honestpuck writes "As digital video cameras spawn in the hands of you, me, parents and tourists like cockroaches in my kitchen we find ourselves needing the kind of technical and aesthetic help not really seen since the advent of 'desktop publishing'. Once again a 'Missing Manual' has come to my help." Read on for honestpuck's review of David Pogue's iMovie 3 & iDVD: The Missing Manual.

nut writes "MIDP 2.0 is the latest version of the most common J2ME Profile. It comprises the Java Connected Limited Device Configuration (Usually referred to just as the CLDC) and a Java API for handheld wireless devices -- i.e. mobile phones, PDAs, etc. The MIDP 2.0 Style Guide for the Java 2 Platform, Micro Edition is one of a class of books that every application developer should read, and that not enough do, much like Nielsen's classic Designing Web Usability. It provides cheap access to knowledge that is expensive to obtain. The title is almost a misnomer; Call it a usability guide and give a better idea of its usefulness." Read on for the rest of nut's review.

SpookWarfare writes "To be completely honest I'm good friends with Tom Spurgeon and Jordan Raphael, the authors of Stan Lee: The Rise and Fall of the American Comic Book." So take your grain of salt, and read on below for "an unbiased review of a the most important book ever to be written about the subject of comic books, or any subject for that matter."

Gianluca Insolvibile writes "I plead guilty: I have always admired Microsoft's COM architecture and the relative simplicity that allows you to reuse already installed components to create even complex programs. And I have always been fascinated by the distributed nature of DCOM, which seemed to me much more graspable than complex monsters like CORBA and J2EE. While looking for equally expressive Open Source component technologies among GNOME and KDE, I was never able to find something fitting my needs (I never got into Bonobo deeply enough, though)." Read on to see how this led Gianluca to Juval Loewy's O'Reilly-published Programming .NET Components, and what he thinks of the book.

honestpuck contributes this review of Sams Publishing's Teach Yourself AppleScript in 24 Hours, writing "The market for books on AppleScript cannot be a large one, since there never seem to be many volumes in it; usually only one at a time is up to date and worth the money. Now that O'Reilly's AppleScript In A Nutshell is showing its age (and wasn't that great in the first place), and Danny Goodman's book is even older, I was pleased to hear that this volume had come along." Read on for honestpucks' mixed impressions of the book.

Charles McColm writes "At just under 1,000 pages the 3rd edition of Practical Unix & Internet Security might look intimidating on the shelf, but a quick glance through the pages reveals that it is both practical and entertaining. With Slammer and Blaster making their way into the news it seemed like a good time to brush up on security. Already considered a classic reference, the 3rd edition of the book provides extensive updated information about topics like PAM (Pluggable Authentication Modules), LDAP, forensics, intrusion detection, wireless devices, and cryptography." Read on for the rest of McColm's impressions of the book.

Adios077 (Ada Shimar) writes "Ok, so I was reluctant when I first picked up and started reading O'Reilly's JavaScript & DHTML Cookbook. After all, I'm fairly proficient in JavaScript already (yes, get in line to hire me!), and if I needed some cool DHTML scripts, I could just visit a good site like Dynamic Drive. However, the book managed to both surprise and impress me, a great combination to have in a book." Find out why by reading the rest of Shimar's review, below.

adrienlamothe writes "Practical C++ Programming is dedicated to teaching the reader how to program in the C++ programming language. The book actually has four goals: 1) Teach the reader C++. 2) Instill good programming style and practice (indeed, the book's subtitle is 'Programming Style Guidelines.') 3) Teach the programmer basic software development concepts. 4) Introduce the reader to debuggers and the make utility. 4) The author encourages the reader to use a computer to enter, run and debug the book's programming examples. I concur with this advice, though it isn't absolutely necessary." To see how well the book meets its own goals, read on for the rest of Lamothe's review.

Mahrin Skel (Dave Rickey) writes "When I wrote up my Engines of Creation column for August 12th with a focus on Dr. Richard Bartle's Designing Virtual Worlds , I had no idea it was the closest thing to an independent review the book had yet received. I hadn't intended my column as a review, but simply as nit-picking over an almost theological point of disagreement between my philosophy of game design and that of Dr. Bartle. My intended audience was the normal readers of my column, mostly other people already working in the Online Games industry." Rickey provides a review of Bartle's book for a more general audience below, and explains his reasoning for doing so.

kevin42 writes "Everyone who was into computers 10 years ago knows about Doom. Less people are familiar with Wolf3D, and even fewer people ever played any of the Commander Keen games. But those of us who played them when they were cutting edge games couldn't wait for what would come next. To hard-core gamers, these games were amazing, and important. The change came with DOOM; suddenly everyone was interested in this groundbreaking game." Kevin reviews below David Kushner's Masters of Doom.

honestpuck writes "Security has long been a concern for Unix administrators who find themselves connected to the sometimes dark and dirty world of the Internet. With the advent of personal operating systems with file sharing, remote login and built-in web servers, and the spread of broadband networks with their always-on connectivity, it should now be a concern for everyone." Specifically, honestpuck is talking here about Mac OS X; read on for his review of Sams Publishing's Mac OS X Maximum Security.

