[snifty]

Just because people are interested in "Web2.0" doesn't mean they're not going to be interested in the kind of stuff in this book.

In my opinion, interest in this sort of material is going to be propelled forward by Web2.0. It's not at all true that web programmers "don't give a shit" about mathematical modelling, etc. It's just that there hasn't been much accessible code for people to look at (much of it tangled in obscure, obtuse, proprietary academic and military labs).

It's true that this book seems to be attempting to cover a lot of topics, but that's probably the point: a decade ago, there was no popular concept, let alone interest, in relational databases. That changed because the street found a use for it, as the saying goes. Anyway, I'll second your Witten and Frank recommendation, cool book.