EE Books

If you're intending to read Doc Smith's classic "Lensman" series, then so you should; but you should definitely start, not with "Triplanetary", but with Galactic Patrol. Here's why.

Chronologically, the first Lensman story was Galactic Patrol, from Astounding magazine in 1937-38. This was followed by the next three stories: Gray Lensman, Second Stage Lensmen and Children of the Lens. When publication in book form was mooted, Smith revised his earlier Triplanetary to fit into the lensman universe, and wrote First Lensman to form a bridge between that and "Galactic Patrol". Masters of the Vortex, another unrelated story, was likewise modified.

I, and many others it seems, feel that the four books representing Smith's original conception are the essential ones, and the others are disposable ("Vortex", in particular, being a pot-boiler with virtually no relation to the others). Although "First Lensman" certainly has entertaining moments (as when Virgil Samms is almost deafened at a Rigellian construction site, because the Rigellians have no sense of hearing and can't understand what the problem is).

There's another problem with the books, although fortunately not an insuperable one. Smith's universe, although already huge at the outset of "Galactic Patrol", expands as the series progresses. Originally, the reader didn't discover the total significance of the struggles going on within it until the end of "Children". But the books (except, for some inscrutable reason, "Patrol") feature tacked-on and needless Forewords that give away the whole plot. I *strongly* recommend first-time readers to skip these.

"Triplanetary" is not as good as "Patrol"; and if you start here you may be disappointed - possibly enough to stop reading! Neither is it "really" the first book. But most importantly, you'll run headfirst into plot-spoilers that wreck the tension of the story.

When you've finished "Children", by all means go back and read this.

First of all sorry for my english, i'm brazilian.
I bought this book after the pain of reading the Study Guide from Sun Microsystems, so it was really good. There are some mistakes that would confuse some inexperienced developers, but the level of skill required for the certification would make the own reader fix it. Good reading, good coverage of subjects, the exercises are not so good but they do their work. A very good benefit i found was cd wich comes with the book, it help me to read it at work on time between tasks.

I hesitated to buy this book after reading other people's reviews, but I finally got it and thought it was quite impressive. The newest version covers up to J2EE 1.4. There is a simple code example for each pattern that clarifies the meaning. There is an excellent chapter dedicated to Java Connector Architecture 1.5. I've been reading this book at work as I wait for my slow computer to deploy applications to WebSphere, and it seems highly relevant. You should definitely read other books to become an architect, as I have done. I've basically read the other top-selling architecture books before this one. You should also read specific books on security and internationalization. I didn't see many bugs other than a few misworded practice questions. It's definitely worth the time and money.

This book is amazing, and cover not only everything necessary for the SCEA, but more. Most of this "more" stuff, will not be usefull directly in your test but will help you very much understanding the necessary concepts.

Again, the book is very good, but since it has so much information, it's easy to loose yourself among this sea of words and stories.

I recommend go for other SCEA recommended books like the GoF Design Patterns, Sun Press By Mark Cade, Core J2EE patterns second edition before this one. Once you have a good knowledge to make the test, wrap it all up with this book. It will give you a perfect review of everything and call your attention about small things that no other literature will give to you.

i am just in the middle way of reading this book, but what i have got till now is great. I have 8 years career with software development specially in java, i reached to a point am doing system architecture most of the time, but i can say i was doing it from the point of view of "House Architect", now i can see things from Tower Building Architect, or City Architect in the extreme.
I did not pass the certificate yet so i dont know how much it is useful on this matter.

I'm not sure what the people were thinking who put this book together. There's lots of information thrown in her, but much that isn't applicable to either being an architect, or to passing the exam.

This is not a good book, and it will not help you pass the SCEA exam.

For a book that claims to be about real-time programming, this book fails miserably. An example, the discussion of scheduling describes a round-robin scheduler and says "[f]or other scheduling algorithms, refer to any good book on operating systems."

I really expected more from Addison-Wesley.

Oh, ok... and here I thought scheduling had something to do with real-time systems, guess I was wrong.

A general overview of development and design, a couple details-free chapters on hardware, a few brief words about operating systems (in about the same depth as schedulers), then networking, HTTP and Java. The common thread that runs throgh all of these is their proprietary system which they refrain from disclosing any of the details of, but do provide you with some nice UPS simulators and software that runs only under windows.

What this book is: An introduction to developing for single-board computer (SBC) platforms (Intel x86), including interesting topics like connecting to pushbuttons and LCD displays. I personally found the book very interesting, as it's focused on x86-based embedded systems, rather than traditional embedded processors.

What this book is not: It's not about real-time programming - it's about SBC programming and the nuances of embedded systems. Coverage of true real-time techniques is very cursory, as mentioned here in another review about scheduling (likewise for subjects like de-bouncing of inputs and watchdog circuitry).

