To buy or not to buy, the reviewer doesn't know!
on
Spring Into PHP 5
·
· Score: 1, Troll
This book is clearly not intended to be one of those PHP + MySQL combo books that have proven so popular during the past few years.
So, even though most people use PHP + MySQL and books of the type have been popular this one doesn't do that.
Another potential point of criticism could be that the book does not adequately explain how to use PHP with the various available database systems, only covering MySQL (the industry's favorite for use with PHP).
But yet it does explain MySQL? Which is it? I'm not going to buy the book if the reviewer can't figure it out.
The publisher's Web site for the book does not appear to have any collection of errata.
It has errors that a reviewer found (but can't determine if it supports MySQL or not) and no corrections for them. Chalk another point up.
Aside from the errata, there were some other weaknesses -- none of them serious: The chapter summaries are useless.
I don't like to read through everything (I'm not looking for errors to review about) so I'd like a decent summary.
Combining them makes no sense, and the author does not even transition from the first topic to the second.
Mmm, makes me want to run out and buy the book. Bad writing on top of errors and poor teaching. Sounds like a great way to Spring into PHP 5 doesn't it?
Like others in the "Spring Into" series, this title is reasonably priced, at only $29.99 list for over 300 pages of quality material.
From what I have read here it's not much quality. So which is it? MySQL or not, quality or not?
For those looking to spring into Web server-side development in general, or PHP in particular, it would be money well spent.
I'll stick to learning from sample code. It's cheaper, better written, and probably easier.
People sign things like NDAs, record deals, and professional sports contracts, and then expect us to be sympathetic when they decide not to honor their agreements?
I'm not sympathetic at all but I'm all for artists standing up to the oppressive recording conglomorates. If this is the only way that they can get extreme exposure, fair compensation, and more rights then I'm all for it.
The only way the industry will change is with revolution.
This controversial technology would require that disc players maintain permanent connections to content providers via the Internet, making it possible for discs that fail a security check to trigger a notification process, enabling the provider to send the player a sort of "self-destruct code." This code would come in the form of a flash ROM "update" that would actually render the player useless, perhaps unless and until it is taken to a repair shop for reprogramming.
That's stepping a little too far over the bounds of protecting *your* content. If you destroy *my* hardware you have invaded my private space which is unacceptable.
From what I see of all this, Apple will just keep throwing the patent back until it does finally get passed.
That's exactly what Platt did:
But Platt's playlist application also has a rejection history. It received an NFR on 17 November 2002, and a more serious Final Rejection on 14 June 2004. After further documentation was received, and extension granted, the application received another NFR on 11 December last year.
So, it's obvious that the Patent Office is looking at applications and not just stamping them through w/o checking a simple search first... So we get pissed off when they don't search and we get pissed off when they do?
That's fine and all, but $3600 for a laptop you're just going to use at school is silly, even in 1996/1997. I'm sure it made a great desktop replacement or whatnot at the time, but did you really, really need it to be as fast as it was?
Laptops, at that time, were not "desktop replacements". The fact of the matter was that I was going into CS and needed something that was small enough to fit in the jail cell sized dorm rooms and that would last me more than one year.
It fit, it's lasted me more than one year, and $3600 for a laptop then wasn't all that much money.
Well, obviously we had different experiences. Being one of the lucky ones with a book scholarship I didn't have to worry about my books very often *but* when I did I was not pleased at the "cash turnaround" at the end of the semester.
Buy a required book (used) for $53 and get back $7. Buy a required book (new) for $78 and get back $0 as they aren't using that edition next semester.
School books are a ripoff and the closest thing to racketeering that you can find.
Um...what else is there? Endless crappy vacation pictures?
I have more on my website than just "endless crappy vacation pictures". Granted, most people won't give a shit about 90% of what's on there but I do get plenty of hits to my website looking for local restaurants and activities.
Maybe if someone else had been doing it I wouldn't have had to suffer through Divinci's Pizza (see below) or the horrifying expensive experience at the Rockin' Ribfest in St. Paul.
Who knows though -- maybe I'd have a completely different opinion on the subject all together.
