5 comments about Essential Winlnet: Developing Applications Using the Windows Internet API with RAS, ISAPI, ASP, and COM (Addison-Wesley Microsoft Technology Series).

1. This book gives you everything you need in order to effectively use the WinInet DLL. The coverage is very complete the explanations clear and the code examples relevant and nicely written. The HTTP, FTP, And Gopher protocols are covered using both the MFC wrapper classes and the WinInet DLL directly. An intermediate to advanced C++ windows programmer will have no trouble getting through this book, beginners stay away. You will also need to have a at least a basic understanding of MFC in order to get the most out of this book. A strong recommendation for those needing to use the communications capabilities of the WinInet DLL.



2. I arrived at this book when I was doing searches on a refrence to help me use WinInet with Visual Basic. The book is not really a VB book at all. It barely mentions how to accomplish the tasks of their projects in VB. Everything is aimed at C++.



3. I just got the book. I skimmed all chapters and read selected chapters. Note, this book is pretty old, but I think it still has practical value. The book talks about Windows 95 and NT 4, but more importantly, it talks about IE 4, which is the foundation of IE 5 and 6. I think the WinInet functionality began w/ IE4 and has not changed much, if at all.

   The book does illustrate all examples in C++; however, there are enough non-language-specific *explanations* throughout the book to give it some value to everyone--I say this mainly because there are no other books on WinInet, at present, and clear explanations are not easily found on the Web. I know C++ so I cannot say how easy or hard it is to follow the examples if you don't know C++.

   I'd love to see a newer book on this topic that would cover VB/C# .Net and IE 6, but until then, this book is my primary source for WinInet info.




4. A handy book covering various aspects of the Internet protocols; sample application simple enough to illustrate the concepts.

   If you want to learn WinInet programming, this will be a great start.

   I bought this book while I had to research ISAPI but found coverage on ISAPI just adequate. Wish the author comes up with a second edition or print with more alternatives to ISAPI.




5. I used this book to navigate around the Windows Internet API and managed to put together a decent desk top application in C++.NET. Great. But the COM examples are so full of errors that they can not be compiled from the source code provided from the publisher. Now I'm not a super COM programmer but have put together COM applications with some success. However, it seems the author slapped together the COM chapter with little or no thought.

No comments about The Windows Registry as a forensic resource [An article from: Digital Investigation].

5 comments about GPRS and 3G Wireless Applications: Professional Developer's Guide.

1. If you're looking for a book on wireless application development from a code perspective this is the wrong book. The value of this book is it provides a solid foundation that needs to be in place before coding starts.

   It begins with basic concepts of how wireless infrastructure works. Developers can safely ignore this section of the book. I liked it because it sorted out the "moving parts" as well as the technological underpinnings. It also answered a lot of questions I had regarding where standards and the industry as a whole were headed, and the strengths and weaknesses of existing technologies and why 3G is so important. As an aside, I learned one trivial fact that had been bothering me: where did the name "Bluetooth" come from? Answer: It was named after a Danish king, Harald Blatand who brought unity among different groups of people. Blatand means Bluetooth in English. Not only does the name capture the spirit of Bluetooth as a technology, but this piece of trivia might gain you "Alpha Geek" status at a seminar or convention :-)

   From chapter 3 on, however, is of paramount interest to architects and developers because it gets into lower level details of GPRS, 3G and Bluetooth. The author provides all of the key characteristics of each technology from which a design and development strategy can be derived. Chapter 6 is where both developers and architects will gain information for performance aspects of their products. The author is meticulous in describing the issues and factors that will arise with protocols (the realities of TCP/IP over wireless in chapter 6 is priceless), and is supported with graphs and diagrams that a developer should carefully go over before writing a single line of code.

   Because of my focus in QA and SQA I thought chapter 14 on testing was particularly strong. Again, this is something that developers need to fully understand (as well as the rest of a project team), and the information provided in this chapter fills a large gap in the testing body of knowledge.

   In response to previous comments about this book: (1) Although the content on the CD ROM is out of date, the author's web site contains up-to-date artifacts and URLs. (2) I contacted the author directly (contact information is provided in the book) about the missing test documents cited on the cover of the book and found out that last minute copyright issues prevented their inclusion on the CD ROM. He sent me to where these documents could be obtained (for free) and they were well worth the effort. (3) The book is anything but basic - it gets into some low-level details such as timing and state diagrams that are essential for *properly* developing wireless applications.

