Distributed

Excellent book. I agree with much of the editorial review. I have found this book very useful for my work in distributed computation. The authors are thorough and exact in their work and rely heavily on matrix and probabilistic methods for their results. If you are into parallel and distributed algorithms, then this is a must have book.

Though I believe I am not the first person writing the book review of this historic book, I still feel honored to encourage the new readers to read this one of most important AI research book published in 1986. The book edited by Rumlhart and McClelland was well organized and well written, comprised of a series of independent and interesting topics in neural network researches given by the dedicated authors. The editors themselves are also reputated authors in the connectionist community. The most results in that book never appeared in the past publications and represented the high-quality papers in the state-of-the-art research at that time. Many papers in that book rank the top position of citation rate even today, e.g. the paper about error backpropagation due to Rumelhart, Hinton and Williams. I also got to point out that the importance of the book not only lies in its scientific contribution, but also its philosophical meaning in the AI research (which is somehow influenced by the book 'Perceptrons' by Minsky and Pappert). The successful research results in that book showed people of the potential and new prospect of neural networks in different perspectives. From then on the second connectionist revolution has sprang and lasted today. Nowadays, people still can feel its leading influence by reading it. Upon reading the book again and again, you will always feel inspired at another new way (that is the value of a book!). Try it immediately.

In a word without exaggeration, the importance of this book to connectionist and AI researchers is like the Bible to Christians. Read it, enjoy it, once and again.

This book is full of pragmatic advice on how to build applications quickly. The book includes a CD rom with Screen Cams of the author building all of the examples. There are about 300 pages of step by step instructions to build 2 complete sample applications. This book is highly regarded by PB professionals.

El libro lo lleva de la mano en el aprendizaje de Power Builder, inclusive aun mejor que los propios manuales integrados al paquete original, es muy recomendable para quien se inicia y quiere construir una aplicación totalmente funcional desde el principio

This book can be placed in the area of research in AI that brings single agent, centralised techniques to a distributed multi-agent context. The central idea of the multi-agent paradigm is to solve complex problems with a collection of autonomous and possibly distributed agents.

In the first 5 chapters this book gives a thorough understanding of exact inference in Bayesian networks.

In the 6th chapter Y. Xiang introduces Multiply Sectioned Bayesian networks (MSBN), a knowledge representation formalism for probabilistic inference in multi-agent systems. He clearly informs the reader of the constraints that are associated with MSBNs and how they are the unevitable consequence of a few high level choices.

Some of the choices are:
- the beliefs of the agents are represented by probabilities
- the internal representation of an individual agent is a DAG
- the least amount of communication between agents possible

Some of the contraints that follow from these choices are:
- a hypertree agent organisation which prevents agents from communicating with any other agent
- only communication between agents on variables they share between their local models

In subsequent chapters the author introduces algorithms for cooperative, distributed probabilistic inference. First how to compile an MSBN to a linked junction forest (= the multi-agent version of a junction tree) through moralization, triangulation, and the construction of linkage trees. Then, how to perform the actual probabilistic inference in such a linked junction forest.

In the 9th chapter algorithms are shown that allow to verify whether a structure does not violate the constraints imposed by the MSBN paradigm.

Finally, in the last chapter Xiang gives an overview of all the possible extensions and future work, such as dynamic formation, learning, negotiation etc.

The book is clearly written and very understandable, even for people with little knowledge of probabilistic reasoning. In my opinion this is because of the clear and not unnecessarily complicated language and because throughout the entire book the same example is used (monitoring of digital circuits ).
A few points of critique are that some more space could have been devoted to possible applications and related work.

To conclude, a very interesting and clear book on a new and promising paradigm, suited for everyone interested in Bayesian networks and multi-agent systems.

David Forgacs' monograph on 'Rome Open City' is as thorough an examination of a major cinematic milestone as you could hope for. Roberto Rossellini's breakthrough film, the story of Resistance activity during the German Occupation of Rome 1943-44, was conceived, made and released in the immediate aftermath of the Liberation, and was exultantly acclaimed as a new kind of cinema, where documentary-style authenticity (largely non-professional cast, basis in recent history, real locations etc.) were seen as an answer to the lies of Fascist film in particular, and the illusions of commercial cinema in general, heralding the Golden Age of Neo-Realism.

