No comments about LINQ For Dummies (For Dummies (Computer/Tech)).

5 comments about Network Security: A Beginner's Guide, Second Edition (Beginner's Guide).

1. I am pretty new to the network security world. This book is a great guide to the very basic ways of securing a network. My main goal was to find out more about securing my network from outside attackers, and this book hit the nail on the head. I highly recommend it to beginners and intermediate network professional.



2. Excellent book at an introductory level. Not much technical. But gives a brief overview of most of the security terminologies . This is perhaps one of the best books to start with.
   - Anand



3. I originally bought the book because it was less than 10 bucks, and I wanted a good overview of network security. The book is written fairly well, but it's main focus is security policy and legal issues with a general overview of some network security technology.
   I have been in IT for around 6 years now, the last 2 I spent working on Military/DoD networks, so I already have a sound networking background. This book's intended audience seems to be aimed more toward the executive/management type who does not have much technical experience. I believe a better title for this book would have been "Network Security Policy Making: A Beginners Guide". If you security needs are more for creating sound policy & procedures this is a good for you, the more technical minded should seek elsewhere.



4. Hi,
   I am working in IT Securiy field , and was a fan of this book's first edition. He also did a great job for second edition.
   
   I was about to conduct a internal training class (Basic ITSec.) for my IT colleagues here and use his 2nd edition as primary source material.
   
   I have found no typo nor technical error in this book and the only negative point for me is that the "Hacker Techniques" & "Type of attack " chapters comes too early as they should appear after CIAA was disscused. Maybe this is the author's style to make this book more colorful but I personally think make learning experience in ITSEc. a little deviate.
   
   Still , this book is worth buying.



5. Also great reference book. It is not for someone who has already had a course in network security (except as a reference book) as it is a pretty low level book. It is easy to read and follow.

5 comments about Data Structures and Algorithms (Addison-Wesley Series in Computer Science and Information Pr).

1. I believe two books make a classic collection in data structures - one was the data structures book by sartaj sahni (his first edition book many years ago - I haven't looked at his recent books). That was the book I had to study when I was an undergrad student. Now I was entrusted with the task of teaching Data Structures and after looking at several books, this is the one I chose (may be because it comes most close to the style of teaching using psuedo-pascal that I grew up with).
   
   I believe psuedo languages are the best way to learn concepts of any computer science area without getting bogged down in the nitty gritty of a language's syntax and semantics. I found the problems at the end of the chapters to be thoughtful and not extremely hard for undergraduate students. This book also goes into brief mathematical aspects of analysing the complexity of algorithms where necessary. The mathematical analysis is usually the part that most undergrad students moan and groan about, but they better get used to it IMO, if they wish to elevate themselves from the ranks of "a programmer" to an software / algorithm designer.
   
   I have to agree that this book can be extremely hard for the weaker students in the class who have never had any programming or basic college algebra exposure. For all others, this book should be great.



2. Perfect book. Nice and small. You can buy it cheap too, it's old. But it's full of the meat and potatoes, no fluffy Java source code. Sure, it uses Pascal, but it's not that hard to understand Pascal code even if you never programmed in Pascal (me neither). What matters is the discussions behind the scenes. It covers the whole range of what you should know and it's concise. They don't write books like this anymore.



3. This book explains very clearly the subjects of data structures and algorithms. Its in-depth coverage is very intuitive and easy to follow unlike other literature that is often tedious or esoteric.
   The only complaint I have is the choice of the programming language. Pascal is a language of the past. A new edition using C will make this book simply a gem.



4. It is just an okay book, not extraordinary in any way. Especially, this is certainly not for the novice in this topic, i.e., it is certainly not a good introductory book. So if you are new to data structures and algorithms, stay away from this book, go for some good introductory book.
   
   For the advanced readers, it is an okay book. Better books are available, e.g., books by Cormen et al. and Robert Sedgewick.
   
   The book is written in a way not very intersting or engaging. The algorithms are not explained in detail. Often things are left unexplained or assumed that the reader already knows it. Algorithms are presented in pseudocode, which causes problems especially for the readers familiar to some particular programming language.



5. Hyperbolic remarks about this book will mislead you into thinking that this book is absolutely unique, when it's not. The material here is standard and present on many, many algorithms and data structures book.
   
   Furthermore, this book is dated, as it uses Pascal. It has very little relevance for today's world of collections of data structures made by experts (on Java, C#, Eiffel, Smalltlak, etc.) which are resources you need to know how to tap into to be more productive.
   
   And as a last point, algorithm analysis is not the strong point of this book either, as it is just a late chapeter in the book and gets nowhere near advanced (i.e., real) algorithmic analysis (for which you will need higher math, such as calculus and probability).
   
   Nevertheless, it's a good book but I don't know if you should buy it instead of that other, nice and new book using Java 5.0 using generics.

5 comments about Pragmatic Unit Testing in Java with JUnit.

1. This book is very good for a beginner to unit testing. I like the simple explanation of the different types of unit testing that must be done. This really helps a beginner to make sure that the tests are comprehensive.
   
   Also it clarifies the intention behind use of mock objects. I would use the concepts in this book as a checklist to make sure the tests are written to cover all types of problems.
   
