Applications Books

This is a great book cover to cover. For the admin who has never participated in an Active Directory roll out this book is a must have. The chapters quickly familiarize you the most powerful aspects of Active Directory without much repetitiveness. This is an excellent book for those wanting an overview or for a beginner with Active Directory. Well worth the purchase price.

Hudson and Fullerton definately come through in their presentation of Active Directory! Their clear and concise approach, drawing from their experience in training and consulting shines through! I am in the process of upgrading the network where I now work from Windows NT and this book is an invaluable resource!

The authors have done a very good jobs of explaining several complex matters. More importantly, the authors have clearly shown that they have trenmendous amount of real-world experiece. It's good to know that we still have some authors like that instead of too many professional writers, who have no real world experience and who just paraphase what M$ says about their product on the online help.

Thanks.

Tam T. Nguyen, MCSE

Special Edition Using Microsoft Active Directory provides the network administrator with complete, authoritative, "user friendly", in-depth coverage of the newest directory service from Microsoft. Sean Fullerton and James Hudson use their extensive previous training and administration experiences to expertly explain how to design, implement, and troubleshoot using the new directory service "Active Directory". Special Edition Using Microsoft Active Directory is very highly recommended for users ranging from Beginner to Advanced levels of experience. 554pp.

This book is very helpful if you are planning a Windows 2000 Active Directory design or already have one and need to get the most out of your AD. The authors have organized the book very well making it easy to find the information you need. The book is very useful as a quick reference. Additionally, material is presented in a logical order making it easily readable cover-to-cover if you need a comprehesive understanding of AD.

The authors stress the importance of a solid DNS design and drive home the point just how critical DNS is for good AD operation. There is a good description of forests, trees, and domains as well as much helpful information on planning sites and site replication. The book also goes into detail on printers and scripting.

I found the book very useful for setting up and administering different features of Windows 2000 such as group policy. There are good chapters on Group Policy Architecture and Managing Group Policy.

As an MCSE+Internet certified analyst assigned to the AD design team for a Fortune 500 company, I highly recommend this book. It makes a good operational reference for your bookshelf. Although not geared specifically for Windows 2000 certification tests, it is worth reading if you are preparing for the exams.

This book provides a meaningful, comprehesive, and entertaining picture of the global supply chain. Through stories, Bill has effectively taken potentially dry material and brought it to life in a meaningful and helpful way. Additionally, it is a great source of reference in the research arena.

Jane Biddle
VP Manufacturing Research
Aberdeen Group

Supply Chain Architecture by William Walker is a different kind of book. It looks at how to make a Supply Chain Network effective by developing a high level conceptual principle, and, then drilling down to the practices that should be adopted to operationalize the principle.

Take an example of the Vocalize principle. This principle covers the synchronization of Supply with Demand. The book describes various techniques to improve this process including, how to the Push-Pull boundary is used in different manufacturing configurations, and, how operational control is established in various manufacturing systems such as Manufacturing Resource Planning, Vendor Management, Kanban and Synchronization.

The book invariably details how to optimize the technique in actual practice. It is written by a practitioner for practitioners

It is a book to be read and absorbed. I have found it very useful and have used sections of it in a Supply Chain course I teach at Polytechnic University in New York

Blair Williams
Industry Professor
Author of Manufacturing for Survival (Pearson 1997)

In a field crowded with literature this book is a rare find. A coherent model for the end-to-end supply chain network is presented, described by the information, material and cash flow processeses and the five principles of velocity, variability, vocalize, visualize and value.

The methodology presented is supremely practical - our organization has been using the five principles process to succesfully solve real life problems from partitioning the bill of materials and outsourcing to minimizing risk to supply and optimizing network inventory.

We are looking forward to our next projects focused on using this framework to integrate global supply chains in a highly competitive network with higher levels of profits, return on assets and cash generation

"Thus do many calculations lead to victory, and few calculations to defeat ... it is by attention to this point that I can foresee who is likely to win or lose." Sun Tzu's admonition applies to business campaigns as well as to military battles, and the Supply Chain professional seeking victory for the company and its operations develops a comprehensive plan for doing business battle. "Supply Chain Architecture: A Blueprint for Networking the Flow of Material, Information, and Cash" by William T. Walker is an indispensable tool for developing such a plan. This book takes what could otherwise be an overwhelming task, that of defining an effective Supply Chain network flow, and brings to it an organized, understandable, and all-inclusive approach.

