This book provides an excellent background for new precision farming students/users. It is centered around building knowledge about how precision farming works, and how it can be applied. THIS BOOK IS NOT RECOMMENDED FOR THOSE THAT ALREADY HAVE A THOROUGH BACKGROUND IN PRECISION FARMING. I WOULD RECOMMEND THAT YOU SEEK A MORE ADVANCED, TECHNICAL REFERENCE.

For anyone with an interest in precision farming but has only gained knowledge through magazine articles or talks on the subject, understanding this text can give a good foundation and insight for future learning on the subject. From the text, one can learn about the satellite system used in global positioning, remote sensing techniques, monitors aboard combines, sprayers and planters and computer communications in a modern farm production system. Finest attention to detail and sound decisions for maximum profitability is what precision farming is ultimately about. With an understanding and ability to apply the knowledge, opportunity awaits. This book is a starting point. I also believe that this book would work well as a supplemental text for a college or vocational agriculture course geared toward the subject.

For those of us in college during the Gulf War, this is a must read book. It brought back a lot of memories for me, some I wish it hadn't. I enjoyed reading about Elliot's journey through school and all the influencing elements presented to him. Some of the characters really reminded me of some of my college housemates. It was fun.

This is an excellent novel for anyone who has ever tried to break out and away from destructive influences. I believe most readers will find something in this book that will take them to a place they may have forgotten. A place where, upon reflection, makes one ask, 'What the hell was I thinking?' A lot of those feelings were dredged up while I read this book. The protagonist in this book is constantly being pulled and stretched by those around him and by inner conflict. The author does a fine job of making those conflicts seem very real by placing the reader in the mind of the main character. This is an excellent first effort by Mr. Colety, and I look forward to his next offering.

I mostly agreed with Eric Ma. There are some areas that Wrox needs to review the whole process of publishing Java-related books. Here are some drawbacks that I can draw from reading recent Java-related books:

(1) Repeated Contents: Materials about Servlet, JSP, EJB, JNDI, JDBC, XML, etc are repeated over and over many books. This could waste time, money, and papers for both Wrox and readers.

(2)Books or Articles?: I asked myself: is Wrox publishing books or articles? Each book is written by many authors and the book's flow is inconsistent. The assessment that it is not a book but a collection of articles may partially true. It is true that a book if written by a team of authors could speed up the process of releasing it, but if Wrox editors and coordinators have to do their better jobs.

I suggest that Wrox should review its strategy of publishing books to avoid the repeating of materials over and over and thus bring down the cost associated with publishing the books. The final result is: readers and publisher will both save time and money. Otherwise, readers will loose their belief with Wrox.

For the past 2 years Wrox has been publishing books dedicated to Windows-based data access (ADO etc.), but the same cannot be said about their Java/database collection. Although you find chapters on JDBC scattered all-over almost all server-side Java related books by Wrox, there was no single volume from them that teaches JDBC first, and then show how it is used by the newer dependent technologies, until this book arrived. After looking through this book, I must say the authors and editors have done a rather commendable job.

Why do I make the above conclusion? Let me give you my general impression of the book first. A theme repeated in several of my recent reviews on books from Wrox is about the problem in coherence associated with multi-author books. Well, having more than a dozen of authors for a single book seems to be a fact of life (for books from Wrox at least) now, as the publication cycle gets shorter. I was rather surprised to find out that the organization and coherence is very good in this book, i.e., there is very little overlap among chapters. Also, this books uses JDBC cleverly to tie other pieces of J2EE together, making smooth transitions from one chapter to another. If you want to know, this factor alone prompted me to add an extra star to the overall rating of the book.

Let's now run down the chapters of this book quickly. The first 115 pages deals object-oriented and database modeling, and can be skipped by any "Professional" developer. Then after your obligatory intro to JDBC API, the next chapter covers the JDBC 2.0 optional package. This is the best treatment of this topic I have seen. Then another chapter is all about SQLJ, another first. The effort of having a chapter on database performance should be lauded, where connection pooling, prepared statements and stored procedures usage are demoed. The reminder of the book is about applying JDBC in various J2EE components, such as JSP, servlets, EJB, JMS, and XML. For this part of the book, even though I accept the fact the proper stage has to be set for each one of them, I still don't believe the book found the right balance between focusing on JDBC and showing what these other technologies are about. A large number of pages are used to teach basic JNDI, servlets, JSP's, and EJB's stuff (remember there is already a book on J2EE from Wrox!). Therefore, it is up to the reader to discover the real nuggets of gold hidden in this pile, which are far and in between in places. I found that some critical issues are not highlighted or details are lacking, such as how to use connection pooling/data sources in servlets, JSP's, and EJB's, the threading issues related to sharing database connections, and good database practices in BMP EJB's. However, the one thing I cannot complain about is that the book did not forget to teach the transaction aspect of EJB with a good depth (there is a short ans sweet chapter on using JTA/JTS inside EJB). There is also a chapter on the brand-new JDO framework, even though the spec is still in a state of flux. Finally, there are 4 case study chapters in the book - although the design and implementation are limited in scope and as a whole those samples do not teach all you need to do know about enterprise scale J2EE system development, they do provide a flavor of how JDBC is used in real world, together with setting up Tomcat, JRun, Orion, and WebLogic to access MS SQL Server and Oracle databases.

