Tutorials Books

LOVE the book, I bought a textbook for 5$ and it was in perfect condition!! I LOVE you guys xoxoxox

Absolutely horrible. Book was not as described. Seller stated it was in good condition with highlighting. Shipping was slow, the books binding was completely broken, pages were taped in, some missing, condition was very poor. I contacted the seller to communicate and try to work something out, I never heard back from the seller.

Lightening fast delivery. Great condition on this book. Older edition but still simular to the current 9th ed. Thanks for making this a pain free experience.

I bought this book brand new for $75 less then my school was selling it for. It came in Perfect condtion. I could not be more pleased.
Kathryn

I thought i was getting the paperback version of microbiology. I got the paperback but it was an international version that was illegal to be sold in the United States. I will never buy from this vendor again and if you want what you pay for you wouldn't either. Hopefully it wont be that different from the original version in content.

This is an ok book. This is a good entry level book, the code examples and topics are definitely for the beginner. The problem I have is with the books title, I would expect this book to be about more advanced topics than it really is.

This is typical of many of the first books regarding asp.net, to many subject areas and therefore not a significant amount of depth in any area.

You must have it on top of your desktop... It will HELP you when you most need it.

It is an excellent book. Especially I like the way the authors teach. For a task, first it uses ASP 3.0 to show you how it works and then ASP.NET. It explains the differences between the classical ASP and the ASP.net, why the ASP.net is better. If you use ADO.net, you can't avoid using the namespaces "System.Data.SqlClient" and "System.Data.Oledb", the methods "ExecuteReader()" and "ExecuteNonQuery()". The author gives explanations in an extremely clear way. It tells you what they are, what differences between the two and when to use them. All the ADO examples are made by the both namespaces. It is so clear, there are no nonsense words. Another review mentioned already for another good thing is the Security. I haven't seen any other books to do so. If you are like me - want answers quickly and clearly. You got the right book. Highly recommend!!!!!

Quite a good book, but really only for beginners, all articles, tips, etc. do not really go in depth, so if you have already a little bit experience with asp.net, buy another book ...

But maybe this is the problem with most of the books existing about asp.net at the moment ...

I have bought many books over the years to aid in my career as a computer programmer from all the major vendors (Microsoft, Wrox, Sams, Osborne etc..)

I have 3 SAMS books with a "blue cover" (like this one) and there is something about them.
They all FALL APART!!!
The other 2 I have like this (with the same problem) is: "Microsoft .NET XML web services" and "Building E-commerce sites with the .NET framework".
All three of the books that are made like this from SAMS have all the pages falling out of them, the cover falls off. I tried to glue them but it doesnt come out that great. Its very annoying to have a book you spent maybe 35-40 bucks for and to have the pages all falling off of it and trying to deal with it. It basically makes the reading experience unacceptable because you get tired of dealing with all the pages separating..

I tried to let Sams know about this issue, they need to fire their book binders, but its like pulling teeth getting any customer service from them.

The content is actually quite good, but I cannot recommend a book that falls apart as you read it (literally).

Sorry Sams but you need to address this. I have many other books and I have not ran across this issue but with these "blue-cover" Sams books. Stop trying to cut costs with these cheap book bindings and cheap covers.

This was a very useful book for teaching theory and harmony to adult students. It is clearly explained and contains vast amounts of information. Not for use with children under 12...too complicated for them.

This book is excellent, well organized and with very clear explanations. In addition, there are plenty of exercises that are crucial to actually learn the theory discussed. It gave me a solid background to learn more advanced material. The reason why I am not giving it five stars is that it lacks a CD and a subject index at the end. Mention is made to Ear Training, another book by the same authors that comes with two CDs. However, Harmony & Theory should come with a CD of its own so that one could listen to what is explained. Anyway, I highly recommend this book.

When I was young, I went to music school but I quit after 3 or 4 years. Now I wanted to learn everything back again, cause I forgot the most of it. This excellent book teaches everything you need to know about music. No matter what instrument you play, you can apply the theory to it (but I guess guitar and piano are the easiest). The first few hours I read this book, everything I ever forgot about music theory was clear again. If you wanna know music theory, then you should definitely buy this one! It's cheap and very helpful.

