Do you see "jump the shark" moments from O'Reilly or the technology industry that you'd like to share?
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Showing messages 1 through 28 of 28.

• Nitche markets and leadership
  2003-10-01 12:38:17  anonymous2 [Reply | View]
  
  
  Someone wrote:
  
  (1) O'Reilley books used to be titled things like
  "lex & yacc" where you might pick up the book
  just to figure what it's about. Now there seems
  to be an attempt to downplay the technical terms
  e.g. there's no "mod_perl" book.
  
  All of the wanna-be kids mindlessly, automatically
  select what they want to be from the gurus.
  Even nitche topics - academic subject, hardcore
  subjects, hyper technical subjects - trickle
  down. In some cases, it takes more than a few
  years. OO was in the labs a generation before
  it crept out, then it took a generation to
  start using, and not until this generation
  have we learned how to teach the subject so
  that people get it. Functional programming
  went through the same throws, but now
  "Structure and Interpretation of Computer
  Programs" is an ageless classic and a best
  seller.
  
  I won't ding ORA for catering to the Windows
  crowd (even as I stand firmly outside of it).
  As someone else mentioned, the despreation
  of things like shark jumping comes from, well,
  desperation - not having anything better to
  fall back on. ORA's value is as a leader. If
  ORA doesn't print hardcore, nitche, technical
  books, then someone else will. I've been watching
  MIT Press and the OpenCourseWare thing.
  
  O'Reilly took risks on MacOSX (lots of product
  releases have a buzz, but O'Reilly saw real
  potential). O'Reilly took risks on Google as
  a platform. And of course, back in the day, on
  Perl. They've also taken risks on Python, which
  has proven to be language well worthy of attention.
  O'Reilly did not sit back and say "No one will
  switch from Windows", "no one will drop Perl
  for a younger but cleaner language", nor
  "people can't buy Google, it isn't a real
  product, therefore there is nothing to write
  a book on".
  
  Yes, this sort of thinking is risky. Tim described
  O'Reilly's early history as having an element
  of luck. Anyone can play it safe. Trying your
  luck now and then, dispite flops, misdirection,
  mispredicted trends, inadequate resources to
  polish a book, and all of these nasties, is
  what makes O'Reilly great.
  
  I wonder why O'Reilly didn't pick up Damian
  Conway's _Object Oriented Perl_?
  
  I found this very interesting reguarding the
  lack of truely hard-core books for Perl,
  subjects getting a very glossed over treatment,
  and outright downplaying of technical trends
  so that Perl programmers don't have to worry
  about them, and how closely some, but not all,
  Perl programmers really resemble PHP
  programmers with apathy for design:
  
  http://perlmonks.com/index.pl?node_id=285091
  
  -scott

• Not jumped yet!
  2003-02-06 12:22:41  edfactor [Reply | View]
  
  
  Hi Tim -
  
  I really don't think that O'Reilly has jumped yet. I think organizations that make decisions to abandon their roots jump the shark. Or when they have exhausted the potential of their initial ideas and don't have new ones.
  
  I don't think O'Reilly has abandoned its roots - even though there are probably branches that some of the initial readers probably don't recognize. But that's what happens to real trees - some branches grow thick and support other smaller ones - while others break off.
  
  If I had to argue why O'Reilly hasn't jumped the shark yet, I would give the following reasons:
  
  1. Tim O'Reilly is a real guy who you can say hi to - who actually posts his real thoughts online. He's not in this only for the money and he takes positions on issues that are sometimes better for the world than for publishers (like arguing against unreasonably lengthy copyright terms).
  
  2. While the number of books that O'Reilly produces that are not absolutely outstanding grows every year - the important thing is that the number of books that are is *also* growing. As long as that's the case, I am grateful O'Reilly exists.
  
