Editorial Review

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Reviews (28)

Dummy No More
This book is well written and well laid out. It can be used as a reference or as a learning tool for those less knowledgeable on computer stuff. I just advanced from Windows 98 and this made the leap/transition much easier and less confounding.

"REAL DUMMIE" BEFORE..WITH THIS BOOK,MAKES A BEGINNER FEEL LESS LIKE A "DUMMIE"
MY FIRST COMPUTER...(DID NOT HELP THAT THE COMPUTER WAS A LEMON, AND THE COMPANY REPLACED IT)I NOT ONLY DID NOT UNDERSTAND "COMPUTER" LANGUAGE, I DID NOT EVEN KNOW HOW TO TURN IT OFF WITH OR WITHOUT POWER-BUTTON.ANY ONE WANTING TO KNOW "HOW TO" SHOULD GET THIS BOOK.LIKE IT SAYS..YOU DON'T SIT AND READ IT LIKE A NOVEL...YOU HAVE A QUESTION...YOU LOOK IT UP IN THE BOOK...NOW IF SOMEONE WOULD COME UP WITH A COMPUTER DICTIONARY FOR ALL THE TERMS ETC. USED IN "COMPUTER LANGUAGE"!!!!BUY THIS...YOU WON'T REGRET IT!

Its not a teaching book.
The book for the most part is having a discussion with you about Windows XP.Offering comments or critiques.It is not a book that I would recommend for learning via book.A Few areas actually go into depth.I see it as a PowerPoint presentation discussion about basics XP and should have been sold as.It lacked detail in networking and wireless needed for many user/owner issues. ... Read more

Subjects:  1. Computer Books: Operating Systems    2. Computer operating systems    3. Computers    4. Computers - Operating Systems    5. Microsoft Windows (Computer fi    6. Microsoft Windows (Computer file)    7. Microsoft Windows (Computer so    8. Microsoft Windows (Computer software)    9. Operating Systems - NT    10. Operating Systems - Windows XP    11. Operating systems (Computers)    12. Computer Hardware & Operating Systems    13. Computers / Operating Systems / NT   

Editorial Review

Gigantically comprehensive and carefully researched, Read more

Reviews (24)

Available for free
Before purchasing this book, you might like to browse through its contents.It is available in its entirety for free on the author's website.Here's the URL:
More high-level concepts and less hands-on guidance
This is certainly a good book for getting introduced to most high-level architectural concepts related to Network security, cryptography, mandatory/multi-level access control etc. From a application development perspective, this book falls short on how to build architecure, design and implement them into your business applications which ultimately meets the end-user. The author justifies the high-level concepts well enough from a generalist perspective, but the industry-standards from OASIS leans towards standards-based application security protocols..which pushes a developer/architect like me to take those suggestions first and how to apply them in real world.The book also does'nt address on how-to build security for emerging application architectures based on Service-oriented architecture (SOA), Identity Management, Net-centric Federated applications. As a developer/architect using Java or Microsoft .NET or open-source based distributed applications, I need guidance on how to implement the recommended concepts (in the book) for example using biometrics or smartcards for building multi-factor access control at my application-level...unfortunately I don't find any answers for real-world implementation.

Best security book on the market
This book is a must own and a must read.Ross Anderson may tweak people's noses on occassion...but usually because they need tweaking.Get this book now.Really. ... Read more

Subjects:  1. Computer Books And Software    2. Computer Data Security    3. Computer security    4. Computers    5. Computers - Computer Security    6. Computers - General Information    7. Distributed Computer Systems    8. Distributed processing    9. Electronic data processing    10. Management Information Systems    11. Networking - General    12. Programming - Systems Analysis & Design    13. Security - General    14. Computers / Networking / General    15. Data security & data encryption    16. Network security   

Reviews (15)

Honest and insightfull
This is a great introduction to SOA. The authors focus on the fundamentals of SOA, displaying both wisdom and honesty as they discuss the structure of an SOA, its essential and optional elements, strategies for SOA introduction (from technical and organizational points of view), SOA oriented project management techniques, success (and failure stories), etc.
Excellent overview
This book was an excellent broad overview of the technology related items associated with an SOA adoption.It is a good read for an IT manager or architect that is more concerned with the bigger picture.This book, combined with a book that has more of a business oriented slant, such as Service Orient or Be Doomed or Service Blueprint make a great combination for enterprise architects interested in the potential of SOA.

