Distributed

Like the previous books in the American Photography series, this one presents the winners in an open juried competition. The photos had to have been published or taken in 2002. Only those "selected" photos with a majority vote of the six-person panel were reproduced in the book; those "chosen" with two votes are only on a Web site.

I am not fond of several aspects of this book. First, the designers have apparently decreed that there shall be no unused space on any of the pages. Therefore, you see on the right side of some pages a duplicate of the left side of the photograph on the next page, and you see on the left side of some pages a duplicate of the right side of the photograph on the preceding page. I find this distracting rather than artful. Second, many of the photos are turned sideways. This causes you to have to frequently rotate the 6-pound, 9"x12"x1" book 90 degrees to no good purpose. Third, the placement of the (sideways) captions in a section after the plates requires you to flip back and rotate to discover the significance of some scenes. A good example is the set of Sicilian mummies by Paolo Ventura which is confusing without the caption. I would have preferred captions next to the images. Fourth, two jury members (Harris, Ryan) were editors for some of the photos in the book, and one jury member (Crewdson) shot some of the photos in the book. It's not clear that they recused themselves from voting on their own work. Finally, I do not like the inclusion of obvious digital photo illustrations or of video captures (as in "key frame[] from the video... of people reacting to Ground Zero World Trade Center site" on the book's cover). To me these are not really still photography.

Nevertheless, this book has a number of extraordinary photographs, all reproduced in a large format. Besides the 9/11-related pictures, among the most remarkable are the following. In photo 63 by Henrik Knudsen ("Pool") we see the back of a man standing in the water with a woman's hands around his back (it's ambiguous whether he is loving or killing her). Hans Neleman in photo 110 (from a "Body Transformed" project that apparently has yet to be published) shows a nude woman who has burns on her shoulder and some markings on her back and who is lying in a chair; it's reminiscent of an oil painting. Photo 147 of Fredrik Broden depicts two chairs in a "suggestive pose." Rodney Smith's photo 232 has a woman doing a painting on a canvas of her own back ("even the blind people can draw"). Beach volleyball has a completely new look in photo 238 by Claudio Edinger. The portrait of the really strong young boy with a samurai sword by Danielle Levitt (which Amazon has chosen for the graphic on this page) is found large and sideways as photo 311, but is not on the cover.

You'll find a lot to like about the book. Buy it at Amazon.com!

BTW Number 1, here's a quick rundown of the previous four years of American Photography.

#18 (2002, cow saying "cheese" on the cover, but Amazon graphic is a painted portrait of a Taliban soldier with sunglasses): The best design of the bunch. Photos grouped into sections such as "sexxx," "2by2" (animals), and "911"; interesting juxtapositions of work by different photogs on facing pages. Don't have to rotate the book to read captions.

#17 (2001, ketchup packet on the cover, but Amazon graphic is a computer classroom): Notable for some photos whose meanings are quite obscure, sometimes due to inadequate captions (e.g., per a Web site #297 by Ron Haviv is a photo of a photo of a Muslim family that was methodically defaced presumably by Serbs, but this is not stated in the book). Captions are sideways.

#16 (2000, toy car on stove burner on the cover, but Amazon graphic is two children at a pool): Great photographs by Gilles Peress, Larry Sultan, and others, but I'm not sure why Ariko Inaoka got eight pages. Don't have to rotate the book to read captions.

#15 (1999, multi-colored vertical stripe on the cover, but Amazon graphic is a baseball player): Some attention-grabbing abstract, conceptual, and experimental shots. Captions are sideways.

BTW Number 2, some photogs get published in AP year after year. Here's my list of those who had "selected" photos in #17 of 2001, #18 of 2002, and #19 of 2003: Josef Astor, Nelson Bakerman, Chris Buck, Craig Cutler, Jim Erickson, Larry Fink, Katy Grannan, Lauren Greenfield, Kyoko Hamada, Mark Heithoff, Antonin Kratochvil, Hugh Kretschmer, Catherine Ledner, Robbie McClaran, Greg Miller, Frank W. Ockenfels 3, Platon, Martin Schoeller, Mark Seliger, Derek Shapton, Taryn Simon, Peggy Sirota, David Harry Stewart, David Strick, Michael Waring, and Dan Winters.

