Wayne D. Ford, Ph.D., author, "Breakthrough Technical Recruiting" docwifford@msn.com

Frequently diagrams include acronyms for which no explanation is offered, as if the figure was shoveled in from somewhere else. There is no glossary of acronyms and many are missing from the index.

An entire chapter is spent on RIP1, with redundant statements about the lack of VLSM support and obsolete status.

My experience was that issues of technical sublety were as often muddied as they were explained.

There is good info in this book, too, but considering the Cisco name, I expected much better.

Overall, this book does a good job of explaining the various knobs that Cisco supports for the protocols discussed. However, in attempting to also cover the bits and bytes of these protocols, the book makes far too many mistakes.

For instance, on page 269, when discussing BGP's UPDATE message, the book says that the Withdrawn Routes field consists of, "... triples, with length being one octet, and indicates the number of octets in the prefix field." First of all, the so-called "" construct is not a "triple"! Second, the length element does not indicate the "number of octets" in the prefix field, rather, it indicates the number of significant bits!

On the other hand, this book does a much better job of explaining various protocol features at a high level. In particular, its discussion of BGP4 path attributes is very good. Much better than RFC 1771 in fact!

In summary, get your bits and bytes from the RFCs and use this book to understand when to tweak the Cisco's knobs for its various protocol implementations.

For example, the most important reconfiguration item available is called LISA, and it does not appear in the index.

Sobell focuses on basic Linux programming and development, rather than installation, setup, hardware, etc., so his book makes a good companion volume to the "sysadmin" handbooks on the market, which often come up short on details about the OS language and utilities.

You want info on UFO's? Rent seasons 1-9 of "The X-Files" on DVD or the X-Files movie, "Fight The Future". At least you'll be able to stay awake, and it won't cost you nearly as much money.

CE-5, the newest book by internationally acclaimed UFO expert Richard Haines, Ph.D. (with Steven Greer, M.D., and Mark Rodeghier, Ph.D.), is a professional, riveting, and in places, mind-boggling resource for serious UFO researchers.

For me, reading CE-5 was an absorbing and engrossing experience.

In 435 pages, in two major parts, CE-5 chronologically presents abstracts of 242 of the world's most fascinating UFO sighting reports. Part I discusses apparent communications between witnesses and UFOs; Part II discusses apparent communications between witnesses and alien beings.

But what exactly do you get when you read CE-5? A lot.

Case 14: A disk 1,000 feet in diameter and 12 feet thick was seen by multiple witnesses as it crossed 150 miles of Minnesota countryside over a period of five hours. The moment a witness switched his truck's headlights on, the object changed color from white to red.

Case 35: A witness ran to within about 20 feet of a landed UFO. Two days later he became very ill - reduced body temperature, black vomit, diarrhea with blood in the stool - and two weeks later he died, supposedly from gastroenteritis, although a nearby scientific organization said his symptoms were similar to those caused by a lethal dose of gamma radiation.

Case 39: Two witnesses shined their flashlights at a mysterious aerial object that had landed. The flashlight beams bent up 90 degrees about 18 inches in front of the object.

Case 49: The crew of a US Army tank in Germany, at night, saw a bright UFO flying beneath the overcast. When the object approached, the tank driver flashed the tank's searchlights, and the UFO echoed the flashes. At one point the UFO appeared extremely bright but even then it did not illuminate the clouds above it or the ground beneath it.

Case 75: A medical doctor flashed a 500,000 candlepower spotlight at a UFO, in sequences of three, two, and five flashes. The UFO echoed each sequence, and this apparent communication was witnessed by 39 bystanders.

Case 110: Russian jet fighters intercepted a UFO, fired their machine guns at it, but the UFO zig-zagged and out-maneuvered the interceptors.

Case 183: A police officer drove up to within 40 feet of a landed UFO and saw red lights inside the object. When the police car's headlights finally illuminated the object, the red lights began flashing. Then the police car's engine died and the officer's flashlight failed to work. The officer was unable to account for about 30 minutes of his shift around the time of the sighting.

Case 207: A priest and several dozen other witnesses waved to human-like "people" standing on a UFO that hovered near the mission. The "people" waved back. This apparent communication continued for about three hours.

(Another report in this Part of CE-5 describes a man who jabbed his knife at a "creature's hairy body," only to feel the knife glance off as if it had struck a rock. Still another UFO-related fight involved a young man and a being the witness said "felt like metal." And a South American truck driver fired his pistol at three 13 to 16 feet tall "beings in human form" that exited a landed UFO.)

Case 216: In Italy, a farmer saw a UFO land and then saw three "dwarfs" emerge from it. The farmer, who heard the "dwarfs" talking to each other in an unknown tongue, got his shotgun. It failed to fire when he attempted to pull the trigger, and the gun suddenly felt so heavy that he had to drop it. He felt paralyzed. The "dwarfs" took some of the farmer's rabbits, jumped back into the UFO, and as it flew away, the farmer fired his shotgun at it.

Case 218: (This event is too frightening to describe here, but it is one of the most well-documented UFO-alien-gunfire cases on record.)

Case 223: (This event is also too frightening to detail here. It culminated in the witness' death from leukemia two months later.)