If you want to improve, you should be going through this book. It's a great way to completely solidify your foundation in music theory.

Well, it looked good when I ordered it, but don't try to actually learn anything from it.

I'm returning to music after many years away, and I really need some good material to refresh my memory and sweep out the cobwebs. This book couldn't teach a humming bird to hum, and in fact, when finished, the bird would be a completely confused and dysfunctional musician.

Example: Chapter 17, exercise 1. Gmi6/9 chord. The "answer" is G - D - Bb - E - A. Now, depending on the scale used, this might or might not be correct. Yes, if you are using the melodic minor scale, then E natural would be correct as the 6th. (And perhaps this is simple stuff for some, but for someone trying to re-learn this stuff, a bit of clarity goes a long way). Nowhere, that I could find, is it explained what scale is used to construct these chords.

In exercises like this, they often ask for the chord to be written in
"root" position. The answers are always confusing, and never match what my idea of "root" position is, which is fine, but again, NOWHERE in the book does it really explain what is expected when "root" position is requested. In the example above, for example, what would be wrong with G - Bb - D - E - A ? There is nothing wrong with moving the third above the fifth, but is having the third in between the first and fifth a wrong answer, or is it a matter of the desired voicing that determines where you put the third? (as I think it should be). Again, no explanation.

This is just a couple of examples, but there are many more. The whole presentation of the information is very often confusing and anything but straight-forward. Music is just not this difficult, and perhaps if the book included a live-in professor to explain it (and even then I'm sure the professor would replace this book), I would walk away from it.

It's about as clear as mud - and especially if you want to study by yourself.

I can't yet recommend an alternative becuase I'm still looking, but when I find one, I'll let ya'll know.

Don't bother!

I bought this book after reading a lot of positive reviews... and i'm a little disappointed.

Minuses of this books are:
- language - it's very poor - i guess the author is not a native speaker; the content of the book may be very unclear for people who don't speak english in everyday life (as i do),
- unclear explanations - a lot of easy things are explained in an obscure way. In addition some parts of the book just seem to be incomplete - sometimes you just want to grasp something and you can't because there is lack of information - you turn the page in hope you'll find what you think should be there and... there's entirely new subject there,
- some examples are not printed in the book so if you want to read them you have to turn on you computer - i don't like it.

Pluses:
- nice layout - chapters are arranged in a logical and intuitive way, the most simple and general ones at the beginning, the most exceptional at the end. I suppose it will be fast and easy to find something if there is a need to recall it,
- a lot of simple examples - even if you are not able to understand the explanations of some subjects you can easily grasp them by reading the examples.

In general - this book can help you learn Struts but you have to read it very patiently and carefully. Don't buy this book if you think you have a better choice.

The book is good but I wish the author took time to go through the details, there are so many gaps that I needed to look elswhere to understand. It sees the author was in a hurry and that's not good - I found the examples had many errors, for instance, I could not get the struts to display, the author never took time to explained them properly. Too expensive for a tiny content.

I found this book very clear and concise. I used it as a reference in my work and it has been of a great help to me.
I highly recommend it!!

In my opinion, there aren't many great books out there on learning struts, that will also get you into some of the real life details and reality of struts programming. I went back in forth between this book and Ted Husted's Struts In Action (which is better but a few years older so not quite as up to date). Between the 2 of these books I've been able to get a fairly good understanding of struts and tiles.

I bought this book based on the very positive reviews on this forum and I was not disappointed. I read the entire book from cover to cover and tested the sample code that can be downloaded from the publisher's website. With the exception of a single chapter (13), I was able to run all applications successfully with Tomcat. Note that there are a few errors in the code (not syntax but logical, so you don't see the desired result on the web page once you hit submit on the initial page) but these can easily be fixed. This book has a load of valuable information on Struts. While you do need patience to read it, it does not get boring at any point. Well deserved kudos to the author for doing an excellent job explaining Struts. Highly recommended to any one wanting to learn from Struts. If you have no experience with J2EE but you have experience with Java, do not start with this book as it might get too hard at times. Instead start with some thing more basic such as Head First Servlet and JSP and then move on to this book. If you already know JSPs and Servlets, then this book will teach you pretty much everything you need to know about Struts.

