EDI Books

It is an interesting, useful tool for EDP auditors

I have read this book at graduate level as a class material in Human Resource Management. The most obvious priority of Schulers book is its case studies which are developed elaborately and absolutely topic-related. It was my assignment to translate case studies included in this book into Turkish and while I was reading cases, I realized that as I read, I better understood topics. Although cases are impressive in this book, the chapter titled as "The Role of HRM Department in Total Quality Management Process" is not rich in terms of content.

I reccommend this book especially to international students whose English proficiency level is not very high because the language and structure of Schulers book is very simple, accordingly understandable. A good source in the field of HRM. Highly reccommended.

From back cover:

"Hermes - the Roman Mercury - started as a crafty boy-god and violator of women but then developed into a miracle-worker and spiritual guide. Every aspect of his complex personality offers rich insights.

Mercury is often treated a a light-weight planet which overemphasizes the intellect and ignores the emotional side of life. By drawing on mythology and a series of compelling case histories, Freda Edis shows that it can be far more. People who feel 'stuck' - endlessly repeating the same unsatisfactory patterns of behavior - and need to confront the darker aspects of themselves can find inspiration in stories of Hermes's descent into the Underworld. His love affair with Venus, and the birth of their hermaphrodite child, has much to teach us about reconciling the male and female within ourselves.

'The God Between' explores Mercury's role as Eternal Child, Rapist, Trickster, Traveller, Healer and Alchemist; his aspects to the other planets; and how he operates in the different houses and signs. Psychological astrology, it concludes, offers illumination to anyone who truly wants 'to walk the path of deeper self-knowledge.'"

Guidelines for Electronic Payment of Healthcare Claims Using the ANSI Asc X12 electron by James J. Moynihan, Marcia L. McLure

How IDE importance contributes to a paperless society

This e-book is aimed at CIOs, business and technical decision makers, senior architects and consultants. It is a 150-page PDF document that is well researched, well written description of the strengths and weaknesses of web services, the planning requirements and challenges, and the value proposition for implementing them.

First, it sets the context for web services in a reasonably non-technical manner, staying focused on business issues when possible, but delving into the underlying technology when required. What I like is the balanced view it presents and well formed conclusions and recommendations that reflect no bias towards vendors. I also like the vendor and integrator profiles, description of implementation approaches, and the honest assessments of all.

What makes this book a necessary investment, though, is the comprehensive list of challenges and associated advice for overcoming many of them, and the approach to evaluating web services with respect to both technical and business impacts.

If you're early in the development and implementation phase of web services, or are evaluating them from a strategic vantage point this book will provide an incredible return on your investment (it is pricey) by preventing false starts, implementation disasters and choosing an approach that may be totally wrong for your organization. It will also help you to identify the total costs (and benefits) associated with web services.

From the end of the second world war in so-called first world countries the state moved forward apparently with little or no resistance, extending itself into almost every nook and cranny of human existance.

For almost thirty years in the so-called 'golden age' this was the route of choice for economic development. If it worked for industrialised countries, the logic ran, it will work for the less developed countries.

With voices of Peter Bauer, Basil Yamey and later Deepak Lal like prophets in the wilderness the only ones to dare to object to the new breed of development economists who's watchwords were import substitution and public works, the state moved forward in those countries too but if the truth were to be told the money rolled into the pockets of the ruling elites.

Gabriel Roth was another of those voices in the wilderness. In a 1966 publication for the free market Institute of Economic Affairs based in London he put forward a radical proposal for paying for roads. Ahead of his time by only about thirty years or so his radical proposal is now part of the mainstream in consideration of solving the problem of road congestion.

In this masterful book, Roth puts his engineering and economic skills to good use to look at the extent of the private provision of so-called 'public services' in the developing countries and finds, to no-ones real surprise that the private sector does it better. As if to labour the point, James Tooley in a more recent study, 'The Global Education Industry' has discovered the same thing.

This is an important study which should be reuired reading for all policy-makers from Presidents and Prime Ministers all the way down to local council members as it carries very important ramifications for the provision of services throughout the world.

I feel on solid ground to predict that in a few years time, all of the services currently provided for out of public funds ( taxation is such a weasel word is it not?)will instead be provided by private forms of organisations. Gabriel Roth will have performed the highest level of service for all individuals across the world.

Ah, BizTalk Server.... one of those Microsoft products that, watched from afar, always appeared so frighteningly towering. Training to climb Mount Everest would probably be a less strenuous endeavour. My previous experience with it was just the 2002 version's installation procedure, and that totally left me perceiving it like learning diving in the open sea - going about alone can get pretty scary without the instruction and guidance of a master diver. It quickly became one of those "if I ever have too much free time" items that I never acted upon for years.

