Computer Science Books

Let me begin by saying that I only got through the chapter on triangulations. I used this book in an undergraduate topology course where the instructor was not the best at teaching topology. So, I had to self-study with this book.

The first three chapters of the book are very well written. The theorems are proven in an intuitive manner that makes sense with some analysis background. Also, the exercises encourage, and at times force, the reader to really understand the topologies of the reals. The reader then is introduced to general topological spaces, including quotient and product topologies. This material is also very well written and relatively easy to understand, with some work by the reader.

The chapter on triangulations and surfaces is very difficult to understand. In the first few chapters, I could tell that the casual language chosen by the author would eventually lead to trouble. The careful word choices necessary in a math book were missing in this chapter. Little details like "relative to" and "in" are left out, sometimes requiring hours of careful reading of definitions trying to figure out exactly what the author means. This, to me, in unacceptable. The book reads more like lecture notes and less like a text book. Fortunately, I also purchased Munkres' topology book and referred to that whenever I didn't understand the author's explanation, which was a lot in the last chapter I studied.

Taking into account all the deficiencies with this book, I would still recommend it just for the first 3 chapters. These chapters are an excelent introduction to topology. I give this book 4 stars because it offers a good introduction to general topology. I also liked how the author put the exercises in the sections. This made it easy to see exactly what you should try to use in your proofs. I would also getting another, more theoretical, book to use as a reference if(when?) you get stuck by the author's poor choice of words.

This is a very readable introduction to homology theory, replete with good illustrations and lucid writing. Kinsey does a great job of motivating and explaining her material. I only wish I could have had a text this readable when I was a student.

I must say that this is by far the best topology text that I have seen. Very readable, easy to follow. The anecdotal comments are also amusing. I'm particularly fond of the Ham and Cheese Sandwich Theorem! Highly recommend.

Considering several other undergrad topology texts, e.g. Munkres, Armstrong, etc. this is the easiest to work with. Certainly the best text for self-study. The problems are not too difficult yet they help you grasp concepts as well. They are also laid out as you go; so every so often while you read the text you encounter a problem and you do it as you go. It is much better than putting them in the back of the chapters, as most text do. It is better to lay the problems in the text so you are encouraged to do them as you learn the material. The material in the text is very well explained and contrary to the previous review, is very well-suited, and with sufficient rigor, for mathematics students. The fact that this book "can be grasped at the sophomore level" as the previous revewer claims (and I agree with) lends credence to the simplicity of presentation of the material. Some reviewers I suppose aren't satisfied unless they see a hyperdense conglomeration of gobbledygook which characterizes so many mathematics texts. I don't fall into that camp and if you don't either and at the same want to begin study in topology then I highly recommend this book.

Traffic Engineering and QoS Optimization of Integrated Voice & Data Networks (Morgan Kaufmann Series in Networking)

Jerry Ash is a well known expert in the field and managed to provide a thorough and comprehensive analysis on QoS and Traffic Engineering. The reader will undoubtedly find in this book a large amount of valuable information illustrated by case studies. A recommended reading for anyone interested in QoS & Traffic Engineering.

Jerry Ash draws on his long history at the forefront of research and development in traffic engineering and network planning to provide a comprehensive view of how traffic engineering and network optimization can be applied to provide quality of service in today's networks. Drawing on lessons from the past, he provides a thorough overview and worked examples for modern integrated networks.

This is an important read for anyone serious about studying the topic.

