Learn Best Practices from Saul's Worst Ones
358335
Im a fan of best practices thats why I was a bit reluctant at first to read Leadership Lessons: Avoiding the Pitfalls of King Saul by Ralph K. Hawkins and Richard Leslie Parrott. Since I am teaching through 1 Samuel I thought this book might provide some interesting insights into Sauls failure as a king. The book did. It also provided some best practices in contrast to worst practices of Saul.

I appreciated how Hawkins and Parrott provide not only good biblical insight but also practical leadership application. Through Sauls failures one learns to leverage the challenges and difficulties of leadership.  Leadership Lessons provided good lessons in three ways for me.

First, I appreciated the engagement with the Biblical story of Saul. The priority placed on each event in his life and extrapolating lessons from what happened to Saul provided good principles to apply.

Second, I especially liked how the worst practice was flipped into a best practice and lessons were learned from the leading leadership experts in our day. For me that meant the most important chapter in the book was chapter 12 on how Saul Failed to Consult God, and the reverse lesson how can I be more aware of Gods guidance and follow His direction.

Third, I valued the discussion questions at the end of each chapter. They provide a system for personal assessment and needed reflection. The questions were not merely an afterthought, but provided great value for engaging the material and directing next steps in application.

Yet the most valuable questions were in chapter 12 that I will use in processing leadership challenges:

1. How can this challenge open me up to God?

2. How can I respond to this challenge in a way that is true to my best in Christ?

I give Leadership Lessons: Avoiding the Pitfalls of King Saul 5 out of 5 stars. I started reading with curiosity and found the book to be a great tool for growth. The book provides a great read for those who want to grow in their own leadership. My thanks to Thomas Nelson and BookLookBloggers for a free copy to review. I wasn't required to give a positive review just an honest one.
1940068
This book is an introductory and intermediate book and claims to be nothing else. That said, this book is done right and not only has users complete step-by-step procedures as if taking a lengthy SBS-specific class (of which there are none) but allows the newbie (and perhaps even a few gurus) to successfully standardize their SBS deployments. Weaved into the step-by-step actions you will find tremendous SBS cultural wisdom, such as why the Wizard behaves the way it does and how that Wizard evolved over eight years and four major release cycles. Brelsford, in his sometimes humorous way (yes - a light-hearted computer book - GASP!) is the only writer who could achive this given his book cited direct involvement in the product as a writer and active consultant since its 1997 inception. I look forward to many more Harry books on SBS to come (he indicates in this work that an advanced book will be out this fall - can't wait)

John

Ross-Tek

Cleveland, OH
3689500
This book helps you prepare for the worst. I like the fact that it gives specific tips on how to get access to the most basic needs during worst case scenarios. I highly recommend it.
4562753
This book summarizes 40 years of software's best practices into 240 pages.  Short, sweet, to the point, and incredibly valuable.  High recommended. I browse it about once a week and pull out a gem or two every time.
1032791
An excellent read and very well written. Alan walks you eloquently through the issues that plague the industry and defines common sense practice for good interaction design. Valuable lessens seep from each page. Unfortunately, 6 years after the release the industry is still suffering from those with too much skin in the game and resist the light of change. The book is a wake up call for the industry to practice more K.I.S.S. development and adds clarity to the reason why Software companies are fueling their Tech Support bonfires with poor design implementation.
747891
Financial services company The Vanguard Group had just purchased a shiny new search engine to improve search for their 12,000 employees. There was only one problem: the search results were worse than what they had before.

John Ferrara, an information architect who had helped select the new search platform, blew the whistle, asking the project to be delayed so that relevancy could be improved before the search engine went live. Unfortunately, he failed to make a convincing case to his IT colleagues. Technically, the new platform was running just fine. Besides, the search vendor undoubtedly new more about this kind of stuff than the internal guys.

But not to be deterred, John Ferrara turned to the search logs. He aggregated the most popular search queries from the old platform and, going down the list one by one, measured two metrics for each: relevancy and precision. To measure relevancy, John typed in the query ("company address", for instance), and checked to see how far down the best match appeared from position #1. To measure precision, on the other hand, John looked at the top five results for a given query and marked each as either relevant, nearly relevant, misplaced, or irrelevant. The output from each of those exercises is shown below.

By turning to the data, John was able to convince his colleagues that there was, indeed, a problem. With hands on deck, the team was fortunately able to tune the new search platform before it went live, bringing relevancy and precision up to parity with the old system. Thanks to search analytics, John had saved the team from what could have been a serous blunder.

