example-of

This book is an AOL marketing ploy to enocurage how spectacular AOL is and really lacks any useful substance. The must-know tips and such are easily found elsewhere and there is no need to read the book.

This book is great to have whether you are interested in learning about AOL or the web in general. This was the best gift I've gotten. I definitely recommend it.

Wired in a week is a terrific book! You can run through this book and grasp the outlines quickly - There's some great material in there. What a great book to keep by your computer for quick reference. This book aided in my internet experience, helped me locate information quickly, get rid of unwanted mail, and really taught me that there is more out there than email. I would definitely recommend this book to every internet user!

The code examples and editing mistakes almost force you to have a secondary book just to validate what the author is doing. 3 stars were given for the completenes and solid explanation of concepts. I should've just picked up the out of print version of Richard Stevens "UNIX Network Programming", classic.

This book delivers on its title. I found some of the code useful immediately straight out of the book. I also have his Linux Programming book. It too is very good. I would have given it five stars; but for lack in two areas: firstly, I would have liked coverage of dynamic restart of client / server apps and logging; secondly, as there isn't a CD provided, a download site is given which reroutes you somewhere else and I couldn't find any code to download. This also occured for my other SAMS book by the same author.

This is very readable and usable as a beginner's guide to socket programming. One particular aspect I liked is that the author took the pain to illustrate the socket structure well which many book glossed over. Also, the sample codes are short and illustrate the use of the socket calls well. The book could have been expanded to cover HTTP,SOAP,XML, etc to give it a 5 star. Also think that the publisher could have used better quality print material.

I was disappointed. I chose the book hoping to learn how to deal with some of the basic issues in the programming of video.
It would have been nice to get a subpixel motion example as well as how to deal with fields when you are scaling an image
instead I get overviews on compression, VFW and colorspace.
What I am trying to say is that there wasnt much in the way of practical video programming. The other iratation was there was no CD included. So you have transfer every example by hand.

The question that needs to be answered about this book is, why would anyone still buy and use a book on computer video that is this old? The answer is that it does a few things better than any other book I know of, and a number of other things well enough that you don't need to look elsewhere.

What are those things? First, its brief coverage of JPEG and MPEG-1 are the best single-chapter coverages from a programming point of view ("where are the bits?"-type stuff) of anything I have ever seen. It isn't enough to create a working JPEG or MPEG codec by itself, but this is the place to start if you need to get the idea. You will then need to turn to much more elaborate coverage [I use _JPEG: Still Image Data Compression Standard_ by William Pennebaker and Joan Mitchell (Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1993) for JPEG and _MPEG Video Compression Standard_ by Joan Mitchell, William Pennebaker, Chad Fogg, and Didier LeGall (Chapman & Hall, 1996) for MPEG]. However, this book is a great place to get the big picture from a programming point of view before slogging through the mountain of necessary gritty detail.

Second, this book is the last thing I know of that is in print and addresses the Video for Windows API. This API continues to be the most widely supported API for computer video under Windows, but Microsoft expunged all documentation of it a few years ago -- long before Active Movie was ready to roll. And the current generation of Direct-X based video under Windows is still heavily based on Video for Windows -- it is very helpful to understand that API. The book only has a couple dozen pages on the topic, but it's the only game in town on VfW.

Third, its coverage of color space conversions between RGB and CCIR 601, NTSC, SECAM, and PAL is clear and correct.

Finally, its "your friend the video signal" chapters are as much as a programmer needs to know about such things, and geared to those of us who aren't gearheads.

I have never found Mr. Mattison's code particularly useful. I find his quick discussion of image processing of no value. I have never encountered anyone who needed to know anything about the H.261 video compression standard. And I would not bother to read what he had to say about storage media back in 1994. But there is still enough meat on these bones to make this book one that I turn to with enough regularity that I would buy a replacement copy even now if I ever lost mine.

The text is a must for all needing fundamental concepts in video hardware and software. The electronics, the color systems, the signal processing algorithms, and the data structures for programming are very well laid in logical order. In addition the diskettes included in the kit contain valuable practical examples in C.

This book have a lot of examples with sas codes, outputs, and explanations of outputs, which is useful for practitioners. Recommended for practitioners, but not for serious statisticians who seek in-depth and accurate, a little more mathematical treatment of the topics instead of just explanations of sas codes/outputs.

This book is very instructive for those interested in the pharmaceutical field or might already be in, especially for those not having a statistics degree. The different tests are explained and tell you for what situations they can be applied to. Good examples with SAS code and sample data are provided. For most problems, manual calculations are shown before doing them in SAS. This book was not that easy to digest though. Multiple reading will make the material more clear.

THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF ROSES is probably one of the best survey book about roses available. I'd give it 5-stars but it was written by a German for a German market and has been translated for American gardeners. Most of the factoids translate well, but I can help looking at the photos of Schneewittchen and remembering a tale I heard at a garden lecture about how this rose was named "Snow White" in Germany, and became "Iceberg" when it crossed the Atlantic. I don't know if the story is true, but my husband speaks German and when the white fluffy stuff falls he calls it "schnee."

ROSES contains a 20-page introduction on the history of the rose--a long history that could probably not be covered adequately in 500 pages. Markley provides a good synopsis with the ususal mention of the Apothecary Rose, the Wars of the Roses--with quotes from some of Shakespeare's plays, and a box insert on Malmaison and Josephine's love of roses. I knew the rose was symbolic of Mary, and that rosery beads where first made of rolled rose petals, but it's nice to be reminded.

The remaining 200 or so pages are devoted to the botony, horticulture, and growing needs of roses as well as a nice index filled with an annotated rose list consisting of those specimins Markley prefers. The information Markely provides about container growing, winter protection, planting and maintenance is extremely useful and detailed.

The photographs are pretty, but they have been doctored--the color intensified via a wash which makes the flowers appear out-of-focus. This is an unnecessary ammendment given the beauty of the roses--it appears the photos were in color to begin with. I don't know whether this is the result of inferior photography (in Germany??) or German pandering to stupid Americans who can't tell the difference, but it reminds me of the unscrupulous garden catalogs Allen Lacy complains about that alter the photographs of their stock to fool the consumer. Experienced gardeners know when they are looking at the real thing.

The book contains a listing of gardens in Germany where roses are grown, either as a featured plant or the main event. Not surprisingly, the author recommends you tour these gardens in summer. If you collect good garden books this is a useful addition for your collection. If you're an American gardener and can afford only one book, better stick to Taylor's Rose Book which contains useful information without obviously altered photos.

Beautiful pictures! A lot of information which was very well organized. I can't wait to put all this info to use in my garden!

I agree with the previous reviewer. This book is one of the more reasonable of those arguing for pardons. It is certainly superior to "Shot at Dawn" which is a polemic that has unfortunately become the bible for the pardons movement in spite of numerous factual erros.

Regarding the previous reviewers comments regarding other armies and the death penalty.

NUMBER OF SOLDIERS EXECUTED BY OTHER EUROPEAN ARMIES:

ITALY: 750
FRANCE: 133
GERMANY: 48

The French and German statistics are not considered reliable, they merely represent the number of people we KNOW were shot. French and German records are not so complete as those available for the British and summary execution in the field was not so heavily frowned on. It should also be noted that French and German discipline and morale collapsed far more significantly that British.

In WW2 the Germans executed around 15,000 of their own men for desertion. The british did not maintain the death penalty for desertion and over 100,000 men deserted and by 1942 officers at all levels were calling for the death penalty's reinstatement. In addition, the Australian force in WW1 was not covered under the Army Act and so no Australians were executed. The desertion and indiscipline rates in the Australian Corps were well above those of British and Canadian formations. Almost 6 million men passed through the british Army in the course of WW1. Of these, 346 were executed, 37 of whom were executed for murder and 18 for cowardice. Of those shot for desertion, 40% had serious previous charges on a variety of offences and many had deserted either in 1914, before the war stagnated into trench battle or before the even got to the front for the first time. The image of a brave young conscript (the average age of those executed was 26 and the overwhelming majority were over 21) finally cracking psychologically after weeks spent under constant bombardment may be accurate in a tiny minority of cases but it is certainly not the general picture. There are cases where a pardon is definitely arguable but there simply is no case whatsoever for a blanket pardon. The idea that in shooting deserters (the vast majority of whom were not shot) the British Army was operating a policy of "legalised murder" is ludicrous.

In this book Babington tells the story of the many young soldiers executed by the British army during the First World War. The facts and stories behind each case are provided, as well as background information about the war. Many of the cases are chilling and tragic, and leave the reader wondering how he would have behaved in the circumstances. Overall, I feel this book has only two significant drawbacks. While interesting and informative, this book fails to put the debate about military capital punishment into a proper philosophical or intellectual framework. The author seems to assume that his readers will all share his disgust with the executions. But isn't there a place for such punishments during wartime? Are not disobedience, cowardice and desertion serious offenses? The system was certainly out of hand in the WWI army, but that does not mean that capital punishment must be done away with entirely. Of course, a society that finds it innapropriate to exclude gays from the military can hardly be expected to favor executions. I was also troubled by Babington's failure to tell us more about the punishments served out in other armies. As it is, he leaves this to a paragraph or two at the end of the book. Understandably he could not have covered this mater in too much detail, but greater effort could have been made to compare and contrast the situation in France and Germany with that of Great Britain. But these are fairly minor flaws. This is a good book about those unfortunate souls who lost their lives mostly for the sake of example.

