This book deals with ancient versions of Visual C++ and is useless today. It provides neither a sound introduction to windows programming or a smooth transition from other tools to Visual C++

Don't expect this to be the only Visual C++ book you will need. However, it should be a good fit if you 1) already understand generic C++, 2) are new to MFC, and possibly even new to Windows programming. After reading this book, you should be able to use the MFC Class and App Wizards, and efficiently reference more detailed VC++ and Windows books such as Kruglinski's "Inside Visual C++", or Beveridge's "Multithreading Applications in Win32", etc. It's also a terrific bargain if you want a cheap, _legal_ version of C++ to use at home, because it comes with VC++ 1.0. It took me approximately 40 hours to read. "Learn Visual C++ Now" does have a few limitations: it's a little out of date, but using a little common sense I quickly converted its 16-or-32-bit-compatible samples to VC++ 5.0. Also, it does not touch ActiveX, COM, ATL, or the Internet, and it deliberately avoids dealing with the (non-MFC) native Windows API.

The correct title should have been "Review Visual C++ Now." If you once knew MFC and needed some quick training wheels to get back on track, this book is very useful. But to start here at the beginning of the learning curve would be folly. I knew MFC a few years back and this book helped me as a quick refresher. For that, I give it 4 stars.

I have used other books in this series and was quite happy with them. But after reading the first few pages in this poorly constructed book, I could see it was only going to frustrate me with it's blatant and carelees errors. Some of the questions were appreciated, but over all it was not worth the time to even scan over it. Too many errors for my liking...Here is a simple explaination found before the 1st chapter.....We all know that the minimum RAM required to install Sever 4.0 is 16MB...right? According to this book..both Workstation and Server require 32MB!!!! DAHHHH

I've read several books on the MCSE courses. All of them have some errors. Some have more than others. This one has more than any I've come across. I do not recommend using this book at all. For the money, there are many other places you can acquire a bank of questions that are substantially more acccurate and relevant.

In comparison to the Exam Cram Networking Essentials I found this publication to be more than adequate. In fact I managed to pass the exam mainly through the questions in the book. Yes, there are errors, but if you know your basics you will pick them out. Yes, the publisher should have proofed it better. But on the whole I found that many of my exam questions had something in common with those in the book. This was a second purchase from this series and it's a cheaper method than Transcender

I am not familiar with the particular family that is the focus of the book and documentary, but having lived in Eastern Kentucky all my life, I can attest to the fact that this family represents the exception and not the rule. It is quite dangerous to generalize that the entire region is full of families living in such conditions. There are poverty-stricken people in every region, even in inner-cities. Documentaries like this serve to perpetuate the "hillbilly" stereotype that is so demeaning and destructive to the proud people of Appalachia. Most of us are not living without modern conveniences, technological advances, or even advanced education. I would have appreciated the spirit of this effort if there had been any attempt to distinguish the experiences of this family from the majority of the population of Eastern Kentucky. Instead, they are presented as a typical example of the "modern" Appalachian family. That is a shamefully deceptive myth.

I am not from Kentucky but I personally know relatives of this family and I have visited this mountain area with them. This is really how this family lives and I find the documentory and the book to be actual fact regarding this situation. Many of the relatives have left the area over the years and do lead fine lives in other states. This would represent the remainder of the family that chose to stay with their roots.

In my opinion, the American Hollow is not the author's literary and photographic perception of life in Appalachia. It is an unbiased view of life in the hollow as seen by one family. The author did not attempt to label the family as being representative of the population in general. Whether the family is atypical of the average Appalachian family is irrelevant. The determination of authenticity can be more appropriately evaluated by the participants, the actual family members depicted in the book and film. If the family and neighbors recognize the depictions as creditable, then the author has done a good job of telling it like it is, without approval or disapproval, but merely acceptance that this is one Appalachian family. I missed the documentary on HBO and have searched high and low for it without success. Would be interested to know where I might obtain a copy...all comments welcomed.

This book was on discount sale at my local bookstore and I see why now. For someone who has never touched Linux or Unix and wants to read a glorified advertising brochure about its potential, this is a good text. It answers the question "what is possible if I were to buy Linux" and maybe "how would I get started if all goes well"...not the real system admin questions like "what can I do exactly" or "how do I do the following...". If you are an experienced Linux user (like even 2 days experience) you'll be offended by this book.

This book is good as an introduction to Linix administration for readers who are completely new to Linix. I concur with a number of the readers in that this book does lack depth. For myself, it was useful in terms of the breadth of information provided. If you are completely new to this operating system, this book suffices as an overview of common administrative tasks. You will get a basic feel for what needs to be done, but you won't learn operating-system specifics for your particular distribution of Linix. My recommendation is that if you are new, use this book as a start. Identify why you are setting up a Linix server (or workstation) and then jump to the appropriate chapters on that topic. The book is well-organized, so you'll have no problem finding your way around. When you're ready, buy another book that focuses on what you're interested in.

