Daniel J. Barrett is a writer, software engineer, and musician. He is best known for his
technology books.
Writing
Barrett has written a number of technical books on computer topics. The most well-known are Linux Pocket Guide[1] and SSH, The Secure Shell: The Definitive Guide.[2][3] His books
have been translated into Chinese, Czech, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish.
He is unrelated to Daniel J. Barrett, an author of mystery novels.[4]
Barrett has been active in the resurgence of 1970s
progressive rock band
Gentle Giant from the 1990s onward. He created the official Gentle Giant Home Page in 1994,[12] and though it began as a fan site, it was adopted by the band and is listed as the "Official Gentle Giant website" on the band's CD re-releases.[13]
In 1996, Barrett compiled a 2-CD set of their songs for
PolyGram entitled Edge of Twilight.[14] Later, he also helped to coordinate the creation of the boxed sets Under Construction and Unburied Treasure.
Humor
In 1988, Barrett wrote and recorded the song "Find the Longest Path," a
parody incorporating
an NP-complete problem in computer science and the frustrations of
graduate school. It has been played at mathematics conferences,[15] incorporated into several YouTube videos by other people,[16][17] and independently performed by a choral ensemble at
ACMSIGCSE 2013.[18] Computer scientist
Robert Sedgewick ends his algorithms course on
Coursera with this song.
Bibliography
Barrett, Daniel J., Bandits on the Information Superhighway, 1996,
ISBN1-56592-156-9.
Barrett, Daniel J., NetResearch: Finding Information Online, 1997,
ISBN1-56592-245-X.