The book contains very little practical information and spends more chapters selling the reader on the concept of process mapping than it does on the concept itself.

Mostly, I'm going to second another reviewer's comments on this book. This is a very introductory level text, with not much "meat" to it. I will go one further, though.

I agree that Mr. Hunt stays pretty basic most of the time, while in other parts he goes deeper without telling us (the reader) what exactly his terminology means beforehand. Somehow we make the transition from extremely basic mapping to filling out Process Mapping Forms in detail without much in between these two stages.

Another criticism I have for the book "Process Mapping" is the overuse of cut and paste. Okay, I understand that word processors make this whole cut & paste thing very easy, but when you find yourself reading the same sentences verbatim a page later; we have gone to far. This is not only in the product reviews, but in the text as well. I can only take so much of that.

On the plus side, this book gets to the point quickly. Secondly, it does talk about the advantages and disadvantages of using some software packages (e.g. Visio) for your process mapping initiative. Probably too many case studies for my liking, but they do show you have other companies have had successes with each package.

So, in summary, you could use excerpts from this book to explain the very basics of process mapping to a coworker or your boss, but I would not try to actually attempt the art of mapping out a process without picking up a better laid-out, more comprehensive book on the subject.

Easy language, nice examples, easy explanations, lots of references about other authors and books related

I used this book while in egypt. I found it to be very outdated and did not have much of the relevent information that I needed. I am normally a big fan of the rough guides but this purchase taught me the lesson that you need to be aware of when the book was published. I did not realize the book was nearly three years old when I bought it. If they have not come out with a recent update then purchase a different book -time schedules change rather frequently and the more uptodate the book is the better off you are.

I spent about a month reading this guide and the Lonely Planet series while planning my trip to Egypt... Well, they were both OK, but the Rough by Dan Richardson is way more detailed and has more practical info on fees, schedules, hotels and workarounds if something goes wrong. Through the trip (Hurghada - Aswan - Luxor - Cairo - Suez - Hurghada) the LP was what I read in the evening before going to museums or tombs and RG was what I carried around in my pocket through the day. My estimate is that I saved not less than fifty times the cost of this book just because I knew most of the prices and situations in advance, before bargaining :)
A must have for travel in Egypt

To the point, told you what you needed to know, without saturating you with information. I travelled with a couple of friends to Egypt and found their book to be more informative than mine, despite the fact that their Rough Guide was a little out of date when they bought it. It is especially useful if you are looking for cheap accomodation in Luxor and to a lesser extent, Aswan, plus it also provided some decent maps of both areas. One amusing snippet that caught my attention was the information about the back way into the Valley of the Kings (for the fit amongst you only) - you turn right just before the ticket collection point at Hapshepsut, passed the souvenir stalls and follow the path up the side of the hill. Once at the top and passed a hill on top, veer right again to go into the Valley of the Kings. Unlike the main entrance (where you are checked to see you have tickets), you don't have to pay to get in this way, but you can't get into any of the tombs if you haven't bought the tickets - courtesy of the information in Rough Guide. The Egyptians check for tickets again at each tomb entrance, which from what I can remember, you are told about in the book anyway. Still worth it for the views though, especially of Hapshepsut, but DON'T GO TOO NEAR THE EDGE OF THE CLIFF.

The Aswan bit is also clearer than other books, for example, one bit of info. it gives compared to others, is the fact that once you have paid to go to Philae Temple (which is on an island), you have to haggle with the owners of the boats in order to get there.

All in all, a very comprehensive book, but the edition I saw needed a little updating.

I just got this book and I am utterly dissapointed in my purchase. First off this book talks a lot about some interesting concepts of animation, like secondary action, but fails to show you what the hell is it is. I had to look in another book to figure it out....bottom line, the book is very wordy. The artwork was very minimalistic and every thing is totally based on a stiff cut system. So stiff, that the walk cycles dont even look right! If you like generic Icebox type animation, dive right in because thats what this book will teach you.

This is a pretty decent book. However, for the most part it had nothing new or original to offer that I hadn't already seen in other animation books. Nice artwork thought and it's definitely pretty to look at so I guess in a way it's useful in providing inspirational material. But you're not really going to gain anything new by reading it.