Just today, I received an e-mail from someone reading my site that said, "I might try Divinci's Pizza just to see if it's really as bad as you say it is. BTW, enjoyed reading about it."
If anything, maybe I brought someone to a restaurant that will end up being their favorite just because my review gave it some attention.
If blogs are what make using the WWW easier, more interesting and useful, then I'm willing to drop the whole (Blog = Overhyped Personal Webpage) argument.
Blogs are there and they serve some purpose but I'm not sure it makes the web any easier or useful. Depending on what you are seeing it certainly might make it more intersting...
However, personally, I really never use Amazon for anything more than books.
Why? In addition to books (used and new) I have bought multiple things there including two GPS units and a mobile phone.
The latest GPS unit (GPSMap 76CS) was on sale, no rebates necessary, and priced $50 less than its lower end unit (76C). Six months later, the price I got (with no mail-in-rebates) is still less than you can find 99% of the time.
The mobile phone (T-mobile Sidekick 1) came with instant and mail-in-rebates that totalled enough to make the phone $0 with on year of service.
Why would you only go to Amazon for books when there are so many bargains on there that I seem to only be able to find there?
I'm not an amazon.com rep, investor, or otherwise, just a happy customer.
The only way for the kid to really grasp the value of his new laptop is if he works his ass off all summer to earn the money to buy it himself.
Well, normally I would agree but in the case of my laptop, which was purchased 12/1996 for the sole purpose of me bringing it to college (tight spaces for desktops) 8/1997, I have to disagree.
My laptop was about $3600 at the time. I fully understood the true value of the device and the sacrifice my parents made to make it a reality for me...
My proof? It remains in full working order to this day on my coffee table in my living room -- relegated to web browsing and SSH and plugged into the wall for power (the battery started keeping a charge for less than two minutes in 2002).
Just because I didn't "work my ass off all summer" for it doesn't mean I wasn't able to appreciate it and care for it properly.
The Energy bill is a mess the likes of which haven't been seen since the Patriot Act. That's where the focus needs to be.
People only care about the here and now (I'm one of them although I don't care about how this might screw up my computer automatically correcting for CDT and CST).
Global Warming is something that cooks and liberals care about and it doesn't affect anyone in the next two days so it doesn't matter. What's on TV is what matters to people right now.
As long as the media and the Government can divert people's attention with stupid bullshit like their mobile phones and VCRs (remember anything that interferes with Survivor, The Bachelor/ette, and/or any other stupid reality TV show is far more important than anything else).
Blah. You mean that people might have to learn to use the most basic features of the devices they own? Gosh, golly, gee, no!
If anything, the tech sector will love it... People that are *so* annoyed by having to manually change their times *twice* for each switchover will be happy to upgrade to a newer unit that doesn't cause such a horrible thing to occur.
The rest of us will either do the difficult subtraction/addition in our heads until the device fixees itself three weeks later or will just do it ourselves.
In either case, he comes off as a personality that is far more trustworthy than Steve. And trust seems to be a key ingredient in building customer/provider relations.
Oh come on, like anyone cares what Steve Ballmer has to say. Either a) the potential customer doesn't have a clue that Steve is flamebait or b) doesn't care. If the customer is already a Microsoft customer, they are already in a position not to care.
Just because a Linux user at Microsoft appeals to the Slashdot crowd doesn't mean he's the best person to be feeding bullshit to their customers. In fact, he's probably the worst person.
Yes we must take immediate action and shut down the internet......
This isn't funny and I'm disturbed that a moderator wasted one of his points making this seem less sinister than it may turn out to be.
The Government is just looking for excuses to present to the American public to push for even tighter controls that will benefit "the war on terror" and Big Business.
Terrorists support BitTorrent and encryption. We have to eliminate this to keep you and your children safe.
I'm all for linux, but isn't the whole idea open source, low cost and "do it yourself"?
Someone did it themselves and is now marketing it to others. Just because Slashdotters can "do it themselves" and don't need to buy a Linux-based device to play networked MP3s doesn't mean other people won't.