Lou Rosenfeld opens with this relatable story in his latest book Search Analytics for Your Site: Conversations with Your Customers. The book is a very practical guide on how to exploit query logs to improve your company's search experience. Lou outlines a collection of simple but potent techniques for analyzing search logs, spotting insightful patterns, and putting those insights to use.

As mentioned in the Vanguard story, Lou demonstrates the value of understanding users' most common queries. But he also goes much further. From studying failure situations (which queries lead to zero results), to session data (who searched what when), audience segmentation, and goal-based analysis (using key performance indicators), Search Analytics presents a sweeping collection of techniques for turning search logs into an organizational goldmine.

And if those techniques weren't practical enough already, Lou ends the book with a comprehensive list of tips for using search data to improve your website's search, content, navigation, and metadata.

Search Analytics is well-written, to the point, and does what it says on the tin. The author is authoritative -- he wrote Information Architecture for the World Wide along with Peter Morville -- as well as experienced, having consulted for companies such as PayPal, Caterpillar, Ford, and others. I was able to put into practice techniques I learned within days of first picking up the book. If you in anyway share responsibility for search in your organization, this book is well worth your time. I highly recommend it.
1322268
We have all known the "employee from hell" in all of his or her guises: the complainer, the egomaniac, the troublemaker, the passive-aggressive type, the clever con artist, and many more.

In this plain-spoken book, management consultant Gini Graham Scott categorizes bad employees into some three dozen pigeonholes (like the "impossible intern," the "negative Nelly," and the out-and-out liar) and assigns each a brief chapter that opens with a succinct case study. In each setting, Scott asks the same question: Did the boss handle the situation well? Should she have fired the employee on the spot, put him on probation, called a staff meeting, had a one-on-one conversation with the troublesome employee, let the whole thing go, or done something else entirely?

Scott's advice springs largely from common sense. She acknowledges that there isn't just one way to handle a difficult worker. A good deal depends on the office atmosphere, the employee's and boss's personalities, and other intangibles. In discussing a saleswoman who gives so much attention to the first customer of the day that she neglects her duties to other customers, Scott suggests a variety of steps: giving the worker one more chance, explaining that she will be fired if she doesn't change, clarifying where she has gone wrong, asking another employee to monitor her behavior, and rewarding her with small bonuses if her performance improves.

Of course, some problematic behavior - drug use on the job, stealing from the employer, a pattern of lying -- can't be tolerated, and Scott urges that supervisors should fire people who do those things, even if the employee is a friend, or the friend of a friend. Still, there are a number of ways to dismiss someone, and Scott insists that even a fireable employee should be shown the door graciously.
1873692
This book is a tour de force through hits and misses of using Internet technologies in manufacturing. It includes a concise survey of various technologies and standards, as well as a survey of various business models that can profit from them. Not just theory, the book includes discussion of what has happened to the business-to-business portals that sprang up and quickly withered. As is fitting from two authors who are practicing marketing consultants, the book also includes a wealth of practical tips for those who need to find new paths in this difficult manufacturing environment. Included is a chapter on security--certainly a hot topic these days.
3680516
I found this book helpful. I wish each of the pictues involved he would have actually showed the exposure. He bemoans systems and then goes on to teach you another system!
1579384
a complete introduction to semi-supervised learning and a panoramic view of class of SSL methods and algorithms. very usefull for begin the study of SSL
1571469
The basic rules for being a good speaker are contained in this concise book. A useful guide for anyone who talks in front of an audience. Hamilton's book was inspired by feedback that poor preaching was due to correctable mistakes like:
1. Rambling and never making a pint
2. Speaker being disconnected from hearer's daily life
3. Lack of stories to illustrate point
4. Lack of passion and authenticity
5. Monotone delivery, reading manuscript,
6. Boring!

This book will challenge the reader to take an honest look at his/her speaking skills and will give guidance on how to improve your delivery in tangible ways.

I really liked the content of this book, but have issues with the price point considering it is only 86 pages long.
2661674
I think this is a great book for those new to web security.

It's easy for security experts like Bryan and Vinnie to overwhelm people new to the field, and they do an excellent job of avoiding that risk.  How to effectively avoid risks is a theme throughout the book, and the authors do a really good job of keeping it conversational, understandable, and applicable.

I'd also like to address a claim made by Blowdart "This isn't a book a developer can use to solve their problems, rather it's a book that should send them off to learn more about their specific languages or frameworks."  I get where he's coming from, and respectfully disagree.  The book isn't a cookbook with 1,001 recipes for blocking SQL Injection, but it covers input validation, regexps, escaping input, and driving into stored procedures or prepared statements along with the risks.  I think that's a good level of understanding that a developer should have so that they know the strategy and approaches to take; writing code in a specific language is left as an exercise for the reader.  Digging in deeper would mean that there's a new book every 2-3 years to address the latest way to copy a string safely.  This book strikes a good, practical balance.