DrCarbonite (Jeff Martin) writes "I've used OpenBSD in the past, and benefitted from its extensive online documentation. Sometimes an off-line reference is useful (i.e. required), and Absolute OpenBSD fills this void." Read on for the rest of Martin's review, as well as a more critical one from Marius Aamodt Eriksen.

Eric Stats writes "Working as a Network Engineer for web-hosting company that prides itself on uptime and network availability, and moonlighting as a part-time Linux administrator, my managers and clients are starting to expect a level of information security knowledge from me. I decided that if I wanted to take my career to the next level, I needed to develop some security-specific skills. I heard a lot about the open source Intrusion Detection System (IDS), Snort from friends and co-workers (mostly that it was a pain to get running, and an even bigger pain to understand what it was doing)." To get past those frustrations, Eric looked at two more books on Snort (and compares them to the already-reviewed Intrusion Detection with Snort ); read on below for his take on what each offers.

limbo_14 writes "Mike Gancarz takes his oft'-quoted original book, The Unix Philosophy and spruces it up for the Brave New World of Linux with Linux and the Unix Philosophy. Since The Unix Philosophy was written, Unix has undergone many changes and evolutions. Now with Linux emerging as the new face of Unix, he has updated his book with the same philosophy and tenets that were in the first, but updated the book to include considerations for the Open Source community and the new world of Operating Systems in which we live." Even the old version of The Unix Philosophy is worth finding; it may remind you of Neil Stephenson's In the Beginning Was the Command Line. Read on for the rest of limbo_14's review.

emmastory writes "'Expert Dan Frakes toiled endlessly with OS X so you don't have to,' proclaims the back cover of Mac OS X Power Tools. Not to be confused with the O'Reilly power tool books, this is a recent Sybex title. Frakes assures the reader that anyone who's ever touched a computer before can make use of this book, and that even the most experienced user will find something new and exciting. Is he right? Maybe." Read on for the rest of emmastory's review.

fadden writes "When a friend of mine recommended this book, I wasn't quite sure what to make of it. I'm an introvert, but I didn't see what good reading about it was going to accomplish. I don't particularly need conversation starters or dating tips, so what's the point? The back cover claims, 'Filled with Aha! moments of recognition. Dr. Laney's book will help millions of introverts understand why they are misunderstood, learn to appreciate who they are, and develop a just-right life in a world where extroverts once ruled.' Sounds like hyperbole, but after reading the book I find myself in agreement." Fadden's complete review of The Introvert Advantage: How to Thrive in an Extrovert World follows; I wonder how true the claim is that introversion is truly hard-wired.

BanzaiBill writes with the review (below) of Christopher Duncan's The Career Programmer: Guerilla Tactics for an Imperfect World, writing "When this book came out a year ago, I bought it, but was in the middle of massive death march. Frankly, the first three chapters depressed me! It hit a little too close to home. Of course, I wasn't sleeping either, and that turned out to be more important than reading. After a few months of recuperation, I picked it up again. So many of the points this book makes were on the money that I felt I needed to spread the word." Read on for BanzaiBill's review of a book that addresses aspects of programming success not listed on job requirements.

A few weeks ago, reviewer honestpuck looked at Head First Java , comparing it to O'Reilly's Learning Java, 2nd Edition. Now wcbrown writes with a review that starts on the other foot; he reviews Beginning Java Objects: From Concepts to Code in comparison with Head First Java. Read on for his review.

honestpuck writes "In the world of Perl there was once only the 'camel book,' held in perhaps as much reverence as 'K & R' among C programmers. It certainly appealed to roughly the same audience, those who wanted a short, sharp introduction to a programming language. It was with a problem that needed solving and a copy of the camel book that I started as a Perl programmer." Read on for honestpuck's review of another book he regards at least as highly.

honestpuck writes "The Missing Manual series has been around for quite some time, but I have never felt the need to buy one until I started doing some serious work with iPhoto. iPhoto 2: The Missing Manual was a good volume to assist." Read on for the rest of honestpuck's review.