Generic

The book is an exceptionally clearsighted introduction to the topic of RISC. With many lookbacks on existing processors the authors weighs the pros and cons on almost every aspect of the design. I especially enjoyed the lengthy discussions of what an operating system (unix in this case) expect from the hardware and how the two cooperate in the best possible way.

It's discussion on different file systems does not directly have a bearing on the RISC architecture but fits in very snugly in giving a most complete general overview of a computer system. There's more to it than a good processor.

Read it! You'll learn a lot - not only about RISCs - but also what has driven hardware designers in the microprocessor industry for decades.

Good introduction of RISC CPU design. This book illustrates some of the architectural trade offs that real designers make when introducing a new CPU architecture. I especially like the fact that the authors went into great detail about the software and hardware aspects of the CPU design.

The title of this book makes a strong claim--that it is "the" book on generics. Luckily, the text backs up that claim. Beginning with a 100+ introduction to the topic by some of the biggest names in the field, the book continues with shorter articles on more specific topics. If you plan to do work in generics, "The Generic Book" is on your required reading list. One caveat--the authors assume a level of basic linguistics knowledge. If you have never studied semantics before, I suggest reading over an elementary text first, such as Heim and Kratzer's excellent "Semantics in Generative Grammar."

No longer a relationship with engineering as in the last two centuries but with electronics: this will be the challenge for architecture in the future. Not surprisingly it is the clever mind of Robert Venturi to state and, more importantly, to clarify this problem in his latest very insightful book, Iconography and Electronics upon a Generic Architecture. Venturi is not new to this kind of pioneering reflections: his seminal Learning from Las Vegas very profoundly analyzed another crucial topic, the role of architecture in a motorized society. This time he again manages to focus on a crucial theme going well beyond the mere assertion of the problem. The book is, in fact, a collection of recent essays, and yet it has the strength - but not the monotony - of a special study. The arguments touched are various but they are all contextualized as against a common background: that of the new digital era in architecture. Doing so, Venturi manages to approach the problem from different positions that can open unthinkable perspectives: invention and convention, the relationship between architecture and publicity, the architectural object as a part of the landscape of popular culture are just some of the many topics faced. The theme treated is a very popular one, as we all know: the way architecture, and particularly those procedures involved with its making - which we call "design" - , are affected by the digital revolution. This revolution, as Venturi notes, is causing not only a mere change in terms of tools used to design (files vs. drawings, computers vs. drawing boards etc.) but it is bringing about, more importantly, a cultural change. What has been misunderstood in the far too many writings on this topic is that the digital revolution not only is changing our tools but also our goals. And, as usually happens in these cases, this very attention on the mere instrumental changes overshadows the more important content changes. Fortunately Venturi make architects reflect on this second aspect. The so-called "virtuality" will be more a more a condition to accept, a concept to face. With its ever-increasing presence in our culture it will eventually change the way we think and, particularly, the way we think architecture. One of the most important outcomes of this fact is a difference brought about in the idea of "object", a circumstance of paramount importance for designers. The broken link with materiality has indeed introduced a conception, quite widespread, in which objects are less defined, changeable and ephemeral in a new way. This change - notoriously foreseen by Lyotard - has eventually generated a different idea of the building. The exterior part of the building is the one more involved: in fact in contemporary architecture facades are no longer thought of as fixed elements. All the elements of definition - frame, corners, moulding - have lost their role. Facades, rather than exterior faces of material objects are considered nowadays as surfaces, and particularly mutant surfaces. So writes Venturi: "Here is architecture as iconographic representation emitting electronic imagery from its surfaces day and night." Recent buildings by architects like Herzog & De Meuron, Toyo Ito, Rem Koolhaas are quite symptomatic to this respect. But we cannot forget the pioneering intuitions on "transparency" by Colin Rowe. Not surprisingly Venturi - always sensible to problems of communication performed by buildings and consequently very interested in the theme of the facade - tries to cope with these new conditions. He does so without falling in one of useless categories of pro or anti-virtuality. Instead he is preoccupied of being late in understanding the problem: "Architecture was too late in stylistically acknowledging the industrial revolution ....: let us acknowledge not too late the technology of now - of video electronics over structural engineering: let us recognize the electronic revolution of the Information Age". Venturi's reflections are always the architect's ones. In every phenomenon he is concerned primarily by problems of form and of visual impact. This special approach is particularly clear in his singling out a fundamental topic: the new kind of iconography brought about by electronics. Again Venturi's interest lays on the cultural mutation rather than on the pragmatic one. As we know electronics has introduced a new condition in all graphics - not only in those architectural: digital drawings are constituted by dots rather than by lines as in traditional "analogic" representation. Venturi make us realize that this is not a mere representational problem because this variation eventually introduces conceptual changes to the way architecture is conceived. Representational means are not neutral. Of course this is related to what Venturi theorize on the dissolution of architectural elements and especially of facades. What in the past was a choice - think of Seurat or of Byzantine mosaic - now has become a must. For Venturi the connection between decoration and its physical support - a basic theme in architecture - has to become totally free: "What S.Apollinare Nuovo does inside we can do inside and/or outside". A careful observer of popular culture, Venturi includes in his observation also elements like Light Electronic Displays, which are not a real product of digital production but are one of the most explicit representations of an iconography regulated by dots. This, of course, is not contradictory to his idea of a facade as projection surface. After all an old idea, - think of the inscriptions in S.Maria Novella by Alberti - consistently studied by Venturi and now rethought under the light of dramatically new circumstances.

