Reviews (4)

An expense that can be justified.
You are already into various Java technologies like Pricey for what it provides
I was excited about this book when I bought it online. Now that I read it, I am not very happy. The authors could have drilled deeper into some examples of how to implement the application using some wide spread technology like Java or ASP and COM. Giving concrete examples of what a Boundary Object should be, or what classes make sense to implement to interact with databases, just to mention a few, would have been very helpful. I also found "the top ten error" method very tiresome (I often skipped it and went straight to the right ways of doing things). The book was helpful though in providing a guide of what steps to follow in the design process as well as giving us a good idea on how to break the project into objects and diagrams.

A practical follow-up
Okay. I became interested in the lightweight Iconix process after a series of 5 articles in Software Development magazine, so I went out and bought the first book "Use case driven object modeling with UML - a practical approach". Read more

Subjects:  1. Computer Books: General    2. Computers    3. Computers - Languages / Programming    4. Electronic Commerce    5. Object-Oriented Programming    6. Object-oriented methods (Compu    7. Object-oriented methods (Computer science)    8. Programming - Object Oriented Programming    9. Programming - Software Development    10. Software Design    11. UML (Computer science)    12. Use cases (Systems engineering    13. Use cases (Systems engineering)    14. Computers / Programming / Object Oriented    15. Object-oriented programming (OOP)   

Reviews (9)

Thanks from a beginner
I bought a couple of books about Dreamweaver and I want to thank you for creating one that even a beginner could follow. The other books I bought were way over my head and I found myself lost before I even got started. I guess if I get more advanced I may appreciate some of the other books, but as someone who is new to Web design, I want to thank you for helping me get started. I couldn't have done it without you.

Covers the Basics
Having only once created a webpage on FrontPage, I thought I was a bit ahead of the game. Still, I decided to look into a how-to book for dummies like myself.
A rush job
The first 75% of the book deals with plain HTML, forms and other buttons and takes one from 0 to 5 on a scale to 1000.A lot of space wasted on mechanical clicking around the interface.Explain the menus and options and how to use them and don't need to walk through each one as if I've never seen a mouse.Now, if all you want in a web site is a bunch of words, links and pictures, all you need is MS Word and then Save as HTML.So, I imagine the fun part is when you have a database, to make the site smart... The database examples have missing steps and built in assumptions, no clue as to what could go wrong, etc.Needless to say, I spent many hours searching the net to fill the missing spaces left by this book.To my surprise, I found Macromedia's ONLINE UltraDev help a much better resource, with better explanations and a lot more graphics.Thanks Jannine, but no thanks! ... Read more

Subjects:  1. Computer - Internet    2. Computer Books: General    3. Computers    4. Data Processing - General    5. Design    6. Desktop Publishing    7. Desktop Publishing - General    8. Dreamweaver (Computer file)    9. Internet - Web Site Design    10. Programming - General    11. Web sites    12. Computer Software Packages    13. Computers / Internet / Web Site Design    14. Databases & data structures    15. World Wide Web (WWW)   

Reviews (17)

A very poor book on EA
About 4 pages of this book concern Zachman.The rest of the book largely avoids any enterprise architecture topic.
The title is misleading. The book is NOT a practical guide to Enterprise Architecture
The title 'A Practical Guide to Enterprise Architecture' led me to expect a book that dealt with the processes, challenges and techniques for creating an ENTERPRISE architecture. It does not. The book is about various technology frameworks. The Contents lists Systems Architectures, Solution Architectures and Service Oriented Architectures but not Enterprise Architecture. Enterprise Architecture is skimmed over in the Preface. The book barely touches on Zachman and Spewak and Hill. It ignores FEAF, TEAF, TOGAF, PERA, C4ISR, the Clinger-Cohen Act and other ENTERPRISE stuff completely. Enough said. Whatever this book is, is it is NOT a practical guide to ENTERPRISE Architecture. The book may be of use to technical architects designing solution-frameworks to support an Enterprise Architecture.