I honestly believe that this particular company priced their products out of a realistic range for most consumers. $900 for a stereo component that plays MP3s? Big fucking deal. Unless they are selling this thing in Worst Buy or Circuit Shitty it's not going to move much.
Digital Native... I wasn't a true "Digital Native" until I got mobile access. Now I "vacation" from my connection when I am out of GPRS range and too far from my computer.
Hell, one of the requirements for my honeymoon was GPRS connectivity. So even on vacation I'm a native!
We already have enough "science" showing up as "screen plays". I know Slashdot has posted about it before and I'm too lazy to look it up but everyone knows that there are "important scientific discoveries" about asteroids hitting the earth, earth shattering earthquakes, etc, all right before a movie about nearly the same topic comes out.
If you're not sure why Grokster fell into this category and a gun manufacturer does not, it may help to compare Grokster's business model and advertising campaign to that of BitTorrent.
The only reason is because of lawyer speak. Guns were created to kill living things but they are marketed with clever wording that includes everything but.
P2P was created to quickly and effectively distribute data without a central server handling all the load. Problem is that the corporations that don't like it being used against their current business models have more money than the users and creaters of the P2P software.
I'm not slippery sloping anything. I'm stating a fact.
A directive being pushed by the European Commission would, among other things, criminalize "attempting, aiding or abetting and inciting" acts of copyright infringement.
Let's ban everything that attempts, aids, or incites acts of anything. It would eliminate cars, guns, tools, computers, people, milk, water, and air.
Fuck, let's just blow up the whole earth, some corporation would likely benefit from it -- I'm sure they have a patent on the bombs, cleaning up the destruction, and cloning human life after creating the vegetation and animal life.
Let's stop making laws that only support the businesses that have endless supplies of money please.
Slashdot Mirror
This book is clearly not intended to be one of those PHP + MySQL combo books that have proven so popular during the past few years.
So, even though most people use PHP + MySQL and books of the type have been popular this one doesn't do that.
Another potential point of criticism could be that the book does not adequately explain how to use PHP with the various available database systems, only covering MySQL (the industry's favorite for use with PHP).
But yet it does explain MySQL? Which is it? I'm not going to buy the book if the reviewer can't figure it out.
The publisher's Web site for the book does not appear to have any collection of errata.
It has errors that a reviewer found (but can't determine if it supports MySQL or not) and no corrections for them. Chalk another point up.
Aside from the errata, there were some other weaknesses -- none of them serious: The chapter summaries are useless.
I don't like to read through everything (I'm not looking for errors to review about) so I'd like a decent summary.
Combining them makes no sense, and the author does not even transition from the first topic to the second.
Mmm, makes me want to run out and buy the book. Bad writing on top of errors and poor teaching. Sounds like a great way to Spring into PHP 5 doesn't it?
Like others in the "Spring Into" series, this title is reasonably priced, at only $29.99 list for over 300 pages of quality material.
From what I have read here it's not much quality. So which is it? MySQL or not, quality or not?
For those looking to spring into Web server-side development in general, or PHP in particular, it would be money well spent.
I'll stick to learning from sample code. It's cheaper, better written, and probably easier.
People sign things like NDAs, record deals, and professional sports contracts, and then expect us to be sympathetic when they decide not to honor their agreements?
I'm not sympathetic at all but I'm all for artists standing up to the oppressive recording conglomorates. If this is the only way that they can get extreme exposure, fair compensation, and more rights then I'm all for it.
The only way the industry will change is with revolution.
That isn't disturbing at all, this is:
This controversial technology would require that disc players maintain permanent connections to content providers via the Internet, making it possible for discs that fail a security check to trigger a notification process, enabling the provider to send the player a sort of "self-destruct code." This code would come in the form of a flash ROM "update" that would actually render the player useless, perhaps unless and until it is taken to a repair shop for reprogramming.
That's stepping a little too far over the bounds of protecting *your* content. If you destroy *my* hardware you have invaded my private space which is unacceptable.
JFC, all you geeks, all you can think about it is code, code, politics, code.
When they asked for new models I thought of Sports Illustrated's, Hugh Hefner's, and Maxim's.
Get your mind in the gutter people!
