5 comments about Trust On Trial: How The Microsoft Case Is Reframing The Rules Of Competition.

1. This book makes many correct arguments, but too often does not flesh them out sufficiently. This is especially frustrating because the meat is there to be had; the DoJ's case IS absurd. McKenzie could have used more input from someone well-versed in computers.

   An example: McKenzie mentions Jacksons "application barrier to entry", but doesn't bring up the obvious reasons why that particular argument falls flat on its face. Applications are not magic beans that can detect the underlying OS and only run on approved ones. They are just data that you feed to an OS, like you feed "data files" to applications. So it is entirely plausible to create an application which takes other applications as data. A straightforward extension of this idea is creating a program on, say, Macintosh that can execute Windows programs -- and in fact such programs already exist. This renders the "application barrier" nonexistent, and the entire monopoly charge right with it. But McKenzie missed this entire line of argument.

   And, of course, there is Java, which is essentially the same idea. The Judge seems aware of Java's "platform independence capability" but he is too technically ignorant to see that this undermines his entire applications barrier premise. Sadly, McKenzie is, too.

   Still a book worth reading, though.




2. This book by Professor McKenzie shows how baseless and destructive the Government's antitrust case against Microsoft is. He shows that the case is harming the economy, consumers, and the stock market. Significantly, in 1998 the Government lost the primary part of the case that it is now pursuing against Microsoft, the combining of a brower with the operating system. Those of us who use computers know that Microsoft has continually made the process easier throughout the years.

   The Government's case is certain to fail, and will only serve to help elect George Bush, because of its devastating impact on the world's single most important company, and the American stock market. With friends like Joel Klein, Al Gore doesn't need any enemies.

   David W. Lee Edmond, Oklahoma




3. As an economist specializing on public policy, I have found the Microsoft case fascinating enough to have plowed through the economists' testimony in the case, the briefs from DOJ and Microsoft, the judge's findings, and a bit of the interpretive writings.

   Mc Kenzie proved an excellent guide. My assessment is that the government totally failed in establishing the critical premises that Microsoft had a monopoly and predatory practices were a plausible strategy. The government's case on these points barely existed, and its lead expert contracticed himself and his prior writings. In contrast, Microsoft's expert economist present a coherent argument about why Microsoft should not be considered a monopolist and why the charges of predation were invalid. The government sought to hide this deficiency by concentrating on the tertiary point that Microsoft was aggressive. The government's experts and the judge got so steamed up about the appearances that they forgot the fundamental economic point the aggression without monopoly is useless.

   The judge showed no understanding of the economcs and was not particularly astute about what any experience computer user knows. For example, he swallowed the government nonsense about the difficulties of downloading. (If it were so difficult, this site would not be as good as it is. )

   McKenzie's careful, economically sound review of the case gives a perspective sadly lacking in the journalistic accounts that I have seen (including the press and magazine articles that were the basis for two of the three available journalistic accounts).

   McKenzie, in particular, concentrates on the germane issue of why Microsoft should not be considered a monopolist out to overcharge consumers. He shows that the case really is one of rivals, unable to compete in the marketplace, running to Washington for aid. The book is a readable introduction to these critical economic points. It tells how the case developed and what the underlying economics are. People wanting a treatment of what really matters in the case should skip the journalists and try McKenzie. He is evidence that technical problems that journalists fear to treat can be made understandable.




4. As an attorney with a background in antitrust law, I was anxious to find a book that could cut through all the hype surrounding the Microsoft case. McKenzie approaches the case with an obvious axe to grind in favor of Microsoft; now, that's okay, as long as he still makes rational arguments. But his argumentation reads like a law school student trying to prove his antitrust professor wrong. I will give just one example--he argues that Microsoft isn't a "monopolist" because they "only" control 90% of the market. Anyone familiar with antirtrust law knows that the term "monopoly" need not be taken literally, and that market power can be exercised by a firm controlling far, far less than 90% of a market. Such spurious argumentation make you wonder if Bill Gates didn't subsidize this book.



5. Mr. McKenzie's piece on the Microsoft monopoly is amusing if factually biased and tendered towards Microsoft.

   Considering all legal disputes in regards to Microsoft's guilt are a moot point, the nature of this works is to try the legal system to deflect attention from Microsoft's anticompetitive behavior. These circumstances lead one to wonder what the class status of a lawbreaker is such that it can argue that it is in fact the law that is incorrect, not the behavior.

