.
* trouble referring to published literature. Krebs seems to never be quite sure if his audience is a technical computer science security community or a more general audience.
* related to the last point, I found Krebs endnotes annoying and, at least in my opinion, the book would have been better if Krebs had integrated them into the main text. Part of my problem may have been related to reading the text in ebook format, although it was not that difficult to toggle between footnotes and main text on my kindle paperwhite.
Despite these issues, I did enjoy the book. Krebs is well positioned to inform the world of casual computer issues about a critically important subject. I , for the most part, did enjoy the book.