  3. O'Reilly understands that there is a tipping point for quality in a venture that can put your product or service in a league of its own. They have proved this through books, through their networked technical posting/discussion sites - and now again with Safari. Safari is the best recent example. I love explaining to people what it is and why I use it. When I give them the pitch - they immediately assume that it's clunky, hard to read and hard to search - and that O'Reilly wouldn't really want it to succeed as it would eat away at book profits. That's when I get to say, "You don't understand. The service is FANTASTIC. It *is* easy to use, to navigate, and to search. It's so much better than what others have tried and failed to do - that you'll rely on it like I do."
  
  So as long as Tim is a real, thinking guy, as long as his company keeps producing excellent books, and as long as they keep doing new things really, really well - I think that shark is a long way off.
  
  Ed

• Stepped over the guppy anyway
  2003-01-21 17:10:09  anonymous2 [Reply | View]
  
  
  Call me crazy, but I think turning popular trade show giveaways into a revenue stream is getting pretty close.
• Stepped over the guppy anyway
  2003-01-22 21:25:48  Tim O'Reilly | [Reply | View]
  
  
  It sounds like you interpret our sale of T-shirts and related merchandise on ThinkGeek as some kind of desperate ploy for more revenue. But in fact, it's really just a convenience for our customers who want more T-shirts than they can get via our marketing promotions.
  

  
  People have been asking us to sell our T shirts for years (we say that in our ads, and it's true), but we never had the cycles to produce, store, sell, and ship things besides books. And the warehouse we use for book shipping has a hard time with non-book items like T-shirts.
  

  
  That changed when we connected with ThinkGeek. They serve many of the same customers we do, and their business is selling merchandise online. We do the design, and they handle manufacturing, sales, and fulfillment. It's a great partnership for us, and those O'Reilly T shirts are available for those who want them. And never fear, we're still giving away T shirts and other swag in promotions at tradeshows and in bookstores.

• A few bad books, mostly good ones
  2003-01-16 21:01:55  anonymous2 [Reply | View]
  
  
  On the whole, O'Reilly books deserve the respect they get. Many are gems that I will keep for a long time. But some have been low quality, and that makes me sad. Here are some examples.
  
  The MySQL/msql book was a loss, but the Postgres book is even worse (nice "index" -- and the plug chapter for their lame software is in poor taste). I want to hurt whoever let that piece of crap go to press.
  
  *Programming Python* is poorly named; I expected it to be the Python analog to *Programming Perl*, but instead it's just a pile of tips on various APIs and Python tricks.
  
  Which reminds me: the phone-book size is definitely no good. It reminds me of those terrible LARN LUNIX IN JUST 24 HOURS!@#$% books that are just reprints of poorly edited man pages. Stay concise, stay usable (if it's too big for RepCover, it's too big), stay close to the core of a technology. We don't need reprints of the man pages (the Postgres book is a big offender here).
  
  Also, there seems to be a glut of less core-oriented and more fad-oriented books. *Mastering Algorithms with Perl* is great, but *Learning the Basics of Some App That'll be Gone in Two Years* is not. Teach the fundamentals, and the trends will come easily.
  
  While I'm squeaking, let me request a new Emacs book! The existing one covers version 19, and we're at 21 now.
  
  Thanks for all the great books!

• Less than spectacular
  2003-01-12 20:12:08  anonymous2 [Reply | View]
  
  
  I trace my own proficiency with Unix (a prerequisite for my later
  GNU/Linux exposure) to two books: _UNIX in a Nutshell_, and _UNIX Power
  Tools_, both by O'Reilly. Like many techies, I've got my own menagerie,
  and it's something of a badge of pride that I've paid far more shekels
  to Tim than Bill. O'Reilly remains the first place I turn for a
  reference on a new topic.
  
  That said, there have been boners, and not just in the recent past.
  "RCS and SCCS" is 2/3 of a decent book. The coverage of _existing_
  tools is good, but where the authors describe their own half-developed
  TCCS, things waver, in large part because...it's vapor. Lesson: don't
  let authors plug their own software until it actually exists in a usable
  state.
  
