I started this book and it took me about five days to read up to page thirty. I absolutely hated this book. I would not recommend this book to anyone.

When I first started this book I was lost, It seemed so busy, I was having trouble remembering which woman he had what with. But I stayed with it. I found it a nice slow read. I liked the story. It wasn't a hopping page turner but I don't think it was meant to be. It was a good story about love, friendship and growing together. I enjoyed it.

Dawn
MBC

This book was really good, I admit it starts out slow but once it gets going it's really good!

I'll be honest, the only reason I even continued reading this book is because of the reviews below that promised a knockout ending. That it certainly is, but the question is: is it worth sifting through the 250 pages before it of one dimensional heros-and-villans warfare, with basically a bunch of good guys running around and using bigger and badder guns to tear their opposition of hundreds of human lives apart? I borrowed the book and read it in my spare time, so it was worth the read for me. Most of the first 50 pages consists of operatives telling thier teammates that they are going in to secure the area and their teammates telling them to "have fun" Then there's a breif respite. Some "character developement," the set-up for the next mission, the mission, another respite, and then the finale. This is all punctuated by the cookie-cutter "greedy, power- hungry politician" schtck, like RESIDENT EVIL villians in space.

I am not against violent sci-fi novels ( I love the DOOM seies) but BRUTE FORCE is simply a by-the-books, formulatic romp that simply isn't any fun until the end. There's plenty of action, but there's so much it's saturating, desensitizing, and not told with any flair or originality.

But at 270, large-print, paperback pages that don't contain anything deep or profound, it's easy rading. During the beginnings of these summer days, if you dig on bringing on a little bit of weight to your video gaming experience, it just might be your ticket. But Dean Wesley Smith is capable of far better

Wow, I think I enjoyed the novel more than the game. About 3/4 through the game and I had seen it all, it was fun but played out, yes I beat it but it wasn't a thriller. Now the novel on the otherhand MADE you press on to find out the ending... and it explains itself perfectly. I suspect not many gamers read a lot, but if you pick up just one novel this summer make it Brute Force: Betrayals by Dean Wesley Smith:)

There was never a time when I was confused about what was going on. You know, how when you read something and you forget whose who and generally you pick up later what you missed but there is that period of time where you keep reading for the sake of reading? Not so here with Brute Force, it just is well thought out and well executed.

Brute Force the game: 8/10

Brure Force: Betrayals: 9/10

Brute Force Betrayals by Dean Wesely Smith is #2 on my all time favorites it will show you a world completly unknown to us and imediatly get you sucked in with tons of gore and action. It has an extremely shockig ending that you never thought would happen. Dean Wesely Smith is an extremely talented author who also wrote the trillagy The Tenth Planet, which I also recomend.

I travelled through Russia from Magadan to Minsk one month in July/August 2000 and had the lp Russia, Ukraine & Belarus as a travel book. After having used several lp guide books I must say, that this one is a very bad one. The information is old, some at least 5 years, there are wrong or missing adresses of hotels and museums, wrong and inconsistent information about prices, locations and shedules and even some errors in the maps. Especially the prices for travel and accomodation given in the book are about twice the actual price. A lot of cheap hotels are missing but the book is just full of 5-star super-expensive hotels. The part about Siberia and the Russian Far East is much too short. But the worst thing about that book is - in my eyes - the sometimes really unrespectful and unfriendly (to the Russian people) language chosen especially in the captions and comments. I never read that before in a lp-book. One star for the good maps of Moscow and Petersburg and one because it is pretty much the only book covering whole Russia.