"Supply Chain Architecture" is highly effective as a guide for approaching Supply Chain network development because the depth of the content is matched by the book's very orderly approach in showing the Supply Chain professional how to proceed. Starting by drawing the overall Supply Chain map and defining a clear language for relating to a Supply Chain network, Walker lays out alternative Supply Chain strategies and the business and operational implications of each. Typical of the book, a wealth of detailed tables and figures provide specific guidance for this analysis process. Walker proceeds to explore the inter-company issues of collaboration and how to effectively build a Supply Chain network, and then addresses the critical issues in building such a network: the flow of information, tracking and measuring network performance, and the on-the-ground operation of the network. Walker rounds out the blueprint with a view from the financial perspective, showing the impact and opportunities that Supply Chain Architecture offers, together with a summarizing chapter and an Appendix that literally provides step-by-step instructions for this process. At every stage, Walker challenges us to move from conventional Supply Chain thinking to a broader-view, highly concise approach that focuses us on the objectives we want to accomplish.

While supplying a huge amount of hands-on material, Walker makes sure it is a nurturing river of information rather than a destructive tsunami of data by overlaying several storylines into the beginning and end of each chapter. These storylines follow "daily life" activities that illustrate key points in narrative format, and are a delightful way to maintain an overview understanding of the core concepts. This approach makes "Supply Chain Architecture" a complete package - the conceptual and the technical play off each other to complete the reader's understanding of the process of architecting the Supply Chain network.

One can easily imagine Sun Tzu smiling approvingly at the "many calculations" that William Walker gives us as he prepares us for Supply Chain victory. Planning a Supply Chain network, like planning a military campaign, is neither simple nor easy, but with "Supply Chain Architecture" as the map the Supply Chain professional can move into the battle confidently and with the blueprint needed to achieve Supply Chain success.

"Supply chain management" is becoming a meaningless cliche. This textbook spells out- significant (as opposed to occasional/nominal) trading partners, importance of cash flow & lead time- in standard APICS terminology. Introduces parameters for outsourcing manufacturing & logistics. Up-to-date, compared with many logistics tomes.

This is by far the best SAS book I own (and I have a whole shelf full). I have made use of it repeatedly. The examples are excellent. This is definitely a methods book, not a theory book, but the presentation of the statistical concepts is clear and easy to follow and apply.

If you have data that fit the general category "time to event," and are not suitably analyzed by repeated measures ANOVA, you are probably looking at doing a survival analysis (also known by several other names). If you are working largely on your own, and you learn best by doing, you cannot--as far as I know--do better than Allison's book. Of course it all but locks you into using SAS for analyses, but his explanations of proportional hazards and other models are the best I've found among a dozen textbooks and stats package manuals (some of which made sense only after reading Allison). What makes this book so good is that it will have you running your analyses in just hours. The examples are superb take-off points. I was not a SAS user before reading the book and therefore took a little extra time to figure out dataset manipulations and such in SAS, but that was minor effort compared to the rewards of having Allison's clearly written book as a guide. The price of this book represents only a fraction of its value.

This book is well-written, well-organized, and very practical. I found it invaluable in conducting my research. My only recommendation for the author for his next edition is to include a chapter on dealing with correlated event times, like time-to-promotion and time-to-quiting in his policemen example (pg 249).

I've used a number of this author's books and they all share in common lucidity, utility, and rigor. This book makes it easy to grasp complex ideas, provides comprehensible examples, gives sample SAS code so that implementing the methods is as straightforward as possible. Plus, it is clear that the author is a subtle and first-rate methodologist, who innovates in this area as well as teaches it.

So far, this book has been a useful reference for survival analysis. It is clearly written and the xplanatins are understandable and helpful. It would be nice to have a newer edition that addresses changes in later versions of SAS.

The teach your self visually books are fantastic for easy learning, I have the excel and access books, and they are both great.
Thanks to the book creator!.

One of the newest and brightest features of Microsoft 2007 which includes Excel 2007, is the addition of The Ribbon, which replaces toolbars and menus in previous editions. This is quite complex and not very user friendly, but when you learn it, it can be great! If you struggled with old menu bars, you will definitely struggle with the New Ribbon.

The series of Visual Books has been quite popular, mainly because anything as dry as instructional material is greatly enhanced by pictures. The colorful graphics that define the category of work you want are bright, amusing, informative and large. An example is for the section: protect a password shows a big yellow book with a key lock; or change data color shows paint cans and one color spills onto a worksheet. The computer illiterate can "get the picture" even if you don't know what the book refers to.

However, my grief comes with too many big pictures and not enough pictures of the screen. A most important element is viewing the screen, but each pic of the computer screen is way too small. But you do have explicit instructions in the sidebars.

My question remains, why couldn't the writer incorporate larger-size views of the computer screen. This is so needed, because of the elaborate menu bar...or ribbon as it is called in Excel 2007.