Good SOA book, lacks the Open Source approach.
I mostly agree with all former posts. My contribution to the comments is that the book focuses only on proprietary platforms and grossly misses the point on how to use Open Source platforms as an alternative, thus doing the same stuff with a much smaller budget. ... Read more

Subjects:  1. Client-Server Computing - General    2. Computer Architecture    3. Computer Architecture - General    4. Computer Books: General    5. Computer network architectures    6. Computers    7. Computers - General Information    8. Distributed Computer Systems    9. Information technology    10. Management    11. Web servers    12. Computers / Online Services / General    13. Internet   

Reviews (17)

Good, detailed book
I'm a data architect at a small tech company, now working mostly with data warehouses, and was looking to refresh my data modeling skills.After reading Amazon reviews about different modeling books I chose this one and have not been disappointed.Rather than reading it from front to back, I read the first couple hundred pages and am now skipping around and reading sections that interest me.
Decent book
I bought this as a reference for a college course, and it seems to be a decent reference for data modeling.

A Data Modeling Classic
Simsion and Witt's _Data Modeling Essentials_ has been a classic on my data management bookshelf since the first edition.Now in the 3rd Edition, this work has become even more valuable and useful on data management projects.The fact that the authors continue to enhance and expand their work is a real asset.
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Subjects:  1. Computer Books: Database    2. Computers    3. Computers - Data Base Management    4. Data structures (Computer scie    5. Data structures (Computer science)    6. Database Management - General    7. Database design    8. Information Storage & Retrieval    9. Computers / Database Management / General    10. Databases & data structures    11. Systems management   

Reviews (21)

Not Really Useful for the Users of this Camera
I picked this up based on the reviews here and prior to shooting with the camera. About half of this book contains beginning photography type information. I don't believe the owners of this camera are beginning photographers, and if they are there are better resources than this book. I also found the Nikon D200 user manual to be far more accessible and detailed and considerably more portable than this book. This book is written at too high a level to be useful in the field (and it's too big). It doesn't get deep enough into the menus, providing just a small paragraph overview. When you need to know how to quickly access menus, or discern what the menus allow you to do, the available options, etc., this book fails.
The best of the D200 books, I think.

The only d200 guide you need
There isn't much about this little guide to dislike. It's clear, concise and ultra easy to follow. Not only that, but it's a great size - you can stash it in your camera bag and carry it with you! I'm a dSLR newbie, so this wee guide was a relief. Loving it. Buy it. ... Read more

Subjects:  1. Photo Techniques    2. Photography    3. Techniques - Digital    4. Techniques - Equipment    5. Computer Software Packages    6. Photography / Equipment   

Reviews (20)

Excellent !!
In order to complete any jigsaw puzzle, you normally need to refer to the picture on the box.
Excellent hands on service development model solutions for SOA!
Excellent hands on service development model solutions for SOA!
Explaining the Basic Concepts
A surprising amount of the spending for information technology in virtually all organizations is spent on supporting, updating, integrating, or otherwise maintaining legacy systems. SOA is an attempt to define a generalized group of services oriented 'objects' (for lack of a better term) that have a well defined interface and output that is oriented to provide a business orjective.
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Subjects:  1. Accounting - General    2. Business & Economics    3. Business / Economics / Finance    4. Business enterprises    5. Business/Economics    6. Computer Architecture    7. Computer Architecture - General    8. Computer network architectures    9. Computer networks    10. Information Management    11. Information Processing (Information Science)    12. Information technology    13. Knowledge Capital    14. Management    15. Management Information Systems    16. Business & Economics / Accounting / General    17. Computer architecture & logic design    18. Customer services   

Reviews (47)