On the positive side, there is a progressive collection of examples that implement each of the principles presented. The code is included on the CD, along with a demo development library to build the examples. By including the demo library, the reader can get kick-started, even if they ultimately switch to another kernel.

On the negative side, the entire book is a heavily product-specific discussion around the PharLap RTOS kernel included on the CD (which is a crippled license for prototyping only). All the examples are dependent upon the reader using the PharLap kernel and a Windows-based machine with Microsoft's Visual C++ compiler.

In short: All in all, I found this book was a worthy addition to my library, and a great introduction to some of the issues and techniques that are unique to programming embedded PCs.

I'm glad I bought it, but I would have been happier if it had included coverage of other kernels (like embedded Linux), and an intro to some of the alternatives to x86-based CPUs. I was also disappointed that PharLap disabled Borland C++ support in the demo license - the logic for this escapes me.

I applaud the goal as stated in the book's title, and we very much need such a book. For me, this isn't it. I felt that their synopsis claims were not entirely honest: not only is this book based entirely on a proprietary operating system, but the learning version included with the book has been hamstrung to protect the full version. This makes sense, but their chosen method was to prevent you from being able to save your programming to disk or ROM; in other words, so that it can't be embedded. Seems difficult at best to learn embedded programming with software that can't be embedded. And the retail version of the tools on which this book is based cost a fortune. I suppose you could filter for more generally applicable information, but for me it just wasn't worth it. If you were going to pony up the dough for their OS, it would definitely be useful, but in that case they should give it to you as a manual!

Description of reviewer: Computer Science (BS Hons). Commercial software engineering experience of 1.5 years. Experience with x86 assembler, VGA graphics subsystem, C/C++, Win32/MFC, WDM, and Java. Completely new to embedded systems.

Reviewer's goals: Looking to learn basic theories on what makes a good real-time operating system (RTOS). Ideally, I wanted to gain a good background for determining whether WinCE 3.0 is a viable RTOS, and when it should/could be used.

Did I achieve my goal? No. Only chapters 1 and 2 provided any theory chunks, and even then it was more common sense than an epiphany. My fault for assuming that I would abstract tested theory from an instructional handbook. I still learned a few nibbles about what a good RTOS needs to have though.

Do I recommend this book to others? Yes - but match your expectations with what it delivers. While I did not achieve my goal of understanding RTOS requirements, the book does provide a nice guide to how one would build a real-time embedded system from components. Provides good insights into the types of questions one needs to ask when building such a system. The methodology is not philosophical and steers clear from that rancor and leaves the reader to balance their intellect, creativity, and intuition for achieving their needs and wants in a real-time system.

Consider this book to be appropriately titled. It's a guide. It's not a definitive guide. It doesn't tell you, "do this for this application"... Indeed, I don't recommend this book if you need to create some kind of commercial embedded system. This book is for learning and toying around.

Now, if you intend to do anything with Phar Lap's ETS kernel, this book is a great beginner's resource for you.

The usefulness is a bit limited because the lessons that really apply outside of the ETS kernel are really theoretically based. Theory is extremely useful, but RTS theory may be a bit much for a beginner since there's a lot of "bla bla bla, my idea is better" - just visit comp.realtime if you have any doubts.

As an instructional manual, this book does a good job at being agnostic about RTS philosophies and evades a lot of "this is the best thingy" type claims. As a result it does well instructing on basics (versus indoctrinating), but you'll need more if you want to do anything really useful.

Were this book to have delved more into a couple of strong RTS theories and why there are so many arguments in different areas, I would have rated it a 5. This would have allowed the book to have use beyond the novice stage of embedded development.

Were this book to have used focused on an open RTOS, like embedded linux, (which consequently means there's a lot of additional wealth provided from geeks on the net), I would have given this a 4.

Alas, this book gets a 3. It's nowhere near being as bad as a 2. It's a solid 3 because it's usefulness is limited but it gets the job done in teaching basics.

Dont listen to the other two reveiwers.... it does not get any easier to under stand than as presented in this book. Photoshop IS a complicated program, but it is not rocket science.. you have to spend time working with it and this book will definitely show you the way!

I agree with the other reviewer about all of the photos being in black and white makes it very hard to tell the difference between the before and after photos. The book seems to go over many ways in which you can use photoshop which might be of interest to someone who has some experience with the program. However it doesn't seem to be good for a beginner. I tried using it and became frustrated soon after that.

I am sorry to respond with 1 star but the biggest failure of this book is that all pictures are in black and white!!! I can't even tell between the "before" and "after" pictures.

Also, either I am not used to the tutorial style of this book or it was put together with not much thought on the purpose of the layout.