This book is a good reference for GMC applications, it shows a lot of real examples and the steps to be followed to develop a control strategy. Another important issue is about the importance of a controller based in a nonlinear model when compared with tradicionals controllers such as manual control and PID. This book is a rich reference to understand and comprehend these issues.

Loved the book! I have heard most of these slogans throughout my career and loved Mr. Tompkins insightful viewpoints. I literally found myself laughing out loud as I read how these slogans were perceived by the contributors. I had an opportunity to see Mr. Tompkins speak recently, and he's a dynamic, entertaining speaker as well. Read the book, I think you'll enjoy it.

Like the original Design Patterns book that this book is designed to supplement this book is split into two sections. The first section covers C++ fundamentals that apply to the patterns in the second section of the book. It's the second section, which implements many of the Gang of Four's design patterns in C++ using templates that is the heart of this small book.

The C++ templates are designed well and the code is out of the box usable. The graphics are good, but somewhat sparse. If there is anything I could fault the book for it is it's length. More expository time could be spent on the templates and the relationships between each of the templates, classes and code fragments. Templates, at least to me, are confusing at the best of times. So I would have appreciated some more time spent in explaining their function.

For the hard-core C++ coder this is an excellent book, particular in conjunction with the Gang of Four's Design Patterns book.

This is a concise but very informative book about the powerful features of C++ and how to use them. This book covers some of the same areas as the "Generative Programming" book, and then some. In particular, the chapter on Typelists provides a powerful demonstration of the compile-time functional programming style afforded by the C++ template system. There is also an extensive coverage of how to implement some of the classic GoF patterns -- Command, Singleton, Factory, AbstractFactory, Visitor -- and, more importantly, covers the various trade-offs involved. Finally, it demonstrates the power of Policy-based template classes in expressing these trade-offs in code.

Being a conscientious reviewer, let me also point ot a few problems. It is somewhat startling that Addison-Wesley has done such a bad job about producing such an useful book. There definitely is a feel that the book has been rushed to print. There are many obvious errors that any competent copy-editor would have caught and fixed. Typos abound. Names are inconsistent -- for example in one paragraph the same class is called both 'Singleton' and 'SingletonHolder'. The flow is sometimes somewhat jarring -- for example, in the discussion about smart pointers, and using the 'SmartPtr<...> sp; if (sp)' construct -- one paragraph essentially says there's no safe way to do this, "end of story", and then immediately after that presents a technique to implement this, as far as I could make out, safely. Another small distraction is that the fixed-width font used for presenting the code uses a 'fi' ligature (i.e., the two letters 'fi' take up the space of one letter) -- a simple error that should have been caught. All these make the reading experience somewhat less pleasant than it should be.

