5 comments about JavaSpaces(TM) Principles, Patterns, and Practice (Jini Series).

1. I love this book! If you want to understand JavaSpaces, this book a great way to go. It explains each feature in an easy-to-read fashion and then shows off the feature in code. It also presents patterns and idioms and serves as an introduction to ways of exploiting distributed and/or parallel computing (for example, distributed arrays).

   I much preferred this book to "The Jini Specification" which unfortunately wasn't quite what I was expecting from the reviews of that book. I'd say, making a comparison to O'Reilly's "Java in a Nutshell", that this JavaSpaces book is akin to the first half of the Nutshell book, and the Specification book is akin to the second, reference half.

   If you want to do some JavaSpaces work then this is the book to get!




2. Javaspaces is a promising technology for solving difficult problems relatively easily. This book does what it says, it lays out the science behind Javaspaces clearly and concisely with good use cases, patterns and suggestions. The author is very clear and the book flows very well. Upon reading the book I was champing at the bit to experiment with JavaSpaces. It really is a super read. The problem is, however, that Javaspaces is a still-emerging technology. The simplicity and clarity that is documented in the book, does not directly tie over to the actual using of Javaspaces. The current tools are raw and unwieldy, and there are many difficulties trying to actual start a java space up. . Also, the mechanism used by the author to discover a javaspace is now considered passe, destined for deprecation. The book desperately needs a section on "JavaSpaces in the real world". Wading through the current tools and resolving the myriads of problems that occur. Also a section on basic Jini discovery services would be helpful, as would an up to date 'how to find a javaspace' chapter. All in all though, I would definitely recommend reading it, just be prepared for a steep Jini/Javaspaces learning curve after reading the book.



3. Javaspaces is a promising technology for solving difficult problems relatively easily. This book does what it says, it lays out the science behind Javaspaces clearly and concisely with good use cases, patterns and suggestions. The author is very clear and the book flows very well. Upon reading the book I was champing at the bit to experiment with JavaSpaces. It really is a super read. The problem is, however, that Javaspaces is a still-emerging technology. The simplicity and clarity that is documented in the book, does not directly tie over to the actual using of Javaspaces. The current tools are raw and unwieldy, and there are many difficulties trying to actual start a java space up. . Also, the mechanism used by the author to discover a javaspace is now considered passe, destined for deprecation. The book desperately needs a section on "JavaSpaces in the real world". Wading through the current tools and resolving the myriads of problems that occur. Also a section on basic Jini discovery services would be helpful, as would an up to date 'how to find a javaspace' chapter. All in all though, I would definitely recommend reading it, just be prepared for a steep Jini/Javaspaces learning curve after reading the book.



4. Nice concept but the code refers to packages, interfaces and classes that don't exist. Not deprecated, just not there to begin with. And they're different enough that it really has no relevance to the actual technology. Very disappointed.



5. Upon opening this book I was excited. Until I try to work with the examples and found that the examples were based on jini 1.0.
   The current jini release is 1.2.1 and some of the packages are different. I guess if I knew jini and javaspaces I could modify the examples to work with the new jini version, but then I wouldn't need the book.

5 comments about Inside Distributed Com (Mps).

1. If I hadn't already had some COM knowledge, this book would have been extremely frustrating. I found the topics poorly, and in many cases, inadequately explained. I often had to refer to other books to get the full picture. I would not recommend this book. There are better ones out there.



2. The best of course is Richard Grimes, professional DCOM programming.



3. great book for those that already know the workings of com/dcom, but want a better understanding of how things work under the hood (and way under the hood). this book is not VC++ 6.0 or ATL3.0 oriented - but you'll need to be pretty proficient in both or this is not your best use of funds. if you want the rest of the story behind marshalling, esp custom, std, and type lib, then is the best book i have found. certainly not a replacement for grimes - but certainly a notch or two above many of the WROX/Grimes products in both completeness and correctness.



4. Micro$oft is famous for its ability to push out new development technologies. The reason behind this planned obsolesence is obvious, every time they come out with something new people will have to open their wallets to "keep up."

   DCOM is just another disposable technology. As such, it was a complete failure; one that the marketing folks at M$ have tried to bury as quickly as possible under an avalanche of .NET hype.

   DCOM was hard to port because, like COM, it is based on a binary standard (i.e. a standard that changes when you leave x86 and go to 64-bit RISC). Not only that, but DCOM doesn't support distributed transactions. Worst of all, DCOM is a very, very complicated technology to use. Three strikes... YOU'RE OUT!

   The half-wit MBAs at Micro$oft realized their mistake and have abandoned DCOM, leaving it forever in the backwaters where the only record of its sorry existence are stupid books like this.

