Open

I highly recommend this book.

I feel that anyone who loves theater should read Brook: I always come away from his ideas feeling inspired and invigorated: my mind spinning with countless new possibilities. Thinking both as a director and an actor, I find Brook very useful. Perhaps his best quality is his love of experimentation- of finding what works but being ready to reject it for something better. Brook is an explorer more than a theorist. This collection of essays/speeches is an important aid to understanding where his journeys have taken him in his understanding of what makes good theatre.

Brewer brought a unique wit and insight into his Utah book, and its present here in this guide. Many books just present information, but Brewer gives out advice and personal recommendations which I generally found excellent. Prague can be a little overwhelming and his guideposts and instructions were a welcome lifeline.

All my other friends brought different copies of various travel books, and I thought this one was clearly the best.

A few years of online work and an interest in the implications of the increasing importance of tech. mediation of our environment/communication were rewarded (in my case) by Virilio's intriguing discourses--essays, really-- on how we perceive and relate to the world.

The one section on the globalization of the economy, though, was so off-base, I can only attribute it to the French academic community's expertise in theory and absolute cluelessness with real life (see: French economy).

-greg allen

This is mostly a book on cyberculture. Its French title is _La Vitesse de libération_, which translates as "Escape Velocity". Hard luck: Mark Dery independently chose the same title for _his_ essay on cyberculture, so even though Virilio's opus predates Dery's, its translation must come out with a different title.

I read it in French when it was published. As an avid reader of cyberculture, I found _Open Sky_ very well informed indeed. Paul Virilio, however, is no fan of computers: He feels sheer panic in front of the virtualization of society. This is what makes his book so exhilarating to read: I suppose I felt the same as an amateur of military history craving for Waterloos from Napoleon's point of view or Little Big Horns through Custer's eyes.

In this book, he disects the US government, with an essay addressing each aspect. It's amazing how he makes facts and statistics about things like fiscal policy fascinating, humorous reading. And you'll learn something too. He talks about things that are rarely explored in mainstream media. If you've never read anything by him, this is a great book to start.

One of the best aspects of UOSSD is its page count: at 180 pages of text, it's a fast read. It still packs quite a punch, drawing upon and summarizing academic and non-fiction literature on OSS. Prior to reading the book I was unaware of the idealogical battle between the Open Source Initiative and the Free Software Foundation. These and other historical observations were invaluable.

UOSSD is useful for those who want to leave the Microsoft-bashing aspects of the OSS bandwagon in search of a more meaningful role in the community. By explaining the OSS community's dynamics, readers learn that a good way to contribute is to submit patches (p. 104). Authors Feller and Fitzgerald explain that OSS has "the highest payoff for software which requires a high degree of reliability" (p. 135). This is the heart of the security debate engulfing Microsoft.

My only criticisms relate to the passage of time. The book's "acknowledgements" are dated Oct 2001. Unfortunately, a company analyzed in several locations, CoSource, appears to have had already gone out of business by then. Late last year Red Hat left its "pure play" OSS role for "RHEL." Concerns over a lack of internationalization, particularly for languages, have been completely reversed; OpenOffice supports more languages than Microsoft Office.

Despite these drawbacks, UOSSD is a great book for techies and managers alike. I'm adding it to my "Management and Policy" Listmania List today.

What I like is that, after providing an overview of open source, its history and proponents, the authors discuss how to analyze open source software within two major frameworks: the Zachman framework that was developed in 1987 and is popular today as an enterprise-wide information systems paradigm, and a newer framework called CATWOE. I'm new to the latter, but it is solid and is independent of open source. CATWOE stands for Clients, Actors, Transformations, World View, Owners and Environment.

The remainder of the book discusses aspects of open source as they relate to the CATWOE framework, which ensures that fair and complete treatments of the business and technical issues are given. I would have liked a more in-depth discussion of the legal issues and business risks that are associated with the GPL; however, that information is in a state of flux and is probably best gotten from daily news sources.