Now my overall take of this book. For VB/SQL and pure back-end PL/SQL developers who are eager to jump on the Java express train and need a suitable platform (especially for the ones who learn best from playing with actual code), I recommend this book as one of several you should own. Compared to other JDBC books from say O'Reilly and Sun's JDBC Tutorial, this book is the most up-to-date, contains the most source code, and has the broadest coverage of related topics. But keep in mind some of the advanced topics such as EJB and JMS can be intimidating for new-comers. On the other side of the coin, people who are advanced in various server-side Java technologies are unlikely to benefit a great deal from this book and should look elsewhere for info (for example Wrox's J2EE and upcoming EJB titles).

Mr. Turner has taken some fine photographs and his book also lists valuable data about each pub's hours, amenities, etc.

But he doesn't rate the pubs' beers. This is a significant drawback to an otherwise useful effort. Riverside pubs lean heavily on the holiday trade and in some cases their attention to their ales is anywhere from cavalier to downright neglectful.

To support Turner's book, get the 2001 "Good Beer Guide" from CAMRA (The Campaign for Real Ale) in any British bookshop.

Finally, Turner's book is suppposedly written from the perspective of someone walking the fine Thames Path public trail. But he doesn't direct the reader from the Path to the pub ... thirsty walkers will find this flaw exasperating.

Well written and illustrated with great & detailed photography. This book is a must for anyone wishing to visit some of the finest pubs in the world. Particular attention and detailed historic information about the location, and the pubs history, to include stories associated with such. Also included are types of beer served and hours of operation. This book is a must for anyone interesting in history, photography, and a great tour down the River Thames to some of the world's oldest and historically rich drinking establishments.

I'd be kinder with the stars if the title were "Learn Database Administration using SQL-DMO". But I am already clear about that. The only reason I went with 3 was that some of the scripts are indeed useful. But what I was looking for was a good succint overview of SQL-DMO. Rather than focus on the SQL-DMO object model and how best to employ it, the book is a series of tasks DBA's might typically want to accomplish with example code. What I needed was answers to how do you know to use such and such method over some other alternative. Or even a discussion on the pros and cons of techniques employed woud have been more helpful.

I had to do some SQL DMO scripting and could not figure out how to do it using MDSN, so I purchased Wrox's book and found it to be merely a re-write of online docs.

Then I discovered this book and was so overjoyed to find some authors who had actually taken the time to write useful code samples and to go well beyond where MSDN leaves off.

Their code is very well laid out and designed. They have taken the time and care to turn out a quality product.

Strand's poetry hits the mark of greatness at times, but at others -- which to my dismay seems the more prevalent -- floats along on mediocrity. Perhaps I'm missing something. I was nevertheless disappointed by this collection.

DARKER and REASONS FOR MOVING each contain many poems which go very deep into the Self. I respectfully submit that, although the poems as a body did not speak to the other reviewer Skag, very, very few of them are "mediocre."

I have used Rough Guides and similar travel books for years.Information about buses and trains is well researched as are descriptions of youth hostels. That of other accomodations is sparse.A good index is a must in a travel book you carry with you. The index is totally unacceptable.Many important sites are described in detail but are not listed in the index. The maps are good, but it would be frustrating to use this book as a guide while traveling because of the index.

Don't be put off by some of the less-than-glowing reviews of the Rough Guide to Ireland, for this, the sixth edition, remains without question the best in a long line of books geared to the Eire-bound traveler.

Yours truly has traveled to Ireland for eight of the past nine years, and the Rough Guide has been a consistent and consistently helpful travel companion. The recently updated (May 2001) sixth edition is a candid and comprehensive guide, as it covers all the well-known and little-known aspects of the Irish landscape. What distinguishes the Rough Guide from Fodor's, Frommer's, Let's Go, Lonely Planet, et al., is its writing: frank, literate, hard-to-put-down. This reader has all of the aforementioned guides to Ireland (and more), and it's the Rough Guide that receives the overwhelming bulk of my attention. It's the one guide that I turn to again and again, and the one guide that accompanies me to Ireland.