This book is a bit didactic in its approach, and it reads as if it's aimed mainly at musicians who play symphonic instruments (I play electric bass guitar). Nonetheless, it provides a number of tips to help make your practice regimen more efficient, less effortful, and more productive - including breathing and stretching exercises, and mental methods designed to help you approach practicing with a new and revitalized mindset.

jeffbrownlegal@gmail.com

There are some incredibly useful insights into making music. Madeline Bruser suggests getting into a routine and following it daily. Much emphasis is on avoiding practice-related physical and mental injuries. For serious musicians, it eliminates much of the angst surrounding each practice session and brings back the joy that ultimately is the fundamental reason to play.

Another book to check out: Effortless Mastery: Liberating the Master Musician Within by Kenny Werner (an absolutely killer jazz pianist)

on amazon and elsewhere: [...]

This book is written to help you improve your ideas and mental outlook toward daily practice.. Ms. Bruser goes into the importance of technical correctness, including posture and movement, but she really inspires us to approach practice with a different attitude. I play the tuba as an amateur. After reading her book, I began to practice more, but I actually may spend less time playing notes. Musicianship implies technical expertise, but this book is really written to help you improve your artistic musicality and learn to make music with passion, intelligence and sensitivity. To do this, you must approach each practice much like a performance, or a master class with you as your own clinician. Practice is not just face time with your instrument..

Inspiring, readable book with wonderful advice for improving musical performance through physical, intellectual, and emotional exercises. Visualizations are simple and effective. I'm recommending it to all my serious piano students.

Madeline Bruser's compendium on her Art of Practicing seminars will prove valuable to all musicians who feel that the physical/mental stresses of life affect their playing. For a long time I suffered from a sore left wrist after a several hour practice session at the piano which was a result of built up tension and using inefficient motions. After correcting the height of my bench (to be higher) and studying Bruser's text (specifically the chapters on stretching/basic mechanics) I have begun to learn to play in a much more relaxed and efficient manner. Her book is inspiring and full of radiant ideas. I would recommend it to anyone who feels that their practicing has become stagnant or whose expression and speed is being held back by forceful and tense playing.

So, I got a ton out of this book, as the last real programming I did was back in about 1992, in Pascal. Lots and lots have changed, and Python's a real easy transition to a modern language.

One thing that could be improved about the book would be to make it IDE-specific, and teach how to use Eclipse or X-Code to develop a complete application, instead of focusing on the scripting.

But that's minor - the book is a great (re-)introduction to getting a computer to do what you want it to do.

I'm biased, I wrote it! But Amazon[.com] keep asking me to review it so here I go... It does have exercises, albeit hidden in the text rather than listed at the end of each chapter. That's because it was never intended to be a classtoom text but for enthusiastic amateurs. The best way to learn is type in the examples, then modify them. There are, sadly, a lot of minor typos, fixes are posted on the web site.
Enjoy.

In some ways this book seems like it's in search of an identity. It's obviously intended for the novice, and its short chapters and general topics reflect that, but many things are left unexplained or explained poorly, such as the chapter on object-oriented programming. This book definitely fills a niche for introductory python books for an audience with no programming experience, and my frequent frustration has not necessarily outweighed the value of the short chapters on diverse topics. Part of the problem may be that Amazon sold me a copy of the 1st edition rather than the 2nd. I'm going to finish the book soon and print out the Python tutorial to see if that can answer some unanswered questions.

I am a graduate student with over 10 programming languages in my toolbox. Python is by far the easiest to learn, easiest to debug and work with. My gratitude goes out to the developers of this powerful language.

This is an extremely well written with very concise explanations and a great amount of humor added in (look at the Spam class in chapter 6!).

This could be the start of a new British Invasion, except this time with the Knights who say "NI".

Beginning programmers and experienced developers will frequently reference this book.

