Systems Books

I purchased Jain's "The Art of Computer Systems Performance Analysis" for a 3-month graduate course, and I must admit that, in retrospect, I was a bit daunted by its size upon receipt (we were to cover the entire text). Further, I had my doubts about the relevancy of the text in the current environment, given its age.

But I must say, both of these initial questions proved wholly unfounded.

I've never used a text quite like this one before; it is a significant departure from the standard engineering text that weighs heavily on the side of analytical proof and mathematical equations, while foregoing textual elaboration. On the contrary, this book adopts a conversational tone whereby the author develops all of the book's topics in great detail, relying on substantial insight and experience. Truly, a breath of fresh air.

There's such a richness about this text, that a careful read--while admittedly quite time-consuming--is bound to give the reader a sense that he has just become the beneficiary of a heck of a lot of wisdom.

All of this is not to say the text is overly-subjective; in fact, there is plenty of detailed analytical analysis. It is just to say that the book is different, and one that exudes quality communication: it reads more like a lecture than it does lecture notes.

So, back to my initial doubts. It turns out that the verbose depth of material which constitutes the book's 720 pages is really a foundation of its main qualities: it is a very readable and highly-detailed exploration of the art and the craft of performance analysis. And it's for that foundational reason that its age is irrelevant.

A solid book indeed. It has the right mixture of theory and practical cases well dealt with. The techinques must be tried for performance analysis and implemented in real time projects.

This old book is one of the most valued on my shelf. I was first exposed to it in a graduate class, and I have to say that the book is so good I was not aware that my professor was not a good instructor until I had him a second time in a class where the textbook was less than stellar. Don't judge the book by a quick perusal either. At first glance, especially if you are looking at Part I, it looks like one of those books on Six Sigma that will put you to sleep. In fact, the vast majority of the book is quite interesting.

Part II, "Measurement Techniques and Tools", are where things get interesting. The good part about this entire book is that it uses problems in the analysis of computer systems as the basis of presentation for all tools presented. The graphs are excellent, the mathematics are largely self-contained, and if algorithms are presented they are usually given in numbered steps and an actual computer program shown. This is one drawback of the book - it uses the ancient Simula language for its demonstration code. However, if you are familiar with C, Java, or any of the other mainstream procedural languages, you'll find that Simula looks like very readable pseudocode, so this should not be an obstacle to understanding.

Part III is a section dedicated entirely to probability theory and statistics. Starting with the simple definition of the mean, this handy section not only derives all of the statistics you need in this book, it talks about common mistakes made in applying them.

Part IV is about experimental design and analysis. Using the mathematics developed in part three this section talks about all aspects of designing a proper experiment for the measurement or simulation of a computer system, including common mistakes and the best choice for the size of your experiment.

Part V presents the key issues in simulation modeling. First it discusses simulation terminology, simulation design criteria, and stopping conditions. Random number generation is the subject of three chapters in reference to inputs to your simulation. Finally there is a chapter on the commonly used distributions such as Bernoulli, beta, binomial, etc. that talks specifically about random number generation algorithms for each of the distributions presented. What makes this section so valuable is that although you may have possibly seen the math before, more than likely you don't know the value of each kind of distribution. This section makes that issue clear in terms of modeling computer performance.

Part VI is on queuing models, and is probably the most difficult section in the book. Although it is one of the better written pieces I have read on queueing theory, it is not as easily grasped as previous sections based on reading the textbook alone. There are examples present, and the book does a good job of presenting "the big picture" as to the use of queueing theory in computer performance analysis, but you may need outside material to really grasp how to set up a queueing problem from a mathematical standpoint.

No other book I've found does such a good job of discussing all of the topics covered and clearly tying it into practical issues in measuring and monitoring system performance. I highly recommend it.

I'm a performance analyst. I couldn't do my job properly without this book. It really is that simple.

This is an absolute gem. I really think that this book must be read by every CS/EE engineer. Performance analysis is always something that comes as an afterthought and engineers think that some some "mathematical" guy called a perf analyst will stop by after the product is completed and analyze the product. This is def wrong. PA should be done at every stage of production.

This book has been written assuming a novice reader. Several parts of the book have to re-read to really understand what the author is trying to convey, but trust me you will really appreciate it.

I suggest reading the following parts of the book(in order):

Part I (whole)
Part II (4, 5, 6, browse {7,8}, 9, 10 ) 10 is cool stuff..impress your peers with this
Part III (whole) read, re-read, re-read till you have digested every line..worth it really!!!!
Part IV (whole) read, re-read, re-read till you have digested every line..worth it really!!!!
Part V : You can skip this if you are not into simulation.
Part VI : Not really that easy to follow. I suggest Gunter's book for this.

Bottom line - great how-to book. I am NOT in any way, shape, or form, a computer geek. Technology is not my friend, and nothing about machinery is inuitive to me. I am also a no-nonsence kinda guy. In this particular case, I want to edit, not spend my time READING about how to edit. So this book is GREAT! (Wouldn't know if it's the best 'cause I'm completely dependent on doing what it says to do so I have no way to compare it to other resources.) The layout is straightforward - topics are categorized and independant from each other. Like a cookbook. Simply go to the instructions on how to do a particular thing, and there you go! The book uses paragraph format in the beginning of each topic/chapter to explain the "why's" of the upcoming topic; like a comprehensive overview. (What's the purpose and point of doing "_____".) Then when it comes to the "how-tos", each subtopic/activity converts to bullet-points. (Click A, then do B, then press C.) The book also includes side notes and hints along with illustrations of what you should be seeing on the screen at that particular stage. Wonderful! Efficient!

This book is based on Avid Express Pro as of 2004 and will serve you well as a reference text. It is well-indexed and has useful cross-references in the text.