   This title is a fascinating lobbying piece and a valid historical reference of Microsoft Propaganda in the Antitrust Years.

5 comments about Oracle Essentials : Oracle9i, Oracle8i & Oracle8 (2nd Edition).

1. After that You will have good understanding of Oracle basics, but for deeper knowledge You must find other books! Language not to difficult, helpful images.



2. I picked this book up to re-aquaint myself with Oracle. As a developer, I typically only dive into SQL-PLUS and data modeling. This book explains everything a developer needs to know about the vast, and I mean VAST feature set of Oracle. Plus this book brought me up to speed on 9i... Such as features in 9i such as Real Application Clusters, a new XML datatype, and the CREATE TABLE... AS SELECT.

   This book is perfect for an application developer, an IT manager, or a beginning DBA new to Oracle. This book is worth twice its price!! Kudos to Greenwald, Stern, and Stackowiak.




3. Both a great reference and tutorial..... a must for beginners.



4. Since I wear the dba hat, developer hat, and all the other hats on this large (2 billion + data points) Oracle database, I need help for infrequent activities, like installing an upgrade (8.0 to 9i), migrating tables that are upwards of 20GB each, and making sure the new server is setup/configured optimally for the data warehouse. Based on the customer reviews, I bought this book. The level of technical help is insufficient in my specific areas of interest. The last book I bought for this was excellent, The Black Book for Oracle8 and Windows NT. And the books I bought from Oracle Press were also excellent. This book was not as helpful. The Oracle DBA Pocket Checklist is helpful, but you will need lots more than this book if you are the infrequent dba. So back to using Oracle Support and Oracle Press....



5. This book gives you not only detailed explaination on very facet of Oracle in a plain, easy to understand language but also displays a clear map of how each components related and how they work together. That is, in my opinion, very important to understand Oracle.

   The book gives a high-level overview of almost everything. Totally worth the money.

3 comments about Crystal Reports 9 on Oracle.

1. This book contains everything that I needed to extend my existing Crystal Reports 9 development knowledge into the Oracle DBMS realm. As an experienced CR developer, but one without any previous experience with Oracle as the back-end, this reference provided the necessary overview of the Oracle system along with sufficient supporting detail - to allow me to quickly acquire the skills to competently utilize the Oracle system in general, and some of its more advanced features on particular: Stored Procedures as datasources, REF Cursors, the MINUS Set Operation, Materialized Views ...

   Having performed several searches of the Crystal Decisions knowledge base for detailed guidance in using Oracle Stored Procedures (and Packages) as a datasource and coming up short of the desired comfort level - in terms of the breadth and depth of coverage, this reference proved invaluable in my last CR consulting engagement. As an added bonus, Annette Harper responded personally to my email requests for clarification in areas that a more sober reading (one performed outside the deadline pressures of an existing consulting engagement) would have allowed.

   In short, and speaking from the perspective of an experienced CR developer with decent DBMS skills in general, this book made it possible to comfortably and competently transition to using Oracle as the back-end data store.




2. Crystal Reports 9 on Oracle is an excellent book written by Annette Harper. Every report writer will benefit from the in depth coverage of how to write effective reports by best utilize Oracle 9i database features from new Oracle 9i analytical SQL functions, PL/SQL, materialized views, external tables, flashback queries, etc. to Oracle optimization techniques. The book's expert insight into Crystal Reports 9 optimization tips, Data Dictionary report and Crystal Reports 9 repository will empower Crystal Reports writer to fully utilize Crystal Reports 9 and create faster, better reports.



3. This book by Annette Harper is one of its kind in the market.It explains the various ODBC drivers by a comparitive study which gives us a very good idea as to which driver we should use.
   The book is very helpful for people who are writing Crystal Reports against Oracle Database.

5 comments about Java Programming with Oracle JDBC.

1. Looks like most of the material came from oracle documentation. Examples are very basic



2. This book gives good coverage of Oracle's JDBC implementation. That is about as far as it goes. This is just too close to being documentation. When purchasing books on a specific technology, I am looking for the author's insight. Specific things the author learned while working with it. Give me best practices, suggestions, things to avoid, etc. Tell me what I won't learn from Oracle's docs, don't just rewrite them.