If you want to understand open source software development, especially as it relates to business value, this book is the one I recommend. The authors also have an associated web site (the URL is provided in the book).

Taken as a whole, the book makes a series of good business cases for when opening the source code to software is appropriate and potentially profitable -- as well as maximally efficient. I was pleased that Raymond acknowledges that open source is _not_ always the best way to go, even while noting that it will probably be more prevalent over time.

Raymond's fervour about open source shows through, particularly late in the book, but it doesn't detract from the largely objective analyses he makes -- so his arguments carry force.

Worth reading for anyone who's a programmer, a hacker, or interested in the politics of the software business. Or anyone else, for that matter.

The book is divided into three major parts. Part I presents a foundation for the ideas in the rest of the book, exploring the philosophy behind XP, J2EE project development and deployment, and demonstrating the process with a simple Model 2 Web application. Part II spends its first three chapters (4-6) looking at ANT, first with a high-level look at continuous integration practices and then at more concrete examples. Chapters 7-11 look more closely at testing, with chapters on JUnit, Cactus, HttpUnit, JMeter, and JUnitPerf. Part III is a series of reference chapters for ANT, JUnit, Cactus, and HttpUnit. The coverage is exceptionally good and the material is comprehensive.

There's no question that a book like this is unlikely to stimulate readers to suddenly adopt these techniques. Instead, you should consider applying those things that make sense to you and focus on those chapters. The book is written well enough to make that possible, in part thanks to the flexibility, modularity, and effectiveness of the tools being discussed. Serious projects need to take testing seriously and few books approach the topics with this kind of practicality and experience.

If you're doing rapid development, and who isn't these days, this books is well worth a look. It goes beyond simple solutions and may be of interest to QA or testing groups. The philosophy behind this material is modern and forward thinking. It captures some of the best practices and clarifies the application of current tools in the Java community, and has the potential to make you a better programmer and better able to deliver higher-quality code on a shorter timeline. It's not a panacea, but it is a good investment, and inexpensive considering the book's content.

Regardless of whether you subscribe to the practice of Extreme Programming (XP) or not, you're likely to be interested in tools that can help you perform better unit tests and improve your build environment. Good unit tests can make the difference between discovering problems at an early stage (when debugging is least expensive) and less flexible, more expensive projects. If you make heavy use of Java, the ANT build tool is also important, enabling you to do much more than merely build classes. ANT has facilities that range from simple builds to sophisticated interactions with protocols, packaging, and much more.

At first glance at this book, I thought it was trying to be too many things to too many people. It seems to contain every buzzword: Opensource, Extreme Programming, Java, JSP, TagLibs, EJB, etc.

However the book focuses on applying Ant, JUnit and Cactus to J2EE development.

The book is very J2EE and web application centric. A small part of the book had very choppy flow--a few rough spots. Mostly (95%) the book is well written. Generally the book is easy to follow.
My favorite chapters are the ones on JUnitPerf and Cactus.

The case studies are a little long, but they can be skipped and returned to later.

The source code on the website is hidden in plain site. It took a while to find it.

The description above and title miss an important point. The book is J2EE/Jakarta centric. J2EE testing and continous integration can be very difficult without the use of Ant, JUnit, HttpUnit and Cactus.

The description of the book on the companion website clears up the missing points well. I found the description while searching for the source code.

From the companion website:

"Java Tools for eXtreme Programming describes techniques for implementing the Extreme Programming practices of Automated Testing and Continuous Integration using Open Source tools, e.g., Ant, JUnit, HttpUnit, JMeter, and much more."

"The book contains small examples and tutorials on each tool. The examples cover building, deploying, and testing Java and J2EE applications."

"In addition to small examples, there are larger case studies. The case studies are larger more realistic examples. We have case studies involving XSLT, EJB, Struts, JDBC, etc."

"Each case study is complete with an ant build script and several tests, written with JUnit, HttpUnit, Cactus, JUnitPerf and/or JMeter. The case studies focus on building, deploying and testing J2EE applications with Ant and JUnit."

