This book is basically an Internet version of Mark McCormack's classic, What They Don't Teach You at Harvard Business School. His basic point is how you can get more done in less time, with fewer errors, and less effort. That is essential in any fast-paced situation. Anyone who has wondered how an Internet CEO expands a business rapidly will get valuable details that can be applied to anyone's business in shrinking elapsed time.

If I say all of those nice things, why didn't I rate the book higher? Basically, because it seemed to me that all of Mr. Breier's principles serve to create many transactional interactions, but do relatively little to create and extend trustworthy relationships. Just because someone e-mails me three times a day doesn't mean that I feel any closer to them.

Mr. Breier often seems to confuse more activity with effectiveness. For example, his claim to fame is as a marketing thinker, yet the weakest of his principles had to do with picking brand names. In fact, the name of his business, 'Beyond.com,' seems to me to be a perfect example of a name that will be hard to turn into a meaningful brand. With a better brand name, the cost of building could have been vastly less. He is pleased to report in the book that appearing mostly undressed on CNBC got him lots of impressions for the company's Web site. I agree that it got lots of impressions, but at least some of them had to be bad impressions.

I was particularly surprised that he missed the lesson of The One Minute Manager, which this book is supposed to update. The main idea of that book is to encourage people by catching them doing something right, and praising them. They they get things done without much support, other than helping them learn. Mr. Breier's world would not permit the time to do that. His book is filled with lists of do's and don'ts -- far more than most people will be able to remember, each of which must be executed in ever faster amounts of time. Who would want to live like that?

At a time when Internet business models are rapidly becoming obsolete, I had expected that he would remind people to stay ahead of the competition with evolving business models and to treat and help employees and customers better than anyone else does. I looked in vain for those important priorities. The closest he gets is telling people to 'make feedback your friend.'

The book's concept is a good one, but the execution just isn't there. Those who have trouble speeding up their activities will probably get some good ideas here, though, as a time management book in the Internet age. I gave the book three stars for its ideas on that subject.

After you finish this book, consider what your top three priorities should be to ensure the most rapid and sustained success. How can your organize what you do to accelerate progress in those areas? How can you organize your time to make your work more fun and meaningful to you? How can you improve the lives of those you come into contact with? Feel free to add any other dimensions that you care about to these questions.

I really enjoyed this book. I have a ton of business books, but most of them are high level. They focus on theoretical or strategic issues around operating like an Internet company. "The 10-Second Internet Manager" is a much faster reader and has some great tips that I was able to apply immediately in saving time and getting better results. I think e-mail and meetings are the biggest time sinks of my current company life and this book offers specific tips I can share with others in my department. I also like the fact that they have a Web site, www.10secondmanager.com, that I can check out for more tips.

A very fast read and well worth the investment of time and money...

Wow, what a wonderful and insightful book from Mark Breier! Mark, Puts you in the executives hot seat in the decision making process of companies such as Amazon and Beyond.com go ahead Mark!

I have both Mueller's 14th edition and Minasi's 3rd edition and consider them to be superb. If you are going for an engineering degree in computers and like thick technical explanations interspersed with great useable information get Mueller. But, with Mueller don't expect an enjoyable, easy read. But, if you want an enjoyable easy read with great information, get Minasi.

Some complain that Minasi's information is not up-to-date. Well, neither is Mueller's. (In all fairness, Mueller is more current than Minasi.) If you want cutting edge information in any technology field, you are not going to get it in a static book. For that go online to Tom's Hardware and the like. So, bottom line, if you need highly technical information about computer systems (i.e., pin outs, electrical diagrams, etc.) get Mueller. But, if you just want to learn how to upgrade and repair computer systems or get (and maintain) the background necessary for your A+ certification, get Minasi. Better yet, do like I did and get both!

While the book contains a lot of great information, there are many parts of it that are outdated. The newest processor covered is the Pentium Pro. The Pentium MMX is barely mentioned, and the Pentium II is unheard of.

Mark Minasi has a great writing style. It's easy to understand and not at all boring.

With the help of this book I went for my A+ certification test. I got 80% on the Core(65% is passing) and 84% on the Dos/Windows test (66% is passing).

The software side was also a little lacking. I mostly relied on other materials for that section.

All in all I would have to say that the information that is provides is top-notch. It just needs to be updated by 2 years or so.

