Software Books

This is a good tool for me in my intern life

The preceding guides have been my most important reference materials in my work in third world countries.

I will laugh, I will cry... I expect I will like it better than "Cats!"

I DON'T KNO

This is one of the most helpful medical texts ever published

I bought this for its worked examples in graphics, particularly projections and perspective transformations. It covers these topics throughly and clearly. The chapters on clipping to the view frustrum and transforming to the device coordinates were also excellent. The material on general graphics transformations was easy to follow. The appendices cover necessary parts of vector algebra and geometry. The level seems suited for a reader who has had undergraduate vectors and calculus classes. This book is complete, understandable and certainly a bargain compared to other texts costing 5 times as much

In the late 1980's I taught a computer science course in computer graphics and I used this book as the text. It was one of the most interesting courses I have ever taught, the students and I had a lot of fun. The action on the screen was slow and patience was required as we were running Turbo Pascal on IBM PC's.
Although it is now dated, this book was more than adequate for our needs. While it was abbreviated, the coverage was complete, well suited for a beginning course where the emphasis was on the mathematical foundations rather than the modern bells and whistles. Even today, if I were to offer a computer graphics course, I would consider using this book as a supplement, computer power may have advanced over the years, but the mathematics has stayed the same.

This book is a very handy guide to have while you are studying computer graphics. It explains a wide variety of topics in the field computer graphics as well as the math that is involved. However, this book is all concepts and math. You will not find much code in here, but rather a good review of the theory behind elementry computer graphics. I recommend this book to those taking an undergraduate course in computer graphics.

This excellent book enabled me to design my first graphics pipeline from scratch. Even though technologies like DirectX, OpenGL and Glide provide this all for you on a platter today; if you want to understand the maths that they all share at their core, this is the book !

Two things that you'll likely find in most computer graphics textbooks are:
1. A triple digit price tag
2. Disorganized and obfuscated algorithm details
This Schaum's outline is an excellent antidote to both of these problems. Besides its low price tag, it has a very clear presentation of the basics of computer graphics algorithms. It starts out talking about image representation including common color spaces. It gives a clear definition of dithering, halftone approximations, and error diffusion. Next comes a discussion of scan conversion, which is how to translate geometric figures into pixels. Chapters 4 and 5 discuss two-dimensional graphics and their transformations. This includes good discussions and examples on matrix transformations and how they can be chained together. Chapters 6 through 8 extend these concepts to three dimensions. Very detailed information is given on transformations, projections, and clipping in 3D. This includes a definition of a typical 3D graphics "pipeline", which is basically an assembly-line of computer graphics from object definition to display. Chapter 9 on geometric representations was not as good as the other chapters in this outline, since it didn't do a very good job of talking about such representations in greater than two dimensions which is necessary for the development of wireframe models. However, the last three chapters of the book on hidden surfaces, shading models, and ray tracing had very good examples and discussions that could lead to pseudocode. I would highly recommend this guide to anyone taking or planning to take a course on computer graphics as a good language-independent guide to the basic methods and algorithms of computer graphics programming.

I have borrowed this book from a friend, it is the best and I hope I will find it to buy :)

Lischner gets into areas of both Delphi 1.0x and 2.0x that are not usually seen. His understanding of the internals of the VCL and Delphi's Tools Interface make this book a must-have for any serious Delphi developer

Quite simply the best "techie" Delphi book I have seen. Covers 16 bit Delphi too. If you are serious about programming in Delphi, buy this book. Not recommended for Delphi beginners

Great book, a lot of hard to find information, the name secrets does not disappoint. A must have book if you want to know Delphi's inside working.

I read many books about Delphi programming. This one is the ONLY one I would recommend to understand WHAT IS Delphi.

A few years ago (I'm told) Bill Gates called all of the developers together and told them that the big thing it was necessary for Microsoft to do was to implement strong security systems in their mainstream products. I don't know if this is true, but the biggest changes in their 2003 series of products is greatly increased security emphasis.

Exchange Server is no exception. This book is oriented around how to get the most out of Exchange Server while protecting the security of the messaging system. It is written by a network security expert who worked closely with the Exchange Server development team. Published by Microsoft Press, this can be viewed as the definitive book on the subject.

