Hardware Books

The ideas behind Wave-WP, a high-level network-centric programming language presented in this book, are fresh, radical and thought-provoking. The author offers a completely original view on what distributed computing ought to be about. As someone interested in the design of next-generation programming models that make it easy for people to build, manage and control large-scale dynamic network systems, I found Peter Sapaty's work a very worthwhile read.

"Ruling Distributed Dynamic Worlds" describes the World Processing language and the Wave-WP model for implementing large distributed systems. The book will be of interest to anyone concerned with distributed computation, the software of robotic systems and application spaces such as network management and security and other crisis management scenarios.
Wave-WP is an extension of the Wave model of distributed processing expounded in the author's 1999 text "Mobile Processing in Distributed and Open Environments." His new text extends the model to embrace "spatial programming", using a "virtual world" abstraction whose content is assembled using the distributed Knowledge Network concept of the earlier Wave paradigm. Throughout the text, he supplies numerous examples of how Wave-WP interacts with the physical world, in such missions as multi-robot firefighting and hospital maintenance. More traditional applications of distributed processing such as network management are also discussed, as are security applications.
The Wave-WP paradigm superficially resembles the mobile agent paradigm. The author argues that it is qualitatively different to the latter in that mobile agent solutions anticipate emergent behaviour from the specified actions of the mobule agents, whereas Wave-WP operates at a higher level (the "implementation layer"). This allows some complex application behaviour to be generated from remarkably simple and concise Wave-WP code. A number of such examples are presented in the text.
The book includes a detailed description of the World Processing language and of the Wave-WP interpreter, and of the various worlds inhabited by the paradigm (the virtual world, the execution world, the physical world and the "united" world). The range of worlds occupied is (in this reviewer's opinion) the key distinction between Wave-WP and its predecessor Wave architecture.
Readers persuaded of the power of Wave-WP will doubtless be itching to try it out for themselves. Unfortunately, it was not yet available as a product when the book was published (as mentioned by the author in his preface) although earlier versions of Wave have been made available to the research community. Despite this limitation (which may well have been addressed by the time you read this review), the book is a provocative read for anyone interested in innovations in distributed systems.

The best book for the money, and I have read them all! Clearly explains MP3 and other aspects of digital music. Great CD, too.

I have read several books on MP3, and this is definitely the best for beginners. It explains all aspects of finding, playing, and creating MP3 files. While it is easy, it contains enough technical information for advanced users, as well.

The included CD is worth the price of the book, and is the best suite of MP3 programs and utilities I have seen!

Este libro es para personas que deseen actualizar, reparar, dar mantenimiento y resolver fallas en computadoras

The book features hardware drawings and many tables giving data in forms that allow the technician access to any area of study without needing to sift throught page after page of text. I find I am already referring to Upgrading and Repairing PCs when confronted with a task I do no complete frequently. I would recommend this book for anyone involved in the computer technician field as well as the self taught user.

The book had arrived very quickly and in a great condition. I must say that i am very pleased with this puirchase.

Thanks,
EladSoftware Change Impact Analysis (Practitioners)

This collection of papers on software change impact analysis covers both practice and theory. The book starts with an introduction to change impact analysis. This intro covers terms, theories and practices that have emerged and are accepted among most researchers and practitioners, and provides a basic discussion of traceability and impact analysis.

Chapter 1 is titled Nature of Impact Analysis and contains A Process Model for Software Maintenance, Impact Analysis-Towards A Framework for Comparison, and The Year 2000 Problem: Impact, Strategies, and Tools. Although the last paper is obviously out of date, some of the techniques are worth examining, especially since a good amount of the Y2K problem required impact and risk analysis.

State of the Practice is the topic of chapter 2, and contains the following papers: An Analysis of the Requirements Traceability Problem, Software Change Impact Analysis for Design Evolution and Configuration Management Survey. These three papers are a combination of practice and theory.

The material in Chapter 3, Automated Support for Impact Analysis, is spotty. Some is out of date in my opinion, while other papers are as fresh today as when the book was published. Papers in this chapter are: The Integrated CASE Manifesto, A Practical Software Maintenance Environment, Intelligent Assistance for Software Development and Maintenance and Maintenance Support for Object-Oriented Programs (the last is excellent!). Chapter 4 contains the most practical material in the collection. The topic title is Dependency-Analysis Approaches, and the papers are: Using Dependence Analysis to Support the Software Maintenance Process, Interprocedural Slicing Using Dependence Graphs, Data Dependency Graphs for Ada Programs, Data Flow Analysis and its Application to Software Maintenance and Change Impact Identification in Object Oriented Software Maintenance.