Other than that, one point is the Database section has been advanced from the 2003. This element of the software eliminates the need for ACCESS 2007, which is much more advanced. So, if you don't want to explore the challenging ACCESS, you can simply use the Database function on Excel. This works great for smaller projects.

Overall, this is one of the best books for learning excel. Graphic and text are well spread out, it is user friendly, colorful and includes a ton of help.......Rizzo

This book is more than the five star rating. Visually Excel learning the only right way to go. The book is excellently done too.

I use this book everyday, easy to understand, easy to use. My spread sheets look just as good if not better than those in my work place that do this everyday. I am just slower, but who would know.

For those of us who lack computer savvy, a book like this is an essential. Personally I learn much better if I can read text AND look at a picture. Never really having done a spread sheet before, I learned in no time at all. I keep the book right by my computer. I have found all the 'Visually' books to be helpful

For anyone who has grappled with the question of why technology hasn't lived up to its promise in schools, this book is a must-read. Pfaum's observations are fresh and candid, and he examines the question of the "technology fix" of schools without an axe to grind or pre-formed conclusions. This very readable book will ring true to those who have spent time in classrooms and have wondered why technology has not had a greater impact on improving student achievement.

This is a wise and thought-full book. Unlike many books about technology in education that are often too theoretical, too empirical, too uninformed, or too polemical, this book is anchored in real classrooms. Rather than starting with a breathless vision of the future or a cranky rant about the imagined glories of the past, Bill Pflaum begins with what is happening in classrooms right now. He gathers his data first hand - not from surveys, focus groups, or aggregated data but from a year-long personal journey through classrooms all across the country. His careful, thoughtful (and often entertaining) observations are neither completely unexpected, nor completely predictable - instead they explode with authenticity. From such a solid foundation, both personal and universal, he reflects carefully on what is working and what is not working - and offers thoughtful suggestions for a better future that is both reachable, and worth reaching. I liked reading this book.

This book is a must read for decision makers at every level.

Data rules in the age of standards. This is the only book that I have read that discusses educational technology with a genuinely human voice. Pflaum takes a refreshing welcome approach to the task of thoughtfully examining the use of technology in America's schools. Instead of recycling mountains of data from research studies, he visited classrooms across the country and talked to students, teachers, principals, and technology co-coordinators who are on the frontline of the problem.

For educators, like myself, who deal daily with the problems and the blessings of technology in the schools, the book is raw opportunity to view the problem outside of the boundaries of their state and local district.

Pflaum ends his book with some clear, realistic guides for future directions, but the real value of the book is in its rich, constantly thought-provoking portrayal of things as they are now.

Computers have been a part of our schools for about two decades now. Many people believe that computers are the solution to the problems of American education; however, it is pretty clear that they have not been the magic bullet many thought they'd be. The questions then arises: why? Why haven't computers fulfilled the promise they seemed to have in their early days?

In The Technology Fix, William Pflaum tries to answer the question. Taking a sabbatical, he travels the country and visits a number of schools, trying to get a sense of the impact computers are actually having. This book is mainly a report of the visits he made and the different ways he sees computers being used (or, more than likely, not being used) in the classroom. He then gives some of his interpretations of what this means and suggestions for how technology might be used better.

What impact this book has it has through its observations on what is actually happening in schools. As a consultant for schools on technology, I have seen many of the same things Mr. Pflaum has: computers sitting unused, resources managed inappropriately, focus on computer bells and whistles over curriculum content, etc. I agree whole-heartedly that computers have yet to fulfill their promise and I find Mr. Pflaum's categorization of implementation on the basis of commitment and focus to be very revealing. On the other hand, despite the depression I feel sometimes after visiting a school where technology, if it is being used at all, is being used poorly, I maintain my belief that technology is the future and we can use it more effectively. Mr. Pflaum seems more pessimistic.

Within his descriptions of what he's seen in schools, Mr. Pflaum has some useful insights; however, when he tries to build these into universals at the end of the book, he is less powerful. Not that his suggestions are necessarily lacking merit. Instead, some are so obvious as to not be worth the effort of a book-length study. Use computers for assessment? I would think so. Use computers to align standards, instruction and assessment? Of course. Coordinate computer skills across grade levels? I hope so.

This is not to say that schools are actually doing these things. Many aren't. But he's pointing towards obvious best practices here that just need to be implemented. His one controversial suggestion--that computers be target towards those that can use them most as opposed to spreading the wealth equally--is practical but also a sign of his pessimism. We aren't committed enough to do what we should so we should at least do what we can.