This book is very helpful for new beginners learning AXP. It is very detailed and to the point. A must have.

figata ci vediamo al solito posto alle 12.00. porta la corazzata
pinuccio

I am a beginner with Avid and was daunted by all the different and options available to me. Monohan's book was just what I needed. I am currently giong through the book from A to Z, which gives me an overview of all the options and work-methods the program has. Even though I allready had set up my workspace, this book gave me some interesting tips. Even though I had allready developed a workflow for my previous projects, I learned some new options by reading this book.

Interestingly, serving as a guide from a to Z is not where Monohan excells. It should be used as an index to all the available options from this program. Want to know how to find those audio-peaklevels? How to get rid of that nested alpha-channel? Or you want to remember that trick in lassoing to trim mode? Use the index or the table of contents and you'll find what you're looking for in no time.

Great value for its price!

I love that I can just skim through this book & find the information that I need. It is really basic - clearly written with great examples. After being away from work for 8 years & being out of school for almost 20, it was a great refresher! Besides, Max proves that even geeks can have a sense of humor!

As a student finishing my B.S. in Computer Science, I very badly needed something to liven up my CPU architecture and discrete math classes, which were horribly boring.

This book not only did a GREAT job of clarifying the finer points of boolean logic, but somehow managed make it interesting. I would recommend this book to anyone trying to understand the nuts-and-bolts behind what makes your computer tick.

Maxfield's book is unique, both in format and in content. And I'm not just talking about the gumbo recipe at the end.

The first section, almost 150 pages, is "logic lite." It starts with transistors, both MOS and bipolar. From there it works its way up to simple latches and such, and scratches the surface of state machines, with side trips to boolean arithmetic and such. The breezy, informal style will work for people put off by more academic treatments, but the logic design content stops way short of what any other basic logic text would present.

The second, longer section covers material sorely missing from all other logic texts I know. It starts with the simpler parts of silicon fab process, then goes through all kinds of printed circuits and hybrid packages giving a fair tour of the basic printed curcuit (PC) processes that were current when the book was written (1995). It even goes into gutsy stuff like the copper patterns in PC processes that have to do with heat flow during soldering. All those real-world facts earned this book an extra star. The "far out technology" chapter at the end is an interesting read, too, with its discussions of nano, optical, and molecular computing.

The book's weaknesses are significant, though. It would work well with any of several companion texts that would cover what this misses. That includes more advanced logic techniques, like alternatives to gate-level implementation and all the fussy bits of state machines. A standard logic text (e.g. Katz) would fill in those blanks. Going in a different direction, it does only a little towards talking about how PC layout interacts with logic design. More about ground planes, guard rings, power decoupling, RF emissions, etc. would fit well with the detail presented here, espcially when you see how much time and effort it already spends on "vias" vs. "holes." The little bit of analog discussion from the front would help here - why inductive effects matter at high frequencies, why distributed capacitance is different from lumped, why you'd have a high-value and low-value capacitor in parallel, and why that ceramic cap near the power input has a saw cut in the edge. A third possible direction would be the way Wirth's book on circuit design for CS students went: into the higher levels of design, letting tools attend to the lower levels. The biggest flaw is in treating FPGAs as exotic, out-there technology - by 1995, they were well into the main stream, and have very nearly killed off discrete logic and ASICs in many areas.

If you just want a light-weight intro to logic design and to the physical circuits that carry it, this is OK. It could have been better in all directions and, at this 2005 writing, you should check it's sell-by date. I gave it the fourth star for addressing PCs and mounting at all, not for addressing them well.

//wiredweird

Considering this book deals with what I consider to be rocket science at best and black magic at worst I think it does a really good job of explaining things. I'm still working through it and it still makes my head hurt but I recommend this for anyone like me who wants to understand this stuff and has zero background to do so.

I grew up watching my neighbor, a mechanic, work on cars and it helped me pick up the basics. When I would try to take apart a transistor radio and figure out how it worked I was left with an assortment of colorful bits and no clues. This book is the remedy for my total ignorance of things electronic. Just how good it is I do not know due to my lack of knowledge in the field. I reccomend it to any interested beginners.

John understands the communication system within the body. "Tapping" into the innate wisdom of the body and asking a series of essential questions of the body he identifies areas of miscommunication. The great thing is he then teaches us how to make those connections and correct a wide variety of maladies. Unique, innovative and effective while providing individuals using dowsing, divining or muscle testing a great data base of questions. These questions can be applied in many systems to enhance its success.

This is brilliant energy medicine. I was so excited to learn this modality I immediately sourced out the nearest practictioner/trainer. BodyTalk is a perfect example of how we can heal ourselves without debilitating, dangerous drugs, just by listening to what it's telling us. Kinesiology is almost infallible in telling us what's right, wrong, good, bad, and what our body needs or doesn't need. It's easy, fast, and incredibly effective. When everyone finally 'GETS' this, we'll only need hospitals for sewing up stitches. Everything else is able to be resolved with energy medicine, like BodyTalk. If you don't believe we can heal ourselves, or you want to learn how, get this book.

Initially a skeptic, I am now a believer in and supporter of Bodytalk. After reading this book, I recently attended the introductory classes. I have now first hand seen family member's chronic pain disappear in minutes and complete strangers sob as repressed memories/pain are released. This book lays a great foundation for the enormous power of this energy medicine framework.

This book explores the in depth of the use of kinesiology (muscle testing), a method of asking the body simple questions to help in treatment. It also explains how the treatment is done in an easy to understand way, with photo illustrations. The book explains how the basic skills can be used by anyone to help friends and family.

While the concept of this book is very alien to AMA thinkers, I have had excellent results with similar treatments that I would never have thought possible. I don't argue with results, and there is obviously a lot we still don't understand about the brain and the human body.

For those who are not satisfied with the restrictions of traditional medicine, this book explains an alternative worthy of consideration.

I became interested in Body Electronics when I witnessed a body talk session bring someone out of a 2 month long schizophrenic episode. I then went on to learn it myself.