Now the situation is different. Now it has become my job to learn the latest incarnation of 2006 R2 and use its capabilities to demonstrate its worth in a lucrative government POC. Now, I need to learn it _fast_. I needed to climb Mount Everest before the season closes. How does one get familiar and comfortable with the concepts of this monstrous product? In fact, I never truly understood what BizTalk does exactly. I am one of those who cannot absorb useful information from vague marketing overviews; I needed someone experienced to talk me through to using its features. That someone is Daniel Woolston.

This author has managed to compress most of BizTalk Server's core concepts and features into 14 chapters, spanning a mere 262 pages. Using concise language and short practicals, he takes apprehensive beginners (e.g. me) through an eye-opening tour of BizTalk Server. Taking things a step at a time, the practicals continuously build on previous experience and incrementally introducing more features to accomplish more and more feats. Daniel Woolston's style of tutelage quickly demystifies BizTalk Server operations and reveals that getting into it is not quite as insurmountable as it seems from the outside. On completing the last chapter I felt that grasping the foundations of BizTalk Server was definitely not a lofty goal of this book.

But of course, the key word of this book is really just "foundations". Daniel Woolston has targetted this material at newbies, sticking with the simplest of demonstrations. He does not even teach the usage of other adapters for Receiving and Sending; only the File-based adapter is demonstrated. It certainly is debatable; keeping practicals simple enables speedy progress, no doubt; but at the same time I cannot help but feel "we're done already? how about this, how about that..." as I paced through the chapters.

If you ever wanted to learn anything deep, or even just intermediate, about BizTalk, you will be left with _many_ unanswered questions. You would then be reminded on several pages to refer to [Pro BizTalk 2006] for that. If you want a quick _introductory_functional_ tour of BizTalk Server, however, look no further and grab this book.

Overall rating: 8/10
Good - Lightning fast practicals; concepts quick and easy to follow
Bad - Purely beginner basics; only File-based inputs and outputs

This is an ok introduction to BizTalk. It does a decent job of introducing you to the different pieces involved. I also like fact that it gives you exercises to practive with.

With that being said, there are some negatives in the book and I am surprised no one else brought them up. The book sometimes ask you to reference Visual Studio projects midstream that were never mentioned in any previous text or chapter. I also ran into a section that involves using expressions and the exercise references properties that do not exist on the message object. Also, steps are sometimes skipped. Finally, there is a lot of steps I was doing in the exercises, but I didn't understand WHY I was doing it.

I usually never get all the way through a software book for a variety of reasons, but this one I read twice. It has as thorough and step by step set of procedures for getting a new product up and running as I have ever seen. I doubt if the MS installation guide is as thorough. In addition to the step by step instructions for installation it also shows you how to set up the main components of Biztalk as well as giving a helpful overview of the product and its uses and requirements. As someone who resides mostly in the mainframe world this was very beneficial for me; I don't even know XML but was still able to follow along. Even for a web/pc person the detailed level of the instructions is likely to be helpful without being too elementary. And even if you are a dot net c sharp java whatever expert it's likely useful to have this book for the first week or so to help get things up and running, although the author freely and continuously points out that you will probably need to get a more advanced book soon.

The writing style is light without being flippant, most instructions are concise and examples are well thought out. The chapter on Orchestration I found a little difficult to follow- it is where the meat of the logic takes place in a BizTalk process, typically, but this was probably due to my unfamiliarity with dot net terminology more than with a flawed presentation.

A good book, written especially for the beginner, but would probably save anyone time with the helpful step-by-step instructions for installing and setting things up. Very, very highly recommend- although check back in a few weeks after we migrate to the product and see if my review stays this rosy.

First Day and I read 9 chapters. Looks like will be done with the book tomorrow. This is my first time hands on on Biztalk even though I have read some white papers before but this book rocks!. Samples are easy to understand and implement and very well chosen so you start to get the hang of biztalk.

This is great addition on my shelf and highly recommend to the ones who are venturing into biztalk for first time.

Got the book on Monday and was able to read through it and work with the examples and finished the book by Friday (had some down time at work). I had never worked with BizTalk before so this book was very helpful in getting points accross and examples were mostly spot on.

Author had a very easy going writing skills with little humor and did not bore me with lot of technical jargons. Liked the way the book was organized.

I wish there was a chapter on how to debug and monitor your Orchestrations using BizTalk Health and Activity Tracker tool. That would have come in handy when I goofed some of the examples. But I found out about Orchestration debugging from blogs and Microsoft site and was able to work through the examples.