Outstanding Enterprise Architecture Book
I picked up this book today to get a some input on a pending Enterprise Architecture effort I am pursuing for a large organization.This book blows me away with a straight forward evaluation of a number of enterprise architecture approaches.It gives examples of methods to sell enterprise architectures to customer organizations.One of the greatest difficulties in enterprise architecture is communicating its value to lay people.This book does a great job of spelling things out in simple English.I am an experienced Enterprise Architect.I have been in the field for about 5 years.This book is practical and provides a number of excellent ideas for people in the trenches trying to solve true enterprise problems that span process, data, information, technology, applications/systems, and information assurance architectures.This book is a must have for practicing Enterprise Architects.This is a practical guide and not a pseudo-intellectual academic treatise. This gets 5 stars from me. Bravo! ... Read more

Subjects:  1. Computer Architecture    2. Computer Architecture - General    3. Computer Books: General    4. Computer systems    5. Computers    6. Computers - Languages / Programming    7. Design    8. Entrepreneurship    9. Programming - Software Development    10. Programming - Systems Analysis & Design    11. Systems Analysis (Computer Science)    12. Computers / Programming / Software Development    13. Software engineering   

Reviews (8)

A Recipe for Programming
This book opened my eyes.I'd finished a Ph.D. in computer science, and had a decent exposure to quite a few programming languages and paradigms, before coming across this book.I was surprised to start working through this introductory book, and find myself learning new things!The book transformed my approach to programming.
Everyone should learn to design programs
As a programming do-it-yourselfer I've had many conflicting responses to this text -- it's didactic style, its attention to detail, its sometimes patronizing tone, its rigor and broad scope and at the same time its immersion in minutia and quiddities I have never encountered in 'computer books' I had ever perused. Perhaps it's my liberal arts background, or love 'em/hate 'em sensitivity to all those broad stiff-spined textbooks I had carried in back-packs since childhood, combined with a disdain for the authoritative stilted style these educators exude -- despite their patent love of their subject. I felt at once both patronized and condescended to. The joy of learn programming
Great book! I liked the way the author approaches how to begin designing programs. I am half-way through the book and I am finding it very entertaining. Yeap! I recommend this book. ... Read more

Subjects:  1. Computer Books: General    2. Computer Programming    3. Computer Science    4. Computers    5. Computers - Languages / Programming    6. Electronic data processing    7. Programming - General    8. Programming - Software Development    9. Computers / Computer Science    10. Systems analysis & design   

Reviews (2)

Up To Date View of the State of the Art
This book is a collection of forty-seven articles around the common theme of shading images in real time. Many of these effects have been common in the movie world for many years, but in that application the shading can be done on very expensive machines and the time it takes to produce an image is not important because the resulting image is to be shown on screen rather than immediately on a display. Now, with the increasing power in the PC's in widespread use, these techniques are being brought down to the standard desktop.
A comprehensive collection of ready-to-use techniques
Shader X3: Advanced Rendering With DirectX And Open GL compiled, organized, and deftly edited by Wolfgang Engle (Senior Special FX Engineer at Wings Simulations) is packed from cover to cover with 630-pages of insightful new techniques, innovative approaches to common problems, as well as practical tools and tricks that will help in all areas of shader programming. All of the articles comprising Shader X3 evolved from the the working experiences of industry professionals, and all of the sections were expertly edited by shader programming experts. This comprehensive collection of ready-to-use techniques will enable even the most novice programmer to get up to speed quickly, and the more experienced programmers will find a wealth of insights and techniques to improve efficiency and avoid redundancies. Shader X3 is an essential, "user friendly", and highly recommended instructional reference for shader programmers.
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Subjects:  1. Computer Books: General    2. Computer Graphics - Design    3. Computer Graphics - Game Programming    4. Computers    5. Computers - Games    6. Video & Electronic - General    7. Art / Graphic Arts    8. Computer graphics software   

Editorial Review

Of all the tasks programmers are asked to perform, storing, compressing, and retrieving information are some of the most challenging--and critical to many applications. Read more

Reviews (10)