Good book! I'm not an Exchange admin, but I need to understand what the issues are in Exchange and Outlook security. I found the book very helpful in a couple of ways:
* covers 5.5. and 2K, even though the title says 2003
* covers life cycle issues like archiving and compliance
* covers Active Directory and Certificate issues
I was impressed that the book managed to combine enough detail to be valuable to technical users, with clear enough descriptions of the issues to make sense to non-techies.

In today's environment of spam, virus, and bad things in general, knowing how to protect yourself is a very valuable commodity.
Paul has managed to condense everything you need down to a nutshell, okay, maybe more like an acorn tree. But it's all in there.
Chapter 20 should be a must-read for anyone in messaging. It goes over some of the legal aspects of you and your messaging system. Most administrators don't realize the possible litigation that they can get themselves into. And sure, your company will protect you. When it comes to a 10 million dollar lawsuit or an employee, who's going to get the shaft?!
Ever worry about what permissions have been set on something? Take a look at Appendix B for an in-depth guide.

I admit to a certain degree of bias, being that I'm the author and all, but this really *is* the only book that takes a comprehensive approach to every aspect of Exchange security. The book covers physical and operational security, patch management, end-to-end transport security using IPsec and TLS, client-to-client security with S/MIME, and even security issues related to mobile devices like BlackBerrys and Windows Mobile smartphones. Sample chapters are available from a variety of places, including the book's companion website at e2ksecurity.com.

If you're going to pick up a book on Microsoft Exchange Server security, this is *the* book for you. Great and comprehensive coverage on everything to do with Microsoft Exchange Server from one of the foremost Exchange Security experts in the industry. I highly recommend this book to anyone who is seriously interested in understanding what's entailed in Exchange-related security, including some ground-breaking content on compliance (Sarbanes-Oxley, HIPPA, SEC, etc.) and legislation pertaining to e-mail ... which alone is well worth the price of the book! Highly recommended!!

If your organization is facing the challenge of figuring out how to overcome Operating obstacles by leveraging the latest and greatest technology, then this book is for you. It truly helped me understand the strength of what SOA brings to the table, and how to wrap methodologies around it to really differentiate your business with speed and agility.

In this book, Dr. Khoshafian demonstrates his deep industry knowledge and expertise by not only illuminating the importance of SOA to today's business architecture but also by applying this expertise into actionable advice for the reader. Khoshafian helps the reader to understand the practical applications of various technologies while he explores the SOE. I would recommend this book to both business and IT for greater understanding of the issues impacting today's businesses.

The most pragmatic approach to BPM and SOA that's meaningful to an enterprise.

A must read if you want to avoid BPM or SOA becoming something a software vendor sells you and becomes shelf-ware.

Dr. Khoshafian shows just how important it is for organizations to have an effective gameplan with SOA and BPM, not to mention the many benefits one can reap from these valuable technologies. And he tells this in a way that is practical, understandable and yet still realistic. Service Oriented Enterprises is a must-read, whether you're from the IT or business side of the aisle.

Have you identified the human element of SOA within your organization? Service Oriented Enterprises provides an in-depth look at how SOAs are affecting various facets within the enterprise - both organizational AND cultural. Dr. Khoshafian has done a tremendous job making the argument that SOA is only part of the puzzle toward change and that the second major layer of SOEs, called service oriented business process integration, is key to success. I especially liked the ideas he presented on how service orientation can narrow the gap between business and IT, as I can implement some of those ideas at my company. This book will be helpful to both the IT-focused people within your organization as well as the business people who are actively trying to lead in today's service-computing world.

What use is a Web site if no one uses it? Too many Web design books and development tools provide cut-and-paste solutions to design problems without providing the developer with an understanding of fundamental principles.

This is where Dr. Badre's book enters the scene - in a big way. "Shaping Web Usability" does just what it promises, providing clear, cogent instruction in designing sites for people in all their needs and diversity. It promotes a robust methodology for Web design that can adapt to user requirements without sacrificing logic or cohesion. Badre's process also helps one communicate methodology and design issues to others. This book gave me the grounding I needed to explain to clients exactly why I had made a particular design decision and how it would benefit the site users.

If you are concerned about your site being used once it is published (and who isn't?), take a look at this book. It can't make your Web site for you, but it can help you identify and satisfy an online audience better than any other book on the shelves.

Dr. Badre has written an interesting work which thoughtfully examines two important concepts: genre and cultural context. In addition to plenty of solid HCI theory and empirical data, Dr. Badre provides clear examples of how close attention to the genre of one's site and the cultural context in which it is most likely to be viewed will provide a more useful and pleasurable experience for the user. With these simple and powerful concepts, Dr. Badre provides some excellent guidance to new and experienced website designers.