   I have no idea why someone would want to buy this book. Folks, this is a dead technology. It is no more. It is an ex-techology. If you buy this book, you are lying to yourself. This book will sit an gather dust, unless you can find more productive uses for it...like burning it to stay warm.




5. 
   Yes, it's outdated technology, but it remains a shining example of what technical writing should look like.
   
   I'm not saying it's easy to read. I'm saying that at some point in this book, you'll have an 'Ah ha!' moment where you finally get how COM actually worked behind the scenes. It ranks with Aho's compiler book as one where when you finally understand, you Understand.
   
   Let's hope the Eddons are hard at work writing another book that does the same job explaining Microsoft's Next Big Thing.

5 comments about Dissecting DOS: A Code-Level Look at the DOS Operating System.

1. Dissecting DOS provides the source code to DOS(actually RxDOS), a great explanation of the internals, and a look at how great reentrant ASM (assembly language) code is written. Enjoy !



2. After my first review posted, I am very pleased to say that the author (Mike Padanoffsky) contacted me, and was *Extremely* helpful in fixing *any* complaints that I may have had on his book / software. And it chagrins me to say, that the retractant message that I thought I had posted never went up. So I shall do so again. The original one went sorta like this... "This book, barring a minor bug in one of the earlier editions is in my own opinion one of the *very* best books on re-entrant assembly code and on operating systems. In fact, I liked the OS well enough that I use it on a daily basis on my notebook. For any inquiring programmers, if you want to know HOW to write your own OS, this is one of the *most* essential books to have at your side. I cannot stress enough how well it is written and supported. Words just doesn't seem to do it justice." I am also reminded of the fact, that if it weren't for authors like Mike, some of us programmers would still be scratching our heads, saying "Now, how do I do this one???"

   Great book. buy it. I highly recommend it... from one programmer to another.




3. i did not go thro the book till now but i heard a lot about that book



4. The book provides an indepth analysis of the way DOS works, contains invaluable information that you can find nowhere else. Nevertheless especially in the beginning I 've got the impression that bypasses -I admit that I'm not the most proficient assembly user and it can be my mistake- some funtamental elements very quickly. (I still try to find a way to list my files without using DOS interupts as the book doesn' t really explain what exactly interupt 52h/21h does and I 've not yet really understood how the accompanying program printcds work - written in C)



5. The book was pretty good with the information that it did give. Some of the programs that were discussed in the book were not on the disk like the book said they were. Alot was left out and not touched upon like they should have been. There should have been a short section on Device drivers, just to give a reader an overview that they do exist, and maybe a little on installable file systems. I bought this book because the code was written in Assembler. I probably should have bought FreeDos instead except that is was written in C. All the information that I could not find in this book I found in the Code for Free Dos.

1 comments about Formal Models of Operating System Kernels.

1. This book include FIFO queues, process tables and semaphores in chapter 2. In chapter 3, operating system, micro C/OS is described using objective Z schemata rather than Z.
   Z is ISO/IEC standards.ISO/IEC 13568:2002 Information technology -- Z formal specification notation -- Syntax, type system and semantics.
   And related standard is followint.
   ISO/IEC 10165-4:1992/Amd 3:1998 Guidelines for the use of Z in formalizing the behaviour of managed objects .
   
   I am no Z specialist nor OS specialist. And I do not have Z( and objective Z) translator to C language. So I cannot understand main part of this book.
   So I request my colleague to rewrite this Z example to be utilized B methods.
   Also I request another colleague to write TOPPERS/SSP(smallest set profile) specification using Z.
   It should be rewrite to be utilised B methods.
   
   This is the first book who can start to formally designe and evaluate the architecture of operating system.

1 comments about Operating Systems Concepts with Java.

1. This book was well written. I am a graduate computer science student, who rarely used this book, but when I had reviewed the book provided detail information. This book helps you understand a lot about the overall fundamentals of Computer-System Structure, Processes, Threads, CPU Scheduling, Synchronization, Deadlocks, and Memory Management.

5 comments about The Windows 2000 Device Driver Book: A Guide for Programmers (2nd Edition) (Microsoft Technologies Series).

1. There is absolutely no information about printer drivers in this book. The explanation about the printing process is so skimpy that you can't tell that it is wrong.



2. This book is a more concise, better organized version of the DDK documentation, minus the reference material. It does a good job of painting a picture of driver architecture and gets you familier with the terminology involved. However, it does not provide much insight or real-world tips, and in fact the regurgitation of Microsoft definitions and propoganda gets a little tiresome. This book does not go into much detail and is not a reference book. After you've read most of this book you can easily rely on the DDK documentation and never flip through these pages again.
   