In spite of its often terrifying content, CE-5 reads quickly and easily because its abstracts are short and concise. Abstracts are followed by citations, and often by rhetorical questions or comments. (Those comments helped me see a couple of technical subtleties I'd overlooked.) More references and citations are given at the end of chapters and major parts. The book is indexed and has tables of statistical data.

CE-5 is clearly the best review of the world's most intriguing communications-related UFO reports, all condensed to essentials and accompanied by photos, sketches, and diagrams. (Even though I've been an avid UFO researcher since 1947 and have read about 125 books on the subject, most of CE-5's reports were new to me.)

But while I think CE-5 is vital reading for most adults, I also think its reports are too frightening for elderly people susceptible to stroke or heart attack, and for children.

(To underscore my concern here, please understand that I'm a military veteran, a pilot, I'm well grounded in the physical sciences, and I'm a technical researcher and writer -- see http://www.principiapub.com -- but I confess that I found myself _quite_ disturbed by several CE-5 reports.)

In summary, CE-5 is more than a compelling and often stunning series of UFO reports. It is also more than an enormous feat of technical research by Drs. Haines, Greer, and Rodeghier.

My hope is that the public and the scientific community will soon recognize CE-5 for what it really is, the most professional contribution yet toward understanding and solving this century's greatest scientific mystery.

Bob

Locke begins the "Essay" by rejecting and dispensing with the notion of "innate ideas," which basically says that we are born in possession of certain principles, elements of knowledge, or maxims that help us orient ourselves in the world. Through long and drawn out (one downside of Locke is his insistency on detail and repetition) examples and arguments, he attempts to prove that when we are born, we have absolutely nothing intelligence-wise, to recommend us. This is what is popularly referred to as the 'tabula rasa' theory, that when first born, our minds are like "empty cabinets" or "white sheets" of paper - which experience and experience only furnishes with our ideas about the world. His goal here is to get people to question their assumptions about the world, to ask questions and decide for themselves based on reason and experience, how best to interact with the world.

Locke says that the only two sources of all human knowledge are sensation (that information which is passively thrust upon our senses) and reflection (when we consider and think about that sense data, and about our own thoughts). From these "simple ideas," we are able to combine and recombine thoughts to form "complex ideas" and use clear and distinct language to express them to other people. This social aspect of this philosophy is something that really fascinated me about Locke. While focusing on the individual's growing base of knowledge, he is all the while trying to orient people to functioning in society. Saying that the end of all knowledge serves two purposes, viz., honouring God, and being morally responsible, Locke goes on to show how human life often works counter to these goals, with a view to correcting them.

Another of his famous formulations, one all too familiar to Americans, as part of our national idealism, is that the basic state of nature of humanity consists in the "pursuit of happiness." Compared to Hobbes, for whom the state of nature consisted in the attempt to attain greater and greater power over others, Locke's state of nature seems relatively benign - however, he goes to great lengths to show how the pursuit of happiness often leads to reckless and wanton behaviours, ultimately destructive both to self and society. The idea that we must examine our desires and discipline them to the greater good is something that many of us lose sight of, and is an element central to his system.

Briefly then, a couple of other items that might be of interest to someone thinking about picking up Locke's "Essay": His philosophy of language is one that still has currency and influence on linguistic theory all the way to Saussure and the post-structuralists; Locke's manner of addressing cultural and gender diversity is progressive, but vexed, which makes for fascinating work in trying to determine his stances toward non-white European males. Locke's constant invocation of gold in his examples can be maddening, which can only mean that there is some significance therein; and finally, his other hobby-horse, so-called "monstrous births" and their status in the human race bears heavily and still importantly on the debate over a woman's right to choose. All this and so much more awaits you - over 600 pages of Lockean goodness. Beware though, Locke is extremely repetitive and can get bogged down in what, for us to-day, may seem common sense notions. But this is quintessential reading, nonetheless, for everyone interested in the formation of the modern self.

Its not that Locke got everything right, but he does at least point us in the right direction.

The software with run in Windows 98 and 2000 with no install problems. The installation took only a few minutes and I was up and learning. There is a README.1ST that is a must read before beginning the installation.

The package includes 15 cyber class courses from the installation to the backup and it takes Netscape to run, which is also included in the package. Every thin is include and you can watch the experts and then try the labs yourself.

The package is self-paced and you can learn and re-learn at your own leisure. Also include is the Red Hat Linux System Administration Handbook, a 400-page reference manual that goes perfectly with the software.

The book covers installation, booting, shutdown, administration, networking, the internet and more. Komarinski is a RHCE, which lends credibility to the package. Although some of the topics are for the more advanced users, there is plenty for the beginner.

Remember rushing through the lesson will cause you to miss some of the finer points of the topics. Overall a very good value for the money.

This book is an enjoyable jaunt down the Mississippi with Mark Twain on a riverboat. The main characters were enjoyable, and I especially enjoyed the portrayal of Twain. The plot was a little weak, however. The information on riverboats and the river was interesting, but too much attention was paid to it, with little advancing the story. Still, once a second body is found, the plot kicks into high gear. I was caught off guard by the revelation of the killer, but everything fit together logically.

I'm looking forward to reading the rest of the books in this historic mystery series.