   I gave 4 star only because it contains toy examples and does not go into too much detail on this very important topic. JUnit Recipes contains more realistic examples.



2. This is another fine book from the "Pragmatic Programmer" series. If you are doing Java development, but haven't gotten into unit testing yet, this is a great place to start. The book is a quick read - I made it through in two days. The book gives background on why unit testing is important and then tells you how to go about doing it with JUnit. The book has practical advice for the kinds of things to include in unit tests while it finishes with design considerations for make code easier to test. To get the most out of the book, you need to download the code from the author's web site and work through the exercises. It is great how they have taken a critical topic and made it extremely accessible. I highly recommend it.



3. JUnit Testing can really save you a lot of time debugging. This book provides a various way to work with JUnit.



4. pragmatic Unit testing in java save a lot of time to debug java code.



5. Buyer beware. This book does not reflect the many changes to JUnit implemented in version 4. I found it to be a very good book when it came out four years ago however.

5 comments about Logic in Computer Science: Modelling and Reasoning about Systems.

1. This book is a good introduction to logic. It is highly readable, not dry. It explains logic in the language of humans, not arcane mathematics, yet it somehow is able to remain rigorous. This makes logic make sense, rather than it being an abstract intellectual pursuit detached from life and other topics.

   Half the book is on logic, half on model checking. I've only read the logic part so far, so I cannot compare the model checking treatment to that in Clarke et al.'s "Model Checking."

   The logic treatment is not specific to computer science (or at least did not seem to be so, for someone not a student of mathematics and logic), so in my opinion the title is a misnomer; perhaps a better title would be "Logic for People, and Model Checking Too."




2. A lot of good material is covered and in a relatively tight fashion. The presentation of logic is well done, but when getting into the BDDs, the explanations get a little complicated and I personally had to read it over several times before I could make sure I understood what was going on. This book also does not have anything on symmetry, so if that's what you're looking for, there are better books out there. However, this book can hold its own and I recommend it to anyone interested in learning the basics of model checking provided they can take handle some of the heavy duty reading.



3. The coverage of this book is quite good for what concerns logic in computer science. However, using it as an introduction on logic for computer scientists is probably ambitious because the explanations are rather complicated for undergraduates. A first course on logic and another on AI would not hurt before getting into this one. Too many notions of computer science (syntax and semantics of programming languages, complexity) are needed to fully understand some topics, hence it is better that you already have a broad view of all aspects of computer science before reading this one. As an advanced course textbook to formal techniques in computer sciente on the other hand, this one would do the job.



4. In my opinion (I refer to the II edition)the logic treatment is fairly complete for a computer science student (anyway it's missing the treatment of Prolog and the relevant logic).This book is also an excellent introduction to Model Checking of Clarke.



5. I read this book to learn the basics of model checking, and I found it an excellent introduction. Logic can be a dry and intimidating subject but this text presents the theory in an engaging style. Concepts are always introduced with concrete examples to explain them and to show how they should be used to reason about software. This book is essentially theoretical, there is no presentation of real world uses of the methods.

2 comments about Legal Guide to Web & Software Development (book with CD-Rom).

1. Had to buy this for an E-Commerce class I'm taking in law school -- I guess it was the closest thing to a textbook the professor could find. Very useful and straightforward.



2. I needed to write up a web-development contract as an independent contractor. Previously, I had used bits and pieces of other contracts but never quite knew what some of the paragraphs meant. A colleague recommended this book, I bought it and have not regretted it. One of the biggest helps is the author explains the meaning of every paragraph of the contract and makes recommendations in your favor. I finally wrote a contract that I understood and was comfortable handing to the client. And what's even better is they signed it without any changes! I just copied the legal agreements directly from the CD-ROM, modified them to suit the context and sent it off. Also explains the need to register copyrights, and legal stuff related to web sites.

5 comments about Crystal Clear: A Human-Powered Methodology for Small Teams (Agile Software Development Series).

1. Lots of relevent information about Software Development project management. It give insight into ways of dealing with stuff I see every day at work. I am about 1/3 of they way through, it is well laid out, I'd recommend it for anyone that is a technology development group and want some good ideas for how to deal with projects.



2. The Crystal methodology is extremely lightweight, and is not saddled with the percieved "rules" of XP. This is *the* guidebook for the Crystal familiy. Pick a few of the 7 properties and get started building better software!



3. Cockburn's writing style is fluid, the agile development topic is interesting, and his experience is very valuable.



4. I love this book. Recommended read for anyone who has to obtain requirements form customers. The book also has many team building elements and a great Agile roadmap.



5. The "Agile" umbrella includes multiple approaches/lenses from which to view, practice and evolve software and teams. Alistair's material offers an additional lens. So when reading this material, I don't believe it was ever his intent for people to pick up Crystal and say "This is it". Rather, this material offers an alternative framework of thought that would nicely meld/synthesize with other characteristics/practices/behaviors under the Agile umbrella of software evolution. I've not personally applied the material yet .. but could see it's inter-relationship to those things I do currently practice today under the Agile space.

3 comments about Open Source Development with LAMP: Using Linux, Apache, MySQL, Perl, and PHP.