This is an very important book describing a comprehensive coherent vision of a converged network infrastructure (architecture and protocols) for the Next Generation Network (NGN) along with large scale case studies for the AT&T converged network using discrete event simulation, and other dimensioning tools developed by the author and his colleagues over the past two decades at AT&T. The author Dr Gerald Ash has pioneered the implementation of dynamic routing methods within AT&T and WIN over the past two decades and is a leading authority in this area. He has now turned his attention to extending these highly successful techniques to the Next Generation Network (NGN) where all communication and communication services are supported on a converged infrastructure. Dr Ash has been a tireless contributor to a number of standards bodies (ITU-T, ATM Forum and IETF). This direct experience places him in a unique position to assess the challenges of network convergence and indeed he has already removed potential obstacles to his vision of the NGN by participating in the necessary Traffic Engineering extensions to RSVP, LDP etc. This document advances an important class of evolution possibilities, namely for an IP/(G)MPLS/DWDM protocol stack in greater depth and scope than other proposals made to date. It is very timely in that we are now at a crossroads where there are various alternative visions extant indicating how the Internet could or should evolve. The articulation of a comprehensive coherent vision of the NGN and its evaluation is a monumental task and for this Dr Ash deserves commendation. It is made difficult not only because of technical challenges but also because of the divergent cultures humorously represented by the Bellhead/Nethead caricatures.

Dr. Lorne G. Mason,
Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering
McGill University
Montreal Quebec. Canada

A remarkable feature of this book is unusual combination of depth and breadth. Long-term social, political and economic dynamics consistently remains in the limelight of analysis: suffice it to recall names of Tocqueville, Toynbee, Drucker, and Bell. Yet even against such illustrious benchmarks, the book is fresh, original, and - as a pleasant surprise - engaging to read.

The depth of the book is in exploration of why some institutions are more amenable and adaptable to change than others. The main hypothesis is simple yet plausible: The less hierarchical and more horizontal are society' institutions, the more adaptable and productive is the society. Take, the problem of alcoholism, for instance. Sweden is consistently more efficient in dealing with it than most other countries because it is largely non-state activity (although the government does provide a conducive framework for it), organized through a variety of horizontal and voluntary associations. Going from mundane to more dramatic, take a phenomenon of revolution. From the perspective of the book, any revolution is a sign of inflexibility. The deepness of the book is analysis (although such analysis is in its infancy) of organizational structures which institutionalize horizontal and network architecture of society. Network is easily the most frequently used terms of the literature but all too often networks are discussed as inherently informal, as emerging in addition to formal principal- agent institutions. The breadth of the book makes it an engaging read. The author juxtaposes, for instance, Stalinist Soviet Union and fascist Germany without falling into simplification. Again, a skeptic would say that after H. Arendt such juxtapositions are not new, but the author does add fresh features.

The author is not your typical academics. He has been an official in the World Bank and Minister of Finance of his native el Salvador. He is a `thinking doer': his interest in analytics and theory is eminently practical. This `thinking doer'' perspective in Latin America proved eclectic and, for that reason, eminently insightful. Suffice is to recall Albert Hirschman' refreshingly original contributions or more recently Carlota Perez' (who is from Venezuela) 2004 book on how long-term co-evolution of financial and technological structures opens up opportunities for leapfrogging.

I enjoyed thoroughly this book and, more importantly, I learned allot.

The Triumph of the Flexible Society is essential reading for: national or international policy decision makers, for policy thinkers and designers, and for anyone who wants to understand what is happening in the world today. This really includes everyone.

The book does many things to help us cope better with the world of today.

Manuel Hinds provides a strong and clear conceptual framework to understand why, extremely rapid change in societies leads them to become defensive -- protecting rents and privilege -- and autocratic. In cases of extremely large and fast change, like the industrial revolution, many countries were unable to cope and ended up in bloody totalitarian regimes. The stresses of change caused by the industrial revolution led France to go from the enthusiasm of the 1789 revolution to the bloody vertical autocracy of Napoleon. The same thing happened in Russia; it went from the energy of the Bolshevik revolution in 1917, to the long Stalin tyranny, one of the most autocratic and bloody periods in Russian history. In Germany, the same forces of change started to open the society in the Weimar governments of the 1930s, only to end up in the horror of the the Nazi regime a few years later.

