Whats the motivation behind the book reviews?
Way back in ’89, there were lots of questions about which was the best antiviral proggie, and nobody was answering seriously. So I started doing reviews of AV software. However, that may not be a direct ancestor of the book reviews. A couple years later, DECUS Canada wanted to start a security SIG, and I said I’d do the newsletter. When I asked what people wanted in it, everybody I asked said a bibliography of security lit. So I tried to get one, but found that the ones the vendors were throwing around were just lists of titles. I figured that if I could review software I could review books, so I did some research, and sent off letters to publishers begging for copies, and started to review them. Eventually I got more books and reviews than I could use in the newsletter, and started sending them out on the net. DECUS went belly up, and I’m still doing book reviews. Among other things 🙂 There are some benefits. As well as building the world’s best technical library, I do find it a gre