Like other reviewers had mentioned this book is very elementary and will get your feet barely wet with BizTalk. You need to buy an advanced book to compliment this one. I myself have bought the Pro BizTalk 2006 from apress.

If you have already worked with BizTalk before then you may find this book of no use to you. Neverthless a good start and kudos to the author on a job well done.

As others have already mentioned, this book is not a beginner's read - something that I found quite refreshing.

Given that there are excellent reviews already posted that give this book a proper overview (Rob Hardy's especially), I will merely share some of the text that I highlighted, these quotes having stuck out as exceptionally concise and witty.

"But today, conservative, magical, scripture-waving religion has become obviously fake to the well-educated person" (14).

"We come from accidents, not design. [...] Many of us find such answers profoundly unappealing. Nevertheless, I believe they are most likely correct" (16).

"Apocalyptic beliefs are conservative: they promise supernatural vindication for social values which are under attack" (153).

"At every step along the way, the Resurrection was a myth. Elvis did not fake his death because of the burdens of stardom; he does not appear once in a while to his faithful fans. Hitler was not spirited away by Nazi allies from within the Hollow Earth; he does not wait plotting his revenge. Jesus did not rise from the dead; he will not come again" (171).

"Our intelligence is mainly a tool to negotiate a social environment, so we tend to see purposes everywhere in nature, inventing gods to supply them if necessary" (237).

"God and evil do not mix; one of them has to go--and evil is too obviously here" (278).

This is not a book for the beginning or learning Atheist. Edis' book requires a minimum understanding of philosophy, theological arguments, and general sciences. Edis, a professor of physics, writes for the advanced Atheist or theist at a collegiate level. Edis' writing is eloquent and articulate and he strives to cover every angle of his arguments. Edis attempts to help the theist define a plausible god and then systematically goes through all the different types of theological arguments in an attempt to see if that idea of god is plausible. In the end, Edis shows that the idea of god is not plausible under scientific, philosophical, ideological, or logical reasoning. God falls in the realm of faith in the long run. The beginner will find this book very hard to follow and will ultimately leave the book frustrated. For the advanced Atheist, this is a great read that causes you to think about these traditional and non-traditional theistic arguments in a new light.

Christopher Tew has unwittingly proven my point by his review of the book and critique of my review. As Mr. Tew states one has to SHARE Mr. Edis's assumptions, in other words we must be locked into a philosophical ideology that refuses to accept empirical evidence contrary to our presuppositions. That was the whole point of my review is that Mr. Edis and Mr. Tew are nothing more than blind materialistic fundamentalist. They ignore verifiable facts just because their ideology takes rule of their lives. This is a dangerous position to be in and one that must be exposed for what its pure ideological dogmatism. Anyhow, let's discuss the books' and Mr. Tews complaints against Daniel.

You should understand that there are three major groups out there that try to date and analyze biblical books.

1 The Christians (Those people who believe that the bible is the word of god)

2 The Liberal Scholars (This group is made up of people who are trying to show that the bible is completely wrong and man made.)

3 The Secular Historians (The largest of the three groups whose goal seems to be historical accuracy without commenting on the theistic aspect)

Group 1 and 2 both have an agenda. Since they are obviously biased a neutral observer would either exclude them or give them little weight. What Tanner and Christopher have done is exclude group 1 AND GROUP 3. They do this because only group 2 SUPPORTS their belief structure. So rather than try to look for errors, a prerequisite for those who relish accuracy and the truth, they prefer to hold tight to their erroneous constructs.

So let's look at the facts that group 3, the secular historians have given us.

Many fragments of Daniel have been found at Qumran, an evident sign that the book had caused considerable importance in the 3rd century. This alone devastates the author and reviewers argument, but lets continue.

Daniel exhibits extensive knowledge of the 6th century events, far more than would seem possible for a 2nd century writer. For Example:
1. Babylon was the creation of Nebuchadnezzar.
2. Belshazzar was functioning as king when Cyrus took Babylon in 538 BC
3. Intimate knowledge in recording the change from punishment by fire under Babylonians to punishment by being thrown to the lions under the Persian regime.
As a side note historians used to criticize Daniel for the following items until recent finds have vindicated the books historical accuracy. Conversely, Daniel exhibits no knowledge of 2nd century events, quite curious for a book that is theorized by a few liberal scholars to have been penned in the 2nd century.