   The author has a talent for packing an incredible amount of information into a paragraph and still holding your interest. He also comes across as authoritative and manages to cover a wide spectrum of issues and facts without compromising on details needed by developers and architects (or anyone who wants to update their knowledge on the latest wireless technologies).




2. I started this book with the yearning to know about all of these technologies: Bluetooth, 3G, GPRS, UMTS, CDPD, HSCSD, Location-based services, and TDMA/CDMA/etc. I really have a decent understanding after this reading this book.

   It gets to the details of how handoffs between GPRS base stations and stuff like that. Things you might not need to know, but its the details that get you places. I'd recommend this book to anyone wanting to know about the general gamut of wireless technologies.




3. As mobile internet becomes increasingly rampant and soon to be a household word, it's vital for the individuals who are on the design and sales forefront to educate themselves on this evolving technology. I recommend for all of our sales and marketing staff to familiarize themselves with Andersson's Professional Developer's Guide. Andersson's book can assist even the novice wireless hopeful with fundamental terms and concepts vital to surviving in this era of cutting edge wireless technology.



4. Emzone develops state of art mobile applications for Sales Force Automation (SFA) . The Book iscomprehensive and helps for GPRS application develoment. It isvery helpful in Emzone current development.



5. This book is fine.

   The e-book is a ripoff unfortunately. Two reasons:
   (1) the cd packed with the printed book is omitted.
   (2) amazon's e-book download page doesn't work properly; you have to hit escape, then use "view source" then pick out the download URL.

No comments about Supporting Users And Troubleshooting a Microsoft Windows Xp Operating System (70-271) (Pro Academic).

1 comments about Logical Design of Operating Systems (Automatic Computation).

1. In this book, two respected Computer Scientists write about the logical design of operating systems, blending theoretical results and practical applications.

   Probably the best aspect of the book is the fact that Bic and Shaw stress fundamental concepts, instead of using examples from specific operating systems like Unix. And although the book is rather old, the information in the Second Edition is very necessary today to the design of operating systems.

   The book begins with elementary concepts, such as concurrent programming methods, the deadlock problem, and process scheduling and goes on to explore protection problems and various security issues. The exercises at the end of each chapter and the overall textbook style make it a must for the operating system student.

1 comments about SUSE LINUX Enterprise Server 9 Administrator's Handbook (Novell Press).

1. Kuo and Beland help the sysadmin who might be new to SUSE Linux. Conceptually, you can think of the book as two interwoved parts. The first part is explaining generic linux, or even unix, operations. Applicable to a Red Hat or Solaris machine, perhaps.
   
   More pertinantly, the book goes into SUSE-specific abilities, with a natural emphasis on maintaining a secure system. The book is clearly directed at a sysadmin in a corporate environment, as opposed to a hobbyist with a home computer. So robustness and defending against malware are constant themes.
   
   For example, you may want to offer anonymous ftp writing to your machine. By default, this directory often ends up in /var. Which means that users could, inadvertantly or not, end up filling the partition that /var/ sits on. Bad, because /var holds a lot of system log files, amongst other items. So the book suggests putting the anonymous ftp write directory on its own partition. Some other sysadmin books totally ignore this situation.
   
   Careful attention should be paid to the last sections of the book, which discuss instrusion detection. A good precis of the main tools is furnished - for Ethereal, Nessus, nmap, Snort and others. You get enough details in the overview to understand their usages and their comparative advantages.

No comments about eBible for Palm OS.

5 comments about Win32 System Programming: A Windows(R) 2000 Application Developer's Guide (2nd Edition) (Addison-Wesley Microsoft Technology Series).

1. This is one of the best books I read. The description is clear. It used some UNIX commands to introduce some functions, but the reader needs not to have UNIX background, just skips those short description.
   If the author gave all system routines line by line, the book would be huge, it is not necessary ( we can tell from the title), and the price will be double. As a programmer, I like this book.



2. This book is roughly the same as Steven's "Advanced Programing in the Unix Environment". It gets you in touch with the moving pieces of the Windows operating system.