In his book, Mr. Pflaum has provided valuable insights into what is actually going on in schools today per their use of technology. This alone makes the book valuable. Though his suggestions for improvement are a bit short-sighted, they have their place and could open the eyes of some administrators and teachers. Still, his bleak view clouds the possible bright future and growing impact technology could have if we are willing to have commitment and focus. I hope readers won't let his attitude bring them down.

Too many books are either all for technology in schools or completely against it. Neither kind of book is very useful for teachers who are trying to figure out how to use technology intelligently in their classrooms.

This author takes a walk through 20 or so schools, and describes what he observes with the insight of a seasoned educator. He does a very good job of spotlighting the intelligent uses of technology, and an equally good job of uncovering the dreary, wasteful uses. I found the book is a wonderful way to hone my own thinking.

Moreover, the book is a fast read, and very engaging. Pflaum writes with an uncommon honesty and humanness, and he has that wonderful ability to draw pictures in your mind. I'd recommend it to both teachers and parents who have input in the way schools are run.

This is a well written book, code is easy to download, and a number of topics. All in all though, the writing is clear and easily understood so it's well worth the money...

I am a Java web/search programmer who wanted to "get into" text mining. I found this book an excellent resource for this. Text Mining is a field in which active research is still going on, and other Text Mining books I have looked at reflect this - the authors expect you to have a certain degree of mathematical background to understand what they are saying. This book explains briefly the math behind each of the approaches, but it focuses more on the algorithms that result from the math, so it is easier to read.

Of course, a side effect of this is that the approaches described are not necessarily the state of the art for solving any given problem, but once you get the basic approach to solving a problem, it is relatively easy to find and understand the documentation on the web for the more advanced approaches, since you now know what you are looking for and how it differs from your basic solution.

The book does have a (fairly long) chapter where it covers the math background necessary to get started with Text Mining. If you understand the stuff in there, you will actually be able to think up solutions to text mining problems that are unique to your own situation.

The algorithms in the book are in pseudo-code, but the book comes with a CD (or download from the author's sourceforge project textmine.sf.net) where you can see working Perl code.

Overall, I think this is one of the most useful books that I have purchased in a while. It should appeal most to programmer types who have programmed in their language(s) of choice for a while in areas other than text mining, wants to get into text mining, and doesn't want to spend a lot of time relearning high school and college math before starting off.

Text mining is one of the most exciting subjects of the web, and too few books are dealing with it. This one is one of them, and it gives quite a few examples of text mining applications, like spam filters or search engine ranking algorithms. The style is easy to follow, and the concepts easy to understand given some maths background.

However, I expected more details, and a richer content overall, thus the four stars. This is still a good book.

Software developers learn how to mine information on the Web and turn it into valuable data; but developers need to understand how data mining works. For a programmer's application-oriented review, Text Mining Application Programming is the item of choice: it reviews text data, how it's found, and how search engines locate and gather it. Next, it teaches how to build spiders to crawl the Web, how to use the information, and how to monitoring it. Perl developers will find its Perl-based code useful, but it's not necessary to know Perl to run the software herein. An excellent guide to mining the Net.

There is an old expression that half of knowing anything is knowing where to find it. And there is little more frustrating to be looking at 'My Computer' trying to find what you know you have stored in a file somewhere. Well, perhaps just as frustrating is to go to one of the search engines and try to find something that you know is there but just don't know the proper words to find it.

In this book Dr. Konchady talks about how to go find data that is in text form on your system, on your network or out on the web somewhere. It talks about search engines, but also about other techniques that can be used only by programming.

The CD that comes with the book contains several Perl software snippets that help to find named entities, parts of speech, phrases and gives a summary of text documents. This area includes developing web crawlers that can be adapted by individual users to go out and find specialized information. It further contains an Open Source software package called Text Mine that is designed for mining operations. In addition it has utilities to build and enhance Text Mine and utilities to build and manage MySQL database tables. This is an excellent book on everything from the basic hints and types through some of the mathematics that underlies text mining.

His section on the nature of an English language Question and Answer system is the best I've ever seen.

I think this book is absolutely great. As someone new to karate (3 months practice),I find the series of pictures for each kata excellent. By viewing the pictures closely, you can observe the individual details of the stances and postures etc. as a kata is performed. I find I am forever reaching for the book as I practice the katas at home. Money well spent.

Owen Evans, UK

The 5 volumes of Higaonna Sensei's traditional karate-do is the most extensive and well researched manual I've ever read. Each volume contains step by step bunkai of each kata as well as thoroughly researched history of Chojun Miyagi Sensei and of karate itself. Each move is described in japanese terminology plain and simple. Having just joined okinawan goju-ryu from Shotokan, and currently san kyu, this book is a must for any karate-ka. The detailed step by step kata pictures actually help you in your kata when you need to know certain moves or are learning new ones. I highly recommend these manuals.