A Comprehensive Introduction To Text Retrieval Systems
A wonderful feature of this book spans out practicality for various topics including compresion algorithms and theory, document and imaging system and information retrieval. On my personal interest, the authors highlight a vast list of not only the theory but present it in a simple common sense logic.
Great Book on Information Retrieval
Managing Gigabytes is the best book out there on information retrieval.If you're interested in implementing your own IR system, there's nothing available that comes close to this book.But the book is good not just because it's the only one out there: the writing is excellent, the algorithms are presented clearly and explained well, and the coverage is thorough.Additionally, the coverage of compression algorithms is the best I've found in any book.All algorithms and pseudo-code in the book are presented clearly enough such that any competent programmer should be able to implement them.If all else fails, however, the free downloadable source code for the mg system can fill in any gaps. The Wonderful Thing Is: It's the Only One
This is the only book there is that will actually teach you how to build an information retrieval system (aka search engine).It discusses all the algorithms and tradeoffs, and comes with free downloadable source code to experiment with.Some of the material is standard, but covered in more implementation detail here than anywhere else.Some of the material is novel: you won't find better coverage of compression unless you hand-assemble twenty research papers, and reverse-engineer them to figure out how they're implemented.But with "Managing Gigabytes", it's all here. (Although, after a particularly envigorating discussion of how to string together a bunch of techniques to compress their corpus and save a couple 100MB, I did a check and found you could buy 512MB of RAM for less than the cost of the book.Knowledge is Power, but sometimes a little cash is more powerful.)The only negative is that this book is not called "Managing Terabytes", as the first edition promised/threatened it might be.RAM and disk are cheap, but not that cheap, and for now terabytes (and sometimes petabytes) are managed only by NASA, Google, and a few others.I can't wait to see the third edition! ... Read more

Subjects:  1. Computer Books: General    2. Computers    3. Computers - Data Base Management    4. Data compression (Telecommunic    5. Data compression (Telecommunication)    6. Database Management - General    7. Digital Image Processing    8. Digital techniques    9. Document imaging systems    10. General    11. Image processing    12. Information Storage & Retrieval    13. Microcomputer Text Processing Software    14. Programming - Software Development    15. Text processing (Computer scie    16. Text processing (Computer science)    17. Computers / Programming / General    18. Data compression    19. Databases & data structures   

Reviews (2)

Great book, but annoying errors with Internet Explorer
I would love to give this book five stars because it is such a treasure chest of information and most of it is error free.However, the authors have failed to test their examples in Internet Explorer with the script debugging tool turned on.The overlays respond to clicks with the map event handler.Only the map should respond to the map click event handler, not the overlays.It's easy to fix, by testing to see if the overlay exists before executing the click handler on the overlay, but it took me quite a while to figure it out.If the overlay exists and the click is on the overlay, it should not execute the map click code.I get annoyed when I notify the authors of an error and it gets ignored.I can go to their website right now and click on their examples using Internet Explorer and get an error.

Well done
I am using this book to build a mapping application. I'm a beginning-intermediate web programmer and find the book well designed.There are nice sections on improving the user interfaces of map applications, updating maps with data queried from a database, and plenty of good examples (also posted on the book's website).It's a good all around case study in developing dynamic websites with JavaScript, custom controls, databases and PHP. There is a positive review on Slashdot as well. ... Read more

Subjects:  1. Computer - Internet    2. Computer Books: Web Programming    3. Computers    4. Geographic information systems    5. Internet - Web Site Design    6. Internet - World Wide Web    7. JavaScript (Computer program language)    8. PHP (Computer program language)   

Reviews (27)

too expensive I would say
great book if you wanna start sth anywhere in machine learning, but it is toooooo expensive.

Excellent book, concise and readable
This is a great book if you're starting out with machine learning. It's rare to come across a book like this that is very well written and has technical depth. The writing is to the point, maybe even a bit terse, but all that you need to know is in there. It's a bit old so doesn't cover kernel methods or SVM's but is still a great first machine learning book.

great book
This is a great book because it focuses on machine learning techniques. It has been used as textbook in my class. ... Read more

Subjects:  1. Algorithms (Computer Programming)    2. Artificial Intelligence - General    3. Computer Bks - General Information    4. Computer Books: General    5. Computer Science    6. Computer algorithms    7. Computers    8. Computers - General Information    9. Machine Learning    10. Non-Classifiable   

Reviews (5)

save your money
The author probably has great insight into the subject matter;unfortunately, he does not know how to convey his knoeledge to the reader. The practice test questions are ambiguous and full of errors. There was probably minimal editing of questions and answers; as a result, a reader has to correct the errors and then try to fully comprehend the explanations to the practice questions. It is an inefficient way to study and learn. Head First,despite its errata (it has corrections at its website), is a superior product. This textbook is not worth the headaches.