However, these detract little from my overall opinion of the book. This book belongs on your bookshelf.

This was a good buy for me, but I needed time to realize this. At first some techniques present in the book seemed too obscure to me, even though I use template metaprogramming regularly myself to perform tasks, where conventional C++ techniques lack in expressivity (like no direct support for reflection).

As the time passed and the tasks at hand became more complicated, those techniques that seemed ezoteric to me before provided me with the inspiration needed to cope with the difficulties that arised in my work.

A mostly careful, painstaking, and detailed review of all of the criticisms of Gewirth's theory (the theory that pure reason obligates one to treat others with respect). This kind of meticulous patience deserves five stars, except where it also includes crucial flaws that should be clearly devastating enough for the author to abandon the project. Beyleveld does not confront honestly enough the central flaw in Gewirth that my caring about myself does not rationally obligate me to care about others. Beyleveld rushes by this in three pages, arguing as follows. (To paraphrase:) 'Believing that everyone deserves respect would give a basis for my treating myself with respect. Therefore, I must believe that everyone deserves respect.' It's simply a non sequitor. The rationalists think that one needs some transcendent grounding to care about oneself, and they argue that this grounding commits us to caring about others. But we never get an argument that one needs a transcendent grounding to care about oneself. Who needs that? No one. Avoiding that issue is a deep weakness in this work, for Beyleveld's hundreds upon hundreds of careful pages become a waste of time, ink, scholarly attention. Still, it is hard not to give those pages three stars, since they are in themselves five-star-type work.

The subject of this book is so arcane that most people have given up on it. Yet, it is the underlying principle of almost every economic, philosophical or religious argument: can morality be deduced (not induced) from the mere existence of language-using self-motivating individuals.

Gewirth said so, and Byleveld spends the entire book in upholding his argument, and erecting counterarguments to the peer criticisms of it. This is not for the faint of heart, nor the easily confused. I left the book with a profound tiredness, but it was good tiredness, because I had finally listened to an intelligent explanation of why it is right to have morality: because you want to be free to do what you want.

Read this book if you read this far, especially the first fifty pages. Read carefully and logically. This is the quantum physics of sociology!

Few philosophical voyages are as frustratingly rewarding as the voyage offered by Alan Gewirth's argument for his supreme principle of morality. This comment will seem more than a little bizarre to anyone not familiar to Gewirth's work. On first reading of his Reason and Morality, readers will find hundreds of flaws in the argument. However, further readings often frustratingly reveal many of these "flaws" to be misunderstandings.

Deryck Beyleveld has responding to those who, after re-reading Reason and Morality and Gewirth's innumerable responses to critics, are still left with the belief that the argument fails to rationally justify morality. I doubt that anyone who takes the time to consider the plethora of arguments in Beyleveld's book can doubt that he has addressed many remaining criticisms. Indeed, I believe he has shown Gewirth's project to be successful

Not nearly as amusing, nor as heartwarming, as Dr. London's first book, "Kill As Few Patients As Possible." Still an enjoyable read, just not as much fun.

In 1987, the World's Best Doctor wrote a handbook for other physicians (Kill as Few Patients as Possible), that hilariously passed on choice tricks of the trade. Now managed care has made it impossible for Dr. London to care for his patients in the exemplary fashion he laid out - and so he's written the book that will allow patients to get this excellent care on their own. From spelling out the medications and diagnostic interventions which have been proven to help prevent disease, to a list of the symptoms which mandate a visit to your doctor TODAY, this book may be lifesaving.

This book makes complicated issues and statutes easier to understand. The book clarifies, using case citations, the FDA statutes. A very handy resource.

This book lets you learn a bit on every one of the popular Rx medications available for sale today. Includes international name, US name, what it's used for and some pictures. Very usefull for the non-professional.

It's also important to say, it covers all of the 200 most popular medications, and you will not find a drug that is a MUST to be included which is not.