Body Talk (By John Veltheim) and Body Electronics (as taught by Douglas Morrison) are the 2 most powerful healing modalities I've come accross (along with yoga and meditation), and I've studied many, many healing techniques since chilhood.

This book is well written and teaches the basics of body talk which are easy to learn and apply.

As a medical student, I found this book to be extremely useful. It is well referenced and offers some simple, but powerful techniques about how to best interact with patients.

What I liked best about Communicating with Today's Patient: The practical suggestions that can be used often and right away. For example, when broaching a difficult subject, ask "What has been your experience with (topic)?" This gives you a reading on the patient's perspective and prevents incorrect assumptions. Dozens of techniques like this make the reader a better communicator right away. Two thumbs up!

Many doctors take their communication skills for granted, but the sad fact remains that most of us do not do a good job talking to our patients. Learning how to improve your bedside manner is extremely difficult to do, but this book shows you how you can do so. Reading this book is likely to be one of the best investments of your time you can make - and it's full of practically useful stuff you can implement immediately !

I'm not a doctor, but I'm often a patient. This book has shown me how to communicate better with my doctor. In fact, I think it has excellent and helpful information for everyone, as we all try to make others understand our desires and comply with them.

This book is terrific. It zeros in on so many of the problems caused by a lack of understanding the needs for proper communication when dealing with people involved in a usually stressful situation. It presents these problems in a simple and direct manner and then shows in common sense language how to solve them. I majored in communication in college and was involved in the health care industry for over 30 years. I would strongly recommend this book for anyone involved in that industry or in a position where dealing with people is a priority.

Planguage is a word and concept that combines Planning and LANGUAGE and is rooted in the author's experience since 1960. The core tenant of Competitive Engineering is that well structured specifications have a dramatic cost reduction over down-stream error correction. The defect prevention process (DPP) is used to clean up early stages specs, or preferably measure defects and motivate lower defect injection, in specifications and the attendant issues instead of relying solely on defect detection andcorrection once actual development has begun. Competitive Engineering provides focus and skills to dramatically increase how productive many of us have been in the past.

The centrality of quality specifications means significant gains for the broadest spectrum of stake-holders who stand to win with the System Of Interest (SOI). Take this specification as an example to clean up:

"The new system will use Foo language running on OS Bar and ensure top industry quality response time on web requests."

People in the field have seen specs like these. Hopefully you aren't writing them. There are what Gilb classifies as "Major defects" in this spec. Which web requests, the front page or all of them pulling from the various databases? Can the old system be incrementally upgraded instead of an entirely new development environment? Why use Foo and Bar if something else gets the job done better, faster, and with less resource utilization? Just how fast is "fast", anyway?

In Competitive Engineering you're told to get measureable quality requirements, record who requested that requirement, and exactly what "success" is defined as. That allows you to go back to the requester with notes such as "If we use OS Baz we'll get a 27% increase in CPU performance" and let them make a decision or escalate to the project funder. You're also encouraged to weed out "design constraints"; at least out of the mandatated and into the labelled area "Design Constraint". Wouldn't it be great if you got a specification that let you design the best you could without technical input from someone that can't use a web-browser?

See if you can understand my re-write of the above spec into Planguage.

Response Time on Front Page of Company Website.

Type: Performance Requirement
Version: 1.2
Status: Draft
Owner: F. Flintstone

Stakeholders: Marketing, Server Support, Corporate Intelligence, ,

Ambition: The front page of the corporate website should respond fast enough to keep the viewer's attention.

Description: Marketing research indicates the typical business website viewer makes an opinion on the website, and thus the company, within 20 seconds. Our corporate site pulls data from three different databases and a sizeable image library, taking an average of 26.87 seconds on a home DSL/Cable modem equivalent network. Marketing advantage can be gained if we can grab viewer attention noticibly faster than our two nearest competitors who average 23.43 and 26.09 seconds, respectively.

Vision: Enough accurate information provided quickly enough to keep the customer on our site.

Scale: Time, in Seconds, to a complete front page load on the equivalent of a 250K network connection.

Past [Front page, 1 Apr 07]: 26.87 seconds

Goal [1 November 07]: 19 seconds <- Marketing Director: BR

Stretch: 15 seconds

Wish: 9 seconds

Design Constraint: Supportability <- Server Support Manager WF Must utilize .

Design Constraint: Security <- Corporate Intelligence BB Must meet .

------------------------ end of spec example --------------------

Probably the only thing that might confuse you about that specification is the use of text within "<...>". Planguage uses that to denote a "fuzzy requirement"; something that is defined but not with the concreteness you'd like. In this example, however, it would be relatively simple to query B. Rubble for the specific guidelines her team seeks to enforce. The use of fuzzy requirements also allows for change over time; more OS versions may become supported while others are obsolete.

When I read part of an electronic copy of the text I had a problem. My antiquated home printer could not print it and if I used the work printer I view the output as a possession of my employer. The book is written as part instruction, part reference manual; I bought my own copy because I know I'm going to use it for the next few years and several employers.

This is one the books which has caused a great impression on me. It helps to get away from high-level, gut-feeling, fuzzy goals and descriptions to very concrete targets, unambiguous requirements and rational decisions. This strikes a chord at the heart of systems design and architecture, which consists in maximizing a set of business goals with limited resources (time, budget, personnel). I highly recommend it.

Building software systems is not easy, this book can help you to do a better job.

In a period where the trend is to follow agile approaches with condensed guidance (see the 12 principles of the Agile Manifesto for instance), it could seem strange to publish a book on software development with more than 500 dense pages. You should however not be frightened by this book. Beneath the size and the structured form lies an approach based on practical experience that incorporates change and flexibility without abandoning the quest for precision and delivering value.