Not what i was hoping for
Well, I was hoping for this book to help me understand special CS2 filters, enhancements, etc....and what I got, was great stuff I cannot redo as shown in the pictures and very short guidelines for the most part of it. One example was the enhancing of the eyes (sometimes the iris turns out too dark, and there are ways of enhancing it to brighten the eyes.) The so called step-by-step guide in the book, I followed it and followed it, even got my husband to take a turn, and neither one of us was able to manage the enhancement, at least not in either of the 2 different versions explained. (We later figured out a different way, but I'm sure it's not as good as the example pictures shown in this book.) Like I said, overall it's a great book, that teaches you tons of neat stuff, but I don't think it's very easy to recreate, not even with the provided CD. You really need to be a very advanced CS2 user to be able to use this book as a tool for it's full potential. I'm hoping that once I've mastered more about CS2, this book will come in handy again. And yes, all the pictures are terrific quality, and it's nice to read and look at, but how much does that really matter, if you can't even recreate the things explained in it?

A tremendous professional resource
I've found this book absolutely invaluable and perhaps the most useful book on Photoshop I've ever read. I agree with all the other reviewers whom endorse it but to those who ask: "who is this book for?" I'd point them in the direction of many other books better suited to their needs. How can you fault a book for not catering to everyone?! However this book was perfect for me - a busy professional photographer. I've been using Photoshop for years but have huge holes in my understanding. I really needed to gain more sophisticated and practical understanding of many fundamental principles and complex procedures as quickly and efficiently as possible. I don't have the time or patience for lessons rarely practical to my needs.
who's it for?
Best suited for someone who has at least a little experience with earlier versions of Photoshop, this text could be better organized.Could also benefit from more detail and better expalnation of how things work. I did find useful the sections on camera quality, historical references, and the author provides links to external websites which this reader found helpful for research.Print and paper quality is very good, but when are we going to see a software book written (or at least containing images) by a non-fashion photographer?The women in ME's photos are merely over-decorated objects, and might as well be artificial mannequins. ... Read more

Subjects:  1. Computer Graphics - Photoshop    2. Computers - Desktop Publishing    3. Photo Techniques    4. Photography    5. Techniques - Digital    6. Techniques - General    7. Photography / Techniques    8. Photoshop   

Reviews (42)

Excellent overview of SOA
I am new to the SOA world, and as I am now just about through reading "Service-Oriented Architecture; Concepts, Technology, and Design", I can highly recommend this material to interested technical and non-technical professionals.No book is going to provide everything you need to become an expert, but this book has laid an excellent foundation that I shall build upon when I start reading Thomas Erl's associated "Field Guide" book.As an added bonus, Thomas Erl has many web pages with additional information enabling you to drill down in particular areas of interest.
Verbose, Mostly High Level Concepts
This book might be best described as SOA for managers.Most of the book covers high level concepts.In some parts everything is presented as an abstraction, leaving the reader to wonder what the connection with the real world is.
Simple concepts are expressed in overly complicated manner.
I have read 30% of this book and I'm sure not going to by another one by Thomas Erl.
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Subjects:  1. Computer Books: General    2. Computer architecture    3. Computers    4. Computers - Languages / Programming    5. Internet - Web Site Design    6. Online Services - General    7. Programming Languages - XML    8. Web services    9. Computer architecture & logic design    10. Computers / Online Services / General    11. Systems analysis & design   

Reviews (5)

Great book !
I used Reporting Services since its first release. Have a couple of books on RS 2000 but this one is the first I bought on SSRS. Great book for everyone, detailed, easy to read, deep and rich in examples. Something very valuable is the complete code online available to everyone to download. I can conclude that this book is a must for someone who's starting with SSRS or wants to enhance the knowledge. It's a must in every bookshelf.

I just say it is excellent
This book is an excellent way to begin understanding this technology Microsoft released. Step by step explains the most important concepts about SSRS with tips and recomendations to do the things better. You can buy this book without any problem.

