Home Buying and Selling for the Clueless: Everything a Beginner Needs to Know

Book Description

Since its doomed maiden voyage in April 1912, the Titanic has become a monumental icon of the twentieth century and has inspired a wealth of interpretations across literature, art and media. This book is the first to present a fully comprehensive discussion of the diverse representations of the Titanic disaster in cinema, history, literature and art. The distinguished contributors draw out the connections as well as the differences in the way generations of artists and audiences have approached and used the tragedy and present an in-depth examination of its most recent interpretation, James Cameron's blockbuster film Titanic. The book is both a valuable comparative text for media studies courses and a good read for the broad Titanic market.

Book Description

An examination of Internet culture and consumption. The Internet is increasingly shaping, and being shaped by, users' lives. From cybercafes to businesses, from middle class houses to squatters settlements, the authors have gathered material on subjects as varied as personal relations, commerce, sex and religion. Websites are also analyzed as new cultural formations acting as aesthetic traps. At every point, email chat and surfing are found to be exploited in ways that bring out both unforeseen attributes of the Internet and the contradictions of modern life. The material, taken from ethnographic work in Trinidad, adds depth to earlier discussions about the Internet as an expansion of space, the changes it effects to time and personhood, and the new political economy of the information age. A tie-in with the book's own website provides further illustrations.

Customer Reviews:

The best of academic thinking.......2000-07-13

"The Internet: an Ethnographic Approach" represents the very best of academic thinking and theorizing on the subject of the 'internet'. Miller and Slater provide us with a remarkable perspective on the ways in which real people, in this case Trinidadians (at home and across all the far flung points of the globe), use the internet. I was lucky enough to read this book in draft and have been eagerly waiting for its release so that I can share it around.

Here the internet is not just about the dot.com economy and the rush to get rich, rather it is an amazing constellation of technologies that help strengthen and reinvent families, that create new idioms and icons of identity, that allow new places and spaces to be Trinidadian. The book is rich with stories of mothers who can now keep in daily touch with their daughters in the UK and the US; of messages that pass from pieces of paper to email and back to paper again as they are transmitted between households without internet access; of websites all over the world that employ the same set of coherent Trinidadian symbols to project a nation's identity onto the world screen.

This collaboration is the first, hopefully of many, between Daniel Miller - a British anthropologist whose previous work theorizing consumption is just starting to be read in the US - and Don Slater - a British sociologist who most recently conducted fieldwork in online communities in the UK. It represents the emergence and convergence of several important trends: (1) the serious study of `the internet' as a set of social practices (not just a piece or pieces of technology) that map onto real, rather than virtual geographies; (2) the possibility for new kinds of field methods that map onto these new technologies and new social practices - perhaps `fieldwork' isn't 2 years in one place anymore; and (3) the potential for collaborative research and writing across between disciplines and between diverse practitioners with a range of experiences and expertise.

As an anthropologist working in the technology industry in the US, the ways in which this book also challenges the centrality of the US as a consumer of technology is particularly helpful. As it turns out, Trinidad is a big site for the consumption of the `internet' - while everyone may not own their own computers, people are finding a variety of ways of accessing technology and their demands and desires for this new medium are instructive.

In this analysis of the internet, Miller and Slater provide not only a rich and nuanced ethnographic account of the internet in Trinidad (and beyond), but also important models for doing collaborative work, studying 'up' and across, and for using ethnography to understand technology.

Anyone working at the intersections of new technologies and social practice should own this book, and probably will. However, anyone working in the technology industry (from the dot.coms to the more traditional manufacturers) and around its extensive peripheries (from researchers to policy makers and funding bodies) should also buy this book and read it!

Book Description

Maintain your herbal medicine chest with instructions on harvesting and storing herbs, what to buy at the grocery or health food store, and techniques for preparing herbal healing formulas. Rely upon the helpful treatment list that includes 30+ herbal remedies categorized by symptom and disease. A quick reference table of commonly used healing herbs, plus sidebars on "Safety First" and "When to Call a Doctor" enhance this must-have manual for proponents of alternative medicine or anyone who wants to give natural healing a try.

Customer Reviews:

Herbal Remedies.......2000-04-03

Herbal Remedies covers a great deal of information. It not only provides information about internal and external remedies but also how to grow, make, and take them. It gives advice on garden designs and caring for your herbs. You can search not only to the herb but also to your symptoms. It is a great starter book for someone wishing to learn more about herbs and start an herb garden.

Herbal Remedies: Dozens of safe, effective treatments to grow and make

Average customer rating:

Herbal Remedies: Dozens of safe, effective treatments to grow and make

Manufacturer: Rodale
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000GFUZOU

Book Description

The rapid maturation of PHP has created a skeptical population of users from more traditional "enterprise" languages who question the readiness and ability of PHP to scale, as well as a large population of PHP developers without formal computer science backgrounds who have learned through the hands-on experimentation while developing small and midsize applications in PHP.