Forgacs takes as his starting point Italo Calvino's remark that neo-realist works about the resistance were not 'direct representations of events in reality' but 'textual elaborations of already represented events'. Although the major stories depicted in the film - the street murder of a pregnant woman, the torture of a communist resistant, the execution of a dissident priest - were based on real events, they had already been mythologised in oral accounts, newspaper articles, diaries, paintings, sculptures etc., which representations Rossellini synthesised in his film.

More damagingly, the myth of Resistance offered in 'Rome Open City', which Forgacs suggests was necessary to displace collective guilt and anger as well as provide Romans with a narrative of unity and memory, evades or distorts the more troubling aspects of the Occupation - the natives' 20-year complicity with the Fascist regime; the collaboration of the Fascist police and their network of spies with the brutalities of the Germans; the silences and compromises of the Church. The deportations of the Jews, for instance, are not even mentioned. The 'patriotic myth' was also a way for Rossellini to atone for his own Fascist past, having directed three features for the army.

This is not to suggest that Forgacs simply demolishes the film, which was immensely influential and is still the director's most accessible work. After all, Rossellini himself later disowned the more manipulative and melodramatic aspects of thw work, which were incompatible with his more austere and viewer-challenging later films. By offering a detailed historical and cultural context; by recreating the conditions of the film's conception, production and contemporary reception; and by analysing the film's techniques and themes (most brilliantly in his discussion of urban space, the different uses made of it by occupiers and resisters), as well as the 'polluted' (Rossellini's own phrase) ideology that informs the pretensions to objectivity (in particular the demonising of 'bad' sexuality), Forgacs replaces the monolithically 'important' and 'truthful' film of legend with something much more complex, contradictory and intellectually satisfying.

My company has been an SAP customer for years, but there was still a lot of mystery about what SAP is and why it's good. This book lays it out in perfect terms, integrating both the C-suite point of view and the IT perspective. I highly recommend this book to anyone working with SAP.

Just having done a QM implementation without consultants, I know how much detail there is to wade through. This book would have been invaluable during that time, and has since allowed me to make several enhancements to my implementation. it touches on nearly every aspect of the QM module, and gets fairly in depth in many areas. The process maps from SAP to the ISO/QS standards alone were worth the price of the book. if you are thinking about sap qm, don't do it without this book.

This three section collection of papers is for advanced architects who are exploring contemporary security strategies. The collection is divided into foundation material, concepts and implementation. The book has a fourth section, but it's an appendix that lists the author bios.

The papers in this book are based on presentations given at two ECOOP'98 workshops: the Workshop on Distributed Object Security and the Workshop on Mobility: Secure Internet Mobile Computation. Unlike many books that are based on workshops and lecture notes, this one is more practical than academic. I like the fact that XML and Java are covered, and found the papers that deal with access controls filled with useful information. The paper by Blaze, Feigenbaum, Ioannidis, and Keromytis on the role of trust management in distributed systems, and Roth's paper on mutual protection of cooperating agents gave information that me and my team used to solve a design problem.

Like most collections of computer science lecture notes the writing is vastly different from more popular books, but the information is there if you're willing to dig through dry writing. Also, this book is not for programmers who either don't have a computer science degree or are not familiar with computer science and software engineering.

If you have ever wondered what a film archivist does, this book is for you. If you are really serious about your passion for silent films, this book is for you. Mr Usai's concise book is packed full of research tips. There are over 50 illustrations, many in color, of all kinds of different early film frames (70mm, 35mm, 9.5mm, 28mm) plus early color processes, even early 3-D frames. He explains how the early color processes worked and how early films were assembled. He goes into great detail on how that silent film that you may watch today may be drastically altered from the original in the early 1900s. And he explains the many frustrating problems that silent film archivists encounter. He explains the pitfalls of compiling filmographies, and how some printed sources are valuable and others are worthless. If you are just becoming interested in silent films, this book will be too much for you. But if you are really interested in the "nuts and bolts" of archive work, or the detective work that we do to study silent cinema, then you won't be able to put this book down!