Lastly, I should mention that Bryan works down the hall, gave me a copy, and cites a bunch of my work in the book.
1164348
I am really impressed by the content in this book, the author has documented a ton of real-world experiences here; for example not only are suggestions and solutions well presented, but also the politics and  repercussions of recommending and implementing 24x7 solutions.  I am  finding this book a complete read from front to back and plan on  implementing many of the techniques suggested.
867282
This book is an informational instruction booklet on how to utilize the services available in any of the Cisco Works packages. It touches briefly on the concepts and terminology involved with Network Managment Solutions and may be insightful for beginning Cisco Works administrators. If you are a higher level NMS Engineer or have had prior experiences working with NMS protocols, this book will not help you move forward in your skills. I would only recommend this item for beginning users.
2457393
Nigel breaks apart the many intimidating  moving pieces of kubernetes into coherent understandable concepts, with real working examples that you can build as you follow along. I wish I would read this book before I beat my head against 100 different disjointed tutorials online! The meat of all those tutorials, and the tools that auto-magically spin up a k8s cluster will make much more sense after this quick read.

I look forward to the API v2 book!
3392746
I wish I had written this book. Yeah, I know. It was written by my friends and former colleagues at The Forum Corporation. But here's why I wish I had written it. In 2002 Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan, with their book "Execution", fingered a core obstacle to better performance: businesses don't fail for lack of good ideas; they fail for lack of ability to implement them. In the past eight years the problem has not gotten any better. In fact as the world has gotten more complex, arguably the execution problem has gotten worse. Davis, Frechette, and Boswell show how an over-reliance on technocratic solutions with a lack of understanding of people factors cause businesses to continue to make the same execution mistakes.

Beyond a critique of the current way of solving problems, the book offers tools to help business leaders leverage the talent of their employees and build stronger more agile organizations.  Moreover the book is based on research conducted with The Economist Intelligence Unit using surveys and interviews with hundreds of companies and in depth profiles on some companies you already know about and others you probably should know about.
2563547
Books on hacking, cracking, exploiting, and breaking software seem to get all of the attention in the security world.  However, we need more works like Mike Schiffman's 'Building Open Source Network Security Tools' (BOSNST).  I regret having waited so long to read BOSNST, but I'm glad I did.  Schiffman's book is for people who want to build, not break, software, and the way he describes how to create tools is enlightening.

The major theme I captured from BOSNST was the importance of creating useful code libraries.  Six of the book's 12 chapters focus on libraries which provide functions for application programmers.  While not all have gained the same amount of fame or use, the author's approach remains sound.  Libraries are the building blocks around which numerous tools can and should be built.

This theme helped me understand the evolution of RFP's Whisker CGI scanner, released in Oct 1999 and deprecated in May 2003.  Whisker lives on as a library, Libwhisker, in the Nikto Web server scanner.  Similarly, Schiffman's chapter on Libsf mentions the utility of creating a library offering the functionality of the popular Nmap scanning tool.  (Unfortunately, I haven't seen progress on this.  Nmap author Fyodor last mentioned 'Libnmap' in his 2003 Nmap features survey, and it's not apparent in the tool's latest version.)

I found the six library chapters to be helpful.  Some of the code has stagnated since 2002 (Libnids, Libsf), while some has continued to evolve (Libpcap, Libdnet, OpenSSL).  Schiffman provides good explanations of buffer overflow and format string attacks in ch 10, and I thought his state machine-based port scan detector (Descry) in ch 11 was innovative.

One of the strongest sections of BOSNST is ch 12, where the author provides a 25-page code walkthrough of his Firewalk tool.  This chapter is the model for anyone seeking to explain tool internals.  Schiffman offers flowcharts, context charts, and explanations of code snippets.  He doesn't simply dump page after page of C code in front of the reader.  (Most chapters of BOSNST do conclude with the full source code for sample tools, however.)

I have no real complaints with BOSNST.  I found minor errors in two diagrams (p 220, 223 should show the SYN/ACK or RST reply coming from the target, not to the target).  Schiffman's writing style is clear and engaging, which makes a difference when explaining functions in code.

Those who want to learn how to assemble their security expertise in the form code libraries should read BOSNST.  Those who wish to use the libraries found in the book, or those with similar functionality, should also read BOSNST.  I look forward to Schiffman's next book, where hopefully he will finally update his biography to say 'AFIWC' (for 'Air Force Information Warfare Center') instead of 'AFWIC' (aka the UN's 'AFrican Women In Crisis' program).