This book is unlike many other web usability books. It goes well beyond the cookie-cutter guidelines for fast web usability, and gets the reader thinking deeply about contexts of web usability. It focuses on the real important issues and concepts. However, it is not an abstract or theoretical book. The author illustrates the concepts and explanations with numerous real examples from the web. This book is a must read for web designers, information architects, and web usability engineers.

This is a serious work on Web Usability that attempts to define in detail the user context and to construct a user-centred methodology based on that context.

There are so many books on web usability these days and most of them are about web pages first and people second. Doctor Badre's approach, though, is firmly grounded on the human side of HCI and some of the material in this book is outstanding.

The chapter on "Older Adults" is a great example. Badre is fastidious enough to consider the different cognitive needs of people in this group and to consider the implications of those needs for the designer. Elsewhere he considers personality variations, the role of affect (or emotion), and many other individual differences.

In contrast, however, Badre has a strong leaning toward standards and predictability, which seems to contradict his comments elsewhere. Having identified the myriad reasons the web audience is uniquely diverse he nevertheless finds traditional HCI evaluation techniques attractive, and sometimes fails to bite the bullet.

For example, Badre insists that "Testing conditions ... should approximate the actual situation in which ...visitors are likely to find themselves." Yet he does not display any distrust of laboratory testing, questionnaires and all the artificialities of user testing that would suggest a more ethnographic approach.

The material on the test methodology is therefore somewhat weaker, but does not detract in any way from the main part of the book, where Dr Badre's experience in Human Factors allows him to illustrate with considerable skill the way design features can be adjusted to meet the cognitive abilities of real human users. In this arena, Dr. Badre is a leading authority, and it is for this, the main body of the work, that I would strongly recommend this book to web and usability professionals alike.

Clear and rigorous, Dr. Badre's book is an essential resource for the serious Web practitioner. Going beyond the usual lists of do's and don'ts, he gives the reader a strong grounding in the field of usability and how its principles apply to the Web. Web designers and implementors who read Shaping Web Usability will not only know what to do, but why -- so they can respond successfully to new and complex design challenges.

The author of this book has shown us so much about how to use the taking and sharing of digital photos to express yourself that I feel really grateful to him for having written it. The ideas in the book are wonderfully creative, and it's a beautiful book to boot. I intend to give this book as a gift to my daughter for her birthday to accompany the new digital camera her dad and I bought her.

I was able to get an advance copy of Dane's book and am so glad that I did. There are so many books out there on digital photography, mostly how-to's that are basic. What Dane does in this book is attack the issue from a completley different point of view - how to use the images to tell a story.

I especially appreciate his very tactical advice on how to start the process - what picture to use first, how to setup a sequence that conveys a mood and character to the story line.

I really liked how he used real examples (his daughter) which helped take this practical book out of the theoretical and into the real world of dealing with images.

My girlfriends father relies on me for technical support for his camera (which we got him for Christmas). So for Fathers Day we bought him his own copy of Dane's book - and a copy of Microsoft's Digital Image Suite software.

He is loving both!

mark sylvester

This is a really amazing book that goes beyond the technical aspects of digital photography (those books are a dime a dozen) and explores the issues of organizing, archiving, and ultimately telling stories with your digital photographs.

I believe this book will have a lasting impact on the world of photography because it helps the reader capture better pictures, streamline the tedious parts of digital photography, and how to tell effective digital stories with photos. Stories and memories, isn't that's why we take photos anyway?

It's also a beautifully designed book that I'll keep just for the design even after I've absorbed all the content.

I just book the Italian version of this book which has just been published here.

This simple and lovely book is not about how to use my new sophisticated digital camera (I will have to study the manual) but has encouraged me to free my amateur photographer mind from concepts carved there like "don't shoot until you are pretty sure the scene is good enough and that film is not wasted". It didn't teach me either how to download the photos to my Mac but certainly has broaden my world and taught me creative ways of sharing my good memories with my Spanish family.

The photos are really nice and support very well all the concepts. The language is clear and so are the explanations even if I doubt I will use the Microsoft products mentioned in the book. I am sure I will be able to "replicate" them with my Mac. To cut a long story short: as the proverb says "it hasn't give me the fish but has given me the knowledge to catch fish by myself".