Manuel Hinds lucidly explains what is happening today by analyzing what the connectivity revolution is doing and why its embarking all of us into a new period of "mega" change. Then he elucidates us as to the large risks that history can repeat itself --again. We may be now in a paradise of openness, competitive markets, individual rights and democracy, but the stresses of defensiveness and reaction are brewing all over the world. In its rapid and increasingly ubiquitous unfolding -- affecting everyone, in their work, culture and identity -- the connectivity revolution is leading many individuals and countries to unleash the same autocratic reflexes that we suffered in the past processes of massive change.

If there is one book you read thus year , I suggest you read The Triumph of the Flexible Society.

Manuel Hinds' book "The Triumph of the Flexible Society" may not only change the way you think about the world, it may change what you "do" about the world. Hinds has written a profound analysis of the way in which different societies deal with the forces of change. Hinds focuses on two major changes in technology-the industrial revolution and the revolution in connectivity. The connectivity revolution, now only in its early stages, includes, but is much broader than, globalization. Revolutions of this magnitude create opportunities, but at the same time they destroy imbedded capital and existing labor skills. Losers in this revolution may seek to maintain their positions in society by impeding change and many will want to restore the order of the past by seeking refuge in one or another form of fundamentalism. Countries that have strong, flexible and horizontal institutions will reap the benefits but countries with vertical, authoritarian structures are more rigid and more likely to attempt to protect the established order. The open, liberal society will be threatened by forces from without, but, more importantly, from forces within. Hinds use his framework to analyze the destructive regimes of the 20th century, Nazism and Communism, and the plight of the developing countries. He also seeks to provide us with the understanding we shall need to cope with the coming revolution in connectivity. This is a "must read" for anyone attempting to understand and deal with the forces behind past and present social, political and economic developments. - Millard Long

In my view, this book contains remarkable analysis and insights into how contemporary industrial culture and society is evolving in response to the world economic and political situation. While some of the earlier chapters are not easy to read, one of the later chapters contains a highly original analysis of recent changes in American culture and society and what has caused these changes that I have not seen presented elsewhere and which I think are right on! I think, while Manuel's conclusions are valid, some are troubling in their implications with respect to the future health of American culture and society. The book also addresses changes in other countries in response to the same stimuli. I highly recommend this book to anyone who is interested in understanding how contemporary American culture and society are evolving and why.

Before reading this book I read "The Unified Modeling Language User Guide". I can say that "The Unified Modeling Language User Guide" is about the theory and "UML 2 and the Unified Process..." is about practice.

I think that both books are must for UML beginners and reference for the UML professionals.

In "UML 2 and the Unified Process.." authors show UML in action within the Unified Process, a framework for software development. The book describes how to analyze and design a software by giving a real example. Given examples are also complete and available online.

The language of the book is simple (easy to understand) and its contents is organized very well.

This book gave me an insight about the UML and also introduced me to the Unified Process. I would recommend it with 5+ stars to everybody.

As a matter of fact I'm not an UML fan nor I particularly favour unified process. Indeed, I'm much more into Agile Development and XP.

The authors do not try to explain why unified process should be better than other processes. They just describe the method: It's up to the reader to decide which parts of the method are good or bad for his job. The reader is not bored with long enthusiastic comments on how he will be a more capable engineer after learning UML and UP. Unified Process is described in an unbiased and precise way: even those who do not favour UP may gather new and interesting ideas to incorporate in their development method.

The approach on UML is even more interesting. The basic ideas is that graphics should be a view, but what matters is text (which *is* something that the UML creators *did* think). Far to many lesser books focus on diagrams and miss to explain the interesting part is their semantics and their descriptions. Indeed, I try not to use UML unless I'm rather sure it's the best way to express a given concept: this book is a helpful reference on how to write correct and practical specifications using UML.

This is a great useful book.

UML has grown. A few years ago, when UML was just getting accepted, a book on how to use it would have been much thinner. But the successful broad uptake of UML led to its semantic notation being expanded. What the authors give us here is a thorough exposition of UML 2.0 and how to use it.

As you might expect, there are numerous examples in UML. Which, to many readers, might be more understandable than a mere abstract diagram. But the book is more than just about explaining the UML semantics. It also goes into the Unified Process for running a project, and how this can be documented in UML. By doing so, the authors hope to better enable an understanding of both.

