Domain Books

This book did not favor any one Linux OS over another (good). Most Linux configuration was via commandline (which most will advocate in a Unix environment) and direct editing of conf files. Each chapter has a great balance of common practices, breaking down the common config parameters, then implementing. Overall, a great reference.

This is a very good book on the topic. The author knows what he is talking about, he doesn't skip anything and explains almost everything that should be explained. Although there are some typos and small errors in the book, they are corrected in the errata. Accessible, thorough, well written, well organized, well supported. Definitely worth the money.

Linux in a Windows World by Roderick Smith (O'Reilly) is an excellent aid for anyone trying to work in a heterogeneous environment. It is targeted at administrators who would like to add the flexibility, security and stability of Linux to existing Windows networks. While primarily focused on integrating Linux servers in the enterprise, to add functionality or replace Windows servers, Smith also addresses the addition of Linux workstations and thin clients to a Windows network.

The text begins with a brief discussion of the available options for leveraging Linux in a Windows-dominated environment and when and where such applications are appropriate and effective.
Smith walks you through Samba file and print sharing, authentication with LDAP, Kerberos, NT domains, followed by remote access methods, and a medley of additional server applications for mail, backups and network management. I found the format very accessible; simple and clear enough for those new to Linux, but with sufficient detail to get up-and-running with a basic configuration.

The tone was refreshingly objective. Windows and Linux options were presented in an even-handed way, absent was the Windows bashing that frequently enters Linux literature. I was somewhat disappointed that the book spent so much time on increasingly obsolete NT Domains and so little with Active Directory, but it is understandable as the proprietary nature of Windows necessitates a lag time in the development of interoperable open source technologies.

Overall I found Linux in a Windows World to be an excellent resource for mixed networks. I would consider it a must read for anyone thinking about adding Linux to their Windows network. It covers all the bases, giving the reader an overview of the available options before delving into the most common solutions. I personally found it useful in configuring several servers in my all-Linux network.

This book has well developed details on Linux client configuration for Linux only solutions with some small Windows tidbits thrown in. Given that the scope of this book should be "Linux in a Windows World", I expected more material on connecting Linux to modern Windows infrastructure, especially Active Directory. What coverage that was offered on Windows, e.g. some chapters dedicated to SAMBA, was mostly focused on 10-year older Windows NT era of technologies. I will delve in to some topics to illustrate this.

In Kerberos (Chapter 9), more than 80% of the coverage is about Linux Kerberos solutions and client configuration. There is a measly 2 pages out of 30 on Windows client configuration. In one area (page 216), the author states that Kerberos to Kerberos cross-realm trust to Active Directory would beyond the scope of this book, but I seem to recall that this information took up roughly 5 pages of text in Kerberos, The Definitive Guide by Jason Garman. There is zero coverage on how to configure Linux to use Active Directory KDC, which is something done in about two pages from the same aforementioned book. I'm wondering where's the "Windows World" involved in this as overall coverage is again for Linux to Linux.

For the topic of LDAP (Chapter 8), the coverage is again about configuring Linux clients to use OpenLDAP for authentication. Even within the scope of Linux-to-Linux the information was limited (there's less than adequate coverage about how lack of caching can cause serious problems, or how to use things like SASL for Kerberized authentication of LDAP). There is no mention of using Active Directory LDAP in this chapter for Linux clients. There was some coverage of Windows client configuration through pGina. However, I would prefer to see Windows solutions as this is suppose to be about a "Windows World" book, but get Linux-to-Linux solutions and with pGina, a Windows-to-Linux solution.

On the topic of DNS and DHCP (Chapter 15), only Linux solutions are covered, so there is no information on using Linux with Windows DHCP and DNS backends. In the scope of Linux DHCP, the information is very limited, and there is no information on how to assign IP addresses based on computer names, which is a feature that even Windows DHCP doesn't support. Windows clients spit out names with an appended "0" character to the DHCP server, which could be use for further configuration of services. In the scope of Linux DNS, there is no information about features needed in BIND to make it interoperable with Windows Active Directory, or even Linux Kerberos solutions for that matter. One needs Dynamic DNS, support for SRV records, and in particular for Active Direcotry, one needs support for underscore characters "_", which I heard is a compile time option for BIND9. Additionally, Microsoft has a proprietary WINS record for legacy support that is not supported by BIND. Both Microsoft certification publications and "DNS and BIND" by Albitz and Liu (O'Reilly) offer solution scenarios for this. None of this important essential information was presented, as the predominant focus appears to be Linux-to-Linux.

On the topic of NTP services (Chapter 15), the information is applicable for older Windows 9X/ME/NT systems that used a NetBIOS to locate a non-NTP service from Windows NT. In Windows XP/2003 that is so ancient history and Windows has full support for NTP client and services through the w32tm command. This is completely absent from from the presentation and details on this topic. Also surprising is no mention of why time sychronization is vital to either any Kerberos solutions, including Active Directory; any clients authentication to a Kerberos KDC should sychronize to the clock on that same server, or else users will not be able to log on if their clocks are more than 5 minutes off.

When covering mail technologies (Chapter 13), most of the documentation is an overview of mail technology and a exploration of Linux solutions with sendmail and postfix, which is very good presentation of those technologies. Microsoft Excahnge Server gets an honorable mention of less than 2 pages out of 51 pages. I would have appreciated more scenarios on how to integrate Exchange including for a variety of technologies, and would also have been interested in Windows clients that would hook into Linux solutions. There's no mention that that modern versions of Exchange are dependent on Active Directory -- something of a headache for Linux admins, but important consideration for planning the infrastructure. The Windows interoperability in this area like other chapters was quite lacking.

There are four chapters in Part II "Sharing Files and Printers" dedicated to SAMBA and related technologies like CUPS integration. The coverage here is predominantly focused on 10-year old Windows NT era technologies. One chapter is even dedicated to NetBIOS Network, something even Windows admins wish would have never existed. I don't know but I would hope that interoperability would cover modern technologies that are at least applicable within the last three years (after all, Windows 2003 is about 3 years old now). There only mention of Active Directory, and NONE of the richness found in where Linux boxes can be added to Active Directory domain, authenticate through ActiveDirectory via windbindd (with support for caching), and Windows account sid (security id) to user id (uid) and group id (gid) mapping with LDAP Unix schema support with either SFU 3.5 or AD4Unix in Active Directory (( NOTE: This can be done through SAMBA 3.0.20 and above, but authors haven't a clue )). The interoperability here is for historical network scenarios that is well covered in existing published (and online free) books. I would expect that a book written in this time would offer appicable Windows interoperability.