Beyond it's highly literate style, the Rough Guide is particularly strong in the areas of Irish history, and its relationship to the sites that dot the Irish landscape. In recent years the Rough Guide has increased its emphasis on dining and lodging options (this guide is no longer content with hostels as the only way to go). Indeed, the Rough Guide now caters to a broader geographic. In other words, it's not only for those who want to "rough it." Another noteworthy improvement in recent years is the Rough Guide's expanded index, and, even more noteworthy, is its "Contexts" section, which is a wonderful, most informative 75-page section devoted to numerous things Irish: history, wildlife, books, movies, architecture, and more. The contexts section, come to think of it, may alone be worth the publisher's asking price. As for maps, however, this is one of the Rough Guide's shortcomings. While there are more than 40 (and they are clear and helpful), this dedicated reader would like to see more of a particular region. Three pages of maps for all County Donegal, for example, doesn't do justice to a chapter that runs 45 pages. In the future, it would be helpful to have more detailed maps of, say, southwest Donegal, western Donegal, and the like.

Minor criticisms aside, the Rough Guide's sixth edition is a must-have for the serious traveler to the Emerald Isle. While not nearly as slick as some other guides (i.e., Eyewitness), its depth of subject and highly literate style more than compensates. Perhaps it's the ideal guide for the traveler who intends to return to Ireland again and again.

While this is starting to show signs of age, published in 1984, this is still one of the better history of science texts available; an excellent text for an undergraduate class. The focus is primarily after 1650. Where this text succeeds is in its analysis of the social effects of discovery. This is a great primer to other texts that can focus in more detail, such as Charles Gillispie's 16 volume, Dictionary of Scientific Biography, for technical depth, and Anthony Alioto, A History of Western Science for analysis and insight.

I read this book as a requirement for an upper division class in college. This book pulled together everything that I'd been learning: science, art, philosophy, politics. It broadened my view point and showed me that scientific discoveries, philosophical views, art movements--everything we, as people, do influences something or someone else.

Groo Mightier than The Sword

An Oriental king is dyeing on his bed and lamenting he has never seen the pleasure of Groo's destruction, so he sets his three sons out to fulfill that last dying wish with his empire as the reward. Detestation results as the events foment the birth of the newspaper and the lies which are printed as a result throw everything into chaos. Groo only has to slay a few armies instead of his regular diet of slaying everyone - the newspaper is so handy in creating chaos. For those who know him not, Groo is the most feared creature on earth: he's a devastating swordsman and as dumb as a rock, hence anyone who knows his name flees at the sight of him. Some short takes of Ruferto included in the end. Note: the printing quality is generally okay to very good for the series, but this is generally a collection for Groo fans and comic book fans. The binding on some of my copies is broken (these are soft backs) and the print is now and then not the greatest. As a fan, I bought every collection I could, and enjoy them despite this! Not though for long-term pristine collectors though.

I've always seen those Groo comic books, yet never bought one (figuring I don't know the background, etc, so I won't understand it fully). So yesterday, when I saw a Groo graphic novel lying around in my local comic book store, I knew I had to buy it. What can I say? It was worth the wait!

The plot: Groo is a mighty warrior, a barbarian, who just roams the earth with his loyal dog, looking for adventure and trouble. The thing is, Groo is really, really, quite stupid. In this graphic novel, Pipil Khan, a tyrant whose schemes were foiled many times by Groo, is on his death bed. Pipil Khan, however, declares he won't name his heir because he keeps being tormented by memories of Groo. So he issues a quest for his three sons: the son who brings the head of Groo, will be the named heir. So, Etrufio, a great warrior, Ogamio, a great wizard, and Relmihio, a great schemer, start hunting for Groo. The plot gets complicated by the fact that Groo's tales by now reached mythological stature, and everyone think of him as a six headed giant - nobody really knows how he looks like, and also because Groo is just too plain stupid to know somebody actually wants to kill him..
This leads to a very amusing tale..

I wholeheartily recommend this graphic novel, it was very amusing - and I definitely will be reading more about Groo's adventures.

The ending of the cold war makes Asia Pasifik in uncertainty condition, one of the danger flash point is south china sea, this teritory potential to escalated into army confrontation, bacause of that all parties need to makes common understanding trough the Asean Regional Forum (ARF) and makes code of conduct to role this conflict.

This book is a must read for anyone interested in the legal or policy aspects of south china seas maritime boundary disputes. The authors break down the issues simply and understandably in a framework that is easy to grasp. The authors also propose solutions to a very complex regional problem.