Papers in Chapter 5 (Traceability Approaches) are also mostly practical, but many are out of date or contain information that was a good idea at the time, but seem quaint by today's standards. Paper topics are: A Hypertext System to Manage Software Life-Cycle Documents (very much ahead of its time, but woefully out of date now), A Software Documentation Support Environment-Its Definition, Traceability Based on Design Decisions (this is *must reading* in my opinion) and A Process for Consolidating and Reusing Design Knowledge. Chapter 6's papers address Impact Representation. While many were written a decade ago all of them are interesting and include ideas that are as valid today. Topics are: The Prism Model of Changes, A Unified Interprocedural Program Representation for a Maintenance Environment, A Formal Model of Program Dependencies and Its Implications for Software Testing, Debugging, and Maintenance and A Graph Model for Software Evolution.

Chapter 7 is devoted to Impact-Determination Techniques and contains interesting papers that are more theoretical than practical in my opinion. Topics are: An Early Impact Analysis Technique for Software Maintenance, Using Program Slicing in Software Maintenance, Efficient Algorithms for the Instantiated Transitive Closure Queries, and Approximate Reasoning About the Semantic Effects of Program Changes. Chapter 8 is a synopsis of material in the preceding chapters, with and commentary and observations about impact analysis as a discipline.

Overall, this book represents a substantial cross section of the body of knowledge devoted to software change impact analysis. Some strengths include the fact that this collection of papers makes the body of knowledge available in one book, and the focus of the papers on software engineering aspects of change and maintenance, and how to manage impact to complex applications. A key weakness is that some of the papers are over 10 years old. However, despite the age of some of the papers many are surprisingly applicable to maintenance challenges faced by practitioners today.

I've been an Apple user since the old Apple IIc and have been through just about every generation of MAC and the operating systems. I'm not a "under the hood" guy - I use computers to get things done. With OS X, Apple did it again, introducing great new technology without documentation to let you know how to use it and unlease the power.

Most computer guides I've seen fall into one of two categories: A- The "This is a mouse. To use the mouse grasp firmly and push . . ." or the B- "Once in Terminal mode and root level, type the command. . . " If you are like me, you want to know how to get the most out of your machine without resorting to programming language. Mr. Miser has produced a great guide that takes you step by step through just about all the important functions and how to steps for MAC OS X (and 10.1). If you check some of the self-help boards on the internet, you get conflicting and confusing info. For example- installation of OS X and partitioning- Should you have the Classic envrionment on a different partion? How does the model of machine effect the partitioning decision? He gives you INFORMATION not just instructions, so you know the advantages and disadvantages of each decision. The book takes you step by step through all the new features and how to use them, and the tips with each section seem to predict your questions or problems before they occur. Having already installed OS X , I had been stumbling through the little quirks and problems. It IS new and different from the old MAC operating systems, and you have to get use to life in a Networked world. I had so many light bulb moments of sudden clarity that I had former Enron execs calling to offer their services in trading the excess power being generated!

The book is littered with wonderful tidbits. I had a simple question no one would answer - how do you rebuild the desktop in OS X? Found the answer - you DON'T need to perform this housekeeping under OS X. Thank you Brad!

Mr. Miser is a rare author. Here is an engineer who has a great understanding of the technology who can give wonderfully detailed information to the user in simple, plain to understand language without talking down to his reader. He has a good grasp that there are a lot of heavy users out there who are not engineers but just want to maximize productivity and minimize problems. On the other hand, the book goes far beyond the beginner level and helps you solve many issues that may have had you visiting your local computer guru- at $70 per hour. Thanks!

And as for OS X - I am doing more, faster than ever before. So make the plunge! Read the book, develop your installlation plan and make the switch over to OS X!

I don't know about you, nor your OSX situation. But I have a computing lab of 22 flat panel iMacs running OSX which have been nothing but trouble. (So much for "out of the box!")

In two separate situations I poured through the more popular and well recommended books on OSX looking for solutions. When none of them addressed those specific problems, I wrote the authors of those books asking the specific questions. (I won't mention them here.) NONE of them responded with an answer, and only ONE responded at all, and that was with a vague "guess." (Which later turned out to be wrong.)

This book arrived from QUE in my Reviews stack, and I instantly went hunting for the answers to those specific problems. I found the solutions quickly and easily among these pages.

The book is well cross-referenced, and written in a "low" geek-speak manner so that most Mac users should be able to use it effectively.

So many of the "trendy" books these days are mere reflections of the "Help" files included with the software or hardware packages. The "tips and tricks" books seem to be a carefully edited version of the popular online discussion forums and discussion lists. But Brad's book seems to evolve beyond that and actually presents important information not found elsewhere -- or more fully fleshes out details skimmed over or misrepresented by the others. (For instance: few of the other books warn you up front that the Finder cannot burn multiple-session CD-RWs -- BEFORE you burn one -- even though the machine ships with a rewritable drive.)

As a book reviewer, I've poured over maybe 30 of the most popular OSX books in the past 12 to 18 months. I feel comfortable recommending this book for all my readers as probably the best purchasing decision they could make for OSX help.