A few discrepancies between the examples, explanations, and especially the CD, eg: where I think she changed a file or variable name in one place and forgot to change it in the other, so you spend some time trying to reconstruct what she meant to say.
Otherwise well paced, good for learning.

I think chapter 8 misuses the term "inheritance", which will muddy the waters for someone trying to understand inheritance. It says "Each object has a prototype whose properties it inherits". Would it be better to say "You can tack new methods or properties on to an existing class (eg: String) using the prototype property"?

Please Rate the overall value of the book from 1-5:
5=Well done! This book will be a valuable teaching and reference tool.

Please rate the instructional value of the book from 1-5:
4=I would recommend this book to someone interested in its topic.

Please rate the reference value of this book from 1-5 where:
5=A complete reference. I would not need any additional reference on this topic.

This is an excellent book for beginners of Javascript. it takes simplest of the cases without boggling the minds of the readers. when I learnt javacript more than 4 years back, Ihad a hard time reading through 'verbose' books. I wish I had this book at that time.

This author has taken the time to explain the concepts in the simplests of the ways. there are adequate screen prints to highlight the results of the executed javascript code. the author explains the document object model clearly for the benefit of the beginners and also explains different ways of identifying the items in the page.

This is an excellent reference book for intermediate javascript programmers adn this book has found a place in my reference shelf and I will be glad to recommend this book to anybody interested in learning Javascript.

The book is well researched and the writing for once isn't tedious, (good job Dr. Quinn). However, Quinn really strains it at times to prove his ideas. This is Quinn's hidden agenda: The Mormon church during the 19th century was not as homophopic as it is now, therefore the Mormon church should not be so severe in its attacks and excommunications of Gay members of the church like myself. Quinn's whole purpose in writing this book is to try to say that the current LDS leaders are hypocrites because earlier leaders had more lenient attidutes towards homosexuality. The book is a good history of same-sex relations but the reader needs to be aware of the hidden agenda and the bias in Quinn's historical research and writing.

Excellent read, and hits the history of Mormon attitudes regarding same-sex dynamics right on the nail's head. As one who has had first hand experience with both Mormonism and same-sex dynamics, I can assure you this book covers the these topics with astounding factual evidence and is devoid of any biasing, or personal agendas. As you can see from earlier reviews by folks from the Mormon hub of the U.S., this book strikes a raw nerve with their own personal and religious agendas. As Quinn so often and eloquently states: "Physical orientation and sexual orientation are not moral issues, and majority/minority phenomena in nature do not involve natural versus unnatural categories. The exceptional in nature is still natural, whether the exception is left-handedness or the homosexual orientation of erotic desire." And, I also agree with him when he states "that every human being, even those whose values or behavior I reject, is of value to God and to me."

Oh, what a kind and non-judgemental world it would be if people would love each other unconditionally, and actually put into practice, not just in word but in deed, their religious beliefs concerning tolerance, love and understanding of each other. Until that time, we all need to accept each other for who we are and bridge the gulf of misunderstanding that often leads to intolerance and hate.

Very good book. A must read for anyone who is interested in the history of same sex dynamics in American or Mormon history. Everything in the book is well documented. Its amazing to see how the church and its members attitudes towards homosexuality has changed over the years.

This is a disk with programs from the book Numerical Recipes. There are no comments in the code, help file is just an index of routines without any explanations. Routines are translations of Fortran code into C but authors did not make any effort to conform to standard C conventions. All the arrays start at 1 instead of 0 which makes the code useless the way it is written - user must modify it. No const attribute is ever used. And this is plain C so if you write a C++ code and hope for seeing exceptions or references, forget it. You are better off buying a book and writing routines you need based on the published code. It is really a shame that such a thing is sold (and tremendously overpriced). jstrompf@soil.nl in his review obviously meant the book and not the CD-ROM, his positive review is misplaced.

This book was written in 1985 when Pascal was still taught in most colleges. This is part of series called "Numerical Recipes: The Art of Scientific Computing" which provide explanation and examples of how you can use the computer to help your work. This particular book does not go into detail about the math, but it gives you examples of routines used to solve your particular problem.