  I've seen and passed by more than one "Definitive Guide" book. There
  have been several, and the topic and content have been so unmemorable
  that I really can't bring them to mind, which describe themselves as
  "the only reference you'll ever need for foo...", but *never tell me
  what foo is*. I do much of my shopping in a bookstore, so I'll pick up
  a title, scan the contents, scan the first chapter, check the index, and
  check out some of the intervening material. If I don't know what the
  book is about, I've got absolutely no interest in it, and it cheapens my
  opinion of O'Reilly. At the hight of the boom it seemed that there were
  more than a few such titles offered, a bad trand.
  
  The "Building Linux Clusters" book was a disaster, as ORA has recognized
  (the book was withdrawn from publication). I don't know what internal
  training and development O'Reilly has, but this should be a flagship
  case of what goes wrong: the book was poorly developed, poorly edited,
  and ultimately withdrawn, a major embarassment. A hot topic, known
  author, lots of diagrams, and CDROM are neither sufficient nor necessary
  for a classic.
  
  The "Learning Debian GNU/Linux" book was, while not anywhere near the
  disaster of the Clusters book, not up to snuff. I'd compare it to the
  complement of "UNIX Power Tools", "X User Tools". Maybe it's just
  harder to write solid material about GUI apps, but the volume never
  seemed to have the same heft as UPT. Similarly, McCarty's book focussed
  too much on fluff -- applications, X Windows, Yet Another Bash Tutorial,
  and the like. While there was an extensive installation guide (a
  rapidly dated topic, addressed adequately in the Debian Projects own
  documentation), there was insufficient coverage of principals and tools
  behind the package management system, Debian's true strength and
  distinguishing characteristic. I still recommend the equivalent Sams
  title over O'Reilly for this niche (a very rare occurance). Lessons:
  pick relevant, fundamental principles which help insure a long shelf
  life. Defer to external references (including a projects own
  documentation) where appropriate, or even your own. I strongly suspect
  O'Reilly may have covered bash once or twice elsewhere.
  
  I've picked up several of the Microsoft OS "In a Nutshell" books. I'm
  less impressed by these than the equivalent GNU/Linux or Unix imprints.
  Quite possibly due to my innate hostility to the subject. Also due in
  no small part to the fact that legacy MS Windows *has* no unifying
  philosophy as 'Nix does, making the task of ordering and presenting a
  reference that much more difficult. But an effort to uncover
  fundamentals and principles (even if they are fundamental flaws rather
  than features) would help greatly.
  
  
  
  Overall points? O'Reilly's greatest strengths are hard-hitting, dense
  (but often entertaining) publications which get to the meat of a topic.
  They focus on principles more than transitory aspects. They avoid
  page-count inflating fluff (needless code listings, screenshots,
  diagrams, bullet lists). Though the books inform, they also serve a
  bootstrap purpose: by illuminating principles, and additional sources
  of information, they far outlive the typical technical publication. The
  contents provide a clear roadmap of the work, and the index is
  comprehensive and intelligent. The physical production is good: paper
  doesn't crumble or yellow, bindings last, printing is crisp. There have
  been some lesser titles over the years, but the ratio to all books
  produced hasn't markedly increased. More imprints in recent years has
  brought more duds, but this isn't unexpected.
  
  And while there have been duds, overall quality remains high. Remember
  that it's a process, not a product. O'Reilly's forrays onto the web and
  into conference space have been both well executed and in line with the
  company's vision and profile. Overall: no sharks in these waters, but
  keep a watch out for them.
  
  Karsten M. Self <kmself@ix.netcom.com>
  

• losing your cool
  2003-01-12 15:34:47  doomvox [Reply | View]
  
  
  (Yes, "jumped the shark" is a grossly irritating
  phrase. Please drop it.)
  
  Like a lot of people, I feel like O'Reilley has
  lost it's Cool status. It's still a good technical
  book publisher, but just one of a number of them.
  