M. Higaonna's work is a high quality technical manual of an Okinawan Martial Art known as Goju-ryu Kara-te. Higaonna's book is one of a VERY few which are of sufficent quality that it COULD temporarily assist a practitioner (or someone merely curious re: Gojuryu Karate's technique (of a very popular exercise: Sanchin Kata) until a teacher can be found. The ONLY problem with the book is two fold. 90% of the book is photos, postage stamp sized photos ! Publishing Insanity !!! Secondly, the book is written in english, and yet at CRITICAL points in its description slips into Japanese. Un-necessary & poorly planned in this readers opinion.

A really excellent book that shows a beginner exactly what he needs to know in terms of stances, blocks, punching techniques etc. I bought this book after 2 or 3 lessons at my dojo. I felt confused by the blocking and strikes movements, my arms where all over the place. The book identifies eack block and strike in a series of pictures that help to pin point each step involved. This book is well worth the price.

Owen Evans, UK

This is a description of the four-volume series by Goju Ryu Karate mavin Morio Higaonna. In it he details the complete Goju Ryu syllabus as passed down to his teachers, Ei'ichi Miyazato and Anichi Miyagi. Miyazato and A. Miyagi in turn learned directly from the founder of Goju Ryu Karate, Chojun Miyagi, a distinguished student of Kanryo Higaonna who learned martial arts in Fukien Province and also on Okinawa. This is simply the best series of books out there on Goju Ryu in any language! The photography is incredible, all techniques are shown with stop-motion photography, and there are many transitional photographs showing the complete execution of every technique. This series is the "bible" of Okinawan Goju Ryu Karate-do. I'm going to give you a break down by volume since all four seem to get put together here...

Volume 1: Fundamental Techniques
Higaonna demonstrates Miyagi's original Junbi Undo (warm up), completely goes over all topics such as stances, traditional exercise routine with the chiishi (stone weights) shown in 187 photographs, Nigiri Game (gripping Jars) shown in 109 photographs, how to train on the Makiwara, how to construct a Makiwara, training with the Ishisashi (stone padlocks) is a sequence shown in 118 photographs, also covered are tan (barbell), tetsu geta (iron sandals), tou (bamboo bundle), jari bako (sand training), and an implement unique to Goju Ryu, the kongo ken. The depth with which all of these are explained and covered is phenomenal!

Next is the section on fundamental technique with complete coverage of stance work, striking and kicking. Then a treatis on Kore-ate (2 man forearm training). For those who believe that all karate is stiff and unbending, this book may change your mind. There is a section on tai-sabaki (movement, and a special treat in the last chapter--the COMPLETE SANCHIN as passed down from Kanryo Higaonna to Chojun Miyagi to Anichi Miyagi to Morio Higaonna. This is the original turning Sanchin Kanryo Higaonna brought back from Fukien Province in China. Researchers believe this particular sanchin came either from White Crane style, or from Fujian Tiger Gung Fu. Morio Higaonna demonstrates the complete for in the traditional (for men at least) shirtless manner. 162 photographs with complete description illustrate this Foundational form of the Goju Ryu Karate School.

Volume 2: Performances of the Kata
Higaonna goes over the charicteristics of Okinawan Goju-ryu, and then the demonstration of the first kata, the Chojun Miyagi Sanchin (different from the Kanryo Higaonna Sanchin in the first book). Included after this are in-depth renderings of kata Gekisai-dai Ichi, Gekisai-dai-ni, Saifa, Seiyunchin, Shisochin, and Sanseiru. Bunkai is shown separately in successive volumes....

Volume 3: Applications of the Kata Part I
Opens with an introductory note from Xing Yang-ling, Morio Higaonna on Bunkai, and then the remainder of the Goju Ryu Karate Kata syllabus: Sepai, Kururunfa, Sesan, Sanseiru, Suparinpei, and Miyagi's personal kata thought to have been influenced by Fukien Crane, Tensho Kata. This volume ends with the inclusion of the complete Bunkai (applications) for kata Gekisai-dai Ichi and Gekisai-dai Ni.

Volume 4: Applications of the Kata Part II
Contains the complete bunkai of Goju-ryu karate founder Miyagi Chojun for the 8 main kata of Goju: Saifa, Seiunchin, Shisochin, Sanseiru, Sepai, Kururunfa, Sesan, Suparinpei. Also includes sections on Iri Kumite, Shiai Kumite, and Yakusoku Kumite. Finishes off with Historical accounts of Kanryu Higaonna and Chojun Miyagi.