As a slightly experienced C programmer and a somewhat experienced Python programmer, I found this book useful. It described Python's features and at the same time put them in the larger context of what modern computer languages do. Like several other reviewers, however, I think the level of this book would be far too intimidating for someone learning to program for the first time. Also, for me the final section of the book ("Case Studies") delved too deeply into object-oriented and GUI issues not directly relevant to my work, and I put the book aside at that point. Bottom line: a nice recap but not really for the novice.

I have been trying to use all the resources - bundled manuals, vtc, lynda.com since 2005 to learn filemaker/a database from scratch. I chose filemaker for 2 reasons - ease of use and support for OS X technologies like Applescript. I found it a bit challenging to understand concepts in Database design but with this one book things were more clear than ever before. I have finished this book and am planning to buy the latest version for filemaker 9.

If you are a newbie in database programming and need to get a well explained book to help you through building your own database. Get this book. It is well worth it.

BTW thanks for this book, I have a fully functional database to manage information related to my studies and research.

This manual has everything I ever needed to know about Filemaker in it. Easy to understand and a great tool for those who are new to Filemaker (as well as people who aren't so new, but don't know it all).

Why software cannot come with good manuals anymore is a mystery. This is exactly as advertised, the missing manual. Some other books will show you how to build bigger, more sophisticated solutions, but this one covers every aspect of how Filemaker works, which is what a manual should do.

Oh, and by the way, Filemaker is an amazing, underappreciated tool which helps manage a mailing list or build an entire database system. You cannot go wrong with it.

I hesitate to write negative reviews because I always suspect that the errors I find are my own misunderstandings. In this case I felt COMPELLED to write one. I bought this book wanting it to be great and having high expectations based on the reviews I read. I doubt many of the reviewers OR the EDITORS read this book very closely. There are so many mistakes (small and large) and examples which flat out DON'T WORK, that the book has almost driven me mad. I've wasted HOURS trying to get things to work the way the authors described. The errata posted on the oreilly.com site lists maybe 1/4 of the errors. There is ONE posted review on Amazon.com which took notice of this, but all of the others seem to miss it completely. Kudos to Raymond Smith!

Two perfect examples (in case you want to save yourself a few hours of struggle):

1. The Invoice Finder tutorial on page 372 simply doesn't work using the "minimum amount" field as they describe. It will work using the date range criterion, but when you add the minimum amount match, it fails. I built a file following along with the text and thought it was MY file that was broken. Then I tried the files supplied with the Missing Manual "CD". The authors' files don't work either. They SEEM to work with the data already in them, but if you add an invoice, it doesn't work. And if you simply open the "options..." definition of the Total Due field on the "Invoices" table, then OK the dialog box, all the existing data fails as well. It must be some kind of indexing problem, but the fact that it slipped by the editors is almost impossible to believe.

2. The Repeating Fields for Multiple Results on page 417 is totally wrong. The formula they supply will not work at all, and in fact, unless the "Price" field is a repeating field as well (which they don't mention at all), you can't do any calculations using the "Get(CalculationRepetitionNumber)" that will work the way they describe. Not to mention the fact that in the second mention of the calculation they call it "Get(CalculatedRepetitionNumber)" which is wrong and won't even take. The text suggests that you "test this calculation with a few numbers", but I doubt that any editor tried it. AND THIS IS LISTED IN A POWER USERS' CLINIC.

I don't know if this is an author problem or an editor problem, but either way, it is a REAL problem for readers.

What a disappointment and a waste of many hours... Don't listen to the majority of reviews on this book. They have clearly come from people who read it but were not actually trying to learn from the DOING the examples in the text. The book is written in a friendly easy style, but there are too many errors to make it valuable. And it's been out for TOO long for these things not to be listed in an available errata or supplement.