When this book came out I was somewhat new to Linux and having a lot of trouble using the other admin. books. I had to have a quick and easy way to get network services up. It was the only book that taught me how to get up all the services I needed.

It covered a lot of important things that are left out of the other books, at least important things to beginners. Most important he has a section on AppleTalk. Other books don't even give hints on this. This is important if you work in publishing, advertising, graphics etc... and need to get a server up in a hurry. What this book does is teach you to get the basic services up and running and then points you to where you need to go to get the real info. I recommend it.

I bought this book in a bit of rush about a year ago because I was starting a new contract with a company upgrading to 5.5, and my experience was with 4.0 and 5.0. For me this book told me nothing I could not find out for myself by a couple of hours playing with V5.5 or just reading the release notes. However a beginner may find it a reasonable introduction, but it isn't post MCSE material.

This book provides excellent summary of the networking aspects of exchange server and an introduction to its application-development capabilities. However, specific programming procedures are not covered.

Excellent book, covers the features of exchange in superb detail. There is no one book that will ever teach you everything about exchange but this book used in combination with Tony Redmonds exchange 5.5 planning and implementation guide will certainly get you well on your way to having an excellent overview of the subject.

you can email me if you have any questions

expat.muller@t-online.de

cheers

A better name for this book would have been stupid stories about characters in knigdome come. All this book does is tell a really bad story that has a really bad pay off. It makes all the characters in kingdome come look really dumb and weak then twists somethings in the kingdome come plot around. For me this book almost took away some of my great regard for the original kingdome come with the dumb things the authors did, you dont mess with something that was really good. This is what happens when you let someone write a sequal that oviously didn't like the prequal. In conclusion dont read or buy this book because if you do you'll regret it!

Kingdom Come was one of the best stories ever and had the potential for a lot of great follow ups but is completely ruined by the Kingdom. Why did Mark Waid think that this was the way to follow up Kingdom Come? There were too many mistakes here to be believed, the story was bad, the art was bad, and all it served was to create a plot device that completely undo's Crisis and is sure to be an even bigger mistake in the future. It also screws up Alex Ross's character designs. Batman doesn't wear his helmet in the final part, why do we want to see an old man in Bat-armor. The Flash's look is reduced to the regular custume with Jay Garrick's Helmet (why, why, why!!!?). In it's defense the filler stories showcasing the Kingdom Come characters decent, enjoyable stories with good art exploring the Kingdom Come future, which is what a KC sequel should have been about. But these aren't enough to forgive Waid and to ever just his writing again.

Overall, I'd have to say I found the book to be an enjoyable read, but if you're expecting storytelling at the level of the original Kingdom Come novel, you'll be sorely disappointed. The initial setup for the creation of Gog and the multiple "deaths" of Superman are all well-handled.

Additionally, I feel that the middle stories were basically interesting and well-drawn. The characters were unique enough and infused with just enough mystery to keep me reading.

It was the final chapter of the book I found most disappointing. Mike Zeck's artwork was simply awful (a shame considering some of the work he turned in back in the '80s). And the story seemed to simply lose steam. I think Mark Waid got trapped by the "trying to accomplish too much" bug. Not to mention that this story effectively cancels out the entire Crisis on Infinite Earths storyline (which happens to be one of my favorite comic book stories ever).

Note that as mentioned previously, Alex Ross has nothing to do with this graphic novel. Don't expect to see any of his artwork contained within.

This is the first of what promises to be a slew of new books coming out on Web Services. As the first book out I guess it's what you'd expect from a book rushed to press. The examples are frequently flawed. If you're already familiar with most of the technology, or you're willing to read the documentation of the WSTK and various Apache documents along with this book you'll find this book a good primer. However, if you're new don't go for this book. The examples tend to be a mixed jumble flowing from COM, Java, NET and even Perl occasionally with in the same example. If you're planning on using all those technologies (and have them all set up) you might be ok. However, if you just want to build a Java webservice, well this isn't the book for you.

This is a good intro to various topics related to web services, probably the best one available so far (admittedly a pretty small field at this time). It covers the standards behind the technology and proceeds to practical working examples of how to put web services into use. There is some coverage of projected future technologies, but mostly sticks to systems that are currently available (skipping, for example, Apache Axis). The author-per-chapter approach means the chapters are somewhat independent, so you can select a topic of interest and go right to that chapter, without having to read everything that came before it. On the other hand, it means some material is covered in multiple places in the book.