The main concept of Competitive Engineering is Planguage, a word created mixing plan and language. Communication is the basis for working together. This is why Tom Gilb emphasises first the creation of a common vocabulary. He states that his glossary could be considered as the best contribution of this book. Beneath the definition of a common language, for me the "hidden agenda" of the book is to help us to think... further. The common language is only a tool that helps us express our thoughts more precisely and completely.

Fortunately for us, Tom Gilb didn't only write a dictionary of system engineering. A large part of the book is devoted to the activities of system engineering and project management. Based on Planguage, Gilb gives us a framework to elicit clearer requirements. He emphasises a measurable vision ("bad numbers beat good words") and presents tools to achieve this objective. He also helps us separate requirements from design. He devotes an entire chapter to quality control. Finally, there is a presentation of the techniques of evolutionary project management that supports incremental development based on the priority and impact techniques described in previous parts of the book.

In every chapter you will find examples and case studies that help to visualise how the concepts translate into practice. There is also an "additional ideas" part that presents material for further thinking. Beneath the seriousness of the topic, Gilb also manage to place some lighter parts and you will find how to compare seriously apples with oranges.

At the end, your realise that you have a book where process is not opposed to people, structure is not opposed to flexibility, precision is not opposed to allowing change, documentation is not opposed to active refinement, Gilb's proposed solution is not opposed to customisation for your needs. It is just a book that gives you new inspiration to deliver better software solutions to your customer.

If you are interested in software process improvement, you can read this book from the beginning and find practical material to examine your current practices with a different vision. If you are a lonesome project manager or developer, you could begin by just using the index to get Gilb's view on your current activity or problem. Be cautious, because there are many chances that you will be tempted to read more material ;o)

After reading this book, I browsed again my old copy of "Principles of Software Engineering" that I bought when it was published in 1988. I saw that many ideas from "Competitive Engineering" were already presented in this book. Tom Gilb just applied to his ideas the same concepts he proposes for system engineering. He refined, expanded and structured them to get a better product. The printing industry has just prevented evolutionary delivery, but you can bet that he will find a way to include this in the future.

My interest in the topic of competitive engineering (CE) was piqued several years ago when I heard very favorable comments about Tom Gilb's tutorial on that subject at the INCOSE 2002 Symposium in Las Vegas.

The book's subtitle is "A Handbook for Systems Engineering, Requirements Engineering, and Software Engineering Using Planguage". The term "Planguage" is central to an understanding of the book. Planguage, which is derived from a union of "plan" and "language", is the methodology for implementing CE. Much of the book is devoted to describing the generalized processes, rules, and vocabulary of Planguage. Tom notes, "Planguage should be viewed as a powerful way to develop and implement strategies that will help your projects to deliver the required competitive results." Fundamentally, the book presents a new take on best practices in systems engineering and management.

The book is useful on several levels. For organizations without a formal or documented process, tailoring of Planguage would jump start the process at a high level of maturity. For organizations that have achieved CMMI level 3 status, Planguage by itself is not as useful. However, many of the ideas of CE-the Planguage methods-are worth considering for enhancement of existing organizational processes. Tom states that CE is "about technological management, risk control, and breakthrough improvement in complex business systems, projects, and processes." CE is a believable approach for delivering complex projects on time and within budget.

The book passed my value-added test, when I realized that I was photocopying several pages for future reference, to be part of my "toolkit" of helpful tips and techniques. I particularly enjoyed reading the 10 often witty, summary principles in each chapter. Two examples are:

* The Principle of `Storage of Wisdom': "If your people are not all experienced or geniuses, You need to store their hard-earned wisdom in your defined process. Capture wisdom for reuse, Fail to write it, that's abuse!"

* The Principle of `The early bird catches the worm': "Your customers will be happier with an early long-term stream of their priority improvements, than years of promises, culminating in late disaster."

About 30% of the book is the Planguage Concept Glossary, which Tom views as a central contribution of the book. I focused my attention on the other, more interesting, parts of the book, which describe the main CE/Planguage methods of Requirement Specification (RS), Design Engineering (DE), Impact Estimation (IE), Specification Quality Control (SQC), and Evolutionary Project Management (EVO, also known as Evo). RS describes an approach for identifying all types of requirements while avoiding ambiguity and also planning for change. Functional and performance requirements are distinguished. DE deals with identifying, choosing, and prioritizing the order in which design ideas are implemented and delivered. In conjunction with Evo, DE selects the design ideas most likely to provide a significant benefit for early delivery.

SQC is an eminently practical approach for evaluating the quality of any technical document via sampling measurements. An hour of SQC early in a project can save almost 10 hours of rework. SQC also provides a means to assess the success of process improvement efforts. IE provides a realistic method for evaluating-in quantitative terms-the effectiveness of designs in meeting both the requirements, especially critical performance attributes, and the resource budgets.

Evo focuses on early, frequent delivery of project results via a series of high-value, small evolutionary steps. An ideal Evo approach would divide the project into a series of cycles. Each cycle would consume 2-5% of the total financial budget and 2-5% of the total project time-while delivering some measurable, required results to the stakeholders. The next cycle is selected to deliver the best stakeholder value for its cost (highest ratio of value to cost, or highest ratio of performance to cost). Although an ideal approach can't always be realized, Tom provides some convincing examples to argue that there is always a solution to making a project evolutionary (small steps with critical deliveries first).

Perseverance pays off with Competitive Engineering. The book is not a quick read, which Tom acknowledges. You have to carefully study some of the pages to understand the concepts being presented. The reward occurs when you glean the nuggets of wisdom from the numerous practical examples, case studies, and Planguage examples. Tom's way of presenting the CE concepts makes the book a useful addition to the systems engineer's library.

For someone who always feared learing UNIX, this made me look like an idiot for delaying that for so long!

