Customer Reviews

Evil Geniuses in a Nutshell

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Ask people how they feel about Dilbert. If they work in an office environment, chances are they love it. If not, chances are they'll say it's poorly drawn and unfunny. Let it be said that, unless you're an avid Slashdot reader or have a burning passion for Linux, you'll feel the same way about the comic strip User Friendly.

If you are a part of that culture, though, you will no doubt find many strips you'll want to photocopy and stick up on your walls. Not all of the jokes fly, but you will love the few that do, primarily because you can relate to them.

Some of the jokes are dated, and considering that many of the events referenced are not necessarily earth-shattering events, it would have been nice to have footnotes or an appendix with references. One joke shows everyone missing from the office on May 19, with the lone character asking if today is a public holiday. Some hard thinking might remind you that that was the day "Star Wars: Episode 1" was released to theaters. Years from now, no one will be able to understand this strip without some historial context.

Of course, the main reason I bought this book was for the cool cover design. As a proud owner of several O'Reilly "animal" books (I will buy no other computer manuals), I just had to have this one as well.

This is one funny book. It truly captures the the world of IT, but puts a humorous slant to it. I read it almost from cover to cover and now frequently pick it up when I am in need of a laugh. I also like to post some of the topics on the door of my office. That bugs the heck out of our NT server folks, the jibes are a little too close to home for them.

Follow the guys from Columbia Internet as they work through the day to day tasks of tech support with really stupid customers, deciding which Linux distro to install, and tips on fragging the enemy. As you read you will find that there really is such a thing as a stupid question.

This book holds a little entertainment for anyone that is interested in computers. Admittedly, there is a certain level of Linux understanding to enjoy the Microsoft jokes. I would not buy this book for the technophobe in your life.

The book is dated now (who really remembers what happened on May 19th 1999?). But that is part of the fun, trying to figure out what the world events were at the time of writing.

There is something for all you computer geeks. A parody of Lord of the Rings and quite a few references to the Phantom Menace will keep you in stitches. There is even a romance that buds at the end of the book. I think it is all fake though, or at least cannot be long lived. Have you ever heard of geeks and romance going together?

If you enjoyed User Friendly, you'll want this sequel. If you
haven't read User Friendly, then you'll want to look at that one
first, since this one follows it. Or go to userfriendly.org and
sample a few of the strips there -- but it's hard to take the
website to the bathroom with you or leave it on the coffee table
for family or friends to discover. Hence, the printed book.

This book picks up where User Friendly left off, and it's more
of the same. The quality of the strips has not dropped off; if
anything, these strips are better than the first ones. I quite
thoroughly enjoyed it. See also Root of all Evil.

The follow-up to the fantastic "User Friendly", this book continues with the excellent comic strips seen by computer geeks daily on the Internet. I recommend this book to everyone who likes computers and has a sense of humour!

Humor, Drama, Computers, Sex, Internet, Violence, more Humor, this book has it all. This is highly specialize humor, so if you are not a geek you may not fully appreciate the subtle wit contained within.

You have to be a computer geek to understand the humor. If you are, and especially if you have a unix/linux background and/or have worked with internet or other computer support you will find this one of the most hysterical comics around.

"Three steps to completing your initiation as an Evil Genius:
1. Adopt ominous accent."
"Checkski."
"2. Never, ever smile."
"Checkski."
"3. Bring a wealthy, monopolistic multinational corporation that sells crappy operating systems to its knees."
"Am thinkink there is no way of doink number 2 and 3 at same time."
- Pitr, reading EVIL GENIUSES FOR DUMMIES

The comic strip USER FRIENDLY maintains a continuous storyline, so EVIL GENIUSES IN A NUTSHELL picks up where the first collection, USER FRIENDLY, left off. The main characters - the staff of Columbia Internet - were introduced in the first book.

Written and set during 1999, the year that THE MATRIX and STAR WARS I: THE PHANTOM MENACE were released, there are lots of then-topical references (such as the completely empty offices of Columbia Internet on May 19 and the ultimate possible evil release date for Quake III).

For instance, during one of Stef the marketing guy's dust-ups with Erwin the AI, Erwin is temporarily loaded into a Furby's toy body. (Gentle readers might remember the talking stuffed toys after a little thought.) After Stef destroys it and Erwin retaliates, Stef finds himself in big trouble with the NSA. :) At one point, Erwin ends up talking like Yoda after being stuffed into a reverse-Polish-notation calculator.

And there are plenty of fantasy elements (at least, if you're in management, you can tell yourself that's all they are). Crud the demonic entity, saying that Microsoft is passé, changes over to AOL. The techies have a holy war over which of the various flavours of Linux is The One (TM). Erwin tries to nuke a spammer, with Russia and China joining in. Pitr tries to solve some budget problems by seeking refunds for all the copies of 5 different versions of Windows Columbia Internet has acquired with their hardware. When Microsoft's anti-Linux team arrives, the coders do the logical thing: they sic the thugs onto Stef. Erwin messes with Stef's head when they get him back, almost turning him into a techie ("I'm thinking I should've taken the blue pill"), but Delilah from MS sales re-education changes him back. In between, the techs play with Half-Life, Alpha Centauri, and Rainbow Six. (When a Terminator-like engineer's brain is replaced by a Pentium III chip, our heroes only notice him because his shotgun is a cool Quake weapon.)

*No* real life techies would try to shop a colleague onto the graveyard tech support shift, would they? No sleazy marketing guy would order sleek new computer gear just to impress a good-looking female techie would he? Just fantasy elements.

Right.

Not many Y2K strips, although the techies do prepare, because while Columbia Internet is compliant they're betting that Windows isn't, and that their clients will blame them. (The next collection, THE ROOT OF ALL EVIL, deals with the post-Y2K letdown.)

New characters:
- Artur the possessed engineer, who talks like Ahnold
- Matt the sea urchin, a new friend of Dust Puppy's rescued from a sushi bar

I can't remember who got me on to UserFriendly.org but it is the first thing I check when I get to work in the morning. This book is such a great collection of the comics from the web site that I read it over and over and Xerox them for my cube walls. It's especially fun to see who get the humor and who doesn't (mostly the Windoze people just don't laugh as hard). Check out the web site and buy the book, you will not be disappointed.