A lot of errors
I would not recommend this book even though it covers all of exam objectives and has a lot of examples and exercises. The reason is that there are a lot of errors that make this book hard to read. It is very irritating, annoying and time consuming.
Reasonably good
I got this book partially because I prefer more of a textbook format than the Head First books.This book's format was more straightforward, so I got it along with the Head First Servlets and JSP.However, I have found a lot of errors, inconsistencies and confusing explanations in this book.Some of the errors are minor, but others really cause fundamental confusion.I'm searching for an errata for the book now.(There may not be one -- I'm not finding it yet.)
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Subjects:  1. Certification Guides - General    2. Computer Books: Operating Systems    3. Computers    4. Computers - Languages / Programming    5. Internet - Web Site Design    6. Operating Systems - UNIX    7. Programming Languages - Java    8. Computer Software Packages    9. Computers / Technical Skills    10. World Wide Web (WWW)   

Reviews (1)

The definitive reference on the reproduction of color.
The author has an impressive array of initials after his name; he is, amongst other things, a Doctor of Science, a Member of the Imperial College, an Associate of the Royal College of Science, and a Fellow of the Royal Photographic Society as well as a Visiting Professor of Physiological Optics and of Colour Science, and a former Assistant Director of Research at Kodak. He has also been Chairman of the Colorimetry Committee of the International Commision on Illumination, and Chairman of the International Colour Association. Read more

Subjects:  1. Color Computer Graphics    2. Color photography    3. Color printing    4. Color television    5. Computer Graphics - General    6. Digital Image Processing    7. Imaging Systems    8. Light    9. Photography    10. Reference    11. Science/Mathematics    12. Techniques - Color    13. Technology    14. Printing & reprographic technology    15. Special kinds of photography    16. Technology / Imaging Systems   

Editorial Review

"Intended as an upper-level undergraduate or introductory graduate text in computer science theory," this book lucidly covers the key concepts and theorems of the theory of computation. The presentation is remarkably clear; for example, the "proof idea," which offers the reader an intuitive feel for how the proof was constructed, accompanies many of the theorems and a proof. Read more

Reviews (45)

Terrible
I do not understand why this book is rated so highly.
Most appropriate for CS students
As a teacher of the subject, I have had the chance to evaluate numerous books on the theory of computation.Of all the available texts, I think this one is the most appropriate for CS students.In the past I taught out of Dexter Kozen's book, which is incredibly elegant, but had some resistance from the students.Thinking it over I decided that Kozen's text, although beautiful, may be better suited to students pursuing a degree in pure math.Sipser's book, on the other hand, is more gentle.I find that Sipser demands far less mathematical maturity from his readers, and thus allows the difficulty to be shifted from excessive formalism to the inherent challenges present in the material.In addition, following Sipser's treatment, I was able to cover finite state machines and pushdown automata in far less time, thus allowing me to concentrate on computability and beyond.The book really shines in its treatment of computability theory, eloquently directing attention to some of the most beautiful aspects.
Excellent accessible textbook on the theory of computation
The theory of computation is the branch of computer science that deals with whether and how efficiently problems can be solved on a computer. The field is divided into two major branches: computability theory and complexity theory, but both branches deal with formal models of computation, and both of these subjects are dealt with in this book. This is an important subject because no matter what leaps forward computers make, something that is proved undecidable and not computable will always be so, thus the theory behind this subject is very important.
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Subjects:  1. Advanced    2. Computational complexity    3. Computers - General Information    4. Discrete Mathematics    5. General    6. Logic    7. Machine Learning    8. Machine theory    9. Mathematics    10. Science/Mathematics    11. Systems Analysis    12. Computers / Information Theory    13. Mathematical theory of computation   

Reviews (2)

I love this book.
This is a wonderfully written, and excellent book. It assumes only minimal backgroundknowledge but imparts a great deal of insight. I love the way that the author describes this area and the connections with deep and beautifulmathematics.