I found this book to be poor in content. The artwork was okay but I didnt learn much in terms of tricks and tips. It waqs pretty basic. The book despite its hype, was a bit dissapointing. I think a better buy is another new book, The Flash Animator. The book tends to have much better layout and the interviews w/ all these animation legends are pretty unique for a flash book.

If you have no clue what a pthread function name is, or what this crazy multithreading idea is all about, then maybe this book will help you some...but I have my doubts. Otherwise, this serves as both a poor reference, a poor primer guide, a poor advanced guide, and poor toilet paper. I've never seen a book manage to miss as a reference, miss as a primer, and miss as an advanced guide. There are easily better books and online resources available, as it's hard to be much worse than this.

This book is akin to learning French by teaching some basic grammar, some advanced grammar, and then shouting: "Je ne sais pas!" "Je voudrais un peu cherise!" without telling you what these mean...and leaving you clueless as to how to find out about them.

This Book covers too many topics unnecessarily, so when you really want to go a little deep into a specific field and make yourself clear, that will be not possible.
This book is not really suitable for real multi-threaded programmer.
New multi-threaded leaners maybe will found it useful for basic concepts.

The authors of this book, in addition to their knowledge of threads, also know how to teach. The only shortcoming I could point out is that certain topics are treated shallowly, while less important topics are explained with too much detail.

What's really interesting about the book is the authors' ``don't do that'' style. Another reviewer found this style to be bad. I found it highly helpful. Instead of presenting a single solution for a problem (``The One and Only True Solution''), and leaving the reader wondering about alternative solutions, they go on to explain what's wrong with these other solutions. People learn by making mistakes, and the authors point out lots of mistakes that can be avoided. This is an invaluable feature, not a bug.

The book contains 50 personal statements and not much else. The personal statements were not relevant to me or my friends. I did buy this book and others. I think the best ones were Insider's guide to med school admissions by Toyos and Princeton Review. Read this one in a bookstore and you will see it is not worth it.

A great book for those interested in getting an overview of the admissions process and writing your personal statement. I really found this book helpful and resourceful. I recommend it!

Well-written, concise, and not condescending like so many of the books written by admissions department people. The 50 essays are alone worth the price.

I purchased this with the idea of walking through it to setup a test server environment with multiple zones and domain names. This book goes on and on about concepts of how it all works, but never gets down to the bottom line of - setup your domain this way and this is how the domain appears and how to access from the Internet. Do yourself a favor and find another book.

I echo others' sentiments: this book contains some great information, but uses a very poor writing style. Regardless of any technical book's level of quality content, a poor writing style can render it useless. The authors--in their commendable attempt to include the most minute details of DNS--ramble on incessantly (sometimes incoherently), leaving the reader dazed & confused. There is some great information here, but I find myself reading passages 3-4 times to understand the concepts. This book could've had great potential, but the editor was asleep at the wheel.

This is a hard book for me to rate. On the one hand this book had enough information and examples to make it easy for me to upgrade our DNS Server to Windows 2000, setup a separate Windows 2000 DNS Server at a satellite office from scratch, add a Secondary DNS Server for the Network. The book also has plenty of information on different settings for DNS and how to make it work with DHCP and WINS. Lot's of info on maintenance tools and commands and how they work. However I felt the book really missed being a great book by not completely explaining how DNS works. There just isn't enough written on how and why it works and not nearly enough examples. Like I said it is hard to say because maybe the full explanations and more examples would just be overkill or in the end they don't help with setup but just confuse. So if you want info on how to setup a DNS Server on Windows 2000 this is the book for you, If you want to know how DNS works across the internet and interacts with other operating systems and networks I have to say look elsewhere.

To say that the writing here is not superb is a gross understatement. The writing is terrible! The logic and syntax is so convoluted that the very meaning of large sections of the book can not be discerned. This book should have never made it to print.

The book is self published. For the unitiated, this means either that the author could not attract a literary agent or a publisher to the merit of the work, or, as a previous reviewer suggests, there was some unnamed publisher who was scared off by the legal implications of publishing the work. My guess is the former is the case. The writing is extremely bad, and the research is very suspect. Save your money and avoid this poor excuse for a book.