There is also something else, related to the above, but sufficiently different and important to warrant notice. If you write in any object oriented language, it requires certain skills in designing classes and how they interact. Part 4 of the book concerns these issues, which it discusses under the rubric of "Design". A good explanation of the basic concepts. Like inheritance versus aggregation, or inheritance versus interfaces. Or why the lack of multiple inheritance in a language like C# or Java is not necessarily a deficiency.

This book gives a good introduction into modern software enigeering and I think that especially the first chapters about basics in object orientation and how the whole process works should be read by every person participating in a software project. I think these chapters are also worth reading for non computer science people.

This book covers almost all of the information needed for A Levle.

I would recomend purchasing it in prefrance to other revisoion books.

Quite simply, this is the best general purpose computing book I have ever read. It would say it is absolute essential for A-level students, but also has an awful lot to offer anyone else, as this will act as a superb reference book for many years to come. If you are studying computing in any form, then you are doing yourself an injustice by not owning this superb book....

If you are an A level computing student, I strongly recommend you to buy this book. Most information in the book is up to date. Color printed, which can always keep you awake. Even if you feel the book not enough for you, it provides some web site for you to reinforce the book.

The Best A level book I have seen. Covers all of the most recent material

I picked this text for my virtual reality course here at the Electronic Visualization Laboratory and found it to be an excellent, well written, comprehensive introduction to the field.

It is interesting this book, since gives a complete visualization of the current virtual reality. In form didactics it travels all the fields of the VR, not serving alone for a neophyte, also for somebody that the VR knows. Very good book
Hugo Neira S

I received this book shortly after it was published. Since then it has served well as a reference for my students working in my VR research group, as well as being very enlightening for me as well.
I will be teaching a course on VR the next two spring semesters at Valparaiso University, and will be using this text.
The book does a great job of spanning the current VR technology out there, as well as addressing issues for development. I'd recommend it for VR researchers, as well as those teaching VR at the undergrad or grad level.

Understanding Virtual Reality" is the definitive, authoritative, and exhausive exploration of the field by two insiders and practioners, Sherman and Craig. Virtual reality, a uniquely viewer-centric, large field-of-view, dynamic display technology has evolved over the past decade in many physical formats, driven by many software applications using a variety of operating systems, computers, and specialized libraries. Sherman and Craig capture them all in this substantial volume.

Most writing about virtual reality involves summarizing and interpreting interviews and demos, with massive doses of the speculative and the spectacular, and lots of historical fuzziness. Sherman and Craig, however, lived in the world of actual VR production at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where corporate researchers, educators, scientists, and artists make use of this technology in their daily work. They have personally suffered with VR tech and benefited greatly from access to it as well as to amazing amounts of computing, engineering, and scientific talent. They were held to real deadlines of corporate contracts, scientific conference demonstrations, and the design of IMAX productions. While they were doing all this, they were also writing this book. As a result, "Understanding Virtual Reality" has the integrity and feel of a long-term, eyewitness account and a personal journal, because these production-oriented researchers were documenting the times contemporaneously, rather than trying to reconstruct the details years later.

I know all this because I was their group leader for a couple of years in the mid-90's at NCSA, and their colleague in VR the years before and after. I co-invented the CAVE hardware, among other things, with Dan Sandin at the University of Illinois at Chicago, in 1991.

I've been using various shell commands I picked up here and there over the past couple years. I decided it was time to buckle down and gain a deeper understanding of the what and the why. After spending a couple of hours with this book, I have the basics solidly under my belt. The writing is clear, concise, and entertaining. I only wish I would have started here instead of picking it up piecemeal (and painfully) via various websites.

I don't know if an experienced user would find it as compelling, but for a newbie, it's a godsend.

UNIX,(3rd Edition) by Deborah & Eric Ray is the best book I've come across for learning the fundamentals of this operating system and for using a Linix distribution for the first time. This book is accessible to beginners and experienced users alike. Its format and examples lend themselves to self-study and encourage experimentation. I used it as my companion reference for learning the Linix MEPIS distribution and it worked perfectly. I highly recommend it for every user of the UNIX OS who wants a handy and easy-to-follow guide.