This book is another quality edition to the Wrox library. If you are thinking about buying this book, make sure you have some knowledge about XML, since the authors don't delve too much into the basics of XML. However, XML is a huge piece of the Web Services mix.

Be ready to learn some new tech jargon and to memorize and decipher a plethora of acronyms (SOAP, UDDI, XML, etc.) but Web Services are very likely the future of distributed programming, so the knowledge is very valuable no matter how long it takes you to figure it all out.

The only other possible downer about this book is that some of the specifications the authors detail are not full recommendations by the W3C and are subject to change...but my take is that after you learn the technology once, the changes you will see with final drafts are not drastic enough to require further learning.

The Ediacaran fossils are an interesting chapter in the history of life. They are also an interesting chapter in "The Garden Of Ediacara." Unfortunately, this book appears to have more material in it about Mark McMenamin than it does about the subject matter. Is it truly necessary to show a photograph of a hotel in Namibia or the author's official Mexican fieldwork badge in order to discuss the first complex life forms? I don't think so. The reader truly has to pick and choose what paragraphs to read in order to learn about Ediacaran fossils as opposed to the author's travelogues. Much of the material is simply extraneous. Proper editing would have made this book much more interesting and pleasurable.

Most of the previous reviewers were accutate. Roipgly a third of this book is worth reading and actually is about the subject matter - the Ediacara. The other two-thrids of the book is not well written and is mainly about the author, his travels, and almost everythign else about him that most readers would not care about. I recommend the book for those who want to read about the Ediacara. However, most of it is not about this subject. A little less ego would have made this a good book.

Reading this book was a real delight. McMenamin weaves his personal experiences in the field with a fascinating account of his quest to solve the problem of the Ediacara fossils - just what were they, animals, or some other multicellular organism or perhaps a mixture of both? This book is well documented so the reader can follow up the argument from primary sources. For me there is nothing more intellectually stimulating than a following a debate on the cutting edge of science with the underlying philosophical issues fully discussed. This book is an exemplar of science writing at its best. I am in complete sympathy with McMenamin's support of the concept of evolutionary directionality driven by both internal and external factors. In particular, the author views encephalization as a biological attractor. Whole new research programs should follow from this book.

Despite the reviews posted by others, I foolishly bought this book. After reading it, I shipped it back. Very, very introductory book that barely covers the basics. Agree with one of the other reviewers - take a training class or sit with someone already knowledgable.

Good book to get started with a basic (and I do mean basic) introduction to Mercury Interactive's automated testing tool, WinRunner. Authors did a good job of good examples and discussion of the overall concepts of WinRunner and test automation. The binding of the book is NOT paperback though. It is more like academic binding with a plastic binder. This normally doesn't bother me, but being the size of a "For Dummies ..." quick reference and carrying a [cost] price tag, I took issue. Probably would not purchase unless you can't get your company to send you through the training course somewhere.

I'll first start my review out by saying that I need to agree with the other reviewers on the length of the book. It is a bit short. But in spite of its length, for a technical book on a very narrow subject, the price is within the norm.

Now, this book is aimed at the beginner, and anyone with a few months experience at WinRunner should overlook this one. BUT for the NEW WinRunner scripter, it seems to have all the right stuff.

One thing someone buying this book should understand, it that the book is clearly self-published. Don't expect the same glossy pages you'd find with an IDG or Sam's Books kind of publication. You don't get that with this book. Enough said about that. On to the review.

Chapter's 1 and 2 do not say much.

Chapter 3 starts you off with installing the product. I've seen a few people have trouble installing software, so, this would be of use to some beginners. It is funny. It reminds me of the instructions for the installation of Windows 95 in the "Windows 95 For Dummies" book. Same wacky sense of humor.

Chapter 4 is a tutorial that assumes you know NOTHING about WinRunner. It has you recording scripts for MS Notepad, MS Paint, and MS Calculator. It explains what each line in the recorded script does.

Chapter 5 is a second tutorial aimed at introducing and teaching about the "GUI map." It points out some of the pitfalls that even I had trouble with early on. It explains how to capture an application's screens into the GUI map. It walks you through capturing all the screens in MS Notepad.

One interesting note is that it seems like these guys have been around the Mercury tools a while.

Chapter 6 is a list of some 8 GUI map pitfalls and work-arounds for them.

Chapter 7 is the next tutorial. Here they have you recording scripts for the testing of a web site. They start by walking you through nine steps for automating such a site: Web Browsers, Sizing up the Project, Breaking it down into Related Areas, Recording, Debugging, Running the script, Finding and Reporting Bugs, Updating the scripts, and Updating the Scripts for each Build.

Each subject is taken up in detail and they even have you put together a simplistic automated test plan. As with the other tutorials, each WinRunner script line is explained. This is the biggest chapter and since most software these days is web-based, that is a good thing.