Deep dive into SRS 2005
I have read all the SRS2005 books out there so far. This is one of the best. Very well done. ... Read more

Subjects:  1. Client/server computing    2. Computer Books: Languages    3. Computers    4. Computers - Data Base Management    5. Database Management - SQL Server    6. Programming Languages - SQL    7. SQL server    8. Computer Hardware & Operating Systems    9. Computer Software Packages    10. Computers / Database Management / General   

Subjects:  1. Computer Animation    2. Computer Books: General    3. Computer Graphics - General    4. Computers    5. Photography    6. Techniques - Digital    7. Photography / Techniques / Digital    8. Special kinds of photography   

Reviews (4)

Scott Mueller is always worth the money
As a computer Technician this is a must have referance guide.

Great Book Very Informative!!!
I purchased this book after cautiously and carefully reviewing this book and others on the subject of repairing and upgrading PCs. When the book arrived I was intimidated by the sheer size of the book alone however when I opened it and began reading it i was very, very impressed. Not only is the book "ultra "informative it is also very easy to follow. All in all this book DELIVERS. I will be purchasing books from Scott Mueller from now on!

A "must have" title for the serious computer geek...
This is perhaps my favorite PC repair book, and it's a classic...Upgrading and Repairing PCs (17th Edition) by Scott Mueller.What other PC book do you know of that's been around for 17 editions?
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Subjects:  1. Computer Architecture - Repair & Maintenance    2. Computer Books: General    3. Computer Engineering    4. Computers    5. Computers - General Information    6. Hardware - Personal Computers - General    7. Microcomputer Maintenance And Repair (General)    8. Computers / Personal Computers & Microcomputers / General    9. Personal computers   

Reviews (63)

A really good PHP introduction book
First off, this book is completely useless to you if you have do not have adequate OOP programming background. It jumps around different topics and does not really explain why things are arranged a certain way. This book pretty much assumes you have knowledge of either C, C#, Java techniques - which makes PHP extremely easy to understand. If HTML is all you have under your belt, this is probably a terrible book to buy.
37 Chapters, 3 Books in one, and a must have desktop reference.
This is as it states for the Novice to the Professional and that is completely true.
The only PHP and MYSQL book you'll need!
This book is geared for three types of readers I believe (a rarity among books). First are people who have no experience in programming or web development whatsoever, the second are people who have worked in other languages whether be on the desktop or the web, the third type are people who already have some basic PHP and/or MYSQL experience and want to further their knowledge into intermediate topics. How can a book accommodate so many types of readers? Well, being slightly over 800 pages helps and also this book is very well written and organized and focuses on all the important topics.
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Subjects:  1. Buyer's Guides    2. Computer Books: Languages    3. Computers    4. Computers - Languages / Programming    5. Database Management - General    6. Internet - General    7. MySQL (Electronic resource)    8. Programming - General    9. Programming Languages - CGI, Javascript, Perl, VBScript    10. Internet    11. Internet languages   

Reviews (17)

Excellent all around
This is the first Mac programming book that has been released since OS X's debut that is actually worth buying. It is such an amazingly detailed tour of everything that makes the OS tick that I am honestly amazed by the thought of one person writing the entire thing. It's not going to put on a stupid looking cowboy hat and teach you Objective-C or hold your hand through building your first Cocoa project, but it will show you how to actually do something interesting once you progress beyond re-inventing the text editor and to-do list.

An awesome comprehensive programmer's pal
This is a great book.It covers device access, iokit, debuggers, compile flags, processor info, efi/bootx and nvram settings, universal/fat binaries, heritage of Darwin and the mach role, memory management and threading, and more.It's thicker then the bible, but none of it is fluff.Well written easy to follow, and has tons of good examples.