I find most books boring and tedious, so I don't read much, but this book was actually fascinating to me. I read it for hours at a time and the amazing thing is it's a technical book. If you didn't know better you'd think you weren't reading anything technical at all. It's even funny at times. I now use it as my PC bible. I recomend it to anyone who doesn't want to work at learning something useful. -Sen

The author despairs of the state of current musical theatre now overtaken by big British musicals. Before the great Broadway musical theatre of Jerome Kern, Rogers and Hammerstein, Jule Styne, Frank Loesser, Cy Coleman and Leonard Bernstein, to name a few, there was opera and operettas. After the era of these great composers and lyricists there is again operetta, in the form of the spectacles (Steyn's analysis, not mine) put on by Lloyd Webber and Boubil and Schonberg. To Steyn the years between the operettas were marked by the fully integrated musical, where book, lyrics and music worked together to tell a story. In Lloyd Webber's operattas, the music ovetakes the lyrics and the book so for Steyn it is regressive rather than progressive, a return an earlier state. But to make his point, he shortchanges Lloyd Webber who he admits came close to the old-fashioned Broadway musical in "Sunset Boulevard" and whose score for "Phantom of the Opera" he calls "perfect." Morever, while he decries the lack of wit and cleverness in current lyricists, he completely shortchanges Stephen Sondheim who he perjoratively nicknames "the genius." Among the many annoying chapters, the chapter on Sondheim is one of the most annoying because Steyn claims that Sondheim deliberately chooses themes unsusitable for musical theatre ("Passion," "Sunday in the Park with George," "Sweeney Todd" and "Assassins"} and is not passionate enough. He completely distorts Sondheim's accomplishments. "Sweeney Todd" is as much about fatherly love and obsession as it is with serial murders; "Company" is one of the most relevant and moving musicals I have seen on marriage; "Merrily We Roll Along" regardless of the fact that it plays backwards (a gimmick also used by Pinter in "Betrayal") shows how far one strays from one's youthful aspirations and dreams; "Follies" looks back on life and love with songs that have become standards such as "Losing my Mind." Steyn himself is a clever enough fellow so he often seems to sacrifice truth for a well-turned phrase. I had a hard time rating this book and gave it four stars because of its breadth and style; for the most part it is a well-written book by a strongly opinionated but witty author, but personally when it comes to Sondheim and the British I think he is just wrong.

The writer below lists several recent musicals as examples of why Steyn is wrong about the state of the musical today: RAGTIME, FLOYD COLLINS, etc. Of course, he unwittingly proves Steyn's point. These are preachy, self-important musicals, drunk with the delusion that they must be profound because they play around with Important Themes. The musical as the great form of entertainment it was--the form that, at its best, raises entertainment to the level of art--is gone. Who writes musical *comedy* on Broadway today? Dance has become almost irrelevant (except in revues), and no one except Sondheim bothers to write witty lyrics in the tradition of Porter or Hart. Now, you can say that this is all "progress." It isn't, though. It's a step backward. The problem with the musical isn't that it went forward, but that it abandoned its roots. Steyn isn't a perfect writer, but he traces the process of this abandonment, and will leave anyone who loves musicals--as opposed to pretentious pageants--feeling justifiably depressed.

It's usually quite lonely being a political conservative as I am, and also a devotee of Broadway musicals since for such a long time even in its now seemingly more "conservative" days of the tradtional book musical, Broadway was always the domain of men who possessed very poltically left wing points of view. But during the heyday of Broadway's golden age, liberals like Lerner and Loewe, Rodgers And Hammerstein etc. knew that their audiences were comprised of diverse viewpoints and hence strove first to just entertain with a minimum of social commentary (when Lerner in his advancing years succumbed to the desire to be pretentious, the results, "1600 Pennsylvania Avenue" and "Dance A Little Closer" ended up disappearing in a week and are now deservedly forgotten). Such is not the case with today's Broadway where not only are all new musicals and plays usually loaded with radical left wing social commentary but even the musical revivals are subject to PC rewrites to satisfy today's narrow audience of those on the far left (case in point, the tamperings in "Damn Yankees" which this book comments on, concerning the tacky aside about J. Edgar Hoover which doesn't work in the musical's book and is the biggest exercise of self-indulgence so typical of the arrogant left wing mindset that dominates today's theater).