That's exactly what Platt did:
So, it's obvious that the Patent Office is looking at applications and not just stamping them through w/o checking a simple search first... So we get pissed off when they don't search and we get pissed off when they do?
You can't have it both ways.
That's fine and all, but $3600 for a laptop you're just going to use at school is silly, even in 1996/1997. I'm sure it made a great desktop replacement or whatnot at the time, but did you really, really need it to be as fast as it was?
Laptops, at that time, were not "desktop replacements". The fact of the matter was that I was going into CS and needed something that was small enough to fit in the jail cell sized dorm rooms and that would last me more than one year.
It fit, it's lasted me more than one year, and $3600 for a laptop then wasn't all that much money.
I'm not sure a 33% discount will be enough.
Well, obviously we had different experiences. Being one of the lucky ones with a book scholarship I didn't have to worry about my books very often *but* when I did I was not pleased at the "cash turnaround" at the end of the semester.
Buy a required book (used) for $53 and get back $7. Buy a required book (new) for $78 and get back $0 as they aren't using that edition next semester.
School books are a ripoff and the closest thing to racketeering that you can find.
Um...what else is there? Endless crappy vacation pictures?
I have more on my website than just "endless crappy vacation pictures". Granted, most people won't give a shit about 90% of what's on there but I do get plenty of hits to my website looking for local restaurants and activities.
Maybe if someone else had been doing it I wouldn't have had to suffer through Divinci's Pizza (see below) or the horrifying expensive experience at the Rockin' Ribfest in St. Paul.
Who knows though -- maybe I'd have a completely different opinion on the subject all together.
Just today, I received an e-mail from someone reading my site that said, "I might try Divinci's Pizza just to see if it's really as bad as you say it is. BTW, enjoyed reading about it."
If anything, maybe I brought someone to a restaurant that will end up being their favorite just because my review gave it some attention.
It's called an upgrade. Color screen and autorouting -- up from black and white and only an arrow pointing me as the crow flies.
If blogs are what make using the WWW easier, more interesting and useful, then I'm willing to drop the whole (Blog = Overhyped Personal Webpage) argument.
Blogs are there and they serve some purpose but I'm not sure it makes the web any easier or useful. Depending on what you are seeing it certainly might make it more intersting...
However, personally, I really never use Amazon for anything more than books.
Why? In addition to books (used and new) I have bought multiple things there including two GPS units and a mobile phone.
The latest GPS unit (GPSMap 76CS) was on sale, no rebates necessary, and priced $50 less than its lower end unit (76C). Six months later, the price I got (with no mail-in-rebates) is still less than you can find 99% of the time.
The mobile phone (T-mobile Sidekick 1) came with instant and mail-in-rebates that totalled enough to make the phone $0 with on year of service.
Why would you only go to Amazon for books when there are so many bargains on there that I seem to only be able to find there?
I'm not an amazon.com rep, investor, or otherwise, just a happy customer.
The only way for the kid to really grasp the value of his new laptop is if he works his ass off all summer to earn the money to buy it himself.
Well, normally I would agree but in the case of my laptop, which was purchased 12/1996 for the sole purpose of me bringing it to college (tight spaces for desktops) 8/1997, I have to disagree.
My laptop was about $3600 at the time. I fully understood the true value of the device and the sacrifice my parents made to make it a reality for me...
My proof? It remains in full working order to this day on my coffee table in my living room -- relegated to web browsing and SSH and plugged into the wall for power (the battery started keeping a charge for less than two minutes in 2002).
Just because I didn't "work my ass off all summer" for it doesn't mean I wasn't able to appreciate it and care for it properly.
The Energy bill is a mess the likes of which haven't been seen since the Patriot Act. That's where the focus needs to be.
People only care about the here and now (I'm one of them although I don't care about how this might screw up my computer automatically correcting for CDT and CST).
Global Warming is something that cooks and liberals care about and it doesn't affect anyone in the next two days so it doesn't matter. What's on TV is what matters to people right now.
As long as the media and the Government can divert people's attention with stupid bullshit like their mobile phones and VCRs (remember anything that interferes with Survivor, The Bachelor/ette, and/or any other stupid reality TV show is far more important than anything else).