A phenomenal series, the Karate World and Goju folks everywhere NEED this to be back in print again. Higaonna's effort is really in a class by itself.

Reader would learn a lot about Unicode and many unique problem of different scripts. For example, it is not one glyph for traditional "character" nor one code for one traditional "character". I also recommend readers also read source code of pango library and manual of freetype library.

This book is an outstanding companion volume to the Unicode standard. In fact, if you had to pick one, you'd quite possibly be better off owning this book INSTEAD of the standard. The author display an impressive knowledge of the world's writing systems and of the inner workings of the Unicode standardization process.

Part I of this book starts with the history of character encoding standards, from Morse code to today. It then presents a thorough review of the Unicode architecture and associated standards. The information presented was mostly excellent, although I found the section describing SCSU a little bit too sketchy (and the actual code in part III not entirely satisfactory to fill in the gaps).

Part II gives an overview of the various writing systems and character ranges represented in Unicode. Even for a nontechnical audience, this part would be fascinating with all the typographical and historical trivia it presents.

Part III discusses various algorithms applicable to text processing in a Unicode context. I must admit that I found this part a bit of a letdown. Many of the algoritms are only sketched out because discussing them in detail would be beyond the scope of the book. Quite possibly, the pages dedicated to these algorithms would have been better spent presenting examples of code using the various existing APIs for handling Unicode (Java, ICU, Perl, Windows, MacOS X).

This does not take away from the fact that this is a great book that any programmer interested in Unicode should own.

The book has three main parts:

(1) Unicode in essence: an architectural overview of the Unicode standard (six chapters) where you also get bits of terminology and history.

(2) Unicode in depth: A guided tour of the character repertoire (six chapters) where you get a lot about writing systems that can be represented in Unicode, and less about the Unicode characters.

(3) Unicode in action: implementing and using the Unicode standard (five chapters) where you get information aimed at computer programmers that wish to implement parts of the standard or write applications dealing with multilingual text.

Though this book is very long (~800 pages) it is still shorter and a lot more clear than the Unicode standard itself (over 1000 pages).

Code examples are in Java but they are not ment to be complete solutions and so there is no accompanying website or a CD.

Professional programmers are the target audience of this book. The reader is faced with many topics in linguistics, history and data structures. Readers with computer science background would probably appreciate how classic traditional algorithms were adapted and how data structures are used in character sets with a significantly larger number of character than 256.

The author of the book states that the book is about "representing written language in a computer", which may be misleading to some readers. The book is about the Unicode standard. Obviously, there are many other ways to represent written language other than the methods described in the book. As chapter 2 teaches... There are always more ways (sometimes better ways) to represent your data.

Part 2 of the book will not cover every writing system of the world. A better book for that would be "The world's writing systems".

Part3 is probably the most interesting and useful part for programmers (though the first part is important, in my opinion to those who want to UNDERSTAND Unicode).
You can learn about a lot of things and skip many too (depending on your interest and need). I believe that most readers will skip most of the topics.

This is not a book that is read lightly, but it is hellovalot easier and more fun to read than the Unicode standard itself. It appears that once you read this book and get what you want from it, you will end up going to read the Unicode standard only to see updates, hopefully, not for clarifications.

I am dealing with Natural Language Processing and being a Hebrew speaker I also have a lot of text in Hebrew (almost all the time it is Hebrew with other languages too, e.g. documents that contain Hebrew with some English). This book helps understand the difficulties, the current implementations and give you a solid ground to start thinking how you can make things better. Current infrastructure for Hebrew is either poor or not perfect and in most cases the better solutions are proprietary. There seems to be always problems representing 'plain' text in more than one language without stepping into the trap of the soup of different ways to do it. Unicode is one way to do it (arguably, not the best, yet it is alive and growing) I hope this book can help more people understand what they are up against, clear the fog and help people do better implementations.

I find this book extremely useful!

This is almost three books in one. The first part provides a very good introduction to Unicode in general. The middle is really useful for all sorts of people, from linguists to content authors who want to understand the scripts encompassed by Unicode. And the last part is extremely helpful for programmers who want to understand how to implement many text processing techniques using Unicode.

Throughout, Rich's style is easy and enjoyable to read, and yet quickly gets to a wealth of useful information.

Great job! Highly recommended.

Unicode Demystified is a great manual and a good read. It earns a place on the bookshelf of programmers who deal with modern text processing, which is based on the Unicode standard. It is a great resource for anyone involved in software internationalization and localization.

Gillam provides a lot of useful details, history and explanations for the structure of the character set, and shows how to use it. The book is a companion to the print and online resources of the Unicode standard itself, and provides the glue to many of the pieces, the how-to's and basic data structures.