A very nice 'handbook' of sorts for users of SOMs.
The material is presented clearly and comprehensively from the unique perspective of the SOM originator himself. The inclusion ofexhaustive references is particularly useful for the prospective researcher, but, atthe risk of sounding ungrateful, I'm curious as to why paper titles werenot included in the citations? Overall though, a very good reference. ... Read more

Subjects:  1. Artificial Intelligence - General    2. Computers    3. Computers - General Information    4. Engineering - Electrical & Electronic    5. Life Sciences - Biophysics    6. Neural Computing    7. Neural Networks    8. Neural networks (Computer scie    9. Neural networks (Computer science)    10. Reference    11. Self-organizing maps    12. Adaptive and Learning Networks    13. Adaptive und Lernende Netze    14. Biophysics    15. Cluster Analysis    16. Communications engineering / telecommunications    17. Computers / Neural Networks    18. Computers-Artificial Intelligence - General    19. Klassifikator    20. Klusteranalyse    21. Lernen ohne Lehrer    22. Mustererkennung    23. Neuronale Netze    24. Pattern Recognition    25. Science / Physics    26. Selbstlernen    27. Selbstorganisierende Karten   

Reviews (4)

Only book which consolidates Audio coding & Standards
This book describes the basic details and the Signal Processing behind the Audio compression. It also describes PQMF and MDCT in continuation which is rare in books. Almost all the standard audio codecs are described with comparisons. I am delighted to read the book. At least my search end with this book on this topic. After getting this book, I need not look into IEEE & AES papers. For Audio engineers working on this domain should read this book to have a complete picture and overview of the technology and the domain.

Not satisfying for a nerd like myself...
The book gives a good review of the historical development of audio coding standards with emphasis on ISO. Generally speaking it is well written, but the technical details as well as theoretical aspects are frankly, quite superficial; therefore it is not satisfying for a (proud) nerd like myself. If one's goal is to implement a program to handle the MP3 bitstream, for instance, then the book does not help. If one's goal is to design a new filter bank to improve the MP3 coder, then the book does not help either. However, it is recommended for beginners to get a flavor of the audio coding field.

Touching the core mechanisms underlying digital audio codec.
For a long time in my school life and now as a audio engineer I look forward to this kind of book.Read more

Subjects:  1. Acoustics & Sound    2. Automation    3. Data compression (Computer sci    4. Data compression (Computer science)    5. Digital Audio Technology    6. Digital techniques    7. Engineering - Electrical & Electronic    8. General    9. Recording and reproducing    10. Science/Mathematics    11. Sound    12. Standards    13. Technology    14. Technology & Industrial Arts    15. Audio processing    16. Communications engineering / telecommunications    17. Medical-General    18. Sound, vibration & waves (acoustics)    19. Technology / Automation    20. Technology / Engineering / Electrical    21. Technology-Engineering - Electrical & Electronic   

Reviews (26)

Accessible Guide to Algorithm Design
For those computer science students and programmers who are put off by the style of "Introduction to Algorithms" by Cormen et al., this book is a good alternative. Rather than just being a catalog of algorithms with code and little explanation, this book covers a much needed middle ground and contains a good deal about the analysis and design of algorithms in general along with discussions of common algorithms themselves in an accessible style. In fact, the author makes a point of mentioning in his preface that you will not find a single theorem in this book, and that the purpose of his book is to get working programmers up to speed quickly on both the generalities and specifics of algorithm design.
extremely practical, very good as a starting point in algorithms study
I found this book extremely practical, especially for professionals that don't have everyday the occasion to be confronted with real algorithmic problems (I assume that most of the industry-related software programmers / designers / analysts are in this category), thus beeing in need to have a reference at hand "just in case" :-).
For the real programmer
There are many reasons I like this book more than other Algorithms books I own (e.g. Sedgewick). One is that Skiena's book comes with an HTML version, so it's easy to keep it with you at all times (e.g. on your laptop, at work, and at home). Another is the "war stories". I found that I wanted to read the war stories first, rather than the technical content.Another is that the book points you at existing implementations, which really is what you'll eventually need to look at if you're going to use or write any code.
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Subjects:  1. Algorithms (Computer Programming)    2. Computer Books: General    3. Computer algorithms    4. Computers    5. Computers - Languages / Programming    6. Programming - General    7. Programming Languages - General    8. Computers / Programming / General    9. Mathematical theory of computation    10. Software engineering   

