For crying out loud - how about we stop demanding that the victims be punished (ie: cut off from the net) and try to figure out how to detect and kill these Bot-nets on the infected computer. What are you guys? The RIAA? People with Bot-net infected PCs are victims just as much as those who receive the deluge of spam they produce. Maybe more-so since most spam gets caught by the ISPs these days. I got hit by a bot-net infection recently that stole 15GB of traffic off me before I had a chance to spot the problem. I'm astounded that after all this time the so-called leaders in anti-malware software still seem to be unable to prevent, detect, or remove Bot-net infections (and maybe I'm just under-informed about the nature of the problem). But since they don't seem to have a handle on a solution, how about the Slashdot community just stops fantasising about how great it would be if all the noobs got taken off the internet and start realising that the noobs PAY for the services we all enjoy (we couldn't afford this thing on our own). We have to understand that ISPs don't have the luxury of cutting access to huge chunks of their customer base just to stop bot-nets. They'd go broke and we'd lose OUR access (unless of course we had millions from our startup successes to pay for our own private uplinks, but without noobs to buy our new online services there won't BE any more startup sucess stories). So the real solution to Bot-nets is YOU. Not the ISPs, because they CAN'T solve it. Not simply to "ban the noobs" because we'd suffer too. YOU guys need to spin up the brain-turbines and figure out how to find and kill these day things, because you're the only ones who CAN. We're counting on you. Go for it, and good luck.

My favourite "learning" book is Think Unix by Jon Lasser from Que.

It's not specifically about Linux, but it covers all the things I routinely have to re-learn when things go wrong on my Linux box. Things like file permissions, groups, shell script basics, hard and soft links, and importantly, the reasons these things exist.

It demystifies the command line and provides a new user with the true understanding rather than just a bunch of tutorials on how to install packages like most of the other Linux books I've read.

It also covers some of the history and development of Unix-type systems (including Linux) so the current state of the art makes more sense than it might otherwise make to someone who only recently crawled out of a micro$oft-centric universe and discovered that there really was life on other operating systems (BIG life :-).

Regards, Simon