Daniel uses three (not two) languages; Persian, Aramaic, and Hebrew. The Persian expressions in Daniel are specifically OLD Persian words. Linguists date these old Persian sources to pre 350 BC. This is also evident that the Septuagint translators made inexact, almost guesses as to the meaning of these words. It stretches credulity to believe that Daniel was authored in 167 BC and less than 30 years later the meaning of the words have been lost or forgotten. It is absolutely farcical to assume Daniel was authored, accepted into the canon (this alone averages 100+ years), transported to Alexandria Egypt, translated into Greek all in a scant thirty years. Pleaaaaaase, if you buy this then you also believe that Rome WAS built in a day.

Another hurdle with the allegation that the book was written in the 2nd century is that Daniel usesPersian terms for government terminology where one would expect a writer in the 2nd century BC to have employed the current Greek government expressions. Again no explanation is given for this simply because no rational one can be given.

The Aramaic in Daniel is what linguists call Imperial Aramaic, as you undoubtedly know language changes greatly over time, just read Lincolns Gettysburg address to get the point. There are several papyri that have been dated around 5 - 6 century BC where the Aramaic matches that of Daniel (see the Elephantine papyri for example). The papyri that have been dated at the 2nd century BC show notable differences. This leads the UNBIASED linguists to date the document as early of the later part of the sixth century BC. As you can see linguistic evidence is clearly against a date in the second century BC.

I can continue listing a panoply of evidence that historians use to date this book, but just this small sampling should suffice those who are really interested in learning about history without the philosophical burden of naturalism dictating to them that they must disregard truths in favor of their ideology.

In conclusion Mr. Edis and Mr. Tew presents a modified Maccabean view, however a fair and UNBIASED survey of the data seems to indicate that historically, linguistically, and logically a second century date for the autograph of Daniel is extremely difficult to maintain. In essence you can still find people that believe the world is flat, but if you look at the evidence you will reach the conclusion that the world is oval and Daniel was written pre 3rd century BC.

Mr. Tew and Mr. Edis have fun in your fundamentalist world of naturalism as for me; I will take the empirical and verifiable evidence and use them to ascertain truth.

The first two chapters are very challenging if you don't have any background in philosophy or physics,While some of the other chapters are very accessible to the avg. reader.In my opinion this is not an introductory book to atheism or the arguments against theism.If you have read some other books of this genre and you enjoy a challenge there is much to like about this book.

Edis begins by showing how the god of the philosophers is such an abstraction that we don't even know what it is we are talking about."Not much to build a religion on" as he puts it.The problem for me was that for much of the chapter I didn't know what he was talking about,although the summarizations helped me out somewhat.

His summarization of evolution was pretty good and I enjoyed this section, but my favorite sections were his summarization of the evolution of the myths of Judaism, Islam, and Christianity.He gives a great synopsis of the latest biblical and New Testament scholarship, Even though he dismisses the Jesus myth theory too easily,I really liked this part of the book.

In his chapter on physics he takes apart the arguments of theists and new agers trying to use science to bolster their claims.He takes on William Lane Craig's Kalam cosmological argument that states that anything that has a beginning must have a cause.Since the universe began to exist it must have been caused and this cause would obviously have to be the god of the bible.How convenient that this argument exempts God from having to be explained by a cause.Edis dismantles these and similar arguments explaining that"the standard big bang is the beginning of spacetime itself,not an event in time" and "the state arising from such a singularity is fundamentally random.At the singularity there is no physical law , no causation; the singularity itself stands uncaused."

His chapter on good and evil and moral values is also very helpful in correcting the notion that without God(whose god?)we can have no ethics or morality and anything would be permissable.If those who claim that the Bible or the Koran contain absolute moral principles would actually read those books we would be better off.They would see what these man-made gods are really like and we could possibly move beyond such silliness.

A difficult read in parts,but all in all I'm glad I bought it and I have referred back to it a time or two already.

The book is ok but he gives too much respect to religion. There isn't much here that hasn't been said before countless times. People pre-decide what they believe no matter what the evidence and this has been true since the beginning of history. How many religions and different gods has their been throughout time? We hardly know of any beyond major religions, I'm sure there are thousands of more appealing and more just mythological stories and characteristics of these gods then the so called Judeo-Christian psychotic one. The author admit's they (religions) are false but things that are false should not be appealing to him or our children as a whole, they should be studied in philosophy classes or classes dedicated to critical thinking and the development of a scientific mind. I admit the idea of acting good and being rewarded and brought back to life to live forever in paradise is a nice IDEA but the works that contain such ideas as an afterlife shouldn't be given any merit today in the modern world we've outgrown that kind of ignorance and false knowledge that our ancestors needed psycholically to get by in a harsh, unjust and unfair world.