For example, the Unicode encodings UTF-8/16/32 (and BOM) are explained very well, bidirectional text is discussed with a lot of insight, and the family of Indic scripts with their special features is presented with examples for how to encode Indic text.

Tried to covered a broad concept and has done it well. He is more a video expert than an IP expert but given the breadth of the concept he is trying to cover, I must say, he has done a great job. I would have given him 5 starts if he had not use the term "signal" in the IP and RTP discussions.

This is one of the most in-depth and comprehensive books I have ever seen covering IPTV, security, streaming, conferencing, compression and network transport. If you are professionally involved in video, this book serves as the perfect first stop reference that will give you a quick understanding of what the technologies are for and how they interrelate. Information is very well organized and easy to find.

Excellent book for technical professionals looking to go deeper into video. All the relevant protocols and technologies are surveyed, and enough detail is provided to give an understanding of their relevance. Highly recommended - this will point you to the areas to explore in more depth if you need to go further.

This book provides an excellent basis for anyone working in the field of video transport over IP networks. The author is a highly-respected expert in this field and speaks with authority on the subject, yet has written a volume that is very readable and useful as a reference. I can highly recommend this work as an up-to-date review of the topic.

As a video engineer for over 30 years, I am constantly amazed by what passes for reference work in the field of television, communications and computers. Most of the technical books answer a few questions at best and are very good at putting one to sleep, very quickly!

Not so with Mr. Simpson's book. "Video Over IP, a Practical Guide..."is,indeed, just that. With the convergence of entertainment communications and computers, the plethora of acronyms in this field is worse than it's ever been. Video over IP cuts through the clutter and provides concise, easy to understand answers. Mixed in are real life application descriptions, and practical examples that describe the technology clearly and in a way that can be understood by engineers and managers alike. An example is Mr. Simpson's analogy comparing MAC addresses and IP addresses, where the MAC address is similar to an automobile's VIN number and the IP address, which may vary over the life of a piece of hardware, is analogous to the registration or plate number. Brilliant! Couple this with the review and checklist update at the end of each chapter, and what we have is an excellent reference work that is both easy to read and up to date. A must have for anyone in the video, telecom or entertainment fields.

This book is awesome. It is exactly what I have been looking for.

I have been coding in VB.Net for a couple years now and I'm comfortable with the standard features of VB.Net and Visual Studio.Net. I needed a book that would take my skills to the next level and help me take full advantage of the more powerful capabilites of the .Net programming environment.

Make no mistake, this is not a beginner's book. It does not rehash the same old instructions on how to do the basics. What it does, and does very well, is take you straight into the advanced topics of interfaces, delegates, reflection, attributes, multithreading, COM Interop, remoting, custom components, smart clients, web services, and much more. I can see how this information will help me build awesome applications that I would not have otherwise been able to do.

Paul Kimmel's writing style is concise yet friendly. The examples truly help clarify the lesson at hand. The size of the book is small enough, 700 pages, that you can take your time to understand the material and still expect to complete the book in a reasonable amount of time.

I know that I will be writing and delivering better software as a result of reading this book. It is exactly what I was looking for in a "Level 2" book. I don't know if there is a "Level 3" book or not, but I can only hope that if there isn't one, that Paul Kimmel is in the processing of writing it.

This book covers a grab bag of topics around the .NET platform. Topics range in obscurity from reflection (which it starts with) to just above basic, using ADO.NET with stored procedures. Threading, which is always a difficult topic to explain, was covered in a well written fashion, but lacked illustrations, which I think would have brought a lot of clarity to the subject. Other topics were given some illustrations, but overall the book used screenshots for most of the graphics. Remoting was another area that could have used illustrations.

Overall well written, but could have been better organized and illustrated. Definitely worth a look over if you find that it covers topics of interest.

To start this book review I can only say one thing ... this book is AWESOME! I actually sat
down and read the whole book in just over a week. I couldn't put it down. The way Mr. Kimmel
writes will keep your attention GLUED to each page as you read and learn about Visual Basic
.NET programming advanced topics. His sense of humor comes shining through in his examples and
writing. It is a book that I could just not put down. I'd come home from work, grab a bite to
eat and it was off to the reading room for me. I spent many a night this past week staying up
late because I didn't want to close the book for another night.