3. This book is for Java developers who need to get the most out of using JDBC and Oracle (version 8.1.6). Choosing a specific database allows a lot more detail. Other JDBC books may skip database-dependent parts of the API; this book even gives code examples for the hard stuff. It is slow to read end-to-end, but "dipping" works well - there's almost always a helpful code example nearby.

   There are problems, though. The author is obviously very familiar with Oracle, but lacks the experience to make comparisons with other products, this book won't help you choose when to use Oracle or whan another system might be more appropriate. Also I noticed other signs of lack of research - he sometimes gets abbreviations wrong, and the Java code is not particularly well-written.

   The big problem for me is that the book assumes you only ever use Oracle. There is no consideration of code portability, it offers no wisdom about avoiding or encapsulating proprietary Oracle-specific extensions. The techniques in this book could easily lock your product into Oracle, worse, they might even lock your product into a specific version of Oracle.

   The book has minor discussion of extra features in Oracle8i and Oracle9i, but nothing about JDBC 3. It's less helpful if you are using a version older than 8.1.6, too.

   If you (or your management) have already sold your soul to Oracle, get this book. If you might need to use other databases, get a more generic book, but keep this one for those times when only a specific Oracle feature will do the trick.




4. Let me start by saying that had I purchased this book 2 years ago when it was first released, I would have given it 5 stars.

   This is a very well-written book, with good explanations and sample code. However, the book is fairly out of date, and much of the performance tuning suggestions he makes don't really apply as much when using the latest Oracle JDBC drivers and Oracle9 database. This book covers Oracle 8.1.6, and a lot of changes have been made between that release and 8.1.7 and Oracle9.

   I recommend the newer "Oracle 9i JDBC Programming" book by Jason Price for much more current coverage of this topic.




5. A no-nonsense, well-written and well-organized introduction to the Java programming language with Oracle JDBC. It uses a careful, example-based, easy to understand approach. A friendly and well-written book recommended for anyone ready to learn the power of Java programming language with Oracle JDBC.
   Thank you

5 comments about Oracle Certified DBA Exam : Question and Answer Book.

1. Although I have been a DBA for sometime and have quite the collection of reference material, this book lacks the "concise" explanations after each question/answer that it advertises. The proofreading seems to have been an afterthought as well. I find that the official Oracle material and practice exams are by far more useful. This book is for database professionals who already have an intermediate level of knowledge who wish to get their certification.



2. Aside from the numerous spelling errors, even the "concise" explanations after the question/answer portions of this book are pale. This book is for people who have at least an intermediate level of knowledge of Oracle to get anything from this book or at times to decipher some of the explanations that make absolutely no sense at all. The official Oracle DBA certification exam guides and practice tests are the way to go for your certification!



3. Aside from the numerous spelling errors, even the "concise" explanations after the question/answer portions of this book are pale. This book is for people who have at least an intermediate level of knowledge of Oracle to get anything from this book or at times to decipher some of the explanations that make absolutely no sense at all. The official Oracle DBA certification exam guides and practice tests are the way to go for your certification!



4. A very poorly compiled, full of errors (spellings and contents) practice workbook. None of the three authors has actually passed the OCP DBA certification. This book should be entitled Element Oracle 101. It is definitely not the book that can help you to prepare the real OCP exams. I already returned the book and asked my money back. Very surprised the Prentice Hall can publish such a useless book. Shame to PH!



5. A very poorly compiled, full of errors (spellings and contents) practice workbook. None of the three authors has actually passed the OCP DBA certification. This book should be entitled Oracle for Dummies or Element Oracle 101. It is definitely not the book that can help you to prepare the real OCP exams. I already returned the book and asked my money back. Very surprised the Prentice Hall can publish such a useless book. Shame to PH!

No comments about Beginning Oracle Database 11g Administration: From Novice to Professional (Beginning from Novice to Professional).

5 comments about Pete Cassidy's Cookbook for Oracle SQL*Plus.

