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Product: Book - Hardcover
Title: Independent Component Analysis Publisher: Wiley-Interscience Authors: Aapo Hyvärinen, Juha Karhunen, Erkki Oja Rating: 5/5  This is a nice and self-contained book on the subject of independent component analysis (ICA). The authors start with relevant mathematical and statistical background (in Part I) to prepare readers for the derivations of ICA (though seasoned researchers may want to skip the first part of this book). The authors discuss the motivation behind ICA and present several ways to derive ICA (since this subject has been approached by several communities). The authors also compare and discuss the pros and cons of these approaches. The authors discuss several applications using ICA in Part III. Compared with other ICA books, this manuscript has much depth and completeness. I highly recommend this book to any reader interested in this topic.
Product: Book - Paperback
Title: Sams Teach Yourself Java 2 in 21 Days (4th Edition) (Sams Teach Yourself) Publisher: Sams Authors: Rogers Cadenhead, Laura Lemay Rating: 4/5  I have a limited programming background, having completed a couple VB6 courses, and I have some background in C, HTML, and SQL. I'm just now starting my first C++ course. Having had VB prior really helped to prepare me with the object basics, methods, classes, components, and events. I was truly able to understand 99% of the book, including the code examples. Some of the syntax was not explained adequately, but if you do not let it bog you down, most of it you will understand by the time you finish the book. There were alot of calls made to Java methods which are not explained, but the J-Builder v2.01 software which came with my book has a very useful online reference section(go to Help-Java Reference). This reference has an index where you can look up the class heirarchies, descriptions, syntax and usage of all methods and constructors, and much more (Examples of each method and other simple code samples would be nice, though). Most of the book's code samples were challenging enough to be interesting and just long enough to illustrate the concept. There were a number of errors, many of which you can be forewarned about at the book's website. The author encourages personal email questions, but he sends back an automated message saying it will be a few weeks before he can get to your question. I liked that the code samples only had a very limited amount of comment statements, but the author goes over the new concepts in the code line-per-line in the text. For me, the first (7) chapters were the hardest and seemed to cover the essential code basics and object/class concepts, but after that I really felt the material got easier and had a nice flow to it.
Product: Book - Paperback
Title: The Wiki Way: Collaboration and Sharing on the Internet Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional Authors: Bo Leuf, Ward Cunningham Rating: 4/5 What creates the sense of community that you feel in certain newsgroups, mailing lists, or IRC's? What drives people to gather there? If you find this question interesting, then look at Wiki: it is an example of a strong community on the web. Wiki (the collaboration tool) can be thought of as a lightweight WebDAV (web Distributed Authoring and Versioning)without n levels of standards committees. In a Wiki site, every page can be edited by anybody, and new page links 'spring into existence' automatically just by RunningCapitalizedWordsTogether. This simple concept, created by Ward Cunningham, is surprisingly powerful. The technology behind it is also simple, and the wiki code that makes this work is written in perl, so if you want to add a feature or tweak it, then you can 'hack it'. A visit to the original Wiki web site can be very rewarding, at [1]. At this site, the community includes many experts in Design Patterns and Extreme Programming (XP). You will find literate discussions on software and life in general. Laird Cameron describes Wiki well in his Open Sources column [2]. This book is an overview of Wiki, and a detailed how-to look at the code. The book is casual and informal, well suited to the wiki culture. It explains the thought processes which went into the design of wiki planning, deployment, and basic administration. The book contains case studies from academia and the corporate world. The accompanying CD will get you going quickly. You will want to read this book, if:- In the corporate world, you want your group to pull together and create a knowledge base.- For the design of your software product, you want to understand group dynamics.- In the academic world, you want an online meeting place for course work or peer review. - You are studying the design and implementation of collaborative tools.- For your personal use, you need a notebook that goes with you wherever there is a web browser. Wiki's perl source can be hard to read, and you will be wanting to change it.Maybe Wiki is an entertainment for your spare time,and then you can just play around with it.However, you probably need this book if you aredeploying a wiki at work. This book presents a relaxed, 'democratic' approach to Information Architecture. It encourages you to provide minimal structure: the inclusion of a search function, a recent changes page, users' mini-bios, and links to return to the top. The wiki users are encouraged to structure the content, and this book suggests how they might be encouraged to do so. For counterpoint see Rosenfeld [3] who describes how to structure a conventional web site: organize information, help navigation, label the content, configure the search system, and manage the process. I was interested by the discussion of the many Wiki clones, in Perl, SmallTalk, Java, and others. Everyone has different preferences for UI features and implementation. Also interesting was part 3, which discusses the Wiki culture.Wiki has fostered strong community spirit among those who have contributed to its design and implementation.People express diverse opinions yet work together well.Compare this 'atmosphere' with that of of some news groups whereflames are common. When you set up a Wiki for use by your colleagues or students, you need to understand the group dynamics of a successful collaboration site, and this part of the book will help you to encourage people to take roles and get involved, thereby extending the community. I have a few quibbles about the book and CD.- Readers will want to visit the book's errata page [4] before using the CD.- There is a 64 page subsection, with one contents entry, which is hard to navigate other than to read it sequentially (it spans pages 143 to 207).- The source code examples in the book have an indentation width of one space (though the source on CD is formatted correctly).- The book and CD are intended for users of MS Windows, which is unusual when discussing open source. This quibble is very minor, as the book and CD are platform neutral in most ways. The book gets five stars at Amazon and a good review at Fatbrain. Recommended! At your bookstore, look for the cover drawing by M.C. Escher of two drawing hands, with nifty reflection effects. By the way, you will have already heard of the untimely demise of Douglas Adams. His Guide to the Galaxy, similar to a Wiki, lives on at www.h2g2.com. [1] www.c2.com/cgi/wiki [2] Server/Workstation Expert Magazine, March 2001: swexpert.com/CC/SE.C12.MAR.01.pdf [3] Rosenfeld and Morville _Information Architecture_, O'Reilly [4] the errata page: wiki.org/wiki.cgi?WikiWayErrata
Product: Book - Hardcover
Title: Cisco Wireless LAN Security Publisher: Cisco Press Authors: Krishna Sankar, Sri Sundaralingam, Darrin Miller, Andrew Balinsky Rating: 5/5 Wireless and security go hand-in-hand. Enabling wireless without implementing security is a disservice to your client; it makes them totally vulnerable to intrusion. This book gives you the technical capabilities and knowledge to understand what it takes to implement current (2004-2005) security techniques in your Cisco Aironet wireless environment. It includes detailed information, including sample IOS configurations, about Cisco wireless security and intrusion prevention. The book flows well from chapter to chapter and builds upon previous topics. The authors discuss Cisco SWAN (Structured Wireless Aware Networks) in depth and then offer several enterprise wireless deployment scenarios. All-in-all, a very well-written technical manual that I highly recommend for WLAN engineers implementing Cisco Aironet solutions. This book was written before the Airespace acquisition and does not cover that architecture.
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