In the scope of printing through CUPS (Chapter 4), there's no mention that I can tell of Windows support for IPP, the same technology that CUPS uses. Linux clients can connect directly to Windows IPP printer without even touching SAMBA (just have to use port 80 in the URL as Microsoft implemented their solution before the RFC was finalized). Some redeeming qualities of this section was how to do free PDF-Gernation printer share on Linux, and also how to implement Microsoft RPC facility (through SAMBA) for auto-insstallation of printer drivers on Windows clients.

Overall, given that the focus is predominantly Linux for Linux solutions, this book maybe should be called "Linux in a Linux World". If you need an overview of Linux technologies and solutions, then this is a decent book, but if you want modern real-world details on interoperability to Windows, then there are far better books in this space.

Working several years as a certified Windows Administrator, I find it strange to have a complete chapter soley dedicated to the topic of NetBIOS. Who uses NetBIOS? I looked further into the book, and the all SAMBA material seems to be a rehash older and overdocumented SAMBA 2.0 docs...

I looked at another section and it seems that Windows NT 4 time was covered (maybe accidently through author's misunderstanding of Windows time?) and w32time service. The later uses the NTP time standard, while older Windows NT 4 time relies on NetBIOS... Hmmm... Maybe that's the reason for a NetBIOS chapter.

I was hoping for something more to deal with Active Directory and modern systems, but learn interoperability to stuff you can only buy at the swap-meet or flea-market.

I didn't cover any other chapters, as they seem to focus on Linux-to-Linux interoperability. Yes, I know, but it is true, Windows coverage in the other sections is less than 5% - 10%.

So bottom line, most of book is Linux with honoroble mention here and there of Windows, the chapters fully focused on Windows interoperability are rehash of SAMBA 2.0 and how to hook into end-of-life Windows NT 4. And you get a whole chapter on NetBIOS? Shall we *cough* look for other books?

Memorial Day was spent reading this 1921 novel, in a battered copy from the back shelves of the Los Angeles Public Library's stacks, where the volume had been, the librarian told me, damaged by the sprinklers set off to quench the great fire that destroyed much of the old building over twenty years ago. This fragile book seemed a casualty of its own, like
its characters, who rush off to the French front only to hurry up and wait. Two of them enter the "Oregon forest," the Argonne campaign, but the assault itself takes up only a few harrowing, nightmarish, disconnected scenes halfway through the narrative.

Dos Passos emphasizes the detachment of his characters from their peaceful or uprooted surroundings. Much of the book roams about the mental landscape of its three protagonists, rather than what happens in terms of action. It conveys more the tedium of bureaucracy and the formation of the conformist, against which the sensitive individual chafes. The five chapters have titles that make sure a reader nearly ninety years ago does not forget what, for us, may be unmistakable concepts. "Making the Mould" follows soldiers as they are processed; "The Metal Cools" shows them in France waiting for mobilization; "Machines" takes them closer to the war; "Rust" follows them after peace is declared; "The World Outside" shows them away from the camp; "Under the Wheels" returns them to military control.

Dos Passos, as biographies by Townsend Ludington and Virginia Spencer Carr (both reviewed by me) document, took his own ambivalence against war as one who volunteered as an ambulance driver to witness it into this novel. It's a young writer's effort, ambitious yet a bit awkward, but if you have read his later sprawling chronicles, the relative compression of scope here may demonstrate how Dos Passos sought to integrate modernist perspectives into a standard "boy goes off to fight" storyline. He sought, perhaps as one of the first successful WWI novels in print-- or still in print-- in America, to show a social mechanism grinding away that "Catch-22" or "Full Metal Jacket" or "Dispatches" would do for future conflicts that pitted people against power. In a time when many still remained optimistic about government, idealism, and the impact of culture upon the masses, Dos Passos sought to warn his audience about the degrading effects of patriotic cant, Christian platitudes, and military hypocrisy.

In "Three Soldiers," Dos Passos' first "mature" work, the coming-of-age stories familiar to early 20c readers mingle with a broader assault on conformity. The author listens to speech and it rings sharply. He watches for fog and shade and sun with his trained eye that looked as a painter would what his soldiers witness and struggle to understand. These themes of ordinary people overwhelmed by the world that appears to loom far above the reach of any of us who wander through it deepened to enrich Dos Passos' most successful novels, "Manhattan Transfer" (reviewed by me) and the USA trilogy, with their author's insistent message of resisting any political creed or organizational system that sought to stamp robots out of, or into, wriggling fragile flesh.

We've all seen films or photographs of the lunar landscapes of WWI, but here, in Dos Passos' evocation, we share the shock of the first glimpse of this to a soldier. He may have seen few if any snapshots or film reels of the battleground. Here's his sudden arrival at the demarcation of the actual frontline.

"As they started down the slope, the trees suddenly broke away and they saw the valley between them full of the glare of guns and the white light of star shells. It was like looking into a stove full of glowing embers. The hillside that sloped away from them was full of crashing detonations and yellow tongues of flame. In a battery near the road, that seemed to crush their skulls each time a gun fired, they could see the dark forms of the artillerymen silhouetted in fantastic attitudes against the intermittent red glare. Stunned and blinded, they kept on marching down the road. It seemed to Chrisfield that they were going to step any minute
into the flaring muzzle of a gun."

The rest of the book, after a few vividly sketched battle vignettes, settles down into post-Armistice routine, as John Andrews, the stand-in for Harvard grad Dos Passos, cultivates his aesthetic eye while grousing at the indignities of mass crowd control and his own chapped sensibility. I found him a familiar type, perhaps fresher in Dos Passos' times than ours. Dos Passos pours most of his effort into this soldier's story, after the battle, but it fails to sustain its vigor, although his youthful restlessness and ambition borrowed from their author appear on the page as genuine and honest. The fault's more with the slow pace, unrelieved by excitement. This may portray a side of military life often left out of books, but it's dull.