I was wondering through the Unix maze, untill this small title cleared everything up. A little delight to have. If only I had known it existed, I would not have had my butt kicked from title to title, on craps, who called themselves Unix learning guides.

I have been looking for good Unix book for beginer. I am in computer industry for 10 years, mostly in web applications. My unix knowledge is minimal (first 5 chapters of this book). Recently I decided to improve my skills to get ready for shell scripts. I found this book in my local library.

Book was organized very well, simple and visual approach ensures you like a teacher. Straight to the point and simple. I highly recommand this book to beginers and intermediate levels. If you planning to jump into shell script, first refresh your basics from this book.

Michael Heim has written a very balanced look at Virtual Reality. In fact, he has even coined a term for it; Virtual Realism, to contrast with the over hyped ramblings of the "network idealists". I found myself taking time to savor this book. It is not a page turner in the proverbial sense. Rather the book causes one to calmly meditate on the current "Art of Virtual Reality". It also introduces novel (to me anyway) concepts such as two models of virtual world building: the tunnel and the spiral. One of the final chapters goes in depth about Nature and Cyberspace, something that I had never considered in the same thought. Despite being about a subject that is somewhat "out there" this book was very approachable. If you are at all remotely interested in man and computers, networks, the nature of reality or other philosophical topics central to the new millenium then buy this book. Read it carefully. Enjoy.

Michael Heim's "Virtual Realism" is a critical yet pragmatic exploration of the present state and future evolution of virtual reality (VR) technology. Unlike much of the predominate rhetoric of VR theory, Heim's does not situate himself as either a VR idealist or alarmist, but instead offers a strategy for reconciling these polar positions by way of a critical, yet pragmatic analysis called "virtual realism". What is most is interesting about this book is the eclectic array of examples Heim's uses to support and illustrate his strategy. By drawing on examples as diverse as interactive art exhibits, the music of Glenn Gould and Jim Morrison, and extending to nuclear waste sites, he envisions a not only better ways to live with technology, but ways to make technology more humane. Heim's writing is both eloquent and accessible making "Virtual Realism" an insightful study for anyone interested in the impact of technology on our social and physical environment.

Michael Heim, in Virtual Realism , "dedicated to those minds at large who find no home in the established schools", explores the many ways in which virtual reality is increasingly influencing our lives. These techniques are both challenging the content of the normative design arts, and extending the boundaries of thought.

VR realism mixes traditional aesthetic criticism with aditional questions of immersion, interactivity, and information intensity. Virtual realism steers a course between the idealists who believe computerised life represents a higher form of existence and the down-to-earth realists who fear that computer simulations threaten ecological and local values. Further, a spacemaker is a designer of cyberspace constructs like a filmaker.

Riley, in The Visible, The Visual and The Vicarious, comments, "The real landscape often gives rise to an internally experienced landscape that is far richer that the "real" landscape. Such fantasy landscapes are open-ended in interpretation and may define the boundaries of postmodern existence."

Virtual, imaginary, and film art landscapes are more numerous and perhaps more significant than real landscapes.

Copyright 1998 Robert Hotten

This is the latest in a series of books by Michael Heim on the human changes, both good and bad, wrought by the introduction of computers. Virtual Realism in particular seeks to find a balance between a retreat from technology and the wholesale embrace of it without regard for the consequences. He starts out defining the technology of virtual reality in such a way as to understand the strong reactions to it. He follows with a series of essays seeking to find the balance implied by the title. This is an accessible but always interesting book not requiring an extensive technical or philosophical background. His analysis is not exhaustive or linear, but that is not his intent. He brings up and ponders the big issues involved with human adoption of and adaptation to a powerful new technology.

We are visually oriented people. As the old saying goes, a picture is worth a thousand words. And with the dramatic increases in computer power that have come about in recent years we can visually display things that not too many years ago took a whole room of equipment.