1. Got to be the worst cover ever - even though its his daughters idea sorry! I cover it in brown paper at client sites. Its an excellent dip in and read and contains solutions to many commonly experienced problems both for experience and neophytes alike. For me its a MUST HAVE. I can give it to very inexperiened developers rather than explain for the n'th time how to define your editor in SQLPLUS for example.

   Howard Latham Editor Oracle Scene.




2. It contains all that you need and nothing you don't for using SQL plus utility effectively. It also has lot of examples.



3. If you're thinking about buying this book, you might want to know what's in it. This book is about 250 pages, and each page contains one example of something you can do in SQL*Plus. There is only a small amount of explanation about what the example does, often only a sentence.

   The examples are all things that people who work with Oracle might want to do from time to time, but might not know how to accomplish.

   So this book will be most appreciated by someone who already has a certain amount of experience with Oracle. If you use the Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced categories of Oracle knowledge, I'd say the people who would most like this book are those who are at least half way through the Beginner stage, up to people who are just entering the Advanced stage.

   If you are a rank beginner to Oracle, you will not understand many of the examples. For instance, the page for Using Array Processing merely demonstrates, for SQL*Plus, the command SHOW ARRAYSIZE. That's all! If you already know what array processing is, and just want to know how to determine what arraysize is currently set to, then the command shown will be helpful. But if you don't know about array processing in SQL*Plus, what's the use of seeing this page?

   Most of the book is like this. In fact, imagine for a minute there was a SQL*Plus expert in your office, and every day several people came over and asked, "I'm stuck on one point and was wondering if you could tell me how to...." Now suppose that expert typed a few commands, showing the person how to do the specific thing they were asking, and then saved what he typed. After he had 250 commonly asked questions, he put what he typed in a book, one per page, adding a title to the page and maybe one sentence of explanation.

   That's exactly what this book is. It assumes you already have a certain level of knowledge about Oracle in general, and about SQL*Plus in particular. If that's true for you, then great, you'll appreciate these 250 techniques and tips, because they're things you'll probably want to know how to do. But even if you have a year or two of experience with Oracle, you'll probably find you have to look in the Oracle documentation for a fuller explanation to make sense of some of the things in this book.

   That's not necessarily a bad thing. It could be a great way to learn. In fact, if you're a rank beginner, you might still like this book if you're the type of person who likes to dive right in and start typing commands to see what they do. Just be aware that you better have the Oracle documentation CD-ROM handy, because virtually none of the great commands and techniques shown in this book are accompanied by any explanation other than the occasional sentence.

   If you are the type who likes to read complete explanations, I'd suggest the SQL*Plus book by Gennick. Whatever, this is a good book, it's just that you'll probably need some background before you can really appreciate and make use of it.




4. Pete's cookbook is an excellent resource which I highly recommend. What makes the book 'work' for me is there are many superb examples of both simple and complex practical SQL and SQL*PLUS problems and solutions. In addition to being humorous, it is easy to follow and to understand. When I am trying to get a task done by a certain deadline, I don't have time to wade through miles of explanation. I need the answer YESTERDAY and the SQL COOKBOOK does that for me. I also teach Oracle courses and my students really love the book too.



5. I have used Pete's book for over a year now, and I find it a strong sourcebook. Unlike many of my other source books, this book gives the actual text of the commands that are necessary to accomplish the job.
   I place this text at the top of the Oracle books I have.

5 comments about Bill Gates Speaks: Insight from the World's Greatest Entrepreneur.

1. While this book was well written, I was dissapointed with what I learned about Bill Gates. There was not enough detail and the book was pieced together from a number of different quotes, which is ok for many biographies but the extent of the number of quotes compared to the varied sources did not complete the picture.

   The books cover claimed 'Insight From The Worlds Greatest Entrepreneur' but I did not feel an insight.

   Despite the above, if you like Bill Gates and want to learn a little more about him, I recommend this book. There are some fun stories and some things to be learned about the man. It is put together nicely, it makes a high claim but does not completely deliver on this claim.




