I'm surprised at some that didn't get a mention in the article: Enemy of the State, Swordfish, The Net  . This should be interesting to see the results of...

*Sigh* My first suggestion would be to stop stealing the results of other folks hard work. This is the Ethical Hacker Network and these sorts of things are frowned upon around here. As an author, this particularly makes my blood boil.

Secondly, sitting around and watching security videos so you can accumulate more certs (I'll assume there are some braindumps involved here as well) isn't going to get you anywhere. The first time you have to sit for an actual technical interview you'll go to pieces. You need to jump in and get some real hands-on time with the tools and technologies and apply the concepts.

An interesting tidbit from the New York Times today:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/01/world/middleeast/obama-ordered-wave-of-cyberattacks-against-iran.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all

That was a sticking point for alot of folks, I think. I spent a little time last night scribbling notes for the new one and cackling gleefully 

Totally awesome solution from Tim  Reading through this is giving me a bit of an itch to do another one, although I'd better get my next column for Don done first before he kneecaps me.

Interesting idea sil. I'll have to cogitate on that...

Thanks to Andrew and Don for the great review. Doing a coding book was a first for Ryan and I and it's definitely a different sort of animal. I really hope you all enjoy it and find it useful.

We're aware of the case problems in some of the code and there are definitely a couple places where this causes issues. These were introduced at the last minute by the person formatting the book (grrrrr). I'll get with Ryan and see if we can cook up an errata doc and get it online.

For anyone here that wants a soft copy of the code, let me know and we'll get a package put together and send it out. I'll put that up online also, but folks here will get the first crack at it.   

I've ordered from them a couple times. Not the best experience in the world due to a few problems:

They sent me one of the wrong items and it was a hassle to get it replaced with the proper one.

Some of the equipment was VERY used

Two switches had bad roms (which they did replace), and it took quite a bit of troubleshooting on my end to figure out what the problem was. A little QA on their end would have kept these from going out the door in the first place.

I had several switches arrive with broken faceplates (as in broken off entirely) due to bad packing. I had to argue with them to get them replaced.

They sent out a CD with a gob of IOS versions on it for various equipment. Nice to have, but not kosher with Cisco's licensing.

Overall, a mediocre experience, particularly for the rather large amount of money involved. Would I buy from them again? Likely not.

I flipped through it in the bookstore, but haven't sat down to read it yet. It looked really solid, which is consistent with my expectations of the authors.

I think you may have mistaken us for the Unethical Hacker Network. They're the next door down, happens all the time

Ahh the good old ding dong song   On the same theme:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mIUk08iYZKE

I've been listening to alot of these guys lately:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHg5SJYRHA0

There's also an Econo Lodge just down the street. I ended up there last year. It's certainly not the most luxurious place to stay, but it wasn't a rathole or anything.

I ended up going with the Physical Security Skills for Penetration Testers class.

Btw, if you 're going and haven't booked the hotel, better get on it. I had to call Hyatt to get in at all, and had to pay the non-conference rate for one night. Neither the hotel page link from the Derbycon site nor the regular hotel reservation page were showing availability.

Thanks for the feedback on the exploit class, that's one of the ones that I was looking at. I may go for the physical security class instead then, if I end up doing one.