As "a sort of socialist," Andrews hates "the psychology of slavery," although he must mutter this more than mouth it, for fear of a court-martial. Later in the novel, he and his fellows must face the courage of his convictions. Rumors of uprisings in Paris contend against punishment labor battalions and fates of deserters. From the vantage point of a fresh Soviet revolution, some of his fellow soldiers whisper their hopes for a Communist future; Dos Passos' registers their yearnings but his characteristic caution at any utopia peddled can also be sensed, despite his own radical yearnings at this time.

It's all described well, yet often repetitively. Conversations in one bar after another. Smells of food and rain and sludge. Dappled leaves alternate with mud and grease. Andrews' endemic ennui does drag long sections down after he recovers from a shrapnel wound and heads off to study in Paris. Here's a representative excerpt, as Andrews waits.

"There were other buglers. He wondered how many buglers there were in the army. He could picture them all, in dirty little villages, in stone barracks, in towns, in great camps that served the country for miles with rows of black warehouses and narrow barrack buildings standing with their feet a little apart; giving their little brass bugles a preliminary tap before putting out their cheeks and blowing in them and stealing a million and a half (or was it two million or three million) lives, and throwing the warm sentient bodies into coarse automatons who must be kept busy, lest they grow restive, till killing time began again."

The first up facing the bugle, Fuselli, from San Francisco, begins "Three Soldiers" to complete the trio, two coastal men and the Midwesterner representing a cross-section of America. Fuselli's swerve away from marching off to the front to putting in for an instant transfer to a post well behind the lines confused me. Perhaps Dos Passos meant to convey the inexplicable split-second decision made by a man under pressure, but without any prior preparation for this, Fuselli's ambition to rise in the ranks kept puzzling me, as he'd not shown any aversion to seeking out combat previously. He does show up briefly a couple hundred pages later, after falling out of favor during a battle, but this is left rather vague, via a quick conversation with Andrews, by now on "school detachment" at the Sorbonne.

Unlike Fuselli, but like Andrews, the other soldier enters the novel as a Casual (like Dos Passos himself), suited not for the regular Army. He and Andrews wait to be shipped off; Fuselli has been, but vanishes from much of the novel's middle sections. Chrisfield, a Hoosier farm boy, is jittery and brittle, but due more to his hair-trigger temperament rather than any reveries, as his pal "Andy" is prone to fall into, about a fin-de-siecle Queen of Sheba voluptuary's embrace. These earn prose recalling Stephen Dedalus' contemplations, minus the religion or the guilt. Andrews' vision of the France he finds is filtered through Flaubert. He falls for Jeanne, and stays in Paris to master piano.

"Chris" gets into scraps and he represents one of the common men with whom New York City-raised Andrews learns to deal with, however uneasily. They both wander, together and separately, into cafes, brothels, fields, and cities. Eventually, Chrisfield fades and Andrews continues largely on his own through the rest of the novel. The scenes stay simply composed, but remain attentively rendered in clear prose. It's the author's style, more than the often mundane plot, which keeps you intermittently involved. There's a welcome arrival or threat of military intervention that carries you with a bit more pep through the final chapter.

Dos Passos always faced critics who faulted him with treating his characters more as pieces to be manipulated than rounded figures. I welcome novelists who double as historians, taletellers who tend towards sociology, but those expecting more visceral tension and manufactured bouts may be disappointed by a conflict novel that tends to stay away from the thunder. Dos Passos sides with those who struggle against donning the uniform, who scrabble against the clanking ranks and file clerks. You can see in this early novel that his habitual manner of setting down his stories as social commentary more than psychological exploration remains, nonetheless, his characteristic approach as a writer, take it or leave it.

John Dos Passos was the son of a Chicago attorney. He was born in 1894 living until 1970. He is most famous for his "USA Trilogy" and "Manhatten Transfer." The work under review is "Three Soldiers" set in the waning months and early years following World War I. It concerns:
1. Dan Fusseli a poor uneducated Italian-American from San Francisco who dreams of becoming a corporal, winning the hand of the girl back home and fighting the Germans. He realizes none of these modest goals.
2. Chris Chrisfield is a farmer from rural Indiana who murders a mean sergeant named Anderson. He deserts the American army following the war while stationed in Paris. He often dreams he is back home again in Indiana.
3. John Andrews like author Dos Passos is a Harvard graduate. He is a musician who is bored by the deadly mindless tedium of the army. He also deserts the army, meets a sophisticated Parisian woman and falls in love with a French barmaid. He is captured on the last page of the novel facing at least 20 years in Leavenworth for desertion.
It is manifest that Dos Passos has used the three main characters to represent the different geographical regions of the United States. The characters differ in their educational levels. All three musketeers become very disillusioned with America, the US Army and the government.
These characters mirror Dos Passos's hatred of war which he developed while serving a brief time in France during the war. At this time he was also infatuated with communism and the radical left wing of the political spectrum. The book reminds me of TS Eliot's "Wasteland" poem put into no-nonesense prose by the Harvard Midwestern author.
There is little plot development in the novel. Anyone expecting to read of World War I combat will be disappointed since no battle scenes are given. The regiment in the story does not get a chance to participate in the gory battles of that horrendous war.
Dos Passos is good at vivid descriptions and the inner feelings of his characters. We sense the boredom, fatigue and war weariness of the men involved. There is quite a lot of profanity for a book written in 1921. The book is realistic in its depiction men at war. I gave the book five stars since it does have a strong antiwar focus and deserves a wider readership. The novel could be well used in a classroom setting focused on World War I.

John Dos Passos was one of the few to tackle all these themes in one work, the gigantic USA. In Three Soldiers, an early novel set during the war before Weimar, he draws on personal experience to capture the clackety-clack of the war-machine. As in his masterwork, he uses popular song and bittersweet evocations of innocent youth in the face of ruthless power to trace the breaking of young men's dreams. With his elaborate narrative structures and seemingly effortless prose he shows that it is not just war that requires the suppression of liberty but modern industrial society too. But unlike the greatest first world war novel Journey To The End Of The Night there are signposts here of socialist paths that led far away from dystopia.