I was disappointed by this book, especially considering the high reviews that it has received. I would consider myself an advanced computer user and intermediate in working with programs like FileMaker. (Though database programs I have used before have had less features). This book uses an example of building a database throughout the book that involves customers and invoices, etc. The problem is that in later chapters the ongoing example database begins to interfere with the presentation of the material. If you have the time to work through the example database in detail (for a few hundred pages+) you might have a decent understanding of Filemaker-at least within the context of the example. Or if you have that kind of time, you might just want to take a class. I started with the beginning of the book when I began to build my database (which does not involve customers and invoices). After doing the initial planning/building work, I tried to skip to other parts of the book that were relevent to what I needed to do. Unfortunately, most of the descriptions are based on the original example--this made it difficult to apply the information to my own project. If the functions had been just described clearly at the beginning of each section, without relying on the example it would have been much better. There are a few mistakes as well-small but they cost me a bit of time. E.g., the book states that the "missing fields" problem can be fixed by changing a setting in preferences. This is not necessarily right--in my case it turned out to be a layout issue. I've had better results with trial and error than on relying on most of the book. Also, the language is not as clear as it could be, and precision is important in a book like this, especially for those of us who are not advanced users. Most importantly, I would have preferred a book with more straightforward descriptions and instructions.

When I read Abby Whiteside' s book and applied her ideas in my pianoplaying,after some experimenting, I noticed an enormous improvement in physical comfort,ease at the keyboard and quality of tone. I am very gratefull to her! In my opinion she has discovered the secret of the piano technique - a controversial subject which has been investigated for over 300 years now - as you can see it in the playing of the great artists.
BTW, she is not the only one who had these ideas, Tony Bandmann had similar views which she wrote down in her book " Die Gewichtstechnik des Klavierspiels" (she recommends the weight of the arm to be " thrown")
Although A.W. is repetitive in her book, her view can' t be repeated enough to convince pianists who have problems with their technique to try her ideas.
Don' t mind her quality of writing, could be better, but I can follow her very well, it' s the idea that is important ! The quality of writing is secondary is such a book.

I enjoyed Abby Whiteside's approach to piano playing. I'm amazed she's thought of as a heretic when she's just trying to show an approach that brings elegance and ease to more difficult piano passages. I like the comparisons of piano playing to ice skating but snow skiing would have been much more appropriate in my case. The pianist is really more a magician, consistently finding new ways to make the impossible seem possible, who needs to inspire and awe the audience.

This book must be put into practice to understand how significantly valuable and important her teaching was. Knowing several students who studied with her and concert pianists who adopted the technique and are highly well-known and regarded as top performers, this book has valuable information. Unfortunately, it is very difficult to describe physiological movement in a book. It's much easier to translate it through one-on-one contact or visual exposure.

This book is densely written, somewhat repetitive, and could use some editing, but is a must-read for the piano student. Whiteside has some unconventional advice, such as throwing away the Hanon and Czerny exercises and de-emphasizing fingering, an idea that deserves further discussion. She had very advanced students who may have gone through years of training in finger exercises, and thus, she may de-emphasize them too much. However, in my experience, it is absolutely important to understand how the pianist's entire body works together to produce music at the keyboard, and it is nearly impossible to play quickly and fluidly if the hand is clenched and taut. Whiteside emphasizes the importance of deriving power from the torso (as translated to the keys through the arms and fingers), and keeping the hand relaxed and supple (after all, you don't want to injure yourself the way Robert Schumann did in trying to build finger strength). The first chapter of the book discusses rhythm, which she considers all-important to beautiful performance: "Rhythm is the core of the blended activity of the entire playing mechanism." In this respect, she praises jazz artists who experience their music more directly (having "tune in their ears and a rhythm in their bodies") than do classical artists who learn music from the written score. There are many more worthwhile ideas in this book, covering everything from basic technique to memorization to playing arpeggios and trills.

...not practising the piano! I've had this book about a year. When I first read it, I thought it was gibberish and found it difficult to understand exactly what Abby was talking about. However, re-reading it recently has been nothing short of a revelation. So much so that I read it three times, each time getting more out of it.

I'll admit that Abby wasn't the greatest writer. But I don't share the opinion that she uses unreadable English. When you 'get it', everything becomes clear and makes perfect sense. Imagine trying to explain how to run to a child who can barely walk. It may be confusing that she used the expression 'top arm' to mean 'upper arm', for example, at least so it seems. But on a careful reading I don't think she meant merely 'upper arm' at all. I think she meant the upper arm AND the shoulder joint. Big difference.