This book is amazing. not only is it a good reference book for beginners to experts, it contains valuable references to sources outside of the book. McMullen makes no attempt at completing a thorough "UNIX bible." Rather he usese this book to illustrate the basics and use references and tools to find more information in addition to this book. I think that that aspect is what makes this book indispensible. The "UNIX for Dummies" is not as good as this one

This is a great review for any beginner who really knows nothing about UNIX. It's not boring and "text-bookish", but it's also not stupid and sappy, which is something that sometimes with books for beginners. Highly reccomended!

Everybody likes easy to read books and I also assume that learning UNIX is not necessarily has to be a struggle. This book stood up to my expectations almost perfectly: it is very well written and clearly expressed work. It does not overwhelm with technical details and does not press too much. It is VERY descriptive and takes you snoothly from subject to subject. I also followed an advise in someone's review and purchased "UNIX Essentials" DVD that is complete unix course recorded. These two nicely complement one another. You watch it and you read it. If you didn't catch it from the first try you watch it again and read it again. In two months I found myself confident to that extend that gave advises to our system administrator and he accepted them because there were subjects that he wasn't completely sure. What I can say, in three month I passed my first interview and got a job! Sure it is a way to start and there are much more advanced reading, however these two provide you with the background !
I can't overstate how much I have learned from them. Don't be naive, though. You will have to learn and memorize many things. The fact of owning neither book nor DVD will not make you knowledgeable, but if you will work it trough, trust me, you will surprise many people around!

I have formidable experience with different books on UNIX and related subjects and this one would be in the list of my favorites. It is very well written, very articulate; it goes into many subjects with great attention to details and so on. For a first time UNIX user, it may be used with Linux and UNIX for a beginner training suite, 4DVDs + 2CDs includes 4 Unix Academy Certifications ed.2008.
Highly recommended.

Most texts on industrial control are long on theory and short on practice. This book is a rare gem that presents the theory (without overloading you on details) and then explains how to actually use the theory in practice. (One note: the practical applications are focused on electric motor control, which is the author's background.) If I had to have only one book on controls in my library, this would be the one.

The author attempts to bridge the gap between theory and practice, and does a good job at it. Familiarity with control concepts will help one to get more out of the book, because the book focuses more on the practical aspects. The explanations in some of the sections can definitely be more complete, and thus I have to give it only a 4 star rating. Overall it is a good book.

This is a really good book that simplified control system for the real world. Most text spend too much time on theory and analysis and end the discussion with a bunch of equations and graphs without explaining how to implement the design. This book covers both analog and digital control, and lets you download a software from the author's web site. This software, ModelQ, lets you play with various parameters so you can see how the system behaves when it is not optimized.

One drawback with the book is it only covers PID control and its variants, but doesn't cover state-space control. While state-space control may be considered "overkill" by many control engineers, state-space is used in industry. The decision to use state-space is often not in the hands of individual engineers, so it may not be an option to ignore state-space. It would be nice if Mr. Ellis could cover state-space in his next edition of the book.

I had three main reasons for buying this book:
1. To bridge the gap between the control theory from school and the systems that I now design and build
2. To gain insight on how to improve the performance and reliability of real motion systems
3. To find ways to apply advanced techniques to help meet challenging performance requirements

I got all of this and more from this book. The topics covered clearly and concisely in this book span three courses I took at Cal Poly SLO: basic controls, digital controls, and modern/advanced control theory. Mr. Ellis does a great job of quickly introducing these topics and getting straight to the practical implications.

The free software and examples work well to illustrate his points quickly and easily while helping to commit the insights to memory. I also hope to use it as a training tool for our techs.

I highly recommend this book to anyone working with control systems, especially grad students and people getting started in the field. I look forward to reading his book on observers.

Ellis has made a fantastic book on PID and similar control loops. He takes a very different tact than most controls books -- he writes with a voice similar to a handbook, but delivers enough content to compete with more traditional textbook-style controls books. It is light on the math in comparison, but I don't find myself wanting for more math.

I do a lot of controls design, consulting, and teaching. I recommend this book often and find that people that buy it uniformly track me down and thank me for the recommendation. I can't think of much higher praise for this book.

Some readers might find some parts slow going, but this classic work remains an excellent introduction into how and why our understanding of the heavens (and ourselves) changed so radically following the work of Copernicus. Those interested in reading Kuhn's seminal and more famous "The Stucture of Scientific Revolutions" will enjoy reading "Copernicus" to see how his thinking grew from this earlier work.

I asked my son when he was 4 years old why the Sun moved across the sky over the day. He answered me "because the earth turns". This seems like an obvious answer even for a 4 year old, but 400 years ago his response would be meet with ridicule and even worse would be considered heresy. Thomas S. Kuhn is able to beautifully and logically describe from a scientific perspective the ideas and discoveries through the ages that lead to the enormous conceptual leap from a geocentric to heliocentric world. This alone makes this book a great read. But what I valued more from the book is Kuhn's revealing of the impact of the "Copernican Revolution" outside the scientific world. It's influence on religion, society and the entire scientific process is still felt today. The idea of a heliocentric universe was not only a great scientific theory, it was really a turning point in the human race and how we see ourselves in the universe. I would also recommend "The book nobody read" and "Galileo's Daughter" as more modern follow ups to "The Copernican Revolution".

Kuhn's The Copernican Revolution was written as a text for an undergraduate course in the intellectual history of science. As such, its approach is focused and temporally expansive. The drawback of such an approach is the deficit of analysis in key areas. The analysis of the Church's role in science during the late middle ages and Renaissance was rather one-dimensional, but this obviously is not Kuhn's focus. Instead, he would like the reader to realize that any set of data can be modeled to an infinite number of paradigms (in anticipation of Structure of Scientific Revolutions). The heliocentric argument solved some qualitative problems but was largely Ptolemaic in articulation. Its aesthetic and geometric harmonies were extracted by astronomers who could could apply a mathematical rigor to it, in a post-Ptolemaic tradition (Kepler and Newton).