  Since you're asking, here's some things
  that probably gave me this feeling:
  
  (1) O'Reilley books used to be titled things like
  "lex & yacc" where you might pick up the book
  just to figure what it's about. Now there seems
  to be an attempt to downplay the technical terms
  e.g. there's no "mod_perl" book.
  
  (2) Publishing Windows oriented books certainly wasn't a good sign... sorry, it doesn't matter to me
  that you're making money on them. Pursue maximal short-term revenue strategies if you want, but don't go
  whining "how come no one loves us any more?!".
  If you're going to act like just
  another publisher, then we'll regard you as just
  another publisher.
  
  (3) There seems to be a tendency to milk subjects
  with too many books. You can't pick up an O'Reilley
  and expect it to be really definitive any more (even if it claims to be in the sub-heading):
  e.g. I snapped up the first Palm book during one
  lunch break, figuring that it might have some
  info on programming it... but it turned out to
  be an idiot's book, little more than a listing
  of URLs (as though I couldn't find them with a
  search engine). The book on *Programming* Palm's
  that came out later. Similarly, I picked up
  "Beginning Perl for Bioinformatics", with some
  reservations because the Perl aspects were obviously too elementary for me, and *then*
  the "Developing Bioinformatics Computer Skills" book came out, which is what I should have
  waited for.
  
  (4) O'Reilley has been slow to come out with books on some cool technical subjects, e.g.
  "Postgresql". By the time O'Reilley got to it,
  I had Postgresql books from a few other different
  sources, so you didn't sell any of those to me.
  
  Oh, and once last sign of the apocalypse for you:
  what's with the white spines all of a sudden?
  You've had the other technical book publishers
  desperately trying to figure out how to come up
  with a cool look something like O'Reilley's, so you
  decide to drop the colored spines for those boring white ones?
  
  (By the way: on the plus side, those Pocket
  Reference books are a great idea. I'd never
  have bought a full size book on a subject like
  CVS or the Gimp, but a slim paperback like the
  Pocket References fits the subject perfectly.)
  
  
  
  
  
  

• There are a few cracks in the facade...
  2003-01-05 01:03:07  anonymous2 [Reply | View]
  
  

  You evolved and grew, but you did not loose your spirit. At least not yet.

  
  
  

  However, as you grew, it became more difficult to get reasonably fast responses from your editors. Sometimes they do not reply at all. A few years back, an ORA editor would write a short comment on the proposal submitted to her/him, and would be prepared to discuss it further, or discuss other topics. That's not possible anymore and it's a turn-off for prospective authors.

  
  
  

  Also, having looked at your book catalogue I can see that some of the recently employed editors don't have your old editors' ability to see the blank spots on the publishing map. It is frustrating to see many interesting subjects go uncovered for years.

  
  
  

  It's not a call for a dramatic change of course, but for a small adjustment. I continue to buy your books, and I'm buying more of them than ever before. I just want you to get even better.

  
  
  

  Here's to another 25 years of exellence!

• There are a few cracks in the facade...
  2003-01-05 12:48:03  Tim O'Reilly | [Reply | View]
  
  
  Lack of quick responses from editors is one of my own pet peeves, something I complain to the staff about. To be fair, we do now get thousands of unsolicited proposals a year. I think we need to come up with a better system for assigning them to editors. A lot of what happens is that they get sent to a mail alias, and if someone is very interested, they respond, but otherwise, folks wait to see if someone else responds.
  

  
  We really ought to treat these like trouble tickets, and assign them into queues, with monitoring on when and how they get resolved. It would be a lot of work, but would create a lot more dialogue. As you say, even if a proposal isn't one we can accept (and by the numbers, you can see that very few unsolicited proposals are going to turn into books, since we publish fewer than 100 new books each year, and many of those are projects we initiate, rather than ones that came in over the transom), this could start a conversation about other interesting topics. Customer contact is a lot like whipping cream. You can't just stir it lackadaisically; you need to engage enthusiastically to get air (for whipped cream) or new ideas (from customers) into the mix.