Having read almost all the books on technique I can only judge Abby's ideas by the results they produce, and in the space of only a couple of weeks of carefully applying her ideas, my playing has become freer, with much less effort and tension and consequently very much improved. In other words, more musical, which, after all, is what it's all about. In the context of her teaching the supposed heresy of dumping meaningless scales and technical dross such as Hanon make complete sense - which is a major liberation in itself!

In my experience, great pianists can be appallingly bad at attempting to describe how they do what they do (re the note on Godowsky below). Their playing is so far above anything to do with 'technique' that attempts at descriptions in layman's terms become reduced to the glaringly obvious, and even contradictory (The Dover books alluded to in another review are a case in point). Arthur Rubinstein once remarked that he hadn't a clue how he did what he did, and I can well believe him. As I said above, this is a book about actually playing, not practising, and as such is priceless. I'm left with the impression that Abby Whiteside may well have been a genius teacher, and I'm sure it would have been an amazing experience to have had some lessons with her. In any event, a huge debt of gratitude is owed to her for putting down these ideas by those of us who are searching to make the best of our talent and to do justice to the other geniuses whose works we try to bring to life - or in my case, since I'm a jazz pianist, to try to improvise as well as Bud Powell!

Some reviewers have entirely missed the point of this book, but it's their loss. Ultimately, this is a unique approach, deeply concerned with the beauty of music, self-expression, and communicating through the piano in the most efficient way. It's an awesome book and the only one on playing, as opposed to practising, that I'll keep. It would be an injustice not to read it carefully and then re-read it again and again.

I paid for fast shipping and it still took over a week wich is not what i paid for.

I bought Discrete Mathematics With Applications from Pigeons Books and I was very pleased. The book was in excellent condition, just as listed. It looked nearly new. The seller was very quick in returning my e-mails and was very truthful and informative about the product. He also worked well with my requests and shipping was very prompt. It was mailed the next day and I received the product within 5 days of purchase. Definitely recommend this seller and his products.

I have taken many courses in digital electronics and in programming so I know logic well. The author of this book explains logic from a complex mathematical standpoint. The author takes a very simple concept, (and I mean a VERY simple concept) and makes it difficult. The logical statements are neither presented in a standard logic format or in a standard programming format. The author creates her own "made up" format for every logical statement and makes a mess of the subject altogether. The book is terrible! I can not for the life of me understand why ANY professor would choose this book. It could only make teaching more difficult.

Very well written, in simple terms. I reccomend this to anyone returning to school to finish a degree or changing their career goals.

Hello all,

Just like many reviewers, I give this book 5 stars, why? First of all I am a senior
majoring CSE and I hate all college text books. This book is an exception. The first three chapters is introduction to logics nothing much. From chapter four on the good stuff starts, induction, set theory, recursion, representations, and more. The book has lots of examples and exercises, also the answers to selected exercise are on the back of the book, (not just answers also the work). Above all this book is really good but before you buy it hear this:


/***********************************************************************************
I wouldn't recommend that you buy this book why? Because the second edition
is same as this book, the only difference is the cover Image and the exercise
problems. So copy the homework problems from the copy at your college's library
and use the second edition as a reference. Also the second edition costs only $5.0
or less
**********************************************************************************/

Thank you and good luck

cheers

I t was an excellent purchase! I got it before what I expected and new!=)

I got the item about 10days after placing its order. The book came in condition describled. Good purchasing experience, however if it came a little earlier then would be great

As an undergraduate student, I found this text to give reasonable coverage in several areas- especially expectations based models and investment theory. The explanations are fairly clear, but not quite as intuitive as Mankiw which I often reviewed at the library before tests (had his principles text, perhaps this conditioned me in his parlance). Overall, the book is fairly comprehensive, but lacks clarity in certain respects. Teachers may want to offer some supplementary materials with more concrete explanations. Don't make us buy it though, this book costs enough as it is!

Excellent book very educational and particularly suitable for non economists.
Macroeconomics (4th Edition)

The book is generally a good text. However, I have a lot of problems with how illustration of ideas by calculus is handled. I find several inconsistencies which even my instructor have problems in explaining. I recommend it to the mathematically challenged person not to mathematical enthusiasts.