While there are many books on learning PHP and developing small applications with it, there is a serious lack of information on "scaling" PHP for large-scale, business-critical systems. Schlossnagle's Advanced PHP Programming fills that void, demonstrating that PHP is ready for enterprise Web applications by showing the reader how to develop PHP-based applications for maximum performance, stability, and extensibility.

Download Description

Over the past three years PHP has evolved from being a niche language used to add dynamic functionality to small sites to a powerful tool making strong inroads into large-scale, business-critical Web systems. The rapid maturation of PHP has created a skeptical population of users from more traditional ""enterprise"" languages who question the readiness and ability of PHP to scale, as well as a large population of PHP developers without formal computer science backgrounds who have learned through the hands-on experimentation while developing small and midsize applications in PHP. While there are many books on learning PHP and developing small applications with it, there is a serious lack of information on ""scaling"" PHP for large-scale, business-critical systems. Schlossnagle's Advanced PHP Programming fills that void, demonstrating that PHP is ready for enterprise Web applications by showing the reader how to develop PHP-based applications for maximum performance, stability, and extensibility.

Customer Reviews:

Good INTERMEDIATE Book.......2007-07-15

Note:
Beginning PHP programmers will be lost. Start elsewhere.
Intermediate PHP programmers will learn a lot regarding technical details and good coding and design practices, but not enough to advance them to the level of 'Expert PHP Programmer'.
Expert PHP programmers should know most of the technical details found here, but they will likely learn a bit about good coding and design practices.

For beginners: *
For intermediates: ****
For experts: **1/2

I am an intermediate PHP programmer, so this book was perfect and extremely helpful for me. I can say that I was very impressed by this book for a few reasons. For one, it provides a nice overview of many useful topics (many of which are not exactly "advanced") such as object-oriented programming, error handling, templates, unit testing, caching, authentication/security, session-handling, remote procedure calls, performance analysis, and writing extensions. However, they are mostly just overviews. It gives the reader a good starting point regarding the various topics and introduces less experienced PHP programmers to the various topics which they may not have been concerned with formally. Unfortunately, even for an overview, a few of the sections were a bit too slim. Object-oriented programming was only touched on and some important topics related to object-oriented PHP were omitted. Also, remote procedure calls received so little attention that they might as well have been omitted. Other sections do a better job. The benchmarking and profiling sections were quite informative as were the sections on error handling (sort of) and unit testing. They aren't comprehensive, but I know that I personally learned quite a bit even though I eventually had to seek out additional references. Regarding the various "advanced" PHP topics, the book is basically a jack of all trades, master of none. The book deserved to either be longer, split up into more than one volume, or it should have had a smaller scope. Still, it does a good job at providing an intermediate PHP programmer with plenty of introductory information on these "advanced" topics. It won't make you an expert PHP programmer, but it will set you on the right path.

There are two main reasons that I liked this book: the clarity of explanations and examples and the strong emphasis on good programming and design practice. Nowhere in this book did I ever feel close to being lost and I can say that the author does an outstanding job at describing the concepts and he chooses good, fairly simple examples. Also, good practices are strongly emphasised through this book. Unfortunately, good practices and technical details are often treated separately in many books if good practices are covered at all. Here, the author never loses sight of this. Even when he gets into the dirty details, he constantly reminds the reader that some paths to the same goal are better than others and he clearly explains why. For this reason, I would even recommend this book to expert PHP programmers who probably already know most of the technical details, although the book is most useful for intermediate PHP programmers like myself.

In summary, this book is best for those who know the basics of PHP but are not yet experts. You will learn just enough technical details to prepare you for the next level even if this book won't take you to that level. Also, this book will help almost anyone write cleaner, safer, better-designed programs, expect for beginners who would not be able to follow the examples and topics.

Final note: GREAT value.

A must read for intermediate level PHP Programmers or above.......2006-05-30

This is a hefty tome, weighing in at 650 pages chocked full of great information about advanced PHP programming. The book is divided into five sections each with several to many chapters. The sections are Implementation and Development Methodologies, Caching, Distributed Applications, Performance, and Extensibility. Where appropriate sample applications are developed to present a point, in other situations a higher level approach is taken.

Covered within various chapters are topics like Error Handling, Unit Testing, Computational Reuse, Session Handling, Benchmarks, Profiling, and detailed information on how the Zend Engine works. While I've used or learned about several of the topics covered within, I think I learned something (whether it was a new approach, completely new information, or a refinement to what I already believed) in every single section.

Ultimately, I think I will become a better PHP programmer for having read this book.

I will be recommending this book to all my friends, and basically to everyone of an intermediate skill level with PHP or above. My friends are going to need to buy their own copy though, as I will not let this one out of my sight.

Nice Survey Book / Not Great.......2006-01-09

I agree with other reviewers that this is a survey or concept book. Schlossnagle is a bright php programmer but a lousy teacher. Do not buy this book if you are hoping to learn 'Advanced PHP Programming' from it. This book is too superficial in it's coverage of the many subjects. Ie: Schlossnagle's coverage of Object Oriented Programming is less than six pages (why bother?), and does not adequately cover the basics.