And that's all I have to say about that.

Most professional Web designers and developers occupy a large portion of their work in a visual design environments such as Dreamweaver, and use the tools within Dreamweaver to hand-code at least portions of their own markup. The positioning and scope of Special Edition Using Macromedia Dreamweaver MX is primarily to assist these web masters in gaining a professional level of competency through a working knowledge of Dreamweaver and the issues in design and markup that are affecting the changing way in which they work. Special Edition Using Macromedia Dreamweaver MX cogently addresses issues in Web design and development from an extremely contemporary standpoint. Suitable for beginners, the primary emphasis in Special Edition Using Macromedia Dreamweaver MX is to assist the intermediate designer interested in learning how to work with Dreamweaver to achieve best practices within the design and development industry. User Level: Intermediate, 720 pages

The title of this book is not the only thing that is covered (i.e. Dreamweaver MX). The authors also discuss HTML, standards, best practices, Mac vs. Windows browsers, etc, while introducing the features of Dreamweaver. This is important as many books just provide a point-and-click cookbook w/little relevant dicsussion as to "why" something is done a certain way.

There are also useful references to resources on the internet and good tips. The writing style is easy to follow and there are many good illustrations. This is not only a fantastic book for Dreamweaver MX, but a great web development book as well.

I buy a ton of tech books every year and don't give top reviews easily. This book definitely earns its 5 *'s.

I first encountered Mr. Browns JCL book in it's 1st edition about 10 years ago. I was familar with a JCL book by Shelly & Cashman at the time. Mr Brown's book had much better example's and was written in a conversational style much easier to follow than the standard IBM JCL reference or the Shelley & Cashman book that I already owned. I also have had exposure to a JCL book by Doug Lowe which is a good student text but is weak as a professional's reference after school is complete. I am currently entering my 17th year in programming. I Consult currently at a fortune 500 company, and teach COBOL for a rehabilitation program in Minneapolis. I have just convinced the staff responsible for text selection to replace the Lowe book with Mr. Brown's for the Fall quarter. In my class I have students with various disabilities ranging from physical impairments to learning disabilities. The new larger format of the 3rd edition is appreciated by those with sight impairments, and the numerous examples are appreciated by the student I have with a learning disability. I have recommended the book to many collegues and when I managed a staff of 8 I issued a copy of the book to everyone on my team. Simply put, with the many examples, the style of prose and the excellent index I can not recommend a better book on JCL

This excellent book is for novice through experienced programmers. It includes information on the more recent releases of MVS, including SMS and its impact to JCL. While the text is good reading, it is also useful as a reference book.

Most computer books age at light speed, but this one is an exception. Although it was published in 1998, the images still deliver an understandable message of how computers and the Internet work. As is the case with all "Visually" books, the sequence of diagrams takes you through a step-by-step set of lessons that anyone can understand.
If you are a novice in computers and the Internet and have a phobia with learning about them, this is still one of the best books that you can select as a starting point.

For the inexperienced intimidated by big,thick manuals with lots of print! This book is a fantastic, visually-pleasing intoductory course into computers and the internet. If your learning method is by observation or "hands-on", this is the book for you! It is as if the illustrators are in a room with you answering your every novice question and at the same time "plucking out" that very piece of equipment from the inner-workings of your computer. The result is a perfect solution to a potentially complicated learning experience, simplified. The adult "picture book" reviews computer basics like ram,cpu,modems,and compressed files, to web newsgroups, multimedia, E-mail and web navigation - what they are, how they work and how they fit in the "big picture"- all done visually. Their slogan is "Read Less, Learn More" and that is exactly the author's presentation. I got more out of this book than the "Introduction to Computers" course I took at our local college!

This book is extremely helpful in understanding all the aspects of windows millenium. I recently went to a computer store this weekend and looked at all the possibilities of the windows millenium versions and this book, by far, is the most cleanest, clearest, and easiest to understand of all the books I looked at. Don't dissapoint yourself, buy it.

Okay my Dad and his wife are almost completely clueless when it comes to using computers. My Dad runs out and buys a new computer with Windows ME. (note: he was running Windows 3.1 on his previous computer) So I bought this for him to help out. He LOVES this book. So does his wife. Very helpful!

This product was exactly as described and arrived 2 days before the expected date. All-around GREAT shopping experience. I LOVE AMAZON!

I ordered a book for school through this site and couldnt be happier with the results. I got what I paid for and it was in perfect condition with no damage. Id reccomend this site to anyone. Its reliable and inexpensive as well. The only advice I can give is if you need something sooner than 2 weeks dont use USPS for your shipping choice. Sometimes it'll be given as a special for free shipping but it takes a while but it may also depend on where you live compared to where its being shipped out from. Aside from that I'm very satisfied and will be using Amazon in the future.