As such, it is a wonderful breath of fresh air to find this book by Mark Steyn, a theater critic who happens to be a political conservative, offering a good deal of telling insights as to why Broadway has largely lost its way the last couple decades, though it is very unfair and typical of the left-wing arrogance of some of the writers below that all of his criticisms are rooted in his ideology. To blast today's musicals on their inability to provide a good integrated score and book, as well as good songs is the kind of criticism that a liberal like Richard Rodgers, who walked out of "Hair" after Act One, would have no problem with. (Indeed, apart from "Memory" when was the last time a Broadway song made into the standard repertoire of American popular music?) Steyn proves to be provacative at times, and also very funny as well on a number of occasions that you have to applaud his brilliance even if you don't end up agreeing with him all the time. His chapter on Stephen Sondheim is priceless, showing the strange contradiction of how the works of Sondheim that are so timeless in their appeal ("West Side Story" and "Gypsy") are the ones that are put down the most by his most die-hard fans in favor of his forgettable flops.

One other note to MssOtis@aol.com who likes to use the term "McCarthyism" with the same reckless abandon so typical of the militant left, yet like so many of its members does so in total ignorance of the actual events that spawned the term. One, Senator McCarthy didn't send anyone to jail, and two he had nothing to do with the investigation of Hollywood Communists (all of whom went to jail for the very real crime of contempt of Congress, not their poltical beliefs and the fact that they were leftists or in some cases committed Stalin bootlickers). "McCarthyism" is a term which in its proper context refers to unproved or reckless accusations against someone with the intent to damage or smear merely beacuse of one's political associations. It has nothing to do with sending people to jail for their beliefs. And in its proper context, MssOtis@aol.com by smearing Mark Steyn because he is a conservative who writes for the American Spectator on occasion, is the true practitioner of "McCarthyism" in the end.

This is the textbook for my undergraduate data structures class. In my opinion this book is more suited to graduate level study, or for very experienced C programmers. The author assumes that you have a very solid grounding in C language structure and discrete math, his examples are often cryptic and incomplete leaving it up to the reader to figure out what is meant. In my opinion this book is not well suited for learning the fundamentals of data structures, and I'm still looking for one that is.

As a C.S. major, I had to buy this book for my class. The author uses concise vocabulary and explanations, and gets straight 2 the point. The best part of this book are the ref. that are at the end of each chapter. To understand and appreciate the richness of this book, you have to have an understanding 'bout the topic of data structure (preferably in C++). The author does a very good explanation about the topic of graphs, the logic used is simple by following his examples and explanation. The only reason I rate the book 4 stars rather than 5 is the # of examples are limited and there are no solutions for the problems.
Overall, I would recommend this book to any CS student that wants to go one step further in the Data Structure analysis.

As a computer science student having this book for (dinner) my course in structures and algorithms, my comment will not be of the fool proof theoretical academical type.
I find this book very useful.
It has a lot of code examples, and in my oppinion it is perfect
for those who has some experience writing C++ code.
The implementations rely heavily on templates, which
(will effectively scare away the remaining students)
is actualy irrelevant when it comes to most of the algorithms.
I say this even if our course only covered 60-70 % of the book.
Luckily for me, I already loved templates when I started the course, but I dont think this was the case for most of my fellow students.
The book is vell organized, and it has a lot of "easy to understand" drawings all the way through.
It starts with a tutorial on advanced C++ topics for those who just finished their ABC book in C++ programming
(like Deitel&Deitel).
The code examples are very professional, tight and bug free.

If you are happy writing C code, this book is not for you.
There is some use of STL througout the book, but it does not require you to be an expert on the topic.
I think it has a deep and thorough examination of all the topics, and it covers more structures and algorithms I could dream of for at least the next 2 years.

I recommend this book to all C++ code writing engineer students
(who are not afraid of irrelevant templates)

I have read many books on financing and founded my own tech company securing funding from angels, VCs, and investment banks. This book was non-practical and filled with too much marketing fluff with page after page of trademarked terms that made no sense whatsoever. I know for a fact that if any of my VCs read this book they would literally laugh. It was like Tim Robbins trying to write about venture capital. The bottom line is that investors don't give you money based on what you say but rather what you do -- walk the walk.

