Dave Page

Hughes, Cameron and Thomas Hamilton and Tracey Hughes. 1995. Object Oriented I/O using C++ IOSTREAMS. John Wiley and Sons, New York, New York. ISBN 0-471-11809-5. Order…

Two halves of a book here. First is a good explanation of the IOSTREAMs package although a lot of it doesn’t seem to be more detailed than the Visual C++ help. The base classes and what they do are very well discussed, and I think I know quite a bit more that when I started.

BUT…then they talk about an implementation of character cell stream controlled output ala CURSES, and never show code. The object diagrams are in some strange notation explained in the appendix. UML is now the standard, I hope the next edition fixes this. The second half, as I see it, talks a lot about different window systems — interesting but not what I wanted to pay $34.95 for. And then we attach streams to these I/O devices. I want to write a DBWIN32 stream interface, and this infomation is not useful for that. You might find it better.

Comer, Douglas E. 1995. Internetworking with TCP/IP; Volume 1: Principles, Protocols, and Architecture. Third Edition. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Prentice Hall. ISBN 0-13-215987-8. Order…

A detailed look at the transport of the Internet. As one who spent days configuring an NT server into a multihomed host using subnetting, a lot of the information is already known, but would be a good introduction for a technical minded person who can resist the urge to sleep. Starts out with obligatory origins of the net, thru dotted decimal notation, etc. Lots of good info on IP, routing, accessories like FTP and Telnet, and the section on IPng was very interesting. Would be a good textbook for a course.

Stevens, William K. 1995. Miracle Under the Oaks. New York, New York: Pocket Books. ISBN 0-671-78042-5

A discussion of the growing prairie and savanna restoration movement in Illinois and a view of the work of Steve Packard, a major force in the grassroots restoration movement. Very interesting to me since I worked on a prairie crew in 1990-91 at Poplar Creek and intend to do so again very soon.

Adams, Scott. 1996. The Dilbert Principle, A Cubicle’s Eye View of Bosses, Meetings, Management Fads and other Workplace Afflictions. New York, New York: HarperCollins. ISBN 0-88370-787-6

Pretty Funny. The obvious assortment of Dilbert cartoons and email from hapless fans illustrate foibles in the modern re-engineered business world. The final chapter on the OA5 Corp ( Out At 5, meaning everyone leaves at five PM ) is some of the best straightforward advice on business climate I have ever read. At least the final chapter should be read by all management. Sometimes it takes a cartoonist to reveal the true nature of the beast.