Kuhn challenges the reader's imagination to decipher the heavenly phenomena in the same way Ptolemy might have, without being hampered by the technical minutia of astronomy. He writes so lucidly as to pick the reader up and drop him or her under the ancient sky, and to follow a long, through time. Paramount to Kuhn is the practical importance of astronomical data and the logic of its categorization.

Perhaps the most persuasive analysis that Kuhn endeavors is that of the progression of the Renaissance neo-Platonics: Brahe, Galilei, Kepler, Descartes, and the mutation of the Copernican system into Newtonian synthesis. In one sense, his analysis is very non-Kuhnian as it can't point to a singular moment, and involves more of a patchwork of adopting new features (that is until Newton).

A concise introduction to the evolution of astronomical thought from antiquity to newton and a compelling classic.

This is a great overview of the development of the Copernican system. The main text is very clear and readable and the "technical appendix" has good expositions of key mathematical arguments. Nevertheless, I think Kuhn's interpretation of "the Copernican revolution" has some shortcomings. Kuhn wishes the Copernican revolution to conform to his idea (as presented in his book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions) of a revolution brought on by a crisis: "[Copernicus'] famous preface still provides one of the classic descriptions of a crisis state" and "Ptolemaic astronomy had failed to solve its problems; the time had come to give a competitor a chance." But Kuhn does not support this position very well. For instance he writes: "When Copernicus listed the aspects of contemporary astronomy that had led him to consider his radical theory, he began, 'For, first, the mathematicians are so unsure of the movements of the Sun and the Moon that they cannot even explain or observe the constant length of the seasonal year.'" Here Kuhn is using a rather underhand trick. He is implying, of course, that this calendar issue was Copernicus' primary motivation, but fails to address two crucial counterarguments. First, Copernicus' preface is addressed to the Pope and he is clearly interested in emphasising that "my labors contribute somewhat even to the Commonwealth of the Church, of which your Holiness is now Prince," mentioning specifically how the calendar issue was a concern for Leo X, etc. Second, when Copernicus says "first...", he does not mean "first" as in "most important," for he continues with a "second" and then reaches "the chief point of all." This chief point of all is the fact that the Copernican model has a beautiful implication: the planetary distances. A geocentric model cannot give such information because we could scale the orbit of Saturn, say, to make it twice as big and it would still look exactly the same seen from earth. But in a heliocentric model the distances are determined because if we scaled the orbit of Saturn then it would look the same seen from the sun but different seen from earth. So with the earth in the center we cannot determine planetary distances because we are the center of scaling, but with the sun in the center we would notice scaling and thus the planetary distances are locked, or, as Copernicus puts it, "this correlation binds together so closely the order and the magnitudes of all the planets and of their spheres or orbital circles and the heavens themselves that nothing can be shifted around in any part of them without disrupting the remaining parts and the universe as a whole." Thus he can claim triumphantly that earlier astronomers "have not been able to discover or to infer the chief point of all, i.e., the form of the world and the certain commensurability of its parts. But they are in exactly the same fix as someone taking from different places hands, feet, head, and the other limbs---shaped very beautifully but not with reference to one body and without correspondence to one another---so that such parts made up a monster rather than a man." (I'm using the translation from Goldoni's excellent article in the Mathematical Intelligencer.) Kuhn admits that the Copernicus' determination of the planetary distances is "crucially important" but dismisses it as the main reason for the acceptance of the theory: "'Harmony' seems a strange basis on which to argue for the earth's motion... Copernicus' arguments are not pragmatic. They appeal, if at all, not to the utilitarian sense of the practising astronomer but to his aesthetic sense and to that alone. ... New harmonies did not increase accuracy or simplicity. Therefore they could and did appeal primarily to that limited and perhaps irrational subgroup of mathematical astronomers whose Neoplatonic ear for mathematical harmonies could not be obstructed by page after page of complex mathematics leading finally to numerical predictions scarcely better than those they had before." The correct reading---beauty before truth---is staring Kuhn in the face but he refuses to recognise it, opting instead to dismiss Copernicus as "strange" and Kepler as "irrational."

"The Copernican Revolution" tells the epochal story of how the earth-centered cosmology of Ptolemy was replaced by the sun-centered cosmology of Copernicus and Kepler. The book is a classic. Kuhn understood how ideas influence each other and hang together in a system. He could write with equal erudition about observational astronomy, medieval theology, astrology, and Aristotelian physics.

"The Copernican Revolution" is a trove of historical and intellectual insights. Perhaps the main lesson is that scientific progress is not a simple matter of theory being adapted to observation. Multiple theories can account for the same observations, theories have complex non-observational bases of support, and extra-theoretical assumptions provided by "common sense" (such as the immobility of the earth) can be highly contingent products of a culture. Scientific progress is never guaranteed. Erroneous theories -- such as the theory placing the earth at the center of the universe -- can hold sway for centuries and generate a vast body of supporting evidence, only to fall out of sync with new observations and a new climate of opinion -- at which point they can hang on tenaciously, or collapse "suddenly" over the course of a generation or two. It all comes down to history.

Kuhn's great contribution to thought was to situate the history of science within the history of ideas -- he treated scientific theories as the products of cultures, institutions, and sheer accidents, not as deliverances of pure logic. "The Copernican Revolution" is fantastic and should be ready by anyone who enjoyed and learned from "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions." It's become fashionable to bash Kuhn lately but his books have a secure place in the canon of history and philosophy of science. Six stars!