I'm a business consultant and help to launch start-ups and new (growth) products for existing companies. Almost without exception, most companies I see need capital. I read "Financing the New Venture" a while back and found it to be the most insightful book on how to finance new ideas I have ever seen. In fact, I now make it madatory reading before I even begin discussions with a potential client. Like Warren Buffet, I am very concerned about the current financing enviroment; and don't invest in (or conuslt with) technology companies that don't make traditional investment sense. This book perscribes a sane step by step process for accessing short and long-term financing. The reason for this review is that an associate brought to my attention the book review from the reviewer in Boston, who "skimmed" the book and found the book only relevant for donut shops. If that reviewer had actually read the book, the reviewer would have discovered the author's business model is not only relevant to high tech, but that THIS MODEL will be the only model worth investing in when the internet-style investment behavior of Venture Capitalists plays itself out.

This book provides in-depth information about raising capital through use of venture capital, banks, investors & angels. It discusses the motivation behind each, what they expect, and how to structure your business plan to the specific financing you seek. Every person who has seen it in our entrepreneurial library has liked it. We are purchasing additional copies to meet demand!

This book is a wonderful guide to bands and artists deemed "alternative" by the editors of Spin magazine--The book's forward provides the best definition I've read/heard of the alternative genre, and it includes such diverse acts as Abba and Kronos Quartet. My high school library had a copy of it, and I think I had it checked out for the majority of my four years there. The library at my college doesn't have it, and I've considered buying it, but it's already become pretty dated since its publication in 1995. There is no mention of Tricky, Portishead, or Radiohead; Debut is the only one of Bjork's solo albums in the book; they even say something like "What will Natalie Merchant be doing now that 10,000 Maniacs have broken up?" It's a wonderful authority on musicians like Neil Young and David Bowie, whose discographies can be intimidating to a relative young 'un like me. There's also a great piece on PJ Harvey, whom I will consider underrated until there are VH1 tribute concerts in her honor. Anyway, if you're interested, check out the Northfield High School library.

It's difficult to review this book without commenting on all ofthe mud being slung around. I first want to clarify someAs for thebook itself, to its best merit, it provides a great eduaction to readers about obscure artists that they perhaps would not come across otherwise. What? Druan Druan, the Go=Go's, ABBA and the Culture Club were included in an "alternative" guide? B.F.D. I'm glad that some obscurities like Can, Sun Ra, Gang of Four, the Residents, Glenn Branca and New York's No Wave scene were given in-depth features. Also, some of the writing is quite elequent and hysterical. My favorite critics are Forced Exposure founder Byron Coley and Simon Renyolds. It's true that some 1995 trends are found, (the lounge revival, the romance of early 90's indie rock-"its golden years, to name a few.) It's also interesting to see how the book, in general, places so much acclaim on alternative rock, which would later be no longer considered a radical force of cultural change.

And as for its faults, aside from differences of opinion on certain reviewed albums, it's difficult for me to accept Spin's championing of the punk movement and underground culture in the book, since it is the same magazine that stated that fanzines are "by losers, for losers." In general, I don't read the magazine because it's more dependent on pop culture trends than music,(the "Rolling Stone of the 90's",) it claims in its press releases. Unfortuantely, it's become popular for other music magazines to follow that premise, as fashion spreads can be found in Alternative Press and URB. I also found Wesibard's introduction to be as vague and confused as the "Alternative" label itself is.

In general, enjoy life more and try to explore some of the obscure artists featured in the book. END

I found the book to be informative in listing a majority of artists and bands whose songs you will never hear on "commercial" radio. These include the Modern Lovers, Pere Ubu, Replacements, the Shaggs, and much much more. Without this book, I would not have known about them.

One thing I found unnecessary was that the book included AC/DC, ABBA, Cheap Trick, Black Sabbath and the Police; They were hardly alternative in my view. In spite of that, a majority of obscure bands grace the pages of the book, so it's not a total disappointment.

Despite most of the critics' snootiness and know-it-all style of writing, some lists songs as they critique the albums of the bands. The listing of the songs was really helpful and allowed me to listen to each band's unique musical style. After all, you are your own critic.

If you can bypass the faux literal pretensions of the critics, you will find the book to be a good guide to "alternative"/non-commercial music.