The problem of course with biblical or religous belief is that there are three claims that must consistently be met and internally consistent throughout such a book. Our ancestors had impossibly big ideas about god and other things because they had no idea how nature worked so they floundered by imagining explanations for them based on a mixture of emotions, ignorance and misunderstanding. You cannot fault them for everyone is born ignorant and woefully so. We're so lucky to have an education system in this moderm day and age that kills superstition.

The problem with christians is that the bible makes incorrect statements about reality, no omniscient god could ever make a mistake, so the only valid christian interpretation is a young earth (Genesis 1) and that demons exist and cause disease (Mathew 8:30-34), thats what the bible teaches and no god who claims to be omnipotent, omniscient and loving could ever make such a backward book. In the case of mathew 8, demon performs excorcism of demons from men and these spirits go into the pigs and cause them to run into the lake and die. Now Jesus if you are not a unitarian is God incarnate, how can he be god if he's pretending to cast out demons when he (god) knows they don't cause disease? or what about Jesus outright denial he is god in Luke 18:19 -- Luke 18:19

"Why do you call me good?" Jesus answered. "No one is good-except God alone. Here we have christ admitting he is not good and only GOD is, if they are co-equal and co-eternal then why not just say "Yeah I'm good because I'm god." It's these stupid contradictions and errors in the bible that kill the alleged prophetic evidence, the ENTIRE bible must be flawless and without error for the bibles prophecies to even be CONSIDERED as evidence, if theres any error elsewhere that kills the fragile structure that is the bible and other holy books because of the (usual) three things claimed about their gods properties and powers: Omniscient, Omnipotent, and Benevolent.

The seller was very nice and sent the book quickly. I use the book for my class even though the class calls for the 9th Edition. It saved me so much in money and the same infomation is in the 8th Edition.

I recently bought this textbook as a student in an Ed.D program. The prof had each student teach a chapter at each class, which kept us all alert and engaged. Great reference, and very comprehensive.

This book did what it needed to do in my Designing Organizations class in college.

"Organization Theory and Design" is a book every corporate member that has aspirations to better understand and contribute to his organization should own.

I used this book studying a basic course of organizational behavior after the professor had referred to it as "the best text on the market". I found out he was right - the book is extremely well-written and its contribution to my understanding of the subject is invaluable.

As it happened, I partly read older versions of the book to find out how every few years Mr. Daft updates his analysis, insights and examples of the ever changing and evolving world of organizations; for instance, the past example of IBM that served as the major opening example of an organization that has gone from the top of the world to the brink of disintegration in the beginning of the 90's (and since then regained leading position in its areas of expertise), is replaced in this 8th edition with Xerox. Mr. Daft continues and presents the most recent developments in organizations' design - structures and management methods that have only emerged lately in response to the turbulences in the environments and competition worldwide.

By making the changes and improvements in every edition "Organization theory and design" wins the title of this review - "the learning book" - that mirror images the main theme of this work - "the learning organization". Almost no organization can stand still in today's reality - managers and workers have to constantly think of better ways of doing things and learn from every source that bears knowledge and can give the organization a better competitive advantage. Things have never moved so fast and threats and opportunities have never been so immense. Competitors have to be efficient and different to survive and stay on the top.

The structure of the book is designed to convey its ideas in the best possible manner: Each and every chapter opens with an example illustrating its content, then an introduction to the subject. Theory and examples from today's organizational world followa and are interwoven throughout the text in the "in practice" section. A fascinating section is "leading by design" in which Mr. Daft highlights top-of-the-line companies that have managed to materialize the theory and consequently lead their industries. Yet another remarkable feature is "bookmark" in which the autohor recommends and actually reviews the content of other books that further develop the subject the chapter dealt with. For me, the magnitude of this behavior is unprecedented; I haven't read a book that is so much interested in advancing and advertising works of fellow authors. This is a code of conduct every author can learn from in pursuing the ultimate goal - to better inform and educate his/her readers.

Some of the material the book covers include the organizational environment, organizational structures, organizational decision making processes, ethics, organization-decline and organizational politics.

As is the norm in many books, Mr. Daft integrates case studies directly connected to the content of each chapter in its end. They add all the more to the reality dimension that is so strong throughout the book.

Lastly, the price of this book is somewhat expensive but well worth the money and will certainly prove to be a wise investment. Years after its reaing and studying it may serve as a reference source when the reader will stumble across situations covered in the book and learn to appreciate even more the lessons insights Mr. daft offers.

I bought this book with the apprehension that it might not be the same one I'm looking for.But Amazon made me feel so satisfied.I got the exact book and that too new and in much lower price than the market.