Chapter 8 explains how to debug a WinRunner script. Just a short three pages, but it explains some of the "gotcha's" and how to avoid them.

Chapter 9 is another "Pitfalls" chapter. This time you get the problems and solutions for 15 different web testing issues.

Chapter 10 is just a "Why and when do you automate" kind of chapter. It is short.

Chapter 11 has 5 pages of hints and tips. Again, not much new here for the WinRunner Pro, but a lot of info to keep the beginner going.

Chapter 12 is an overview of software testing techniques. It contains the basic info that a tester should know.

There is an excellent SOFTWARE TESTING GLOSSARY with some 200+ testing terms defined. Someone new to test automation or general software testing would find this to be one of the most valuable parts of the entire book. I would even buy it if it were available by itself for a few bucks.

To sum it up, this book has a LOT to offer the WinRunner beginner. It gets him/her started, it teaches him/her "the ropes" and there is not much else out there in third party WinRunner books.

My humble comments on the Piston-deVoto book:

This book is dry and uninspirational. Its exercises do their best to be 'writing' exercises, whereas they have to be exercises for 'hearing' .

Positive Points: Its expansions on Piston's first edition do some logical revisions, altering the ordering of chapters, and making the book more -systematic-; some of the exercises look a lot like the exercises in the initial chapters of Piston's 'Counterpoint', so that's also an indication that the latest DeVoto edition tries to be careful about the contrapuntal dimension of music that you simply cannot ignore if you're asking the student to write exercises other than block-chord progressions.

I'm pretty much a novice in 'Harmony' and 'Counterpoint', but I have to say that among all those books that I have examined, the best one by far was Sessions' book. ***You have to evaluate a harmony text by the types of exercises it has, because a harmony text is nothing other than a simple guide to have you discover certain things for yourself, preferably with the assistance and critical evaluation of an experienced tutor.*** I've tried to benefit from the first and fifth editions of Piston's "Harmony", Gauldin's "Harmonic Practice in Tonal Music", Rimsky-Korsakov's little known "Harmony", Schoenberg's Harmonielehre (A work of genius, which really should by evaluated on a different plane than what we're discussing at the moment.), Hindemith's "Traditional Harmony", and Sessions' "Harmonic Practice". Gauldin's book is a confused appempt to reconcile Schenkerian pedagogy with the general frame of mind that you see in Piston. The result is only un-inspirational, and 'dry'. What are we aiming to do in 'harmony' study? Are we not trying to acquaint ourselves with ears as unprejudiced as possible, with the materials and technicalities of a certain system, which has not just descended from the skies, but has evolved, -as a very efficient and easily comprehensible way of organizing the thought-in-tones? How can we do that? Not by memorizing formulae, or individual 'functions' for sure: You can't learn a language by memorizing sentence-forms. 'Detailed' as the Piston-DeVoto-Gauldin approach may be, it lacks the fundamental element that the student must feel himself free with his exercises, from beginning to end, so that he later has the ability to 'talk', and perhaps, much later, to express himself with/in that language.

Sessions incorporates the figured bass-melody harmonization-figured soprano scheme of Hindemith with the Schoenbergian idea of having the student listen and discover for himself the meaning of harmonic usages by concocting his own structures from the beginning. That's a very interesting synthesis (remember how Schoenberg hated melody-harmonization!), and I must add that he also takes the relevant aspects of Schenkerian theory. From the beginning, he makes you think in contrapuntal terms: You can't do that if your 'book' forces you to think in terms of roman numerals, and in terms of roman-numeral-restrictions that seem to belong not to a liberated understanding of tonality, but to a very curious 'style' within functional-harmony. That's why people have accused the Piston-DeVoto book of having nothing but note-drawing exercises: I concur with them!

Interesting to read the reviews about this book. Just because a book is "hard" or confuses you doesn't mean it's a bad book. Look, I'm a professional musician, composer and teacher. This book is the most complete and best harmony text out there. There's plenty of room for personal preference, and it's probably not fair to say one book is better than another. This book, however, is truly exceptional, and the 5th edition is the best so far.

BTW, I taught myself harmony from this book when I was in high school (with the guidance of a teacher reviewing my exercises) and tested out of all theory at a prestigious university. Basically I got the equivalent of an undergrad theory background from studying this text.

Pay no attention to the reviews bashing this book. True, it IS a hard book, but once you've made your way through this book from cover to cover, your understanding of music and classical harmony will be SO much stronger. The excercizes are thoughtful and offer many challenges, which help to enforce the points taught in each chapter. And it isn't TOO hard. I'm a junior in high school (and a DRUMMER, to boot), and I've really enjoyed this book thus far (I'm on chapter 14). Grab this book. With the proper amount of dedication paid to it, it will serve you well.