BKBSTNET.RVW 950504 "Best of the Net", Seth Godin, 1995, 1-56884-313-5, U$22.99/C$32.99/UK#21.99 %A Seth Godin seth@sgp.com %C 155 Bovet Road, Suite 310, San Mateo, CA 94402 %D 1995 %G 1-56884-313-5 %I IDG Books %O U$22.99/C$32.99/UK#21.99 415-312-0650 fax: 415-286-2740 kaday@aol.com %P 430 %T "Best of the Net" Gee, it's rather gratifying to find your name in the acknowledgements section, even if you had nothing to do with the book, can't find any contribution you made, and can't, in fact, find your name mentioned thereafter. (Judging by my friends in the list, I think our names were copied from the VIRUS-L FAQ.) The book is supposedly made up of recommendations from "a group of Internet experts" and "numbers of motivated, involved, smart people". But, as they say in the academic papers, the study was flawed. Godin sent out a request for people to send him stuff, so the study sample "self selected" for people who had nothing better to do. Quick reality check. Do we have RISKS? No. Oak? No. Net-happenings? No. alt.best.of.internet or usenet? No. RTFM? Yes (once). The Vatican exhibit? No. rec.humor.funny? No (well, maybe fair comment). News of the Weird? Yes. This Is True? No. What we do have, here, are two hundred "topics", all two pages long. Each has a few (very few) net references, mostly newsgroups. (A lot of the other "references" are "veronica".) Some references are long out of date (and the computer virus citations are awful). There are random pieces of information-- extracts from newsgroup postings or FAQ listings, and often a picture from somewhere. These have no proper citations at all. copyright Robert M. Slade, 1995 BKBSTNET.RVW 950504 ============== Vancouver ROBERTS@decus.ca | Omne ignotum pro magnifico. Institute for Robert_Slade@sfu.ca | - Anything little known Research into Rob.Slade@f733.n153.z1/ | is assumed to be User .fidonet.org | wonderful. Security Canada V7K 2G6 | - Tacitus