I've been wanting to get my hands on this book ever since I got the press release announcing this latest addition to the "Hacks Series". When the O'Reilly folks sent us a couple of copies, I've already had a book or . . .
I've been wanting to get my hands on this book ever since I got the press release announcing this latest addition to the "Hacks Series". When the O'Reilly folks sent us a couple of copies, I've already had a book or two in my queue, but as I'm a fan of Flickenger's work (both the writing and the actual WiFi creations), it was a natural choice that "Wireless Hacks" received a high priority tag. After reading the book and testing some of the hacks I've learned from it, I'll try to tell you what is so good about this publication.

By browsing the first chapter of the book, I was unpleasantly surprised - the first two dozens of hacks, weren't the usual hacks I expected. If you are not introduced to what O'Reilly hacks are, here is a suitable sentence from the book's covers: "O'Reilly's Hacks Series reclaims the term hacking for the good guys - innovators who explore and experiment, unearth shortcuts, create useful tools and come up with fun things to try on your own". What troubled me about the mentioned early hacks of this book was, that each hack didn't talk about some geeky tool or a way to do something, but rather focused on one of the Wireless related protocols or services. So here the readers can learn about 802.11 (a, b and g), 802.1X, cellular data networks, Bluetooth etc. I'm not saying at all that these topics shouldn't be included, but maybe they could be placed in some kind of introduction, rather than in actual hacks space. Nevertheless, the author shares his experience on the these topics, in the way of noting the pros, cons and recommendations for each issue.

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