This book is good for introducing you to things you may not have thought of before. Ie: I liked the section on exceptions but found it too brief and assumed too much. I was therefore forced to read other materials, including the official php manual, before I had a real grasp of exceptions.

Larry Ullman does a much better job of explaining subjects. His PHP Advanced for the www (first edition) is an excellent book to actually learn from. Unfortunately it is a little dated and the second edition is still a couple months away.

Do yourself a favor, spend your money on another book if you are intending to actually learn 'Advanced PHP Programming' from a book.

The Elevator from the Intermediate Level to the Professional Level.......2005-10-05

Read on if you are:

- Used to PHP programming, but not a very sophisticated programmer.
- Looking out to do more programming on a higher level.
- Ready to read through book texts three times and to read further material that is not included in the book you buy.

Schlossnagle's book is not written along one red line, it covers various topics and allows jumping around quite freely. However, the topics that it covers are highly efficient in helping you advance with your programming skills. They might not quite be what you'd expect from a PHP book, because actually Schlossnagle covers anything that is needed to work with PHP on a professional level.
Consider this list of topics:

- Write clean code
- OO-Design Patterns
- Project documentation
- Performance tunings

This is all not really PHP-only stuff, but it is a great source of inspiration and furthers the understanding of programming in general very much. The latter I find is necessary for everybody who's up to something bigger in PHP.

The PHP examples in the book are - I have to admit - maybe sometimes rather scarce. One would like to see more applications of abstract problems, more examples. But is that what a book is for, to give examples?
I don't think so. For me a book is mainly a source of great ideas from great programmers, anything else is available on the web.

After having bought "Advanced PHP Programming" I purchased other books, the topics of which I would not have considered without reading Schlossnagle's work. I'm just about to write a diploma work and the book is a great reference for anything concerning PHP and development projects.

If you want to make better code this is your book.......2005-08-24

This book is more than your trivial "PHP for Dummies". This book can help you become not only a better programmer; it can help make you a professional programmer. So far, I haven't found any other book that was any help for me.

Yes, some of the samples have errors and some of the topics you might have wanted a little more elaborate. But if you consider yourself professional or even aspire to it: Get over it. Fix the bugs and study up on the subjects.

I successfully moved our PHP development from design anarchy to a fully version controlled, MVC-pattern guided and template based PHP development. I appreciate all the help I got from Schlossnagle. Would someone please cut through all the ".NET for dummies" books out there and give me some of this?

Average customer rating:

Another excellent book by Larry Ullman

PHP 5 Advanced: Visual QuickPro Guide
Larry Ullman
Manufacturer: Peachpit Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Programming | Computers & Internet | Subjects | Books

General | Computers & Internet | Subjects | Books

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ASIN: 0321376013

Book Description

PHP is currently one of the most popular server-side, HTML-embedded scripting language on the Web. It's specifically designed for Web site creation and is frequently being used to replace the functionality created by Perl to write CGI scripts. PHP's popularity and easier-to-learn appeal has spawned a new breed of programmer, those who are only familiar with and only use PHP.

Sharpen your PHP skills with the fully revised and updated, PHP 5 Advanced for the World Wide Web: Visual QuickPro Guide! Filled with fifteen chapters of step-by-step content and written by best-selling author and PHP programmer, Larry Ullman, this guide teaches specific topics in direct, focused segments, shows how PHP is used in real-world applications, features popular and most-asked-about scripts, and details those technologies that will be more important in the future. You'll learn about object-oriented programming, PHP interactions with a server, XML, RSS, Networking with PHP, image and PDF generation, and more.

Customer Reviews:

Another excellent book by Larry Ullman.......2007-07-16

I've been reading Larry's books since back in the early days when php/mysql books were barely found. I have to credit Larry's books with helping me just get started learning about php & mysql, and even helping me with most of what I learn today. I've purchased every new version of his books and pick up new things every time. It's so easy to step along with the examples, to help provide a solid understanding, and to give a fresh reassurance of what I may have already known... plus I always learn new tricks and techniques. I guess that's why I keep getting his books. This book especially helped me with a few tricks just at the right time, right when I needed help with them. I have over twenty-five php books and his are all in the top of my favorites and most referenced to.

PHP Advanced for the World Wide Web Visual QuickPro Guide

Average customer rating:

Wait for second edition
Intermediate but Very Good
This Guy Knows His Stuff
Intermediate, a hard read, poor editing
Good sequel to PHP: Visual QuickStart Guide

PHP Advanced for the World Wide Web Visual QuickPro Guide
Larry Ullman
Manufacturer: Peachpit Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Programming | Computers & Internet | Subjects | Books

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Look Inside Computer Books | Trip | Specialty Stores | Books

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ASIN: 0201775972

Book Description

Untitled

PHP Advanced for the World Wide Web: Visual QuickPro Guide consists of approximately fifteen chapters of step-by-step content, aimed at teaching specific topics in direct, focused segments. The scripts featured in this book are based on features and capabilities that current PHP users most frequently inquire about (e.g. sessions, authentication, and object-oriented programming). as well as detailing those technologies that will be more important in the future, such as XML and Wireless Access Protocols.

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