Blah. You mean that people might have to learn to use the most basic features of the devices they own? Gosh, golly, gee, no!
If anything, the tech sector will love it... People that are *so* annoyed by having to manually change their times *twice* for each switchover will be happy to upgrade to a newer unit that doesn't cause such a horrible thing to occur.
The rest of us will either do the difficult subtraction/addition in our heads until the device fixees itself three weeks later or will just do it ourselves.
In either case, he comes off as a personality that is far more trustworthy than Steve. And trust seems to be a key ingredient in building customer/provider relations.
Oh come on, like anyone cares what Steve Ballmer has to say. Either a) the potential customer doesn't have a clue that Steve is flamebait or b) doesn't care. If the customer is already a Microsoft customer, they are already in a position not to care.
Just because a Linux user at Microsoft appeals to the Slashdot crowd doesn't mean he's the best person to be feeding bullshit to their customers. In fact, he's probably the worst person.
Yes we must take immediate action and shut down the internet......
This isn't funny and I'm disturbed that a moderator wasted one of his points making this seem less sinister than it may turn out to be.
The Government is just looking for excuses to present to the American public to push for even tighter controls that will benefit "the war on terror" and Big Business.
Terrorists support BitTorrent and encryption. We have to eliminate this to keep you and your children safe.
I'm all for linux, but isn't the whole idea open source, low cost and "do it yourself"?
Someone did it themselves and is now marketing it to others. Just because Slashdotters can "do it themselves" and don't need to buy a Linux-based device to play networked MP3s doesn't mean other people won't.
I honestly believe that this particular company priced their products out of a realistic range for most consumers. $900 for a stereo component that plays MP3s? Big fucking deal. Unless they are selling this thing in Worst Buy or Circuit Shitty it's not going to move much.
Thanks for the Slashvertisement though.
I don't know if you ate at Enjoy up in Apple Valley when they first opened, but that was rough too.
I ate there in November when it was still relatively new. It was good then. Divinci's hasn't shaped up at all between March and June.
It's one thing to have bad service and bad food but it's another to be pointed at while you are sitting 50 feet away.
Digital Native... I wasn't a true "Digital Native" until I got mobile access. Now I "vacation" from my connection when I am out of GPRS range and too far from my computer.
Hell, one of the requirements for my honeymoon was GPRS connectivity. So even on vacation I'm a native!
Woot.
I've been reading since 1997 when I was 18. I'm 26. I would guess it will continue to increase in readership for all ages.
We already have enough "science" showing up as "screen plays". I know Slashdot has posted about it before and I'm too lazy to look it up but everyone knows that there are "important scientific discoveries" about asteroids hitting the earth, earth shattering earthquakes, etc, all right before a movie about nearly the same topic comes out.
If you're not sure why Grokster fell into this category and a gun manufacturer does not, it may help to compare Grokster's business model and advertising campaign to that of BitTorrent.
The only reason is because of lawyer speak. Guns were created to kill living things but they are marketed with clever wording that includes everything but.
P2P was created to quickly and effectively distribute data without a central server handling all the load. Problem is that the corporations that don't like it being used against their current business models have more money than the users and creaters of the P2P software.
I'm not slippery sloping anything. I'm stating a fact.
A directive being pushed by the European Commission would, among other things, criminalize "attempting, aiding or abetting and inciting" acts of copyright infringement.
Let's ban everything that attempts, aids, or incites acts of anything. It would eliminate cars, guns, tools, computers, people, milk, water, and air.
Fuck, let's just blow up the whole earth, some corporation would likely benefit from it -- I'm sure they have a patent on the bombs, cleaning up the destruction, and cloning human life after creating the vegetation and animal life.
Let's stop making laws that only support the businesses that have endless supplies of money please.
Would another company be allowed to build poles and run lines right next the current lines?
McLeod has Fiber running 150 feet from my house along County Rd 46. I don't have access to those lines and they are likely sharing the "public space".
So why are they being treated differently? If we are going to regulate/deregulate due to public space I want access to that Fiber.
Is that the mean waitress?
We had a waiter.