2. I like to be told a story. Although the book starts with a good story on how Bill Gates got started, it quickly digresses. This book is an accumulation of facts and boring accounts about Bill Gates and Microsoft. It never gets into the meat of things. I would have liked to have read more about the litigations against Microsoft. Maybe some more about Nescape's lawsuit. It mentions very little about the Antitrust lawsuit that I was looking forward to learning about. Instead we get quotes from Bill Gates that do not enhance the book, but instead interrupt it. The author references websites about Microsoft's and the government's claims about the lawsuit. It's like the author got lazy. Don't waste your money on this book. A very big dissapointment!



3. It's an easy to read story of Gates, but there's nothing new here. In fact, the whole book is made up of quotes from other books and articles. You can't really tell if they are taken out of context or not. There's just not much original stuff here.



4. This is one of a series of books that covers highly successful, highly visible individuals and how they got that way. These books are targeted at school age teens to inspire them to follow their paths for success. The author seems to cover the life stories of Bill Gates and adds quotes where appropriate to boost the storyline. There are occasional segments on subjects related to Gates as shown in the Amazon's "Look in" review. It's an easy read with only 230 pages. If you read any of the other books such as "Gates" or "Hard Drive" you'll get the feeling of reading this book before. Since the work isn't original and seems to heavily reference other books I give it 3 stars. The only question I have is whether the author actual sat down with Bill Gates and talked to him or did she really just go to the library, the Internet, etc. to get info on the book. As a first book on Bill Gates life, it's still a good read for young adults looking to be inspired.



5. Bill Gates Speaks provides plenty of insight including numerous pertinent quotations. Those with little knowledge of Gates yet an interest in his views will find value in this book; however, I struggle to rate this book above three stars as it is merely a scattered collection of thoughts as oppose to a well organized account. With that said, I would also be hard pressed to rate this book negatively as the subject attracts intrigue on its own right and Lowe appears to be at least both informed and well-researched on the topic.
   
   If you have a keen interest in Bill Gates, I would read this book; otherwise, I would search for something a little more engrossing.

1 comments about Zeroes and Ones: Digital Women and the New Technoculture.

1. The label of "cyber-feminist" should not give readers the illusion of Plant's
   ability to mobilize women readers.
   She affirms the role of women as the pursuers of technology,
   as being part of the machine.
   Her words become as mysterious as the ghost in the machine
   because they are only a description of where we are in these times,
   and I was left without a sense of direction.
   Her throws to Ada Lovelace were numbing at some point,
   and I wondered if there were other women we could also look at.
   Possibly specific Asian women would have been a relief to hear about
   instead of her tendency to speak generally about women
   in Japanese and Taiwanese business slowly taking control.

   Her saving grace was her beautiful analogies of technology with textiles
   and of binary language with the roles of women and men.

5 comments about Java Programming with Oracle SQLJ.

1. I found this book to be concise, to the point, and very readable. A large amount of material was well presented in a relatively small amount of space. And the examples worked as advertised.

   I found myself incorporating the material presented into my work before I finished reading the book.

   An excellent resource.




2. This is a great book if you are interested in building J2EE applications and want to link to an Oracle database but don't want to learn the complicated JDBC API. It isn't an 'intro to programming' book like so many out there; it is, however, perfect for object-oriented programmers who are wanting to learn java with a quikness. Finally, a great SQLJ book has emerged!



3. This is an outstanding book. SQLJ is a simpler way of embedding SQL statements in a Java programming, and is possibly the successor to PL/SQL.

   I liked this book because it covers SQLJ programming, as well as:
   1. Oracle SQL.
   2. Oracle PL/SQL.
   3. Oracle JDeveloper.
   4. Developing J2EE components for the Oracle9i Application server (9iAS) such as EJB, servlets and JSP.
   5. Java stored procedures.

   I liked the author's writing style: it is clear and to the point. I found it very easy to read, and was able to follow the examples in the book and apply them to my own programs.

   I highly recommend this great little book!




4. This is just an easy read with good code examples. It is geared toward the intermediate or beginner programmer, and presents clear explanation for easy understanding.



5. My knowledge of Oracle and Java is beginner/intermediate level and I like this book a lot.

   The book explains how SQLJ relates to SQL, PL/SQL, Java, JDBC and it provides a good introduction to the JDeveloper IDE (Integrated Development Environment).

   The book is written very clearly and the appearance and organization of the text is well up to the O'Reilly standard.
   I can't comment on the worked examples yet as I have not yet tried them out.