• not until you retire, Tim
  2003-01-03 11:52:41  mentata [Reply | View]
  
  
  Not to come off like a sychophant, but I think you know your audience. If you really want some perspective on the low points, here are the books that I didn't care for:
  
  - somebody should have done a better job proofreading and checking the code in "Advanced Perl Programming" by Sriram Srinivasan.
  - Olaf Kirch's "Linux Network Administrator's Guide" should've stayed in electronic form
  - I treasure "Java in a Nutshell", but David Flanagan's "Java Examples in a Nutshell" has proved near useless
  - You should *never* let another writer convince you to publish a book with such "extensive use of bulleted lists" as "UML in a Nutshell"; it reads like a Powerpoint presentation from hell (or more likely an unfinished manuscript)
  
  That's all. Not bad, considering I have over 20 more that make the grade.
• not until you retire, Tim
  2003-01-04 08:15:20  austinblues [Reply | View]
  
  
  I read the print version of Linux Network Administrator's guide (1st edition) several years ago, but it still earns its place on my desk within reach. Many newer books on networking have been swapped out to the bookcase several steps away.
  
  "Things have never been better" perfectly describes the instant of jumping the shark and much of the time before that. So you can never know when you jump the shark, only when you have jumped the shark. (Or maybe a shark, local maximum vs. global maximum.)
  

• "one wag" responds
  2003-01-03 09:04:39  anonymous2 [Reply | View]
  
  
  Hi there:
  
  I'm the guy who said "You know something has jumped the shark when Bill Safire writes about it." Somehow, Google lost the reference Tim linked to. The original entry is posted here:
  [ http://www.me3dia.com/archives/aside/000573.html ]
  
  Thanks for the plug, though!
  ---Andrew
  http://www.me3dia.com
• "one wag" responds
  2003-01-03 15:14:22  Tim O'Reilly | [Reply | View]
  
  
  Thanks. I'll change the link in the main entry.

• The question is...
  2003-01-03 08:44:34  anonymous2 [Reply | View]
  
  
  Does O'Reilly NEED to jump a shark...or put car chase videos up for download....or put up a loud flash entry point....or publish a book titled "Psycho Criminals are using the <aintitawful>Internet</aintitawful> to get your children!"
  
  The answer. No. Their audience is still with them.
  
  Happy Days NEEDED the shark jump...it was already full speed down the slope.

• You evolved
  2003-01-03 07:47:08  anonymous2 [Reply | View]
  
  
  You expressed concerns about whether you jumped the shark because of your various, as you put it, spin-offs. Writing about Microsoft, producing conferences, consumer focused books and being an online publisher are the examples that you cited as spin-offs. These actions are not spin-offs they are evolution. If you didn't do these things you would be standing still. Rather you are evolving your business to meet the needs of consumers by leveraging your expertise.
  
  You have all this knowledge on paper, it seems like a natural progression to bring that knowledge in the form of conferences. With people being able to learn about technology either by reading and/or through different conferences it only seems natural that they would be able to further their knowledge day to day through online publishing. Your weblogs are a great way of following trends from people who follow the day to day happenings in the world (not just the technology world). Although your move to Microsoft made some people made, it also allowed other people to view you as being more technology agnostic.
  
  These so called spin-offs are not desparate moves trying to save a company, they all work well together and have allowed you to evolve from an online book publisher to a presence to which a person can turn, to learn about something through a variety of techniques.
  
  No, Mr. O'Reilly you have not jumped the shark, you have evolved.

• the "money saying" is from swingers
  2003-01-03 06:48:50  anonymous2 [Reply | View]
  
  
  money is from swingers, the jon favareau/vince vaugn
  flick.