This book presents a concise one volume introduction to visualizing data structures. It is not specific to any one discipline. The biologist programming how to visualize DNA will get as much out of the book as will the game developer. The material is presented at the undergraduate student level where some programming experience, especially in C++ is a prerequisite.

While there is no CD in the book, there is a companion web site maintained at the publishers which includes the source code of examples given in the book as well as additional source codes of various algorithmic procedures as well as test data to check that the code is compiling correctly. Also on the web are pointers to useful resources related to the contents of each chapter.

This is not a "How did Photoshop do it?" kind of algorithm book. I would suggest that if you want to make good use of this book that you already have had a course on the theory of algorithms, and thus understand how to follow the derivation of whether an algorithm is O(n), O(nlgn), etc. That is because the author dedicates much space to determining what the time-efficiency of each algorithm is before he goes into the details. Next, the author talks about each algorithm in pseudocode, and then finally there is the actual C++ code for the algorithm itself. Not every algorithm involves OpenGL, because quite a few of them don't actually draw anything, they just support the drawing of images by other algorithms. The book is well illustrated. Whenever there might be a question about an algorithm that words or equations can't answer, there always seems to be a figure available to finish the job. The book has a very academic tone to it, and each chapter ends with extensive bibliographic notes. The following is the table of contents:

1. Overview - A fly-over of the entire book.

2. Abstract Data Structures - Talks about solutions to common problems that come up time and again in visual computing. Topics include the Fibonacci numbers, conversions between 1D and nD array indices, how to flood-fill an area using a queue, and detecting whether or not a set of line segments intersect. This may not seem to have much to do with data structures, but the book ties it all in.

3. Coordinate Pipelines - Subjects include translation between Euclidean and projective points, 2D polygon transformations, 3D mesh transformations, and how to render multiple views to one device display by using viewport mappings. OpenGL is used heavily in this chapter.

4. Images - An oddly titled chapter, because if you get right down to it, the whole book is technically about images. The topics include the simple task of displaying the RGB color cube in OpenGL as well as the more complex tasks of image warping, image compositing, halftoning, and dithering.

5. Meshes - Meshes come up often when drawing complex and realistic 3D figures. Topics include approximating a sphere by with a mesh and various remeshing experiments and algorithms with the "Stanford Bunny" as a subject of these experiments.

6. Animation - A brief overview of what it takes to make your images "move". I found this the least satisfying of the book's chapters. "Computer Animation" by Parent does a better job of discussing this topic, in my opinion.

7. Randomization - Topics include computing a uniformly random permutation, quick sort, selecting the nth smallest element of an array, and computing the scaled rigid transformation matching a given pair of segments. The author does a great job of discussing the algorithms, but comes up a bit short in the motivation for these algorithms in visual computing.

8. Higher Dimensions for 3D - Includes some good algorithms on computational geometry and how it ties into graphics. Topics include the k-means iterative clusteriing method, rasterizing a Voronoi diagram, and computing an approximation of the smallest enclosing ball in large dimensions. The author does a good job of tying in each algorithm to its significance in graphics.

9. Robustness - Discusses how to determine if certain algorithms are easily "broken". This discussion is done from the perspective of computing the area of triangles using floating point numbers and also determining if and only if two line segments intersect.

This book does not hold your hand on the issues of algorithm theory, C++ programming, OpenGL, or even basic computer graphics and image processing theory. You are expected to already know that material. This book is more about the algorithms that are applicable to geometry, graphics, and vision and what makes them useful, efficient, and robust. Highly recommended.

I should say from the get-go that I know the author personally, and I've reviewed chapters before the book appeared. I think this book fills a great space between more applied computer vision or computer graphics books, and the more theoretical computational geometry books. It provides a host of practical problems that the author has encountered in his research at Sony Research Labs, and feeds tons of excellent theory to solve it. The theoretical part is made very accessible, even if it assumes some reasonable (college-level) mastery of linear algebra.

