microtherion

Good upgrade to a classic, April 5 2004

This second edition has all the qualities the first edition had 10 years ago: Their writing is clear, they provide a sober assessment of the costs & benefits of various services (as opposed to other reviewers, I don't think the authors had much of an anti-Microsoft bias, just a realistic perspective on where Windows products are regarding security). The book is still fairly compact and it comes with an excellent biography and pointers to security software.

The Definitive Book on the Subject, Oct 14 2003

This looks like the definitive book on designing virtual worlds, and is likely to stay so for many years. It clearly shows that the author had 25 years of experience--not just as a designer of such worlds, but also as a user--to draw on, while at the same time being sufficiently detached from the industry to be able to offer candid opinions on any subject.

It's hard to think of anything on the subject that Bartle does not at least touch on (providing extensive, scholarly quality references to a wealth of further on- and offline materials), from the deepest metaphysical philosophy to the daily squabbles between users and administrators on virtual worlds large and small. Bartle does not in… Read more

Solid, well written Introduction, Aug 15 2003

As opposed to a number of other introductory books for Java, this one doesn't cater to "Dummies", but to competent programmers who want to pick up another programming language. It gives a solid introduction to the language and manages to introduce the necessary object oriented concepts along the way without boring readers who have prior OOP experience. It is also entertaining without being overly cute. I would not hesitate to recommend it to anyone with prior programming experience.