The three soldiers to whom the title refers are Dan Fuselli, a working class Italian-American from San Francisco, "Chris" Chrisfield, an Indiana farm-boy, and John Andrews, from New York, the novel's main protagonist. All three went into the U.S. Army during the first world war and met during basic training. While Fuselli's big dream is to become a corporal and Chris just wants to get to the front to kill German soldiers, Andrews wants to become an accomplished musician and composer. Andrews is by no means a coward and does not shirk combat, but after the armistice is declared he has great difficulty taking orders from his superiors. As Andrews tells his French girlfriend, "every order shouted at me, every new humiliation before the authorities, was as great an agony to me." Andrews had managed to get permission from an officer for a School Detachment, which meant that he would be allowed to study music. He, instead, proceeds in a series of inexplicable misbehaviors to throw it all away.

_Three Soldiers_ is a colorfully written and probably fairly accurate study of various men's reactions to military life and the kind of discipline and regimentation inherent in that type of life. While many found it difficult to adjust to what they saw as a form of slavery, some of these soldiers chose to desert, believing they could eventually blend in with the civilian population on the European continent. Finding a French woman to marry seemed an easy solution. John Andrews was an intelligent, sensitive, well-educated and sophisticated young man. He even spoke French fluently. That he so capriciously chose the path that he did made absolutely no sense to me at all in this otherwise gripping and likable novel.

To read this novel as a war novel is a mistake. World War I is mearly the canvas upon which Dos Passos paints his story. If individuals have a responsibility to their government, what responsibility does that same individual have to his/her own conscience? "Three Soldiers" attempts to answer this question. As with most great works of literature, the story can be read on two levels.

At the surface you have the stories of three men with different desires of who and what they want to be. There is a theme of Socialism and anti-war here as well. It's a good story at the surface level. What makes this novel great, however, is that there is an underlying message here, wrought with symbolism. It's the study of the awakening of the individual and the choices he (John Andrews) makes. It's a study of moral courage in the face of insurmountable odds.

John Andrews (the central character) initially joins the army out of a sense of duty, then begins to recognize how he has been stripped of all who he was and has begun to conform to the "machine" of society. Disgusted, he takes his first tentative steps back toward who he really is at heart. The moment of epiphany comes when, after having been wounded and waking up in a make-shift hospital surrounded by busts of great men of the past, he decides that he must make his stand to change the world in what ever way he can just like the men represented in the busts above him did. His choices eventually drive him to desert the army while in Paris. The real choice comes near the end of the novel when he is presented the opportunity to return to the army with no consequence to his prior desertion. (I won't ruin the ending for you!)

There is a strong element of socialist propoganda in the novel. I am no more a socialist than I am a horse, but the reader should remember that this novel was written before the failings of socialism were widely known. It was a much more idealisic time and the evils and harshness of socialism had yet to be realized. The socialist element of the novel need not deter the reader from the true message: the courage and triumph of individual freedom.

This is a "booklet" the book I thought it was has over 300 pages. A very big waste of money!

Budge's book is just as good as the others who claim to be experts. The only people who have a problem with Budge, are those who believe the altered noses, lips and sand blasted colors of the remaining Egyptian statues...represent the African people who were originally the Kamitians. Budge and other white European scholars who 'told it like it was' are constantly being ridiculed for not joining the bogus scheme of alterations and forgeries in the effort of 'whitewashing Egypt' as is the trend today. Egypt is a name given to it by Alexander the Great, when he conquered the land and defeated the Persians. It was known as Kamit for thousands of years prior to the newer term of Egypt. The natives of Kamit identified themselves with the color of the Black Land as well.

Budge's work is great. Yes, his style of English is out of date and his tranliterations are different. For example, modern writers prefer to transliterate "ntr" as: NEJER or NECHER. Budge uses NETER. Many points of Egyptian grammar remain very unclear and much of what passes for "modern translations" are more guess work than actual translations.
The real reason Budge is trashed so often has nothing to do with his translations at all!

After many, many years of study Budge abandoned the pure assertion that ancient Egypt was an "Oriental" or "Eastern culture". Based largely, I imagine, on Hegel's pure assertions that "The History of the World travels from East to West, for Europe is absolutely the end of History, Asia the beginning." These ideas have become part of European intellectual DOGMA. Africa is not a part of human history; Ancient Egypt belongs to Europe. This is pure DOGMA. But, perhaps we should expect Dogma from a German theologian!
But on the other hand, after years of objective study of the language, religion, society and customs of the ancient Egyptians, Budge was led screaming and kicking, I might add, to the realization that the religion of the Egyptians was BLACK AFRICAN. The concept of the "ka" and the "ba" are found almost everywhere in Black Africa today! The language was a BLACK AFRICAN language and the customs were purely African. The ancient Egyptians were: "African negroes" or "Nilotic negroes" wrote Budge in several of his later works. In spite of the anti-African racism that we find in his earlier and even his later works, Budge rose above the prejudices of his time and followed the facts. The facts led to the heart of Africa, not to Asia.
Many modern African scholars have confirmed that the language of ancient Egypt was a "typical Black African language. For example Dr. Theophile Obenga(ORIGINE COMMUNE DE L'EGYPTIEN ANCIEN DU COPTE ET DES LANGUES NEGRO-AFRICAINES MODERNES) has proven the genetic linguistic relationship between the language spoken by the ancient Egyptians, Coptic and modern Black African languages. No competent linguist can demonstrate that the language of ancient Egypt has any genetic relationship to the Semitic languages....it can not be done!!!
When you study the language of ancient Egypt you study an ancient Black African language, like it or not!!
In a nutshell, that is the real reason that Budge is so often trashed. And perhaps why he is so viciously trashed.......

As a long time fan of ancient Egyptian study, I wanted to pick this up to further understand a fascinating culture. This version is not for the casual reader and offers a rather in-depth look at the scrolls intended for burial and embalming of a body as prescribed in the 'Book of the Dead'. I tend to lean towards more educational depictions of historic cultures and this fit the bill. It is lengthy however and doesn't lean to the narrative, but will still give an enlightened view into ancient Egyptian funerary practices.