While the writing is not superb, the subject matter is quite taboo, yet extremely important. While this content will sound conspiracist, it is quite solidly based. This book references material such as Dark Alliance (Gary Webb); Cocaine Politics (Scott/Marshall); Compromised (Reed/Cummings); Powderburns (Castillo); The Politics of Heroin (McCoy); The Mafia, CIA, and George Bush (Pete Brewton); Deep Politics and the Death of JFK (Scott); and many others. If you find Barry and the Boys incredible, please read some of the books I just mentioned. As this material is extremely sensitive to those in power, you will find plenty of attempts to discredit these authors from such prominent publications as the New York Times, Time Magazine, Newsweek, and the Washington Post. What do you think would happen to the US if it was publicly accepted knowledge that the US government extensively assisted those who imported thousands of kilos of cocaine a month in the 80s?

I am not sure who this book the 'committee' wrote this for, but I can think of no one. More like a hodge-podge collection of Internet clippings somewhat related to Java & Macs, interspersed with useless code. It is sad because the Mac market needs a Java book covering getting started and the many options and tools Apple has provided the Java student & developer.

I am sorry I wasted my money & was responsible for the deaths of the trees that made it!

This is probably the worst technical book that I have read. Its more a collection of papers than anything else, and much of the content is trivial. Beginning progrmmers would find nothing in here. Advanced programmers will probably find a few nuggets of information that are useful, but they are few and far between.

If you are looking for an excellent book on Java on the new Macintosh operating system OS X, this is one to get. The writing style is well done and the book, in terms of content, is well thought out. I am enjoying the authors coverage of pure Java vs Mac OS X specific issues in particular. Keep up the good job.

Lighten up people it's meant to be funny. It's not rocket science. Take an hour or so and have a laugh. And yes I am a fan.

I bought this book for a friend who is an Elvis fan and now wish I had bought a copy for myself. It was a clever idea, with pictures of Elvis on the moon, in a crowd of hippies, etc.

This book is funny and entertaining for all ages. Put it in circulation at a party and groups of people will cluster around, looking for Elvis, howling with laughter (I still haven't found him on one page). I discovered this book at a close-out sale last Christmas and, after reading it, went back and bought every copy the bookstore had in stock! Each person who received this book from me had the same question: Where can I get another copy? We cleaned out the local supply, so I'm delighted to see it can still be ordered through amazon.com. If you've ever heard of Elvis, if you have a sense of humor, if you understand Elvis is DEAD and this book is supposed to be funny, then buy this book. You will enjoy it. Five stars when you consider all books, all categories? No way. But it is a five star book in the light-hearted Elvis is dead, 8-80-have-fun-with-a-book, make groups of people laugh-at-a-party category!

I have worked with WebSphere for over two years, and this book makes some of the worst fundamental assumptions about Java, the power of Big Blue, and the overall direction object oriented technology is going. The book consists of misspelled words, poor examples, and countless programming errors. I really have no idea what qualifications Mr. Worden has regarding IBM products, but my advice to him is that he should actually learn the material he is writing about before he decides to preach from the pulpit about it.

Daniel - One question: What is are "tales of owes?"

As stated in the Introduction (Aims & Audience), the intention of this book is to introduce the role and features of the entire set of IBM tools in creating Enterprise Java solutions. It is clearly stated as being designed to be useful for people with little or no Java programming expertise. It is in no way about Design Patterns, UML, XML or TP Monitors. It will be especially useful for people who need to move from green screen shops to understanding the full range of tools and techniques needed to develop thin client applications for a WebSphere environment. While newer versions of some of the software have been released, the fundamentals remain sound and applicable. I have received many favorable responses from readers via email and I am perplexed by the implication that the entire book could be explained by a single IBM marketing rep. Yes, they're good people, but really now, let's be fair. There are a great many developers, architects and managers who can benefit from a ground up introduction to the full range of tools used to develop e-business applications in Java. That was and remains the main objective and audience for this book. I hope this clarification is useful for anyone contemplating whether or not to read Big Blue Java.