"There is also a reference section for APIs. Instead of rehashing the API documentation, the reference section has example usage, i.e., code examples for the important classes and methods."

"Although this book speaks from an XP perspective, you need not practice XP to benefit from it. For example, you do not have to adopt the entire XP methodology to get value out of this book. Automated testing, for example, can help you refactor code regardless of whether you are doing pair programming or not. Continuous integration can help you detect and fix problems early in the lifecycle of the system regardless of whether your customer is on site or not."

John Feinstein seems to take the former "I write therefore it is" approach. As a result, I never quite got what "The Majors" was about. My fault? I don't think so. I not only "got" the point of Feinstein's previous golf book, "A Good Walk Spoiled," but enjoyed it. That book belongs on any sports lover's shelf, and is worth any novice's time as well.

"A Good Walk Spoiled" is about the lives and trials of the pro golfer. "The Majors," despite the title, is about much the same thing, not so much the four events that make up the biggest trophies in pro golf but the elite PGA Tour pros who compete for these titles.

Frankly, if you aren't hot for golf, you aren't going to relate to these millionaires and their quest to buck the dread acronym BPNTHWAM (best player never to have won a major) the way you will to the fringe folk and dewsweepers that made up the cast of "A Good Walk Spoiled," for whom making the cut was the difference between survival and doom.

There are some decent profiles here, like that of Mark O'Meara, who won two of the four majors in 1998, the year of Feinstein's narrative. O'Meara seems affable, but I got no sense of hunger from the guy. Brad Faxon offers some revealing insights, but since he didn't contend for any majors, he seemed a waste of time in the ultimate scheme of the book. A lot of golfers Feinstein profiles are like that. Meanwhile, players who did contend in 1998 majors are skimmed over, like PGA Championship winner Vijay Singh, British Open runner-up Brian Watts, and most crucially, Tiger Woods. Feinstein probably couldn't get the same level of access to these guys he could to those he dotes on, but that shouldn't be the reader's problem, should it?

Unlike "A Good Walk Spoiled," the writing feels tired. The humor is forced. He throws in some clunky metaphors. A caddy "studies the wind the way a political pollster studies trends." Tiger Woods' security entourage are "like the guys chasing Butch and Sundance: You could see them coming from miles away." This makes the rote approach to the subject all the more apparent, and enervating.

Feinstein seemed to be trading in on the good will he engendered on the pro circuit with "A Good Walk Spoiled." That's great, if he gives the reader something for his new access. But whereas "Good Walk" was a candid and often blunt description of what went on inside the ropes, "The Majors" seems more an exercise in puffery and back-patting, never more egregious than with Fred Couples, a decent golfer and a good guy who Feinstein blows totally out of proportion in his narrative. Couples doesn't contend except at the Masters, but Feinstein can't let go of him for more than a chapter at a time.

The biggest problem about this book is it isn't about the title subject. He doesn't give equal time to the four majors, doesn't really relate any of the day-to-day drama, and offers little insight as to the courses or the final-day fields. He reports the winners, and some key shots, but that's it. If you want majors excitement, read Herbert Warren Wind or "Massacre At Winged Foot."

"The Majors" won't interest people who don't care much about golf, and though it has some interesting insights that made it more than a one-star read for me, it's not something that knowledgeable golf readers are going to find that illuminating.

Some of the more interesting storylines are the close detail in which Fred Couples' season was followed, the improvement in Payne Stewart's attitude, the unbelievably rock-hard nerves of U.S. Open champion Lee Janzen, and the love the Brits showed Open qualifier Larry Mize. However, the most intriguing information comes from the in depth discussion of the career of David Duval. Before I read the book, I despised Duval and thought he was nothing but an arrogant jerk. However, after reading the book, I came to respect him for his no excuses attitude.

Overall, I obviously recommend that anyone who follows the PGA tour read this masterpiece.