Almost thirty years ago, William Donaldson, using the pen name Henry Root, produced a few books of letters he had written to important people or companies and the replies he had gotten. He wrote outlandish and silly suggestions, and it was funny to read the replies back, most of which took his letters seriously, which made them all the funnier. It was, however, a little mean; the respondents were probably in their respective public relations departments and had to take Root's inquiries seriously at the risk of offending a customer. Such tricking of well-meaning clerks was thus morally questionable, but no one ought to fret over the same sorts of tricks being played now thirty years later on e-mail spammers, who deserve to be the butt of any pranks anyone on the internet can devise. Scotsman Bob Servant is just the prankster for the job, and in _Delete This at Your Peril: One Man's Hilarious Exchanges with Internet Spammers_ (Skyhorse Publishing) he has presented to us eight of his recent skirmishes, e-mails back and forth that confuse, anger, and waste the time of the spammers who have attempted to get his money. Servant seems to be, in the tradition of Henry Root, a pseudonymic creation of Neil Forsyth, who has written the introduction to the book describing the author. Forsyth explains that Bob Servant lives in the Dundee suburb of Broughty Ferry and is "a former window cleaner and cheeseburger magnate" who pals around with Tommy Peanuts, Chappy Williams, and Frank Theplank ("Frank the Plank"), who are sometimes pulled into the e-mail action transcribed here. Servant's book is laugh-out-loud funny, as he takes his new e-pals on aberrant and bizarre twists of correspondence, and anyone who hates spam will find his efforts not just amusing but inspiring.

The title of the book comes from a 419 scammer who sent his first e-mail with that line as the subject. The mail was from "His Royal Highnest Jack Thomson" whose father "King Arawi of tribal land" was poisoned for his wealth, which his Highnest is ready to share with Bob Servant at the rate of 25%. "Good morning your Majesty," comes Bob's terse reply, "I want 30% and not a penny less." By the time Bob has readjusted his desire up to 40%, he is also requesting to be paid in lions, as cash is too dangerous, and helpfully suggests to his new friend Jack that Frank the Plank once saw a talking lion on the television, and could Jack get one of those? Jack says one of the lions talks a little, whereupon Bob pounces, "I'm not sure about a lion that only talks a little, I'd like one that isn't so shy, if possible?" Jack replies, "Now you are saying the lion has to talk? What is this madness? Send me the £1700 that we agreed imeediately." Bob is undeterred: "What does the lion say when it talks. I am just checking that it won't get me into any fights." After delaying a reply, Bob goes on to apologize, "Sorry about the delay. I was round at Frank's earlier and got stuck up a tree whilst chasing a snake, then fell off and banged my head on a chicken. You know what it's like." There are ten further volleys in this insane e-mail conversation before it ends, with no money going to Jack and no lions to Bob. The other exchanges collected here are just as silly. When his new Russian girlfriend expresses some doubts that he is being serious with her, he replies, "What kind of weirdo would spend all this time emailing you if they were not serious?"

Indeed. Weirdo or not, Bob Servant/ Neil Forsyth deserves our thanks for his efforts in the war against spam, and for making them available to us in this absurdly hilarious collection. If you hate spam, it will be all the funnier imagining the targets of Bob's furious nonsense scratching their heads at the meandering replies after their initial certainty that they have hooked a likely meal ticket. One final reply comes from Nigeria when it has eventually dawned on the spammer that no money is going to be forthcoming and a good deal of time has been spent reading nonsense: "YOU ARE A STUPID MAN". Not a chance of it; deranged, perhaps, but Bob Servant is far from stupid. It is a pleasure to see such hilarity marshaled against foes who so deserve it.

Every day
Jamming your In-Box
Is SPAM

This book
Is about one man
Who replied

Watch Bob
Spam the Spammers
For laughs


The paragraphs below use some of Bob's examples to give the reader a sense of this book, which is really quite clever if you like this sort of thing.

[Warning: Replying to spammers can cause spam mail to increase exponentially]


Greetings to you in the name of the Most High.

A business acquaintance of mine visited your fine country of Scotland recently and recommended you as a fine and honorable gentleman who can be entrusted with a matter of the highest confidentiality and importance.

He has assured me that you are an expert in business and trade, and that you may have purchased already four golden lions, two leopards and an alligator from the only son of His Excellency King Arawi of Togo. I hope that they are thriving and bringing you much joy.

First, I will introduce myself. I am a former citizen of a Soviet country, but through good fortune and most reputable mail order organization I was able to get married to a good man from Nigeria, who owns both a textile company and a pottery barn. I also obtained for myself a PhD doctorate in Business and Finance through correspondence with major unaccredited university in the United American States.

I am sad to say that my husband is now late due to assassination by his competitors, and I am left alone with his business affairs to handle. I will also tell you that due to his relatives in the government, my husband has been able to save a lot of money which is in an account in my name, and I trust you to keep this information in confidence. My friend Bob, I am a beautiful woman of only 25 years, and I am unable to do business here with the men in Nigeria. My late husband's lawyer cannot be trusted with such matters, and I am looking to you to help me transfer 32 million Sterling pounds to Scotland, where I understand you own a Cheeseburger Business and an African Café.

I would like for us to get better acquainted and maybe you would like to become my husband. I can cook genuine African dishes, especially yam potage, Isi Ewu and Afang soup, which I am sure your customers will enjoy. We can achieve many great things together, you and I.

My dear Bob, I am so excited about this venture between us that I can hardly wait for your soonest reply. Please also send me your photo and the name of your bank and account number so I can begin preparing to transfer the money.



Modesta Spamminovitch-Upayme



This is a quick and funny read, and heartily recommended to anyone who has e-mail.




Amanda Richards, July 19, 2008

With the internet age has come all kinds of wonderful new convinces we now rely on every day. But with every plus comes a minus, and for most of us that minus is spam. Every morning, I hate wading through the massive amount of e-mails I get that I'm not even interested in reading.

One man decided to have some fun, however. And we get to share that fun because of this book. "Bob Servant" (and the observant person will pick up on that name faster than I did) decided to reply to some of his spam and see how long he could drag out the exchanges without the other side catching on or giving up. Here in, we get eight such exchanges and the results are hilarious.