I gave this book 5 stars simply for the reason being that Budge was the first to translate the Egyptian Text and offered a literal translation. In contrast, if anyone wants to read a mystical interpretation of the text the best available for this would be: (The Egyptian Book of the Dead : The Book of Coming Forth by Day by: Muata A. Ashbi)

More than a few people have used this idea over the last few decades.
The people of Earth are going about their normal dodgy business, until
they realise that a comet may actually strike the planet.

A most definitely political novel, this looks at the upheaval such
a catastrophic event can cause, and what happens to the society as a
result.

It seems here that humanity will improve in the face of such calamity.

H.G. Wells had a strong streak in him of the social reformer. This relatively early work, from 1906, shows that more clearly (if ham-handedly) than any other work that I've read by him.

It starts with a snapshot of Dickensian dichotomy between haves and have-nots. Haves, in this case, are so rare and distant that they can safely be ignored. Instead, the narrator is one of the underclass, worrying whether his shoes will fall apart before the end of his day's walk. Malnourished, marginally educated, and economically marginalized, he seizes upon the one bright spot in his life, love of a charming woman. But in a "Young Werther" burst of emotion, that passion twists itself into its own homicidal inversion. At the same time, warships stand off within sight of the British shore, lobbing shells at each other across the night sky.

But there's a new star in that sky, and one that has incredible effect on human life. Suppose, just suppose, that one day, everyone in the world suddenly started acting reasonable, or mostly reasonable. Suppose that all the world leaders, all the soldiers in the trenches, all the capitalist barons, all the socialist firebrands, and even the lovers suddenly woke up, and said, "I've been stupid. Let's do better." This examination of humankind's entry into a better world foreshadows Wells's later "Modern Utopia." In "Comet," he imagines mankind reworked into the beings who could support that ideal world - with the striking examples of those few who need only minor adjustments. "Modern Utopia" assumes that unidealized people will populate the ideal world, so the ideal must have places in it for them. I find the combination of similarities and reversals between these two books equally interesting. By itself, "Comet" might not be Wells's best. In the context of his entire ouvre, however, it holds a fascinating and possibly transitional place.

-- wiredweird

As a kid, I must have read "War of the Worlds" and "The Time Machine" two dozen times apiece. H.G. Wells appealed to the most fantastic parts of my imagination, and he still does. As a kid, I also read this book once, "In the Days of the Comet," but I don't remember being quite as impressed.
As an adult however, I have re-read "War of the Worlds" and "The Time Machine," and while I still enjoyed them, found them to be more along the lines of paperback thrillers. When I re-read this book, however, I found a treasure.
This book tells the story of a world changed by a comet--a comet that passes by the earth and allows everyone to see themselves and one another as they truly are. It affects everything from relationships, to the structures of towns, to how people look at one another. It allows the world to become truly socialist in a non-political way. It shows the world as what it could be if only everyone viewed one another as equally important as one's self. It is not a political manifesto, because by its very premise it suggests the impossibility of such a wondrous happening and of such a change. It is not a violent, dynamic book that hurtles itself forward the way "War of the Worlds" and "The Time Machine" do--it is a gentle, thoughtful look at people, at people's motivations, at the problems of the world, and at a wish to be better than we have been.
It is also astoundingly well written. That's what hit me the most about it. It is full of powerful phrases, poetic sentences, and clearly expressed ideas and metaphors. As an adult, I recommend this book as one of Wells's very best.
It's a treat that I plan to re-read yet again.

William Leadford is a young London Socialist, leading a life of quiet desperation. Around him, the whole world seems to be unraveling, as capitalist wage war on their own workers, and nation rises up against nation. And through it all, a comet has entered the Solar System, and may indeed be aimed straight at Earth. Can the system that dominates men's lives survive its seeming inevitable destruction? And if the comet should strike the planet, what will be the result?

This now largely forgotten work was written by H.G. Wells (1866-1946) in 1906, during his brief sojourn with the Fabian Society. This book is less science fiction than his earlier works, such as the Invisible Man and the War of the Worlds, and is more of a political polemic. In it, we get to see the inevitable destruction of the capitalist system that the antediluvian Socialists predicted. But more, Wells uses the comet as a vehicle to posit a new utopia, where man has awakened from his childhood as a species and puts behind him such things as private ownership of land, nationalism, religion, and so much more. Indeed, this book marks Wells' open advocation of free love, which eroded his popularity among the reading public.

Now, as for the book itself, I am of two minds. The book starts out rather slowly, and I found myself rather bored with it. But, as it continued, it began to pick up steam, and became quite an interesting read. This is one of Wells' better works of fiction, being much better (in my opinion) than Tono-Bungay and the Food of the Gods.

So, if you are a fan of Edwardian literature, or just like a good story, then you will definitely like this book. I highly recommend it.

I thought that I was familiar with most of Well's body of work, until I stumbled over this unique novel.

First of all, do not be put off by the first part of this book- it is intended to be depressing. It is meant to paint the pettiness, ugliness, and just plain bloody-mindedness of human society in 1906. It does this quite well for I almost set the book aside several times in disgust. It is all unpleasantness after unpleasantness in the life of a working class young man (obviously modeled largely after the author's youth.) Even the fact of the approach of the great comet is almost mentioned only in passing as a minor occurrence.

Then everything changes when the comet hits. Mankind is transformed. That is to say that all of mankind is suddenly mentally and spiritually enlightened and awakened. I've read nothing quite like it in literature. The first part of the book makes it jump out at you all the more. All the meanness, pettiness, guile, and evil evaporate in the human species. The story of how these enlightened men put an end to want, injustice, and war around the world is breathtaking and inspirational. Wells attributes this to a chemical change in earth's atmosphere, but there is a surprising amount of spirituality also incorporated (surprising for Wells.)

All of this reminded me of the change that is said to occur when a human soul leaves the material world and enters the astral. All of the old heaviness and stupidity drop away. Only the highest of what it means to be human remains- the old ego dies. Even in the story everyone speculated if perhaps they were not dead and transported to a different world. Some even declared that this great Change was the Second Advent.

There is one thing about this novel that leaves a lingering element of disappointment. This is the fact that the core causes of all the economic, social, and political injustices and stupidities described in the first part of the book in 1906 are still with us. After 101 years these same problems are still with us. I'm sure that this would have also disappointed Mr. Wells.