1. Open Source Development with LAMP (hereafter "OSWB") is the perfect book to learn a wide variety of server technologies that will have you writing useful, clean, fast, and productive websites before you finish reading.

   I was one of the technical editors of this book, and was able to watch it evolve as they wrote. The authors have made a huge effort to make the book appropriate for multiple Linux distributions, and they have achieved the highest degree of technical accuracy.

   OSWB covers many different technologies, some complementary, some discreet. By showing you many of the possible tools, this book lets you decide which is best for the job at hand.

   The theory behind OSWB is that knowledge of 20% of a tool's capabilities will let you accomplish 80% of the tasks you face. OSWB does a superb job of giving the user a sizable introduction to webserver technologies that will be sufficient for most rojects, and tells you where you can get information for advanced needs...This is the first book I know of that has written their website with the exact same tools they teach you in the book, and they offer the entire source of their website for download for your investigation and reference.

   The gold in this book is not just the descriptions of how the languages work, but how you can use them singly or together to create interactive websites. Their are many sample projects which let you see how everything fits together, and much of the ode can be adapted immediately to your needs. The book is extremely well integrated and organized.

   I have used some of the languages described in this book, while others were completely new to me. I am definitely not a web design person, preferring to write back-end server software. owever while reading OSWB, I was charged with creating a MySQL database with a customizable web interface for my alumni organization. Using only this book and a few perldoc commands, I was able to create an interactive mod_perl website in a few days.

   This book offers something to everyone, even advanced web designers. If you are starting out in Web technologies, or are curious about other ways you can get the job done, this is the book for you.





2. Open Source Web Development with LAMP is a very long title, but an absolutely killer book. LAMP is Linux (OS), Apache (web server) MySQL (database), Perl and PHP (scripting). This book also includes many languages not covered in other titles. I was particularly glad to see WML (Website Meta Language) which is useful for generating static pages through a robust programming construct. Static pages load faster and without any security concerns that you have with dynamic scripting languages like perl, php, embperl, or mason, all of which are covered extreemly well in this book.

   I've been doing web development for about 8 years, which probably makes me pretty old in the business. I've seen the dynamic web content languages from infancy, but I've never seen a good way of learning them until now. OSWD w/ LAMP is absolutely fabulous.




3. If you want an interactive database-based web site without spending hours and hours wading through dozens of books to figure out how to do it, then you will want "Open Source Web Development with LAMP". The book starts with the very basics and proceeds step by step so you can get your web site up as quickly as possible and with a minimum of problems. So what exactly is LAMP? It stands for the four components of a LAMP server - Linux operating system, Apache web server, MySQL database server, and the Perl programming language.

   The book is divided into four distinct parts and organized in an unexpected way. Instead of giving each part of LAMP its own section the four sections focus on structure (getting them all up and working together), static web pages (creating and using them), dynamic web pages (getting the pages to do something via Perl and MySQL), and embedded programs (to make the whole system run quicker). Each section covers all the components of LAMP as applied to that section. For example, the structural section examines installation, configuration, security, and basic usage of Linux, Apache, MySQL, and Perl. For Perl it includes a discussion of variables, arrays, operators, flow-control, regular expressions, functions, and file input/output. For MySQL it includes working with tables, insert, select, update, and similar basic commands. This is a very well done section and gives all the basic information necessary to get each of the components up and working with each other. The section on static web pages mainly covers the use of Website META Language (WML) to generate a consistent look and feel across all the web pages on the server. The part on dynamic web pages covers CGI and mod-perl so you can process information submitted by an html page or other CGI script. It also includes information on using Perl to access the MySQL server and generate dynamic information. The final section examines embedded programs such as Server Side Includes (SSI), embedded Perl, MASON, and PHP and how they are used to make a faster dynamic web site.

   I have to say that I really liked this structure. Once a system is set up it is rare to have to refer to the installation information again. If it were organized by Linux, Apache, MySQL and Perl then I would have to flip to what I assume is the appropriate section turn past the installation portion and try to locate what I am looking for. This way, since it is organized by the various stages of getting the system up and running it is easier to find what I want.

   The text includes lots of example coding so you can actually write and test it right away. This is a great way to learn the basics. It is not a thorough course in any of the four components but it does give you enough of a background to do most of what you might need to do. Of course, what makes it really valuable is the fact that it covers how to get each of the components to work together without problems. There are good books on each of these components but it is rare to find one that focuses on the interrelationships between them. "Open Source Web Development with LAMP" is highly recommended for anyone who wants to set up a LAMP server or needing to work with one.

2 comments about A Manager's Guide to Database Technology: Building and Purchasing Better Applications.

1. the short chapters are a refreshing change from most textbooks. informative and gets the job done.



2. "A Manager's Guide to Database Technology" provides a straightforward introduction and overview of important database concepts. Utilizing real-life scenarios, this book highlights the importance of databases and database technology.
   
   Databases in general will play an increasingly important role in our increasingly digital world, in my opinion. Along these lines, I recommend this book as a good primer for a wide audience to the field of database technology.

No comments about VMware ESX Essentials in the Virtual Data Center.