• O'Reilly Expansion and Shark Jumping
  2003-01-03 03:29:28  anonymous2 [Reply | View]
  
  
  Hi Tim -- I'm a big fan of O'Reilly books and my young kids love the animal covers (which helps me too -- "Sweetie, can you get me the Rhino book?").
  
  One factor of O'Reilly's expansion that I hope you do not mistake for shark jumping, is your publication of books that appeal to narrower and narrower niches. While those who do not need a niche book (such as Programming with Jabber) may roll their eyes at such narrowcasting, I think it is great that such a targeted book is even published. (Not to ask for a trade secret, but how many sales do you need to expect before you would publish a book?) The only thing I would suggest is that authors continue to be given enough time and editorial supervision to produce high quality.

• different kinds of jumping the shark
  2003-01-03 02:05:59  anonymous2 [Reply | View]
  
  
  jumping the shark is used to describe something good, that goes bad, afterwards declining in popularity; and as this was originally a TV term, the decline in popularity is followed by extinction.
  
  What about things that were good, that go bad, but, if declining in popularity, do not or as yet have not become extinct?
  
  Has TV itself jumped the shark? maybe, will it become extinct? That's the question that highlights the limitations of "Jumping the Shark" as a metaphor.
  
  How about the internet, lots of people nowadays seem to think that it has Jumped the Shark.
  
  PS: if something Jumped the Shark during the Roman Empire but didn't go extinct until said Empire did (please no catholic church as extensions of Roman Empire metaphors), does this count in the whole "Jumping the Shark" flow?
  

• can we stop using that phrase ???
  2003-01-02 16:35:55  anonymous2 [Reply | View]
  
  
  its beyond tired. way beyond....
  
  utterly and completely tired....
  
  
• can we stop using that phrase ???
  2003-01-02 16:51:09  Dunx [Reply | View]
  
  
  So what you're actually saying is that the phrase "Jump the shark" has jumped the shark?
  
  Wow. Deep.

• Not yet
  2003-01-02 14:19:26  gwadej [Reply | View]
  
  
  For me the book that changed O'Reilly from a sure thing into a mostly sure thing was "Win32 Multithreaded Programming". I felt that that book had not been up to the standard I had held for O'Reilly books.
  
  Amusingly enough, I told several people that if the book had not been from O'Reilly, I probably would have recommended it. As it was, I even gave it a bad review at one of the book sites. My main problem with it was that the book had said it was suitable for novices, but glossed over some MT mistakes that novices might make.
  
  One of the authors actually contacted me after my review and we had a pleasant email conversation on the subject.
  
  I was also somewhat disappointed by "Mastering Algorithms with Perl". The book never really seemed meet it's stated goal.
  
  All in all, I usually expect an O'Reilly book to be a solid source of information and I'm not often disappointed. I've noticed that the level of nit-picky errors seems to have gone up in recent years, but I've only had two books that I wouldn't wholeheartedly recommend.
  
  I guess that means, IMHO, O'Reilly hasn't "jumped the shark" yet.<grin/>
  
  G. Wade

• Another take on "Jump the shark"
  2003-01-02 13:55:01  anonymous2 [Reply | View]
  
  
  My understanding is that Happy Days had run out of any other ideas that would attract an audience. Nothing short of a shark jump would get people to tune in...it was a desperation move. "Jumping the shark" signals, not the peak, but a post peak attempt to get attention by going outside the scope of what worked before in a desperate attempt to keep an audience.

• Even Homer nods
  2003-01-02 12:36:27  anonymous2 [Reply | View]
  
  
  When I was going to university I noticed all the CS students starting to carry around these weird white books with animals on the cover. There were, and still are, many, many books about all different kinds of information technology; programming languages, protocols, data standards, even management methodologies. A few were good and lots were bad, but the reason everyone picked O'Reilly was because it was a safe bet.
  