This book shows you how to manuever the tricky waters of managing client/server projects in which multi-disciplinary skill sets are required to be successful. Though it only hinted at the coming web revolution, its precepts are valuable if applied judiciously in the management of client/server development teams to bring a client/server projec in on time and on budget.

And having had the privilege of working with both of the authors, I can attest to ther excellence and passion in this challenging profession.

Well done! When will the second edition be ready?

Deploying Microsoft Exchange Server 5.5 is - as it says- written by their consultants. The book therefore deals with large scale deployment issues - the sort of thing they would get sent to, as well as reading a bit like edited highlights from Technet. Indeed some of the sections can be found published separately on the standard Microsoft forums that their consultants provide input for. Single server sites with no external connectivity may find a lot of content superfluous. The detail on how to project manage an Exchange rollout, from scaling servers, to the merits of different connectors to performance issues, is very useful: the huge section on migrating Lotus Notes less so. There is a chapter devoted to describing the rollout out documentation that needs to be created in a large enterprise, although no MS Project template on the accompanying CD which would have been particularly useful. The book is still very useful if you are looking for a check list approach to putting in and maintaining Exchange. The discussion of the different possible clients, and in particular Outlook Web Access (OWA) gives an insight into how Microsoft are directing their client server messaging effort. And is well worth taking the effort to fully understand.

The book - as it correctly states - is not intended for someone still picking up the basics or studying for the exam. If you are a Systems Architect , IT/ project manager, or someone working at a strategic or trouble shooting level in a multi server environment, then it is definitely worth reading.

Design Principles was written by a collection of authors specializing in diverse fields from computer scientists, theoretical biologist, pathologist, chemists and neurologists. The book began as a workshop held at the Sante Fe Institute in 1999 by the same name. While it is not a collection of abstracts and papers from this workshop, it did serve as the motivating factor to write the book. Design Principles starts with a description of the immune system that serves as a basic introduction both to the topic and to the biases of the multiple authors. Steven Hofmeyr offers a "gentle introduction to the immune system for researchers who do not have much background in immunology." (p.3) The chapter is titled "Introduction to the Immune System". Right off the biases of the book are exposed as Hofmeyr has a Ph.D. in computer sciences with a focus on information detection and distribution. Hofmeyr does an excellent job describing very complex biology without assuming that the reader has a background in either immunology or systems. While the author is gentle in his presentation the chapter is very dense with information which one hopes will be reiterated as one needs the information further in the book. Overall, I would recommend this book to anyone who is interested in pursuing agent based modeling of biological systems. This book would be particularly interesting to those pursing interests in modeling the process of immunity. My final criticism would be that the title is a bit misleading as I would suggest that the book only gives limited mention and thought to other types of autonomous systems with the exception of Bonabeau's description of control mechanisms learned from social insects and Gordon's chapter titled, "Task Allocation in Ant Colonies."

good and an overall approach to the distributed computing

I feel that after reading this book, I have recieved an immense amount of knowledge. Not that i was unaware of the technology but because this book has been so complete, it has given me an insight of how to do client-server as well as distributed computing.

It is quite a good book about distribted object technology. The reading is very easy and pleasent. You do buy this book...

Arlene Wipfler does an outstanding job of presenting one of the most difficult aspects of CICS in a simple and concise manner. I have personally referenced this book on a number of projects and would recommend the investment

This is a classical book in eletromagnetic transients, a tough subject that most electrical engineering students are not fond of. It is very well written and may be considered as a classic in this field. It is a precious volume and any student (grad or undergrad) or lecturer in the transients field should have it. Even though the original edition is more than 30 years old, the solid ground which the book was build up remains valid.

This book is already somewhat outdated (six years) in relation to the cutting edge of fault tolerance research but it's a good and comprehensive introduction to the subject, and great to programmers looking for some understaning of fault tolerance, as commercial tools still have much to go before catching up with what is in this book. This field is getting more and more important as business systems are being moved to the internet and need to remain operarional 24/7.