I am trying to learn Spanish and this book is helping to familiarize me with all aspect of the language, however I am finding so many mis- prints and wrong answers in the answer key that it is making me doubt everything else I am trying to learn. Seriously, did anyone edit or check answers in this book? The author and publishing company should be embarrassed. I would not reccomend this edition to anyone unless they were just brushing up on their Spanish and would know a mis- print when they see it.

I don't know how this book made it to the printer's with so many mistakes. I'm currently in Chapter 20 and estimate that there's been at least 25 errors including the text and answer guide!

Every time there's an error, I spend 10 minutes trying to understand where I'm off-track. The errors aren't typos, but just plain wrong. It's very frustrating.

The Complete Idiot's Guide... Is an excellent book that graphically and linguistically is very easy to learn from. It covers all areas of the Spanish language thoroughly in a simple, yet explanatory way on spots where a few people are prone to miss things. There's extra tidbits and facts noting exceptions of certain rules when trying to form sentences in Spanish that many books will fail to tell you. It's designed to walk begginers all the way to intermediate, and can very well guide intermediates fully into the advanced stages. All topics of sentence formation are covered and those technical english terms like "superlative sentences" or "past present progressive" that you'll adventually have to understand trying to learn the Spanish rules of sentence formation are always explained fully. There's no need of having a grammarbook beside you. And best of all, it stays away from technical jargon as much as possible and constantly gives scenarios of how what you're learning in Spanish now, will come into practical application when actually in a Spanish Speaking country. All while without straying from the information on the subject it's trying to give. An excellent book! A walk-through, tuturial, and personal guide to the full structure of the Spanish langauge.

Hi, I bought this book in order to understand better LDAP and in order to install OpenLDAB. Well, this book is not enought compared to the free reference at the openLDAP, so forget to buy this one and look another book.

Reading this book was my introduction to LDAP. It stressed first concepts well but then began to repeat them over and over, meanwhile glossing over more advanced issues.

Some of the grammatical constructs in the book were difficult to manage at best and should have been caught by an editor.

Overall it was somewhat useful, but a much better book is "Understanding and Deploying LDAP Directory Services" (Howes, Smith and Good). I recommend it to anyone who has been tasked with implementing an LDAP project.

Not a bad LDAP overview but I was looking for something more in-depth into the LDAP protocol.

Let's celebrate! Mark Levine has written his first book, Debt, yet again!

OH NO! -- "Some devastation has struck the soul and the Earth alike, and in Enola Gay, his second volume of poems, Mark Levine surveys the disaster." He's like the Angel of History or soemthing? Levine is a fine writer but there really aren't that many top-notch poems here; it's just the same tricks over and over, the same exhausted tone ad nauseum. Sure sure sure postmodern malaise. Please. We're bored. Do we have to be boring?

He makes poem proud of itself.

What else do you want?

I am using this book in a class on Data Structures and Algorithms. This book has a lot of material and code in it which makes it good. However, his explanations are terrible. They are ambiguous and unclear. If you can teach yourself from the code, then this is a good book for you. If your looking for clear explanations, look somewhere else.

When going into my Java Data Structures class (the third in a series of Java programming classes), I had averaged a B+ in my first two classes, which covered the basics of Java from boolean operators to recursive programming and simple data structures. In those classes we used a book called "Java Software Solutions" by Lewis & Loftus, a GREAT beginning programming book. It explained each aspect of programming perfectly and even responded to e-mails of questions regarding the text. So far, using this book in my current class, I have had significant trouble with it. Explainations are fuzzy, examples are confusing, and the style of programming is just plain messy. A typical programming book would use clean programming techniques, making it easy to understand what is going on. This book uses very confusing style and also uses the shortest way possible to write a loop or function which is not a good way to teach a student. Eventually, with enough practice, one will be able to shorten their programs, which can be a good thing, but is not good practice for one just learning Java, or even for intermediate students. This book is designed for the experienced programmers or could be used for an honors college Data Structures course, but way too advanced for the normal Computer Science student. My advice to professor, look elsewhere for your text.

I took this class with the author, the book and class were excellent. The java that is covered is done in a much better way than any other java book I have. The book explains with good examples to get the reader to understand topics like runtime, big oh and the collections api and many different structures. I'd recommend this book to anyone taking data structures.