  When you needed to do something for a course you needed it *now*; you didn't have time to review a dozen different books and dig through all the technodrivel. You needed something that was direct, well-written, informative, and most of all, correct. You would not believe how many technical books are written by people who don't know what they're talking about, and how many technically knowledgeable people can't write a simple declarative sentence. Whatever other books were available, the O'Reilly books were always a safe choice. When I got a job in the industry and needed to learn something quick I would buy the O'Reilly book reflexively. I knew that, no matter what other books were on the market, the O'Reilly book would get the job done.
  
  For me, O'Reilly jumped the shark when I bought a book that didn't do the job. I wouldn't call it a "bad" book exactly, but it was inadequate. The writers were obviously writing "down" to the readers, glossing over important facts because they felt the readers were too stupid to understand the truth or something. Or maybe it was just bad writing. Whatever the reason, it was a shock to me. The automatic "O'Reilly == good" reflex was gone. I still buy O'Reilly books, but now they are just one of many technology publishers I consider.
• Even Homer nods
  2003-01-03 13:49:36  arvedhs [Reply | View]
  
  
  Tim, if you must know, I have had the same thought now a couple of times in the past year or so, as this poster. I have 20-odd O'Reilly books - the earliest is a battered copy of PP, must be about 9 years now since I bought it.
  
  I'm even acknowledged in one of your books - XSL-FO by Dave Pawson - and I significantly influenced parts of that book. And I sort of like that; I'm not immune to vanity.
  
  That all being said, I think I got a bit disillusioned when I saw books that seem to not fill a real need. "Ant: The Definitive Guide", for example. I've never read it, and I never will. I'm a voting ASF member, and I know what Ant is....I introduced the use of it in my company...it doesn't need a book. "make" did - I have _that_ book - but with the documentation that Ant already has, why publish a book?
  
  So sometimes it seems to me like you guys are scrambling for material. And not just me, many of my colleagues. And that perception (I only have to look at http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/prdindex.html) may be wrong, but now I don't automatically think, "I'm going to buy O'Reilly".
  
  Maybe you have much more of an infrastructure than I give you credit for. But I'm thinking "quantity is not quality", and I'm wondering if you haven't maybe gone past the line a bit on how many titles you publish, and their subject matter. You're not so far away from being a "* for Dummies" publisher, in some respects.
  
  No offense, and best regards.
  
  Arved Sandstrom
• Even Homer nods
  2003-01-02 13:07:40  Tim O'Reilly | [Reply | View]
  
  
  That's exactly what I'm asking about. I'm hoping you can share which book or books left you with that impression? It's always been a worry of mine that once you break a customer's faith with a single bad book, you damage the faith in the whole line. So consistency is very important.
  

  
  That being said, there's always a matter of taste. While I want to hear about specific books, their authors shouldn't necessarily hang their heads in shame, just take a data point for reflection. I remember when we published Sed & Awk and Programming Perl in the early 90's. People who loved Sed & Awk hated Programming Perl, and people who loved Programming Perl hated Sed & Awk. They are both great books, but S&A has a very gradual tutorial, and PP jumps right in, assuming you know what you're doing. They appeal to different readers. Similarly, C++ experts almost uniformly look down on Steve Oualline's Practical C++ Programming as glossing over the fine points of the language, but you have only to look at the Amazon reviews to see how users love it or hate it. It's got a four-star average over 45 reviews, with the majority being five-star, and the rest being two-star. (We hope that the just-released second edition will please both groups.)

• Even Homer nods
  2003-01-02 15:13:36  Corvus [Reply | View]
  
  
  Well, I didn't want to mention the specific book because I thought it might seem I was bashing the authors or the technology. But if you must know, it was "Learning Unix for Mac OS X".
  
  I had used Unix in school. When I was hired to do web programming, and to test web applications on Mac browsers, I wanted a quick intro to Unix on Mac OS X. So I grabbed the O'Reilly book, not even considering the other ones. OK, maybe I'm stupid for buying a book without reading through it first but, like always, I was in a hurry and O'Reilly had never let me down before. Well this time it did. I found the Unix coverage very superficial; there was more information in the on-line man pages.
  