   A couple specific gripes: 1) If the reader has never written a driver before, they've probably never worked in kernel mode before, so more general information on kernel-mode programming issues would have been appreciated. 2) Though this book does not go into much detail, the forward did promise a chapter on USB and IEEE 1394 available on the book's website. I was not able to find any such chapter on the website, and haven't received a response to my email requesting the information (to be fair I've only given him a couple days).



3. Don't waste your money on it like I did.
   The author just bores you with terminology and never gets to where you want to go. AVOID.... YOU'VE BEEN WARNED!!



4. I am pasting this review that i had originally posted in 2001 at other websites.
   
   This is one of the best books i have read. I have several years of experience in C/C++ and some experience in windows programming however I am a 'absolute beginner' with Windows device drivers and kernel mode programming and i was able to grasp almost everything the book spoke about with relative ease and with NO confusions. I would recommend this book to anyone who has absolutely no background in device driver programming but wants to make a career doing just that. I must admit that the books assumes that you are versed with C/C++ and some understanding of programming paradigm for windows, but it is pretty obvious since this is NOT a book to teach a programming language nor it is aimed at teaching regular windows programming. It is a complete 'NO NONSENSE' book that deals with topics right upto the point. The contents of the book flow gracefully explaining each and every step with precise detail. The author seems to have made the best possible effort to explain the basics before jumping directly into details. And that does help an absolute beginner. This book does NOT cover details about device specific drivers but it does help you reach a point where you are confident that 'you will understand' whatever you research on your own. A very good book... have seen very few of these types lately.



5. This book is easy to follow and very informative. A must have for the amateur driver developer.

No comments about A+ Operating Systems for Technicians.

5 comments about Unicode: A Primer.

1. This book is a very good introduction to the Unicode standards. Indeed, it goes lot further than just being an introduction. It contains a wealth of detail and a lot of very useful references. If you want to find out about Unicode and see how it will affect your work, this is the book to get.

   If you are going to be getting stuck in to some serious Unicode based development work, you will need the official standards for some of the fine detail but you should also have a copy of this book as well. In that case, I'd expect that you would refer to this book a lot more than the standard.

   After a short preliminary section that talks about the need for a standard and the standardisation process the meat of the book deals in "Part II" with the detail of Unicode and, in "Part III" with some practical uses.

   The author explains things like the various UTF encodings for Unicode in a clear and readable style. He also provides a very useful set of cameos of the support for Unicode in various operating systems, programming languages and applications.

   There then follow a substantial set of appendices charting the Unicode codings, the character sets used and so on.

   I do have one criticism of the book. Despite the appendices, there is still a lot of material in the text itself that really should also be in the appendices. I'm thinking of things such as charts of mappings and details about the standardisation process. This is a minor complaint though and the reader will easily be able to step around these sections while progressing through the book.




2. I'm sad that I can't give this book 5 stars because the quality is there. I would have liked additional examples of programming for Unicode. Java is easy because Unicode is its native character set. But I work in C++, C, SQL, Perl and shell scripts too. A few pages dedicated to each of these (and perhaps some other languages in common use) would be of great help. Some of the issues I'd like to see addressed are:

   1) The preferred data type(s) for representing Unicode characters in each language.

   2) Library functions to avoid and alternatives to each.

   3) Reading and writing common encodings (UTF-8 and UCS-16 are the big ones).

   4) Conversion between Unicode and other character sets.

   The addition of this material in future edition would make this one of the most essential books on the shelf of anyone developing software for the international market. As it stands, it is still a fine book. If you are a programmer doing internationalization, it is worth owning.




3. Character encoding is not for the faint hearted. Unicode promises to end all that.

   If you are interested in fundamentals of Unicode, you'll be dissapointed with "Unicode:A Primer" . For instance, do you know how exactly your vi editor is able to display that russian character by talking to the xterm ? My expectation in reading this book was to get an idea of what in the world are UCS-2, ISO-8859, ISO-10646, Unicode, UTF-8, etc...and what is the basic difference between them . So, I was actually interested in the author talking about these encoding standards in a low-level detailed manner.

   The material in the first five chapters , which form the introduction to Unicode, appears jumbled and quiet hopelessly out of sequence. If one is used to reading in a widely accepted manner of first defining things and then discussing them, one would be dissapointed. It is only in Chapter 4, for instance, that the author defines UTF-7, UTF-16 etc - whereas these "terms" are frequently used in the preceding sections.

   But, if you don't care about the basics and would like to get into the details right away - there are parts of this book you'll find useful. Not completely satisfactory maybe, but at least useful. For instance, you get to explore the difference between the various standards - all in one book. And that's good. There are chapters on programming language, OS and XML/HTML which would be useful for programmers. For example, the book talks about how Perl, Java, C++, etc. (with some code too!) and databases support Unicode - how Windows 98 does not. So, if you are working on encoding and know what you want, you may actually find it here.