A remarkable achievement
Amit Singh's Mac OS X Internals book is, for all intents and purposes, a flawless treatment of the subject matter. The breadth of coverage crosses all major kernel subsystems(processes/threads, virtual memory, etc), extentions, a history of Mac OS X, programming/developement environments, hardware architecture (including PPC details) and system firmware. I can't think of anything that Mr. Singh did not cover.
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Subjects:  1. Apple And Macintosh Programming    2. Computer - Apple/Macintosh    3. Computer Books: Operating Systems    4. Computers    5. Macintosh (Computer)    6. Operating Systems - Macintosh    7. Operating systems (Computers)    8. Programming    9. Computers / Operating Systems / Macintosh    10. Macintosh OS   

Editorial Review

Applications software may get all the glory, but it's the hardware and operating systems that do the heavy lifting in any computer system. Technicians who have earned CompTIA's A+ certification are recognized as qualified to solve complicated hardware and OS problems and can earn a good living doing so. Read more

Reviews (14)

Good Book
I think this book is worth buying. It builds on a foundation of basic computer knowledge and takes you into more advanced topics. It covers all of the objectives for the A+ exam but I would recommend that you use it in conjunction with other exam readiness material. Again, this book is not a waste.

Terrible study material for the exam
I can't believe others gave this A+ Complete Study Guide great reviews? This book was horrible. I had to study other textbooks and materials so I can pass the real exam. If I just study this book alone, I would fail the actual exam. The book is so wordy! Blah! Blah! Why do I want to hear long sentences. Just get to the point! And the sentence structure was terrible. I don't understand what was going on most of the time. Just focus on the subject without the jargon. Not enough on Windows XP and networking, but many questions had these on the actual exam.

Not as advertised
I am sure that this book will serve the needs of most of the buyers as a competent treatment of the subject area. I am studying for the exam and wanted two things: A large set of practice questions for drill purposes (the cd had 30 questions) and a portable reference copy of the book. The ebook included can only by read from the cd according to the text file that comes with it, but in fact for me the book was totally unreadable from the CD on a PC or a Mac with serveral different versions of the adobe reader that I tried. I am not interested in reading a 900 page book just to pass an exam and found that the dummies book plus the testking questions were enough. This book did not suit my needs at all. ... Read more

Subjects:  1. Certification    2. Certification Guides - A+    3. Computer Books And Software    4. Computer Science    5. Computer Science (General)    6. Computer technicians    7. Computers    8. Computers - Certification    9. Data processing    10. Electronic data processing personnel    11. Examinations    12. Study guides    13. Computers / Technical Skills    14. General Theory of Computing    15. Microsoft Windows    16. PCs (IBM-compatible personal computers)    17. Study guides, home study & revision notes   

Reviews (13)

Good content overall
I used this book in graduate school while taking the Database Management System course. The book has usefull information. It help me understand and practice normalization. Some unfamiliar concepts also were learnt from the book. I can recommend this book to anyonegetting into the database world.

Very practical.
Indeed, a brilliant rendition of practical information. I am currently working as a chief technical designer in a financial data warehouse project for a fortune 100 company. Chapter 11 (Data Warehousing) unfolded some time-critical points.

IT'S POORLY ORGANIZED AND DIFFICULT TO FOLLOW; NOT INTRO BK
This is a required textbook for an Intro to DB course. Once again, the University of Texas at Dallas has followed a constant pattern of requiring textbooks that are 1) Poorly organized/written books, 2) expensive and 3)The professor haven't read the book themselves AND are not using/following a required book when teaching their course! This said, my review of this book.Read more

Subjects:  1. Computer Books: Database    2. Computers    3. Computers - General Information    4. Database Engineering    5. Database Management - General    6. Database management    7. Information Management    8. Information Storage & Retrieval    9. Office Automation    10. Business & Economics / Information Management    11. Databases & data structures   

