8:18 AM - (no subject)
I started reading Autotools by John Calcote. It's a book about the GNU autoconf, automake and libtool utilities. I've found a few questionable statements in the book, and the author tries to justify his view. I don't view it as a bad writing style, but I shouldn't need the author to convince me of his geek-ness. I get suspicious of sources that feel they need ton convince me of their credibility.
Obvious errors:
The author refers to GNU/Linux as the proper name for Linux. This is disputed in the Linux community. I've been corrected while using both uses. From my current perspective, Linux is a kernel and GNU/Linux is the kernel + GNU tools. Since the official GNU kernel is GNU Mach/HURD, it doesn't make sense to claim Linux is a GNU product. It's not.
Claiming one is an open source fan while writing a book on OpenOffice + WIndows 7 is silly. I have no problem with the author using WIndows for gaming, but it doesn't help credibility. On a certain level, I find the choice of Open Office to show poor judgement. If you're on a platform with a real word processor, why use Open Office? It's slow, error prone and nothing but headaches. Anyone who's used OO on any platform knows what I'm talking about. One could argue LaTex or docbook are better choices for proving one's worthiness as a geek.
Trying to convince the audience why the book is needed is silly. I bought it because I wanted a book on autoconf.
Finally, Mac OS X applications do have a use for such a script.. it's called GNUstep.