Some of the examples listed cover linear algebraic equations, Fourier methods, and partial differential equations. As mentioned, these are written in Pascal, so if you are not familiar with that programming language, these routines will not help you understand the math. If you need to write such routines, and you understand Pascal, this book will help you get ideas for your programming needs.

Get the book w/disk. If you're programming numerical routines in C, there's no better place to go. I've used the first edition of the book w/software for more than 10 years and I'll keep using this stuff till the end. Translating from C to C++ has been a very easy task these 10 years. The important thing is that these recipes are fast, intelligently done, and the book (which you should get) explains everything, including the appropriate choice of recipe for your problem. I've used at least 30 of the routines from these guys and they have all been rock solid. If I had a problem with any of them, it was because I messed with the routine, not because there was a problem with the supplied software. I have yet to run into a numerical issue that these guys do not have a great solution for.

Anyone familiar with the book knows that using the book's dynamic memory allocation routines (provided in Appendix D in my edition of the book and included in the software) allows you to start arrays anywhere you like, 0,1, or 1001, it doesn't matter. These dynamic memory allocation routines also have other major advantages such as minimizing the needed memory for a large simulation by allowing you to easily create new arrays as you need them, discard others immediately when you are done with them, adjust the size of an array according to the need at a specific point in your program, etc. Their way of handling this is so convenient that I never have had a memory allocation need that it does not meet. But this is just one detail; the main thing is that their attention to detail is at this level throughout. I cannot imagining going to another reference.

Get the book, read it as needed (you don't need to read a lot to solve a specific programming problem), and do numerical analysis with as much ease as there is to be had in C or C++ programming.

The title of this book is promising. However, the promise does not hold. The author clearly does not understand patterns or a pattern language. The so-called patterns given here are not patterns in any way. Instead, they are an attempt at a roadmap for the design of a website. I would refer to the design methodology here as a flowchart, not as a pattern language. (And how can a computer scientist mistake a flowchart for a pattern language?)

If you ignore the dreadful attempt at creating a pattern language and simply focus on the usability, the book is marginally better. However, there is almost no focus on the user. There are merely a few rules to follow that may or may not result in a usable website.

If you are conversant with patterns from the seminal "Design Patterns" by the Gang of Four (Gamma, Helm, Johnson, Vlissides), do not purchase this book. I have not yet found a reasonable book that discusses patterns as applied specifically to web usability. Most of the books in this field either miss the point of patterns or are not conversant with usability.

If you are new to usability in general, I would recommend Barnum's "Usability Testing and Research". It gives you the necessary background, plus can be used as a handbook to design your own usability test. It is an excellent introduction to the subject.

If you are a bit more experienced with usability, but not necessarily with the special considerations for websites, I would recommend Nielsen's "Designing Web Usability". It is a much better-written book and describes the necessary concepts much better than this one.

If you are simply looking for a book because you've heard that 'patterns' and 'usability' will help your career, read through the books that I've listed above, in the order that I've listed them.

While the book does keep it's focus on "usability" it really is about the best workflow and not about "patterns". Software patterns refer to meta-systems (such as say an eCommerce or Portal system) and how they are consctructed.

I did find the workflow techniques quite helpful though. I give him credit for putting them in print.

Wu is an acronym for web usability, a group of dialects spoken in Eastern China and a common Chinese family name. Despite millions of hours spent in development and millions of words written about how to do it right, many web pages still are poorly constructed. In this book, Ian Graham sets down a set of 79 patterns that are used to describe the principles of web usability. These patterns together form a set of best practices, therefore the pattern language is called Wu.
Like most patterns, this group is a set undergoing constant improvement and refinement. Nevertheless, they are mature enough to provide a solid basis for making web sites work correctly. In general, each pattern is introduced by giving the name and a figure illustrating the pattern. Most of the figures are screenshots of web sites and others are pictures of related topics such as a still life or a cartoon. The next step is to describe the problem that is to be solved, followed by a more thorough description of the problem and a sketch of the solution. This is followed by a therefore section, which is a one paragraph summary of the solution. If applicable, the pattern is closed by a list of the sources for the pattern.
These patterns are a valuable contribution to the literature describing how to do web page development right. Succinct and yet with sufficient detail, studying them will give you perspectives on web design that you most likely have not yet considered. Reading this book is well worth the effort, and you will be rewarded by having a web site that may take less time to construct, maintain and will be easier to use. Consider it spending a little to save a lot.