This guide begins as a high-level justification for Jiro. It's not actually aimed at API programmers, but rather those people who are considering the technologies their groups or companies will invest in over the next few years. That's important because storage management has been and will be evolving rapidly for some time. The goal in all this is simple: people want hands-off ("policy-based"), standards-driven techniques for maintaining their storage 7x24.

Specifications like Web Based Enterprise Management (WBEM) and the Common Information Model (CIM) already have broad acceptance, so creating a niche for Jiro requires not a little persuasive effort; that's where this book seems best suited. Monday & Connor paint a picture in which Jiro supplements these models and provides the ease of writing in Java and Jini's very powerful support for distributed programming.

Jiro can be nonetheless interesting in its own right. For one, its developers have written an extended RMI (ERMI). Accordingly, Jiro uses a proxy in contrast to RMI's stub, and adds aspects, such as remote object instantiation, that I found stimulating to think about. Still, there wasn't enough of this type of material to call this book a "programmer's guide."

If you're already reading about policy-based storage management, this book covers the major issues well. But it's not a casual reader's guide. Technology officers and architects working with diverse storage environments are the primary audience; I would consider some background in storage management necessary to taking full advantage of this book.

This was a nice reference about Lieberman when he was first announced to be Gore's choice in 2000 for running mate, but now the world needs to see a more in-depth portrait of him. Still, this book is interesting in that it gives us a brief idea of Lieberman's strong moral standards and integrity.

However, regarding his analysis of the Doctrine of Right, he is seriously mistaken that the move from the state of nature to the civil condition is some kind of bargain that promises each participant a piece of the pie, so to speak. This move to the civil condition is not a bargain, but a duty based on a categorical imperative to secure rights that are only provisional. The motive for the move is to secure a system of intelligible possession not to secure a particular amount of property. His analysis is Rawlsian and make the same error as Rawls in identifying this theory with that of Kant's.

Despite this drawback, this book is a must for those interested in deepening their understanding of the Doctrine of Right and the Doctrine of Virtue.