I hope that there are other books out there that the titles don't decieve the consumer. Sorry Lisa.

I ordered this book to see if my dog was in it along with severaly friends dogs who had all paid a good price to have their dogs featured as new Champions. Upon receipt of the "book", I was horrified to see a compiliation of xerox copied photos which had been submitted in color. There are only a few dogs featured, some other printed information which is not particularly interesting and a whole bunch of "fillers." One would think for the price of the book you would get more than a spiral bound poor quality paper report. I wish I could say more about the contents but there is nothing interesting or substantial there. It is sad that the dogs were presented that way after the owners had spent so much time, love and money to get them to be Champions.

The writer from Virginia might have gotten this book mixed up with a yearbook. This book consists of a few articles but is mostly comprised of Champions and their champion get. And it lists all the champions for the years 1952 to 1987. To anyone interested in pedigrees this book should be in your library.

I ordered this book to see if my dog was in it along with severaly friends dogs who had all paid a good price to have their dogs featured as new Champions. Upon receipt of the "book", I was horrified to see a compiliation of xerox copied photos which had been submitted in color. There are only a few dogs featured, some other printed information which is not particularly interesting and a whole bunch of "fillers." One would think for the price of the book you would get more than a spiral bound poor quality paper report. I wish I could say more about the contents but there is nothing interesting or substantial there. It is sad that the dogs were presented that way after the owners had spent so much time, love and money to get them to be Champions.

I found the first review entirely too severe. There were lots of amusing anecdotes, only a few familiar, as well as colorful characters and good local flavor. I agree that the political elements were less successful, but overall, El Beisbol is a worthy part of my baseball library.

An attempt to find symbiosis between baseball, latino politics, and his personal journey. He conveyed a weak attempt on all fronts. Don't waste your valuable time. Just go for the Clemente autobiography.

This book truly brings the world of Latin baseball to life. Mixing history, travel writing, sports enthusiasm & politics, Krich documents the (declining) importance of baseball in the Latin American countries closest to the US & its influence. He struggles on occasion because he alternately refutes & repeats stereotypes about Latinos, players & nonplayers alike. Some reference material (e.g. a reading list, maps, etc.) would make the book more useful, but overall it is both amusing & insightful, notably on the politics of baseball in US-Nicaraguan relations. Students in my Latin American history class have shown a keen interest in it. It should be brought back into print!

In this the author claims that the South Koreans and their American allies started the Korean War. South Korean leader Syngman Rhee lost elections in May and so (the theory claims) caused the war through a number of border incursions.

Add in an attempt to corner the soybean market and preempt a Chinese invasion of Taiwan and you have all the makings of some real tinfoil hat stuff.

Published in 1952, this theory has been refuted and ignored by mainstream historians. Of course it has not been disproved. How could it be? This was a conspiracy so vast, so devious that the fact there is no evidence is all the proof an open mind needs.

The previous reviewer's reference to soybeans and what-not is not actually part of I.F. Stone's work, but from the introduction written by Bruce Cumings. Cumings was trying to make the case that the South and the Americans had actually started the war (which he later had to acknowledge was false), and I think it is unfortunate that such an agenda-driven piece was attached to Stone's book.

It's been several years since I read Hidden History, but I do remember it as a book that made the case that a lot of the information coming out of the US military command was trumped up or false. If anything, Stone makes the case that the US-led UN forces unnecessarily retreated in the face of what was, at first, a phantom menace trumped up by MacArthur as a pretext for removing the communists from China as well. I don't recall that Stone was making the case that the US or South Korea's military efforts were unjustified.

For anyone interested in the Korean War, Hidden History would be a worthwhile read, if for no other reason than to see a certain view of the war (whether correct or incorrect) at the time the war was being fought.

This books binding falls apart easily resulting in loose and/or lost pages. Children's books should really be made with better construction. Other than that, the book looks exactly like the movie, so I am sure the content is good.

The book fell apart the first time we opened it. Work on the QC please!

Kids will love this book if they loved the movie. It contains dialog and pictures from the film. Good for young readers and ESOL students.

The theory in the book on Java persistence is good, however the examples are incomplete and even the downloaded source from the publishers web site does not work. I am pretty sure this book was first to market as a Glassfish resource ... I wish I'd waited for a book which was better thought out.

Alan Keyes is my first choice for president, by far. I donated to his campaign and met with him a few times in the 1990s when I lived in New Hampshire.

I was almost going to buy this book, but then noticed a key fact: its length is listed at 6 pages. Further, its word count is listed at 1610 words, which is about 3 full pages.

That for $9.95? Shame on you, author. And shame on you, Amazon, for putting it for sale at that price. One could glean much more by 5 minutes of googling, at least with an IQ of more than 50.