Mr. Kimmel did what a lot of books have tried to do, but in my opinion have come up short on
all too many occasions. He started out in Chapter 1 explaining the differences between Visual
Basic 6.0 and the new, improved Visual Basic .NET programming languages. He drilled down into
the changes more than any other book I have read and made it so easy to understand the
differences. This is also something that he did throughout the text. This was to give the
reader a look back at the Visual Basic 6.0 language and then explain how it works now in the
.NET world. That is something that many books have tried to do, but in my opinion, Mr. Kimmel
NAILED the explanations to the barn door. He made is so easy to understand the VB.NET language
now and the advanced features that are available to us as developers.

I have spent the past three years teaching at the Community College of Aurora as an Adjunct
Instructor in the Computer Sciences Division. I have had the opportunity to teach Visual Basic
6.0, Advanced Visual Basic 6.0, and Java programming languages. I have read and used many
different textbooks in my tenure. Going forward, I'm going to be telling my Visual Basic .NET
programming class students that this is the book they need to read after they have finished
their Advanced VB.NET book. The textbooks that are available for instructors are all fine, but
I believe that Mr. Kimmel's book will be a much higher benefit to my students who are serious
about learning VB.NET and the power that it now has. I have already contacted some of my
previous students who are Visual Basic .NET developers and have advised them to get their own
copy of this book.

My favorite chapters are 10 & 11, ADO.NET and Advanced ADO.NET. In my years of developing
projects I have done A LOT of database programming, as most of us have. I found that ADO.NET
is a subject that has MANY, MANY different books written about it. Most are very intricate and
very technical, which is good for some people. For the rest of the folks out there, it's best
to get a GOOD grounding in the basics before moving on to the heavy technical stuff. I believe
that Mr. Kimmel found the secret of how to give us that understanding of ADO.NET that we can
now go forth and build upon.

That is how I feel about the entire book. There is enough technical expertise to keep the hard
core developers interested, but at the same time there is a good balance of information for
folks who are just stepping out of a college level advanced VB.NET course who are looking for
a good reference book to help them get a better understanding of VB.NET. Mr. Kimmel covers
Visual Basic .NET like no other author I have found yet. Very concise information is shared in
the pages of his book. There is no "fluff" that you find in some books. No, not in this book.
He drills into Visual Basic .NET like no other author that I've read thus far. I feel very
enriched by having had the opportunity to read this book and plan on having this located on my
bookshelf within EASY reach while I'm developing projects.

I feel fortunate in that I have been extended a hand by what I believe to be that of a
gentleman who is a person I consider to be extremely knowledgeable in both the technologies
and helping others understand the technologies. I received an e-mail from Mr. Kimmel just a
short time after sending a thank you note to the publisher's representative who donated this
book to the Denver Visual Studio User Group, Denver, Colorado, where I selected this book for
a review. I was shocked when I opened my e-mail and I saw the address being Mr. Kimmel's. When
I opened the e-mail what I found was a gentleman who can only be described as an individual
that I hope to keep in contact for years to come. He had a genuine interest in me as a person
and a developer. We have shared a few e-mails since then and I sincerely hope that he will
consider revising his book and writing a 2nd Edition for Visual Basic 2005. I know that there
are going to be many upgrades, changes, additions, subtractions, etc. that are accomplished by
Microsoft and I would really appreciate it if Mr. Kimmel could be the one to lead the charge
as the new technologies are released. He has such a tremendous understanding of the
technologies and how to put them into words that makes it easier for us developers to
understand and then use the knowledge that he shares with us to help build our foundation on
which we build our empires of knowledge.

Thank you to Mr. Paul Kimmel for writing such a true work of art for those of us who are mere
students of Visual Basic .NET and who seek the wisdom of the Masters! I truly believe that
this book could be considered a book written by a Master of Visual Basic for the Ages!

As a professional programmer with almost 2 years experience with the .NET framework, this book is a breath of fresh air. Finally, a book on .NET that goes beyond the basics and shows some of the more advanced and interesting capabilities of the framework.

Highlights for me include a discussion on value and reference types, delegates for multithreading, reflection, attributes, COM interop, remoting, custom components (including UITypeEditor) and implementing Extender Provider controls (like the ToolTip control).

I discovered many details of the framework that had eluded me. For example, did you know that all value types inherit from the ValueType class? how to add custom properties to all controls on a form? or how to use COM interop to provide a smooth path for the migration of VB6 application to .NET?

On the down side, the chapters dealing with the subject of ADO.NET, which is itself in need of a few advanced books, only describe the more basics aspects of the technology. Also, there is no chapter on XML.

Overall though, Kimmel does an excellent job of putting together a wealth of advanced subjects in a compact package.

There are endless books for beginners trying to learn .NET. This book is for people yearning for more. His discussing on Asynchronous operations is worth the price of the book alone. So is his discussion on No touch deployment. If you want to take your VB.NET knowledge up a level, this is the book for you.