  I agree with your remark about different books appealing to diferent users, but I don't know who this book was targeted at. I gave it to a co-worker who had used the Mac for years, but not Unix, and he never got any use out of it either. I don't think it explained exactly what the command line was good for or why someone who didn't already understand it would want to use it. The examples in it seemed rather purposeless to me.
  
  Again, I don't want to bash the authors or the Mac. Maybe I needed something like this as a wake-up call.
  
  If I'm going to bash anyone it would be the editor or proofreaders. Did the editor actually try out the examples in the book? Did it occur to anyone to ask whether the examples were something someone would actually need to do? And things that I really did need to do, like file and printer sharing, were not covered in enough detail for me to get them to work. Like I said; it didn't get the job done.
  
  I don't agree with looking at Amazon.com reviews to see if people like a book. I find most of the reviews extremely superficial or fawning, like a publicist "reviewing" their own company's books. I checked out "Learning Unix for Mac OS X" there and, sure enough, it has a bunch of 5-star reviews. One reviewer gave it full marks for being "succinct". Yeah, that's one word for it.
• Even Homer nods
  2003-01-03 21:43:00  pvr1 [Reply | View]
  
  
  Funny you mention Learning Unix for OS X. I thought the same thing about that one, Mac OS X for Unix Geeks and the Pocket Reference when I read this log. These were the first books from O'Reilly I thought I wasted my money on. I expected so much more from all of these but there was little beyond superficial information. I expect to learn things from O'Reilly books that I haven't seen elsewhere and to have a book on hand I can refer to again and again. FWIW I have about 25 scattered around my house and office. A co-worker stays away from O'Reilly titles because he feel they have too much information and are too intense for him; I told him that's why I like them. Anyway these OS X books went on the shelf and I haven't been back to them.
  
  On the other hand, I found OS X the missing manual to be wonderful. That book sent me back to the iMac again and again as I tried something Pogue mentioned. I would recommend this title over any of the other OS X titles mentioned above.
  
  For the same amount of money, the Missing manual was 100 times more interesting and useful than Mac OS X for Unix Geeks. Not to mention it had almost three times as many pages.
  
  
  
  

• Tim is so tragically hip
  2003-01-02 12:18:01  anonymous2 [Reply | View]
  
  
  I saw that episode. It wasn't the fifth episode. It may have been in the fifth *season* but I think it was even later than that.
  
  In the early episodes Fonzie was a very minor character and didn't even wear a leather jacket (it was deemed too "gangish" for TV). He wore a windbreaker instead. By the time he jumped the shark (literally) he was a major character. In many previous episodes he had jumped his motorcycle over various things, even breaking his leg in one episode.
  
  "Jumping the Shark" is a little different than you portray it. In some sense, whenever something becomes popular it jumps the shark because the original fans wanted it to remain their little secret. Jumping the shark is what happens when a wildly popular restaurant gets a new chef who sucks. Now some people will say it jumped the shark when it became popular and they couldn't get a table, but that is just sour grapes. It reminds me of how people like you talk about the internet before everyone else heard of it. Is the internet the same? Of course not. But it hasn't jumped the shark yet either.
  
  AOL's anti-open activities are not jumping the shark, and neither are Microsoft's licensing policies. AOL and Microsoft were never beloved enough to jump the shark.
  
  You may be thinking of related phrases such as "Elvis Year" (which I think you are very familiar with) and "so 5 minutes ago" (15 minutes ago?) which I believe is from "Clueless", a teen comedy (although undoubtedly was a popular teen saying before that).
  
  Another phrase you might like is "money" as in "he's so money." It roughly means that the thing is ultra-hip or can be counted on. Something like "Kobe is so money." It is from a relatively recent film, but I forget the name.
  
  Cheers,
  Bruce