This book is about capturing experiences, not just photos. It is an excellent read for any beginner (or digital camera buff) interested in learning not just how to take digital images, but how to take and create photos that tell a story. I was originally looking for a book to help me expand the way I use my digital camera when I came across "Sharing Digital Photos". What an unexpected surprise. As soon as I went through it, I knew it was a great find and was amazed at the breadth of possibilities that exist.

Dane covers a multitude of options available for the digital photographer, and covers various methods, programs, and techniques for sharing, managing, and tweaking images. The clarity and simplicity with which the book delivers this information is refreshing. He delivers clear descriptions of the mythology and uses personal family experiences as examples. These personal stories form the heart of the book and make the concepts easy to understand. Each chapter continuously serves up an honest and straightforward delivery that helps create a solid perspective on the different techniques.

Access to website links allow you to experience the solutions and further demonstrate the possibilities. He uses "easy to follow" language, plenty of photo examples, and well laid out graphics in various combinations to effectively communicate the essential message in each lesson while encouraging you to dive in along the way. This book has changed my paradigm concerning digital images where they no longer sit idly in my hard disk! Happy story telling...

I feel the addition of a CD with examples and demos of the software programs would have made the experience even more enjoyable.

Though in places a bit heavy-going for a non-specialist readership, SDIMM is a first-rate introduction to the information sciences. As an overview of state-of-the-art technology, SDIMM may be dated, but the problems it describes are timeless -- and fascinating. Anyone interested in how information is measured, moved, and translated to the media of minds/brains and computers, would do well to read this exceptional book. Here's hoping RL makes future contributions to the popular science literature.

This is a popular computer book about data compression and data representation. It was first published way back in 1989 and now eleven years later it's not in the slightest bit out of date. How many popular computer books can you say that about?

Althought this book has been written 20 years ago, it is still very
fresh today. The bandwidth with which we communicate, and
our capacity for storing information have increased in the intervening
years, however the fundamental questions that are addressed here
have not changed much. In the first couple chapters, the author starts
with a very precise definition of what information and capacity mean.
This part is merely 50 pages in length, but makes this book worth
owning on its own - I wish somebody gave it to me when I was
learning about information theory.

The remainder of the book is devided into chapters dealing
with different aspects of information: text, speech and pictures,
including problems associated with their storage, processing
and intrepretation. The presentation is insightful, informative,
and, given that it is addressed to an audience of non-mathematicians,
surprisingly precise. Each chapter ends with a ligh-hearted essay,
some of which I found to be deceptively deep and insightful.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book. I'd strongly recommend this book for anybody interested in how things have evolved in computing. Great insight into stuff we take for granted like compression algorithms, error correction.

I read this book over and over and love it every time. It covers topics that I teach from the standard texts, but it covers them in a way that makes it all make so much more sense to my students. This truly is an amazing book!

I picked up this book because we recently started a project where management uses the term "SCM" a lot, and I had no real idea of what that means. This book provides a great overview of the ideas and genesis of SCM, and why it is useful. It also provided lots of detail and examples about the ideas presented to really cement them in my mind, and translate them to activities that we currently do. I can have an intelligent, scientific conversation about SCM now, which is exactly what I was looking for. This book is really excellent.

The book is an excellent addition to your SCM library. This should be you first read if your just beginning in Software Configuration Management. The author covers the descipline well in this easy to read edition.

This book is the second edition A Guide to Software Configuration Management (ISBN: 1580530729). The change in name is a bit confusing, but the author explains why the name was changed--due to the change in scope, magnitude and coverage of the book.

Apart from the changed title, the most endearing features of the first edition--simple language, clear explanation of the fundamentals and lucid treatment of advanced topics--are still there. The first edition was a book that would get you as quickly up-to-speed on the basics and key issues. The second edition builds on the first edition. The language and writing style is still simple and easy to read. The fundamental concepts and the basic SCM functions are explained in clear and jargon free language. All the good aspects of the first edition are retained. But the chapters are revised, updated and enlarged to include the latest developments and to give a more thorough, comprehensive and in-depth coverage.