Most of these e-mails start out all too familiar. There's the African native who needs Bob to get money out of the country. Theirs the Chinese company looking for a local person in Scotland to help with local payments. And there's Alexandria, who is more interested in Scottish men than her native Russians.

But what follows is anything but routine. It's hard to describe just how great this book because half the fun is watching how the events unfold. Twice, Bob turns a job offer into a potential job for the spammer when he pretends to be interested in buying a painting or a bunch of pots.

But my favorite exchanges cross the line into the absurd. Some of these involve wild animals and the postman. But that's all I'm going to say. Well, that and it reveals just how desperate the criminal spammers are to get the information they need. They are certainly persistent. And rather stupid themselves.

I've got to give the author credit. He has created a great world you real get involved in. In each exchange we get to see a different side of Bob and his friends. They provide half the fun.

While most of these exchanges are wonderful, I did think a couple went on too long. And they weren't quite the mostly clean stuff I normally enjoy reading. But that didn't dampen my enjoyment for long.

Ironically enough, I got this book because I replied to a spam e-mail from the author. And I'm glad I did. If you need a release from the constant attack of spam, this book is perfect for you.

Bob Servant, Delete This at Your Peril: One Man's Hilarious Exchanges with Internet Spammers (Skyhorse Publishing, 2008)

One of my rules of thumb is to take books whose subtitles contain value judgments with a grain of salt. The hilarious is never as hilarious as one would expect from the book's flashy title. I am happy to report that Delete This at Your Peril is that rara-est of avis-es: an exception to the rule. This slim book, which is composed almost completely of the promised email exchanges (with some footnoting from Neil Forsyth, author of Other Peoples' Money, who helped Bob whip the book into shape-- the footnotes are sometimes just as funny), is often the kind of laugh-out-loud gigglefest that will cause people to look askance at you on the bus. In each of the eight episodes here, Servant starts out by responding to a spammer as if he's seriously interested, then gets more and more absurd in his emails until they finally get frustrated and blow up at him. It's a wonderful hobby, and more people should do things like this-- and then write books about them. I have now become a huge Bob Servant fan, and as soon as he gives me his bank account details, I'll tell the world so. ****

A blurb on the cover from "MAXIM" exclaims "GENIUS! Highly entertaining and brilliantly deranged." I wouldn't go that far with the genius and brilliant part, but "Delete This at Your Peril" IS very funny and a bit deranged. I read the entire book in less than an hour, and although Servant is as long-winded at times as he is weird, I had some real laugh out loud moments.

The question is, does "Bob Servant," putative author of this humor opus that makes fun of Internet spammers and scammers, really exist? Or is he the bizarre creation of "editor" Neil Forsyth who holds the copyright to the book?

Not that it matters. What Bob Servant (or Neil Forsyth) does--and this has been done before, see, for example, Black Hat: Misfits, Criminals, and Spammers in the Internet Age (2004) by John Biggs--is play along with the spammers as though he is some unsophisticated rube who is falling for the con. What makes the book so funny is how Servant is able to turn the tables on the 419 scam masters from Nigeria and elsewhere and rope them into a lengthy and fruitless email correspondence, while holding out the carrot of his actually going to the bank. Servant piles it on relentlessly with misdirections and pratfalls among and with his ne'er-do-well friends and acquaintances in Broughty Ferry, Scotland.

In the first chapter, there is a certain "His Royal Highnest, [sic] Jack Thompson...the only son of late King Arawi of tribal land" who is seeking "a foreign partner" to transfer "$75m" to, "for investment," to whom he will pay 20% of the proceeds.

Bob Servant fires back with "Good morning your Majesty, I want 30%, and not a penny less."

After a bit of pulling line, Servant declares that he wants the money in lions, and he wants pictures of the lions. Thompson sends him a photo of four identical gold lions, but Servant is not satisfied. He writes, "There appears to have been a slight misunderstanding my friend, I was expecting four live lions, not gold ones."

So Jack Thompson replies, "I am buying four male lions from my friends private zoo and he has also arranged for shipment to Scotland." Thompson attaches a photo of a lion! But this isn't enough. Servant wants the lions to be able to talk. After some discussion of what the lions might be able to say, Thompson assures Servant that one of the lions can talk. Meanwhile Servant is pretending to get the funds ready to send via Western Union to Thompson. But then Servant decides he (and his buddy "Frank Theplank") also want "2 leopards, 1 elephant, 1 alligator, 2 parrots, 1 hedgehog."

At some point Thompson begins to shout: "BOB LETS GO STRAIGHT TO THE POINT. THE LIONS AND LEOPARDS ARE HERE WITH ME AT THE BACK OF MY HOUSE THEY ARE FRIENDLY AND ONE OF THE LION TALKS. BOB SEND ME THE £1700 SO I CAN COLLECT THAT MONEY AND SHIP THEM TO YOU."

Bob Servant replies by asking "What are the names of the lions?" and "What does the lion say when it talks? The bank is preparing me some forms."

To a Russian babe named Alexandra who wants to find a husband, Servant writes, "What a fantastic photo. My God, what a pair of bazookas..." She responds in part with "I do not like Russian men, their attitude to women. I want to love and be loved. Unfortunately, I have not found that in the country. I am gentle women but I am a tiger when I am in love!"

At length Servant sends Alexandra a photo of himself holding a very large, bloated carp. (Well, not himself but some old guy, whom Alex deigns to find interesting, although I don't think she got the symbolic intent of the caught fish.) Bob regales her with tales of life at Broughty Ferry with his buds, Chappy Williams and the regulars at Stewpot's Bar. And on and on and on. Finally in utter frustration (ha, ha, ha) Alexander fumes, "F-you!. To me has bothered to read your delirium."

Ah, such sweet revenge! Bob Servant has done a right bloody good turn for all of us in keeping these con artists at bay and wasting their time.

There are seven more tales in the book. One wishes there were a few more. Bottom line on the old laugh-o-meter: five stars.