Editorial Review

VHDL may sound like a new Internet language, but it really stands for VHSIC (Very High Speed Integrated Circuit) Hardware Definition Language. VHDL borrows ideas from software engineering (architectural, behavior, and formal models, as well as modular design) and is used to design today's custom integrated circuits, from cell phones to microwave ovens and even CPUs. Peter Ashenden's Read more

Reviews (19)

A Great Book for Behavioral VHDL, Not for Synthesis
This book goes into great detail on variable typing, subtyping, and all aspects of behavioral modeling.It's extremely detailed and thourough.If you just want to learn the intricacies of VHDL and only expect to write test benches and behavioral models, this is definitely the book for you.If you're looking for a practical book that will help you to write synthesizable code, look somewhere else.The book does have a 17-page appendix on synthesis, but that's pretty much it.All the "case studies" are behavioral, even the RTL models.

About as good as it will get it appears...
VHDL is used for a wide variety of things - almost none of them what VHDL was every really meant for.This makes finding a useful text a reference a significant chore.Ashenden sometimes seems to move at a snail's pace - the text is written more as a tutorial than a reference.In some ways this is good, really the syntax of VHDL and the constructs are quite simple.His repeated examples make it clear there really isn't much magic going on.Personally I wish the book was more directed at synthesis - because that's what I use it for - but this text is more directed at the language.So some supplementing of the text will be necessary.
The migration path for programmers
Too many VHDL books dilute their point by trying to double as logic design texts. The problem is that VHDL is a complex (or "rich") language, and needs an intense focus of its own. This book does the best job I've seen.Read more

Subjects:  1. Chdl (Computer Hardware Descriptive Language)    2. Computer Architecture - General    3. Computer Books: Languages    4. Computers    5. Engineering - Electrical & Electronic    6. Programming Languages - General    7. Technology & Industrial Arts    8. Computers / Computer Architecture    9. Programming languages    10. Systems analysis & design   

Reviews (2)

an excellent treatment
We used this book in an advanced undergraduate/early graduate class in computer algebra.The book provides a concise and rigorous, but very readable introduction to computational algebra theory, with algorithms written in pseudo code. Clear and understandable, but some bugs
I found this book very useful as a reference while writing a smallcomputer algebra system.It's a definate must-have for all the hordes ofpeople out there who are rewriting subsets of Maple, Mathematica, etc.Theexplanation of the theory is relatively clear and helpful so that anot-so-theory-inclined person (such as myself) can understand the material. The cost of such clarity is a loss of some conciseness so someone wholives and breathes abstract algebra may desire a more esoteric book (likeWinkler's). The biggest flaw of the book are the poorly debuggedalgorithms.Almost every algorithm presented in the book has some sort ofminor flaw with serious reprecussions on correctness.This results in muchfrustration if you're actually trying to implement the algorithms. ... Read more

Subjects:  1. Algebra    2. Algebra - General    3. Algorithms    4. Computer Books: General    5. Computer Mathematics    6. Computer Science    7. Computers    8. Data processing    9. Mathematics    10. Computers / Computer Science    11. Computers-Computer Science    12. General Theory of Computing    13. Image processing    14. Mathematics / Algebra / General   

Reviews (3)

A great Buy
I passed SYO-101 today with 813 points thanks to this book and MOST importantly the 800+ questions on CD included with the Practice Questions Book. It is a great deal and well worth the money if you are considering taking the Security +

Nice capstone set for the S+ exam
I liked these books, they got right to the point. Questions were good also, with good explanations. I found this set to be the best for someone with a security background to prepare for the exam (personally, I have a CISSP), or as a capstone following more traditional preparation for new security folks. I took the S+ exam because I got an email from CompTIA saying I could get a shirt if I took & passed the exam before the end of December 2005. A shirt! Well...count me in!: )