Re: A WTF in the Oracle reference...

HansF wrote:

>Why do you expect they will let stamping out evil stand in the way of profit?

In fact, there is strong motive to get anything out so it can get sold.  This is many people's main complaint about some books - they just rehash the docs and course material to have something to sell when the O version comes out, right or wrong. Authors like Kyte and Lewis who go through everything to prove that statements are so - that is much more valuable, and very expensive to do - and doesn't _look_ any different on the shelf.

I may be way too cynical thinking people would monkeywrench a book - on the other hand, look at that Wiki Vandalism page, and most virii. How k001 would it be to punk a flickr book? Other publishers paying to make the competition look bad? Stranger things have happened... but it might be giving to much credence to evil publishers intelligence. Or it might show a dilution of peer review to let a large number of Joe Shmoes drive a book. Would you let your database vendor do that? Oh wait, don't answer that...

>I'm going through one book right now on ORacle tuning, including 10g. I assume it is not
>meant to be serious - the mistakes in each chapter have me rolling on the floor laughing.
>Unfortunate that it cost me over $50 - I can rent copies of 'Just For Laughs' reruns for a lot
>less. More unfortunate that many will buy it thinking it wil be a reference manual.

>I suspect it is entirely up to the author and reviewer[s] to ensure there is no evil. One reason
>I have switched to ensuring >90% of my new purchases are from APress. You get what you > pay for ...

But what you get may not be what you were _expecting_ to pay for. I believe I paid less than $50 for some books that don't roll me on the floor...:-)

As a fanboy, there are some authors who I would buy regardless of their publisher, sometimes even when they go out of their areas of expertise.

jg

--
@home.com is bogus.
http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20060126/news_1n26migrants.html
kinda like giving out maps of Oracle weaknesses.