The chapter on SCM standards is an excellent primer on the various military and commercial SCM standards. The strengths and weaknesses of each standard is explained. The comparison of four representative standards- EIA-649, IEEE Std-828, ISO 10007 and MIL-STD-973-is very useful and informative. The chapter "Software Process Improvement Models and SCM" gives an overview of various SPI models like CMM, CMMI, ISO SPICE, BOOTSTRAP, Trillium, etc. and explains the role of SCM in process improvement with the help of the SPI models. The chapters on SCM plans, SCM organization SCM tools, SCM implementation, SCM operation and maintenance, SCM in special circumstances give sound and practical advice on the various aspects of SCM from SCM system design, to implementation, operation and maintenance.

In addition to providing a sound foundation on the SCM fundamentals, the book is an easy-to-digest reference to various practical aspects of SCM that are not found in most books and manuals. It is a virtual toolbox of information that can be readily put to use by the SCM practitioners.

The first four chapters of this book might be called: "Why do Software Configuration Management." And they are excellent. If these explanations make sense to you, you might implement SCM before you look around at the software project and find that part of the source code is missing, the source code of this sub-routine doesn't match the binaries, this bug that was fixed is back, and any number of other problems.

The next several chapters go into the fundamentals of SCM. This includes such things as the mundane definition of configuration numbers and the reports that need to be issued.

Just when you are getting to the point where you know that this can't be done, the book goes into the SCM automation tools that are available. Chapter 16 talks about the general functions that can be performed by the SCM tools. Finally he gives a list of the most popular high-end SCM tools. (Mr. Leon - in the next edition of your book I'd like to see some comments made about each of these tools. Just a short sentence or two would be nice to help me narrow down the list of likely suppliers.) For low-end (and low-cost, even free) tools, he points you to the cmcrossroads.com web site for a comprehensive and frequently updated list of suppliers.

This book is a valuable introduction to the whys and wherefores of software configuration management. It will tell management what can be expected and if you're assigned to the task, it will get you well started.

I am the CEO of a software company and even though I knew the importance of good SCM practices, as a small company, we procrastinated on actually implementing anything formal. Anyway, when the fires got to a point, we decided it was time we took the medicine to get serious about SCM and I turned to Mr. Leon's book for help. I also sifted through a bunch of other books on the topic at libraries and bookstores and was immediately overwhelmed by the seeming complexity and all the jargon. The simple language, the concise explanations and the organization of content in Mr. Leon's book served as almost a how-to-manual for me as we went about implementing SCM concepts in our organization. I bought a couple of copies of the new edition for my two EPMs and they have been unanimous in their praise of this book as well. If you're looking to bring some order into your software development world through SCM, I would highly recommend you start with this book.

This is a terrific book on what it takes to make web applications really work (both for users and for the businesses that create them). Managers of web design projects should read this book for its eminently practical advice on documentation, workflow, and pitfalls to avoid. Highly recommended.

If you're new to building web applications and want a balanced perspective on the engineering challenges involved -- from understanding user needs to data modelling to scaling gracefully -- this book is a great place to start. It's mostly language-agnostic, so it'll be a good starting point for a few years but won't update you on the latest technology. Nevertheless, I know very few web developers who wouldn't learn something important from a careful reading of this book.

Where this book really shines is as a bridge from the world of college Computer Science to the world of actually building applications people use. This transition encompasses understanding your users, making flexibile designs, considering security, aesthetics, and a host of other issues one does not actually learn in a normal college CS curriculum. Thanks to its project focus, this book (and the course curriculum it implies) seeds an awareness of these many issues that can later be developed through experience. Other "software engineering" books over-emphasize theories, but this one will actually press you to get stuff built.

It's not easy to build a really good online community website. There are a lot of things to think about, and many of them have little or nothing to do with technical programming skills.

Buy this book, read it, step through it, and learn from some of the best teachers on the subject. And then when you've learned what they have to say here, take your new-found skills and build your own online community site. Using the methods in this book, your web sites can be more useful, successful, and profitable.

To Philip and Alex's Guide to Web Publishing, I learn of this new chapter in Mr. Greenspun's (et al) effort to encourage the Web to be all it can be. This volume is plainly a text book, designed as a practicum, and with its completion my understanding of how to achieve what's possible now and conjure the future of the Web will be greatly furthered. I'm finding it inspirational in the process of designing; expand your dream's horizons!

This book is helpful for programmers as well as people who work more generally with technology. I'm using very specific, technical information from the "Adding Mobile Users to Your Community" chapter for a web application I'm building, while using concepts from the chapter on discussion forums for a research project on how discussion tools are used at my university. If you build web applications, or work with people who do, I highly recommend this book.