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Four books about fighting spam (continued)
As I said, I got through about a third of the book. Some of the comments were funny, but this book just didn't do it for me. I guess I get enough crap mail in my in-box and enough incoherent letters from people all over the world that this book just seemed like more work.
I honestly can't recommend this book, but I do admit that's a matter of personal taste. If you like reading both sides of incoherent rants, well, then this book is definitely for you. On the back of the book is a graphic that says "TO STOP RECEIVING BOOKS LIKE THIS, CLICK HERE." I clicked, but I still got the book.
OUR RATING: 3 of 5
By the way, the reason I gave The Spam Letters a solid 3 out of 5 and not a lower rating -- even though I didn't like the book -- is that it is a well-constructed book that delivers what it promises. The fact that it's not to my taste shouldn't and doesn't count against its point rating.
SpamAssassin
Thankfully, we're jumping out of the weird into the safe, cozy, technically complete world of O'Reilly's animal books. This time we look at the truly ugly face of the King Vulture, shown in Figure D, sitting on the cover of SpamAssassin, by Alan Schwartz.
FIGURE D
 
Another ugly animal usually means another excellent book. Roll over picture for a larger image.
I'm a geek, which means I love O'Reilly's animal books. As many of you know, once a book has made it to the coveted animal book status, it means that you're likely to find everything you need to know on a topic, right inside the book.
Schwartz' SpamAssassin is no different. If you're not familiar with the program SpamAssassin, it's an open source product that's the most widely deployed anti-spam tool on the Internet today. It's also, mostly, used in server-side solutions. And it can be arcane. Powerful, but arcane. And, when it comes to publishing books about powerful, but arcane products, O'Reilly tends to get it right.
They did as well with this one. If you need to manage or set up SpamAssassin, then SpamAssassin is your book. We give it a very powerful and not at all weird 4 out of 5.
OUR RATING: 4 of 5
So there you go. Four books. Some useful, some interesting, some deep, and some really weird. If that doesn't describe the world of hurt email's in right now, nothing will.
David Gewirtz is the author of How To Save Jobs and Where Have All The Emails Gone? For more than 20 years, he has analyzed current, historical, and emerging issues relating to technology, competitiveness, and policy. David is the Editor-in-Chief of the ZATZ magazines, is the Cyberterrorism Advisor for the International Association for Counterterrorism and Security Professionals, and is a member of the instructional faculty at the University of California, Berkeley extension. He can be reached at david@zatz.com and you can follow him at http://www.twitter.com/DavidGewirtz.
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