Wins really is important in a NT domain enviroment, and this book is the best WINS technical reference I have ever read. Michael is an excellent writer as well as a great speaker!

Jose Medeiros, Instructor - San Jose City College, MCP+I, MCSE, MCT, Vice President- NT Engineering Association, ...

This book did nothing to help me set up DNS on an NT network. The book went into great detail on how Bind files and resource records work, but had less than one paragraph detailing how these files work on a NT DNS system that does not use the Registry. I found the NT Resource kit to be much more valuable resource for NT DNS.

This books opens up the mystrey behind DNS and WINS , and how they interact in an NT environment. It goes through a step by step process of explaining the concepts of DNS and WINS. The detail explanation on the Database resource records was excellent.

Overall, and excellent book to have for understanding and reference for how DNS and WINS work.

I feel this book was too vague, no coverage of any basic knowledge for setting up a Windows Nt DNS server I would recommend skipping over this book if you need real information for setting up a DNS server

The true strength of this book lies in its clear understanding and explanation on how netbios and host name resolution works, and the concepts behind DNS. I think this book covers these topics better than any book I have read. I use it in all of my TCP/IP training classes.

I have come back to this book after first digging into it when it first came out. At that time, I got bogged down and never really made it very far into the book. Here's why: A reader needs a basic conceptual familiarity with DDD before tackling this book. I'd suggest Domain-Driven Design: Tackling Complexity in the Heart of Software and Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture (Addison-Wesley Signature Series). You might be able to get a running start by reading the free e-book "Domain Driven Design Quickly" (http://www.infoq.com/minibooks/domain-driven-design-quickly), but the Fowler book is particularly helpful, since it catalogs and explains a number of the patterns used in Nilsson's book.

Don't assume this book is outdated because it uses NHibernate instead of LINQ or the ADO Entity Framework. If you are a true DDD developer, neither product is quite 'there' yet, and NHibernate remains the best ORM framework available. And if the Entity Framework does become a viable ORM product in Version 2, the skills taught in this book should transfer easily.

In short, this book presents a really good nuts-and-bolts approach to explaining how to do DDD, but it assumes you already have a pretty good understanding of what DDD is all about.

I like the author's modesty (very ofter his sentences start with "I think"), his rational thinking and his quoting the relevant big guys. He uses a very nice and simple language throughout the book which makes it an easy read. But sometimes, he is dragging on a subject for too long, for that I have to give it 4.5 stars.

The book provides a massive detailed walk through the construction of the domain-driven framework creation. It is in Jimmy Nilsson's conversational tone and that makes the book very interesting.

I do wish there were a few diagrams to tie each chapter together, but that is for the reader to do.

Read fowler's and Evan's, the book is very good but it is an extension of books of the two authors. So, to understand it completely it is better to read those before.

I have not read the books that this is based but I have enjoyed it a lot.

This book covers many topics and has loads of references for patterns and domain driven design. It reads a bit choppy - almost as if a conversation were taking place. Overall it is a good compliment to Eric Evan's book and would be a good guide for newcomers to patterns and agile development.

I bought this book as soon as it came out, and I was reading the docs online more than the book.

What I was really hoping for from the book was how to setup some of the more complex postfix installations, at the time anyway, that the book was supposed to cover. It turned out the book did a poor job explaining what I was trying to do, and I was back to reading forums to get my answers.

The online docs are a much better source of information then the book.

I've got all three books in the field, and this is a good book. Unfortunately, although Kyle's book was co-written by the author of the software, I believe that "The Book of Postfix: State-of-the-Art Message Transport" by Ralf Hildebrandt is a better choice.

I wasn't looking for esoteric information on how to administer Sendmail. I was looking for a book on Postfix and that's what the author provided. I got the book based a lot on the quality of O'Reilly books and the editor's reputation. Andy Oram is a top notch editor. I recommend this book to any Linux or UNIX person wanting to substitute Postfix for sendmail. Postfix is a drop in replacement for systems configured for sendmail but Postfix is not a monlithic program with lots of vulnerabilities. The author expalins that perfectly.

PostFix is a replacement mail server, MTA, for Unix based systems that
formerly used Sendmail or other variants. PostFix was written to be a
drop in replacement for Sendmail but with it's own variations on control
files.

This book outlines most of the common issues in dealing with setting up
PostFix. The author takes the reader through the design concerns outlined
by the author of the program, Wietse Venema, who wrote the forward of the
book.

Sendmail has been a staple of the mail delivery world but it has a well
deserved reputation for being hard to setup, administer and understand.
The O'Reilly book on Sendmail is at least 3 times as large as this book.
There is alot to learn about its' macro language and using M4 to build
control files. Sendmail is a very hard program for a beginner to
understand and configure properly.

The author spends the first few chapters discussing how a mail server is
supposed to work; how the DNS system interacts with the mail system. There
are well laid out block diagrams to show the flow of email through a
system. Any SysAdmin who has spent time administering a mail system can
probably skip the first few chapters. Those who are new to running a mail
server should find the begining chapters enlightening.

PostFix mostly uses easy to read control files that don't require processing.
The program can be set up to use the Unix standard mbox delivery format or
the newer maildir format. The book explains the pros and cons of the 2
storage formats both from the MTA perspective and the pop or imap
interface.

Most of the more common configuration tweaks used in securing a Sendmail
system also apply to a PostFix installation. They are just easier to set
up in PostFix with the examples provided.

The book has a section devoted to setting up secure mail relay using the
Cyrus SASL libraries. It details setting up the password database via the
Unix standard or shadow format, SASL, LDAP PAM or MYSQL formats. The
author discusses ways to further secure the connection by using TLS
connections to ensure passwords are not compromised.

PostFix has some built in anti-spam tools. The book has a chapter devoted
to to pros and cons of the various approaches. Examples of "reasonable"
and "paranoid" approaches for setting up PostFix are provided. A simpler
apporoach than jumping directly into Spam Assassin or other
spam pre-processors

Mailing lists are another feature that PostFix can manage. The book has
examples of various simple ways of setting up mailing lists short of
installing a separate program like MajorDomo. This is a handy feature.