   But, contrary to what the title claims, this book doesn't do a great job being a primer. The back of the book states the Reader Level to be : Intermediate to Advanced. And that's fair.




4. If you are a computer professional and have to deal with web pages in various languages, you will need to know what Unicode is about.

   This book is a good first look at Unicode. While it does not go into nitty-gritty details, it gives a good overview of what it is about. Now I am no longer in complete darkness, thanks to this book.

   After this book, I will proceed to the official Unicode 3.0 hardcover reference.




5. This book is not really current, nor is it particularly well written. Unicode Demystified is bigger and more expensive, but it's more up to date, very well written and is an amazingly easy read.

5 comments about WML & WMLScript: A Beginner's Guide.

1. Got me started within my first application in minutes. Book covers WML and WMLScript in detail. Includes some Perl scripts that let you interact with a remote server with your phone. Pretty cool. Would like to see some PHP -- maybe next edition.



2. It's a good start, but it does go very slowly. You need to supplement it with WAP Integration immediately afterward if you want to get into any really advanced aspects of WAP. Experienced developers may even want to jump straight to the WAP Integration book.



3. I just added this book to my collection of WAP/WML titles.

   I was pleased with the amount of code this book provides--probably 200+ WORKING programs. I've been able to make all of them work in the phone simulator and on my phone! That's a nice change.

   If you are starting out, the intro chapters will get you up and running. If you have been doing this a while, cutting and pasting the book's code will save you time with things like interacting with Perl.

   Recommend.




4. The book presents working programs you will actually use:

   Interacting with remote scirpts (Perl, ASP)
   Validating forms using WMLScript
   Dealing with limited RAM
   Error detection and handling

   Recommend.




5. Book is straight forward. Easy to read/follow. I had created HTML pages in the past. It was easy to migrate to WML. The scripting discussion (WMLScript) was very valuable.

5 comments about Novell Netware 6.5 CNA Exam Cram 2.

1. Time, determination and this book. That's all it takes to become a CNA.



2. Passed with 700 on first try.
   
   I thought I was pretty advanced already - I have installed and upgraded many 6.5 servers, clients, managed a huge e-dir tree, file system, NSS volumes, rights, NDPS. I thought I was totally ready for the test.
   
   Just to make sure I wasn't wasting my $125 on the test, I figured $20 for this book was good insurance. And it SO was!
   
   The test includes a lot of little esoteric facts about NetWare that even someone with lots of experience might never see. This book does a good job of bringing all of those little esoteric facts to light.
   
   The sample questions at the end of each chapter and sample tests at the end of the book are also very good simulations of the type of questions you'll see. However, I wouldn't say that any of the questions are word-for-word from the real test.
   
   Also, there were some questions on the test that I didn't feel received adequate coverage in this book. Experience got me through those questions.
   
   The sample test questions on the included CD are clearly written by someone else. Some of them made no sense grammatically. It only includes multiple choice and fill-in questions. (The test has several other types of questions).
   
   The fill-in style questions on the CD also have a little quirk: unlike the real test, it is case sensitive. If the answer is "2" on a fill-in question, the real test will accept 2, two, Two, TWO, to, and too (so even bad spellers can get it right). But on the sample test CD, the answer might be programmed as "TWO" and "two", "2" and anything else is wrong.
   
   I didn't actually learn anything useful from this book, except how to use what I already know about NW 6.5 to pass Novell's exam. I would emphasize that you should already know a lot about Netware and have some recent and fairly advanced experience before reading this book and certainly before attempting the test.
   
   On second thought, I did find one very useful bit of information: Appendix A has a very informative table of IP ports used by all Novell products. It is the first time I have seen this information collected in one place.



3. I'm certified now thanks to this book. And what a time saver... the objectives are clearly defined and the material is straight to the point. As a bonus, the author includes brief notes on the do's and don'ts in a real world Netware environment. This is good stuff. If you are serious about getting certified, then this book is for you.



4. I have read the reviews from previous owners and have found a total difference in opinion of the book. I just took the test today and did not pass the exam. The new test is more diffucult than what I read in the book. Since this is the only book out there for the 6.5 exam we have no choice. I found that out of all the questions that are on the cd and in the book only about 4 of the questions were on the test. The book was written in 2005 and I think that the author should take the new test and update the book.



5. I used this book and Foundations of Novell Networking: Netware 6.5 to pass the test. This book alone might not be enough, especially if you don't have hands on experience with managing Netware server. I thought this book did not have enough exercises to pass the test. It is still an excellent source to use as part of your exam preparation.