The biggest attraction of this book is that it lies at the confluence of several fields. Depending on your background, you may be more versed in the systems issues (vision or graphics), or the algorithmic issues (computational geometries). The first kind of person will really appreciate all the foundations they are given to solve the problems at hand. How to apply them is very well explained in the chapters by using hands-on examples, and ample illustration.

To give you a short idea of the table of contents (more information can be found on the author's book web site, easily found through google):

The chapter on images, for instance, does great job discussing Halftoning, Morphing, Color space, and Interpolation/Sampling/Convolution, and contains material that will be familiar to computer vision and graphics people.

On the other hand, the chapter on meshes (with discussion of half-edge and mesh data structures, and mesh smoothing/parameterization) will be very familiar to a computational geometer or graphics person.

The chapter on data structures includes what is usually found in advanced algorithm textbooks. The advantage of having it in such a context is that its presentation is much more adapted to immediate use. There is also practical considerations such as C++ implementation, and a separate chapter on the use of randomization as an algorithmic design technique. That chapter covers an important problem of point registration and geometric point matching that is very useful in camera registration and in photo merging.

The central piece (that takes 130 pages) is the discussion of coordinates (chapter 3, "The Coordinate Pipeline") which achieves the feat of presenting all that is useful for discussing images (2D), meshes (3D), or camera transformation (projective geometry) in a unified and very accessible presentation. This chapter also introduces a few fundamental tools like homographies and epipolar geometry, singular value decomposition (SVD), Plucker coordinates (for lines in space), conics and quadrics. It is a gem and will prove an invaluable reference in my library.

Finally beyond the algorithmic and application issue, the author concludes with a chapter on robustness, a problem that plagues all these applications. It discusses a set of techniques that can be used to eradicate or at least lessen floating-point precision-related crashes (which not just result in numerical inaccuracy, but can altogether prevent the successful completion of a program and generate all kinds of catastrophic failures).

To recap, this is an excellent books that puts into perspective techniques from more theoretical algorithm and geometry communities to use for vision and graphics problem, among other applications. It is geared towards researchers/developers of applications. It is not a research monograph, and can advantageously be used as a textbook for a graduate or advanced underdgraduate class.

A good book for the student of computer graphics. The field is now very mature, and the book describes key algorithms invented over the last 30 years for rendering and ray tracing. Also useful to some readers will be the samples of C++ code that implement several of the algorithms.

As a learning experience, the book has merit. However, if you are tempted to do research in this field, the book should be approached with caution. When I said the field is mature, I meant that surely much of the techniques for visualisation have already been found. Combine this with the high resolution of current graphics consoles, and we get little room for significant visible improvement. Diminishing returns. The time to get into this field would have been in the 70s and 80s. As a research guide, the book does not really convey the prospects of this field.

This is well written book that easy to understand for knowing basic algorithms and design techniques for VLSI design. Authors have presented the material in formal yet simple language that makes it a god book for senior undergraduates and starters in VLSI CAD.

A nice book, infact one of the best in the field, they give good review of the available research in the area. Good for undergraduate as well as post graduates. When you read it you feel as if the author was standing and explaining the material. Good work Sait !!

Since this book was published in 1997, a lot has happend in the area of physical design automation--but this is still a remarkably good text, especially for students and beginners. This because not only is it exceedingly clearly written, it concentraits on classic techniques which form the foundation for techniques still used today.

What is urgently needed is a bang-up-to-date text on this subject which contains materials for the more advanced user--not just for students, but also for old salts like myself who have been working in the trenches for 10 years! If such a text were to be written by these authors, I'm sure it would be a classic.

Sadly, EDA industry is a very small and shrinking industry, and a book like this is HARD to write, because you have to be an expert in so many fields. So this book is probably as good as we can reasonably expect to see anytime soon.

I have read most of the book and implemented most of the propsed algorithms. It was easy to understend. The authors simplified much of the notations that is used by the oirignal writers of the algorithms. It opens the area for any one intersted in those topics to continue research with an open mind about what to choose and how.