There are Appendixes intended to walk a user through the compiling process
which will help users not familiar with using Make. There is a listing of
the PostFix parameter commands and what they all mean.

PostFix the Definitive Guide is a well written, easy to read step by step
instruction book for using the PostFix mail server. Using this book as a
reference, an experienced SysAdmin should make the transition from
Sendmail to PostFix without much trouble. For someone new to the world of
MTA's, the book should answer most of the questions associated with
getting a PostFix mail server up and running.

This is another O'Reilly book that should be on a SysAdmin's bookshelf.

If you're looking for a comprehensive guide on setting up a Postfix mail server, then this isn't the book for you. For those that are already familiar with setting up MTAs, the information provided in "The Definitive Guide" is probably enough, but this book only covers a subset of the Postfix configuration parameters and does not provide the step-by-step instructions that many people may be expecting.

This is a single book, not the whole set and the book is in less then usable quality. The seller was to send return address materials and has not as of 12/19.

I listened to the audio version of both books, and will admit up front that the narrator for this one is not one of my favorites, but I got past that after a while.
Twain seemed to be "padding" the narrative with an awful lot of folktales and legend, rather than his own experience. There's a lengthy (and highly annoying) "fantasy" sequence - I suppose he was trying for parody - as well. I found myself fast-forwarding through almost a full cassette of a gory description of two deuls (near the beginning); he delights in recounting grisly mountaineering stories later on during the novel. The storyline ended abruptly at the end of cassette 11 of 13; the last two were the appendix, which I skipped.
I really liked "Innocents" and am planning on purchasing "Following the Equator" (I looked through it at a bookstore and it seemed pretty interesting), but I wish I'd skipped this one. Three stars for the humor when he actually describes his own experiences.

A Tramp Abroad is the third and least successful of the travel books written by the pen of Mark Twain.
In this book we follow Twain as he tours Germany, Italy, France and Switzerland. I found the early chapters chronicling his visit to Heidelburg University; hilarious visits to opera houses and tale tales such as the Blue Jay yarn to be well done.
The longest section of the book deals with Twain's alpine climbing adventures in Switzerland. This material is interesting but goes on a bit too long for the modern reader.
This is a fine book and deserves to be read and enjoyed by a wider readership that better known but lesser Twain novels and
travel writing,
I would recommend this book to anyone who enjoys listening to a great author recount his peregrinations through Europe in a leisurely and informative manner.

It's fascinating to compare my own experiences, having lived now 3 years in Germany, to those of an American from 125 years earlier. I've been learning to speak German, and his Appendix on the "awful" German language was hilarious. In poking fun at German grammar (e.g., long sentences), he purposely commits the same errors in his own writing. The scene "riding" the glacier down the Alps was so funny I had tears running down my face. It's amazing to think that it was written in 1879, when America was barely a century old, and the insights and perceptions then can be incredibly, eerily similar to either my or "typical" American's attitudes today.

I'd recommend it to anyone, but particularly to anyone visiting or living in Europe. It's way funnier than his "Innocents Abroad", which is also a good read on travel in Europe.

A Tramp Abroad, Mark Twain's tongue-in-cheek, semi-fictionalized account of his second European trek, is, despite it's 600+ pages, a lightning quick read. Twain's singular wit is on full display engaging the reader to such an extent that pages swiftly fly by. Though not his best piece of travel writing (see Innocents Abroad), I devoured this book in large chunks eager to see where Twain wandered next. When he arrives in the Alps, A Tramp Abroad vaults from an amusing piece of travel writing to a supremely satisfying form of entertainment.

If there was any disappointment it occured with Twain's unexpected exit from the stage. A Tramp Abroad covers Twain's travels in Germany, Switzerland, and Italy, but concludes quite suddenly with mere mention that the Netherlands are next on the docket. Yet, wishing a book to continue confers no blackmark on an author. It is further confirmation that A Tramp Abroad easily merits 5 stars.

Ellen does an excellent job recording history. What is unfortunate is that history is ephemeral on the net. Ellen's book is no longer in print - I ponied up for a used copy simply for the record of what transpired and I am glad to have it.

Remember the old saying, "What's in a name?" A name should represent a well known company, person, quality workmanship, products, and services. Nothing could be more true when we consider what is involved in registering and using domain names today. Ellen Rony and Peter Rony have written The Domain Name Handbook to provide readers with a considerable amount of detailed information about this often overlooked but essential element of establishing an online presence.

When a company or person takes action to establish themselves online it is necessary for them to come up with a unique domain name that clearly represents the nature of their products, services, or other stated purposes of the Website. Sounds easy enough but this is not necessarily the case. One of the most hotly contested aspects of setting up a Website today is the selection and ownership of a domain name. There are a number of factors to take into consideration in this crucial decision making process. Ellen Rony and Peter Rony do a masterful job of exposing the many pitfalls that could spell disaster for anyone wishing to set up shop online today.

This 650-page book is packed with extensive information about many of the legal challenges that have been waged over the registration and use of domain names, including alleged copyright violations, trademark infringement, and actual court cases. This is the most comprehensive resource for domain name dispute case studies to date. It is heavily footnoted. Thumb through it to read up on what real people have experienced themselves. Many of the accounts will expose the darker side of the business world we compete in!

According to the documentation provided in this book some big name companies have gone after smaller companies and persons (and vice versa), who have registered domain names already trademark protected by existing laws. Some of the laws currently pertaining to Internet domain name use have not been etched in stone as of yet but information provided in this book will help chart the course. The accompanying CD and a Website offer supplemental reading material. Although these resources offer plenty in terms of legal proceedings, the authors recommend that readers consult their attorneys for solid legal advice!

Perhaps through no fault of your own you may one day find yourself the focus of an infringement case. Be prepared to face these challenges today. This book is must reading for Website designers, Web business consulting firms, attorneys, and companies doing business online!

I have to agree with one of my fellow reviewers - this book is way too technical and dry. With heavy, heavy chapters devoted to the development of the domain name system, trademark challenges, dispute case studies etc., The Domain Name Handbook reads more like a govenment manual than an istructive and entertaining piece of writing. Ten out of ten for so much research but not many out of ten for entertainment value, (and, yes, even an instruction manual can be enetertaining).... Theirwell-linked pages will take you some interesting routes to wherever the real knowledge lies.