Reviews (4)

extremely useful
This book covers many aspects of programming the ARM familiy, including a surprisingly thorough discussion on fixed-point DSP computation.
If your company will buy it for you, get it
In the ARM tradition of charging for everything, thefirmware guide by Sloss is easy to read, and comprehensive up to ARM10/StrongARM XScale/926/940.That said, the book looks like the notes from a firmware lecture delivered by an Arm Apps engineer.The book is strongest in coverage of MMU and cache, but weak on ARM11 (1136 only and as a final chapter) and essentially non-existent in Jazelle coverage.Nice features are the toy RTOS which appears early at reappears with more features (memory protection, and MMU, for example).That this book is so quickly out of date brings the point that MDR bulleted last year, that the ARM family needs birth control but that is a topic for another discussion.Sloss' book has 'non-commercial license' for all the sourcecode.huh?Regarding this book, Freescale for example publishes equivalent information (old ESS manuals) in the 860/8260 training manuals for free, on their website.If your company pays for your books, by all means have them get the sloss book for you it makes a great read on the john, but if you are a student or independent developer, you would be as well served by studying the ARM ARM and applicable ARM source code for U-Boot, Redboot and the L4 microkernel, or even Ed Sutter's book, with the added benefit that you would have a license to use the code in your project.

6 Stars
If you are developing something that contain an ARM core.... this is definitely the BOOK.
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Subjects:  1. Computer Architecture - General    2. Computer Books: General    3. Computer architecture    4. Computer software    5. Computers    6. Computers - General Information    7. Development    8. Programming - Software Development    9. RISC microprocessors    10. Computers / Computer Architecture    11. Software engineering    12. Systems analysis & design   

Reviews (12)

E-Business Demystified
Every chapter is very informative and applicable. It's packed full ofuseable information about how to enter into the new world of internet commerce.
Step-by-step process for developing your own Internet site!

Better than you'd think from the title!Really!
Give this one a chance in spite of the title.It really does break down the different types of web sites (and hybrid-types) that make money.And after such "what do I do on the net?" fundamentals, it does add simple, inexpensive nuts and bolts to get ideas up to speed almost immediately.Examples throughout, as well as specific resource recommendations.Good for confidence, as it reveals that internet money-making is neither rocket science nor spam hype. ... Read more

Subjects:  1. Business & Economics    2. Business / Economics / Finance    3. Business/Economics    4. E-Commerce - General    5. E-Commerce - Internet Marketing    6. Electronic Commerce    7. Entrepreneurship    8. Internet    9. Internet - General    10. New business enterprises    11. Information technology industries   

Editorial Review

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Reviews (35)

great reference book
This is the definitive OpenGL guide and reference book.It is hands-down the best reference book covering all basic OpenGL operations.I'm very satisfied with my purchase, and I use it every day.

Still the definitive guide to OpenGL
For those graphic programmers who think that Java3D requires that you program at too high a level and want more elementary control over their graphics operations, OpenGL is probably a good choice for a graphics programming API. So, assuming you already have a good grasp of computer graphics programming concepts and can already program in the C language, this guide is probably your best bet. If you don't already know these things, you will be completely lost trying to read this book. The book starts out in chapter one showing the reader exactly what OpenGL can and cannot do. Supporting code and instructive figures are supplied. The next few chapters deal with performing basic graphics tasks by using the OpenGL API. Topics included are viewing, display lists, color, lighting, blending, antialiasing, and fog. Again, if you are not already familiar with how to write pseudocode for these type of graphics tasks, you need to find a good basic computer graphics text and learn the techniques first. The next part of the book moves on to slightly more advanced topics such as texture mapping, tessellators, quadrics, and NURBs all from the standpoint of "How do I do this in OpenGL?". The chapter entitled "Now That You Know" is especially valuable to the experienced graphics programmer. Unlike previous chapters, this chapter presents a collection of examples of higher-level graphics capabilities and some incomplete OpenGL code for those examples. The reader is expected to flesh out the code to get a running graphics program, and the book does point this fact out. Chapter 15, "OpenGL 20 and the OpenGL Shading Language", is the only truly new material in this 5th edition of the OpenGL programming guide. Thus, if you are not interested in using the OpenGL shader, you can probably forge ahead with the 4th edition of the guide if you already have a copy.
An OpenGL Companion
The fourth edition of "OpenGL Reference Manual" edited by Dave Shreiner provides an official command reference for the OpenGL graphics library version 1.4.Published by Addison Wesley (ISBN 0-321-17383-X) the text is approximately 760 pages and has a suggested retail price of $59.99.