   Bring with you a strong understanding of C/C++ and some experience administrating a Windows system and you can be up and running banging against the operating system's APIs. Open network sockets, play with "Thread Local Storage", create and register your very own service, interface with the security system, whack around the registry, and a dozen other ways to shoot yourself in the foot or get some actual work done.

   This book has almost nothing about making windows, graphics, sounds, or anything else that will help you get started making yet another accounting application. If that's what you are looking for look somewhere else.

   This book also comes threateningly close to being a good beginners guide to porting *nix applications to the Windows operating system. The author draws many parallels to various *nix utilities and how to write their equivalent using Windows' APIs.

   For those that like plenty of rope to hang themselves, this is the book for you. I enjoyed learning about the various facilities Windows provides the developer, and feel that this book helped me gain a better understanding of where to look first for doing fairly common relatively low-level tasks.




3. I thought the book was well written and would be marginally useful as a basic reference book but I expected more content such at the WIN32 API and more than just a preview of WIN64 and a summary discussion of COM/DCOM and other more complex subjects.
   
   The appendix comparing Win32, Unix and the "C" Library, while making good book fodder, is relatively useless without substantive definitions and examples.
   
   All in all, not much bang for the book. I would not have purchased the book if I had reviewed a copy of the book before ordering it through Amazon.



4. The rating I give here is just based on a skim of the book. However, after visiting the author's website, I very quickly realized that there is a more recent (2004) third edition of the text. Unless you specifically want a more historical perspective, I would recommend that you get the third edition.



5. This book pretty much covers everything I needed to know about Win32 system programming. It has very good coverage of topics like threading, file handling, Memory Management, Interprocess communication, network programming, and asynchronous I/O with completion ports. Ever wonder how to share memory or access really, really huge files? Want to learn how to build more scalable servers? This book covers all that and more. I recently took a new job that uses all of this stuff and I was relieved to find a book that covered it all so well.
   
   He gives a very good generalized view of the windows programming philosophy and explains some common windows types and their uses, which helps in understanding the rest of the API. There are plenty of programming examples and he often compares Win32 programming techniques to UNIX programming techniques giving references to the Stevens book which will help put things in context for UNIX programmers.
   
   For client side programming you can get by with Petzold but for server side this book is a must. If you do system development on Win32 then this book is your weapon.

No comments about Classic Operating Systems.

5 comments about Tomes of Delphi: Win32 Core API Windows 2000.

1. Do yourself a favor and don't waste your money on this thing like I did. It's not worth reading. The coverage of the API is incomplete, to put it nicely, and the explanations are convoluted and confusing. Not worth the money at all.



2. When one reads the worthless pros expressed in Mr. Ayres latest manuscript, it causes one to contemplate how this dolt continues to be a published author. It is clear that based on his use of the English language that he is devoid of anything more than a High School diploma. It is sad to say that his command of Delphi appears to be equally as poor as his writing skills. The examples and sample code are so simplistic that they are literally worthless, and hardly expand on any topic in detail. I honestly think that the original "Delphi for Dummies" was a more informative and better-written book

   It is clear that this latest book is yet another ego stroking manuscript of recycled work from his original books. Many of the API calls have not been updated and many of the samples are riddled with errors and are not syntactically correct for Windows 2000/XP.

   It simply staggers my imagination why Wordware continues to use Mr. Ayres as an author. When reviewing all of the Tomes books, it is clear that when Mr. Ayres split company with his co-authors the quality of the book went down considerably. Perhaps Wordward should get them to re-write this book and see which one sells better.

   Until then, go get Charles Petzolds API book. If you don't know C++ try DevGuru to get some help. They will gladly help translate the C++ calls to Delphi Syntax.




3. A must have for all Delphi Programmers



4. You'd think the qualifications for writing a Delphi book would be 1) you must be a Delphi expert 2) you must write well. Well, I can tell you for sure that this guy doesn't meet either qualification. This is, without question, the worst programming book I have ever had the misfortune to buy. Ayres writes like a third grader. And the code is even worse. A person who'd never seen Delphi before could write this code. It is mostly warmed over MSDN example code converted to Pascal. Frankly, I'd be embarrassed to publish something like this. It's that bad.



5. THIS IS A GREAT BOOK ON THE SUBJECT AND IS RARE TO FIND BECAUSE IT IS OUT OF PRINT.