If you're a sucker for tables, lists, facts, data and specifics, this book with inform. If, like me, you prefer that learning should be fun, you'll find yourself in the wrong hands here. In any case, the book was published in mid 1998 and, with so much having happened on the Web, is in dire need of a revised update.

The Domain Name Handbook; High Stakes and Strategies in Cyberspace by Ellen Rony, Peter R. Rony

This was the first book I purchased in my search tomake sense of the domain name business. It provides great information on the details of the domain name naming system and the history of the organizations involved. It also provides excellent information on trademark considerations and issues. If you are an attorney, or anyone seriously getting into the domain name business, you should have this in your library.

Rony is highly knowledgeable about the minutiae of the domain name registration rules, and offers a great history with some examples of cases of trademark cases and squatting that are highly useful for understanding the way things work. She's now consulting as an expert in this area, a clear sign that her expertise is credible with corporations and courts.

The book does not cover such considerations as the creative and business consideration process of coming up with a unique domain name. There's another book that goes into this topic in more detail--How to choose and Protect a great Name for Your website.

Neither book covers factors which contribute to the value of a dmain name, finding better prices for name registration, websites and strategies for doing research on names you are considering.

Rob Kall, author, domainnamereport

This book is way too technical and dry. Domain Names for Dummies treats the subject matter in a much more enjoyable and business-oriented fashion.

The user is left with little useful information and usable next steps.

As noted by other reviewers, this volume is replete with typos, repeated paragraphs, etc., plus the formatting is awkward. The translation into English is poor -- certainly the French prose had to be more pleasing. Many lengthy sessions of dialog with no segues were difficult to follow. Nevertheless, the stories were fascinating -- they deserved better treatment by Dodo Press.

Just as Sparkster-chan did, I discovered Arsene Lupin and his many adventures through the detective conan manga. However, I also discovered Lupin through a certain master gentleman theif that has been stealing anime fans hearts for a very long time. Yes, I'm talking about Lupin III. I higly reccomend this tale. It is charming, funny, and not as stiff and serious as your typical Sherlock Holes read. Lupin is, after all, on the wrong side of the law. ^_^

The Extraordinary Adventures of Arsene Lupin is the save book as The Exploits of Arsene Lulpin! The only difference is the very clumsy language and formatting of the former. I ordered both books together as was suggested and am going to return The Extraordinary Adventures.

I really enjoyed reading about Arsene Lupin (thanks Head Butler!) - a great character involved in some funny and/or exciting escapades. Despite my enjoyment, however, I contemplated giving this particular book three stars instead of four. My main reservation about this edition (ISBN 1-4065-0001-1) is the poor proof-reading job done by the Dodo Press - often there are words with letters omitted and, in more than one instance, whole paragraphs are repeated before the story continues. Other than the disappointing editing job, however, I highly recommend getting acquainted with Arsene Lupin and this is why I ultimately decided on a four star rating.

Arsene Lupin --- you know him not, but to generations of European readers he was the French Sherlock Holmes. Well, better than the Brit detective. Holmes was on the side of the law, a stodgy enterprise. But Lupin was a burglar. A gentleman burglar. A burglar with wit and style. It was a thrill to watch him work.

And, indeed, you could watch him work, for Lupin liked to announce his crimes in advance, the better to turn theft into sports. In the most famous of the Arsene Lupin stories, he breaks into a Baron's residence, takes nothing, but leaves a card for his unwitting host: "Arsene Lupin, gentleman burglar, will return when the furniture is genuine."


And how about this note, to a Baron so paranoid that he has had his chateau sealed, so that no one but staff may enter:

"There is, in the gallery in your castle, a picture of Philippe de Champaigne, of exquisite finish, which pleases me beyond measure. Your Rubens are also to my taste, as well as your smallest Watteau. In the salon to the right, I have noticed the Louis XIII cadence-table, the tapestries of Beauvais, the Empire gueridon signed `Jacob,' and the Renaissance chest. In the salon to the left, all the cabinet full of jewels and miniatures.

"For the present, I will content myself with those articles that can be conveniently removed. I will therefore ask you to pack them carefully and ship them to me, charges prepaid, to the station at Batignolles, within eight days, otherwise I shall be obliged to remove them myself during the night of 27 September; but, under those circumstances, I shall not content myself with the articles above mentioned.

"Accept my apologies for any inconvenience I may cause you, and believe me to be your humble servant, "Arsene Lupin."

P.S. Please do not send the largest Watteau. Although you paid thirty thousand francs for it, it is only a copy, the original having been burned, under the Directoire by Barras, during a night of debauchery. Consult the memoirs of Garat. And I do not care for the Louis XV chatelaine, as I doubt its authenticity."

There's something delicious about a man who commits non-violent crimes with panache --- it's almost as if he's liberating the art and furniture, rescuing them from nobles who take pleasure only in owning them. The French thought so, anyway: Starting in 1906, Maurice LeBlanc pounded out twenty volumes of stories about Lupin, all in the neat, near-non-fiction style of de Maupassant and Flaubert. (Inevitably, Lupin would comfront Sherloick Holmes. Guess who won?) Later, there were plays, movies, even comics. And the character has been easy to update --- on television, Lupin morphed into "The Saint."

Lupin is at once a 19th century figure and a modern rogue: "Why should I retain a definite form and feature? Why not avoid the danger of a personality that is ever the same? My actions will serve to identify me." All he cares about is his art. It gives him pleasure to commit a crime even while locked in a jail cell. And because disguise and indirection are his greatest skills, it thrills him to announce, with all candor, "I shall not be present at my trial --- Arsene Lupin remains in prison just as long as it pleases him, and not one minute more."

It is great fun to try and outguess Lupin. But why not dress the part while you savor these tales? A smoking jacket or a silk robe. A brandy. Chopin. After a while, Lupin's cracked morality starts to make a great deal of sense, and your mind drifts. By the third or fourth story, you'll be contemplating a jewel theft. And why not? Mrs. X doesn't really appreciate that necklace. And it is insured.

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