This review is a follow-up to my May 13, 2000 review and only addresses the Ukraine portion of this guidebook. My wife and I did spend our entire summer in Ukraine and used this guidebook as our travel bible. We found the information up-to-date and accurate. We also generally agreed with the advise which I think is remarkable since, with three months there, my wife took me to see just about everything the book suggested doing in Kiev and many things it merely discussed but did not recommend. Additionally we also traveled throughout western Ukraine for two weeks. In fact, we went on a group tour of western Ukraine and our guidebook turned out to be a big hit. Everyone on the bus wanted to read it. A fellow traveler who had brought Let's Go Eastern Europe 2000 with him agreed that Lonely Planet was much better. Until something newer comes out, with respect to Ukraine guidebooks I think Lonely Planet can't be beat.

My wife and I will be spending the summer in her home town of Kiev. Since I am an American, I want to go with as much information as possible so that I can get the most out of my time there. To this end, I bought Let's Go Eastern Europe 2000 and Lonely Planet's Russia, Ukraine & Belarus 2000 books. We have reviewed both books and with respect to Ukraine, we find Lonely Planet's travel guide superior. It contains a lot more information about Ukraine than the Let's Go book. Of course the Let's Go book covers many more countries than the Lonely Planet guide so this fact is not surprising.

However, the Lonely Planet book is also more up-to-date. For instance, the Let's Go book makes very wrong predictions about the presidential election that took place last fall. It also contains exchange rates from last summer.

Meanwhile Lonely Planet not only talks about the actual result of last fall's elections, it tells how this set of elections significantly affects the country. My wife's parents generally confirm the observations Lonely Planet offers. Lonely Planet's guidebook also mentions several news events that are only a few months old.

I am very satisfied with the Lonely Planet travel guide and considerably more satisfied than I am with a leading alternative. I am looking forward to using it.

After having read some of the reviews given to this Bible, I was concerned about the issue of mercy and grace. Paul teaches us that grace can be taken as far as holiness can be lived. The articles that are found here really urge you toward holy living. It has to be recognized that even though we are free from the law, God hates sin. We cannot go forward and press into the throneroom of grace without a right heart. The Bible helped me recognize that God accepts me despite my sin, but at the same time requires me to press on in holiness. I would recommend it to anyone that wants to be blessed by the Pentecostal/Charismatic theologians of the twentieth century. I have had many of these men as professors one time or another, and even with their hard stance on holy living their love is beyond compare.

I read the reviews of the Full Life Study Bible and felt I had to respond, especially to the woman from Georgia's view that this study Bible is filled with "hate."

This study Bible reflects the work of a Pentecostal missionary, the late Donald Stamps. Various other Pentecostal scholars also worked on the study Bible including prestigious scholars such as Dr. Stanley Horton, Dr. French Arrington, and Dr. Robert Shank.

My only complaints against the Full Life is that the notes were written by one man so they are not as plentiful as say the NIV Study Bible. I also would favor a more literal translation such as the NASB or the NKJV then the NIV although I am not opposed to the NIV. The study notes reflect the theology of the classical Pentecostal movement. For a more charismatic study Bible see the Spirit-Filled Study Bible published by Thomas Nelson and edited by Dr. Jack Hayford.

I enjoyed this Bible. I have been looking for a Bible that contained the pentecostal/charismatic notes. It also helps me understand the Arminian theological perspectives on different passages of the Bible.
This study Bible has great articles like "The ministry leadership gift for the church", "Election and predestination", "sanctification", etc...
This study Bible does emphasize holiness. But do not misunderstand this study Bible as a "legalistic" study bible. This Bible does not emphasize that good deeds grants you salvation. But it does emphasize how Christians should live in a dark world and how we are to be a light.
I do recommend this if you are looking for a study Bible with pentecostal/charismatic/amrinian perspectives.

I'm a Santa Clara University student, and I'm in the class taught by the author of this book. I'm an experienced programmer who knows PHP, ASP, Java, VBA, and some C and C++, and I must say, this book is very confusing to follow. It offers very little examples and explinations; the accompanied cd-rom doesn't make it easier at all. You won't be able to understand half the slides presented on it without him physically explanining it in front of you; even if you were in his presence, you'll still have a big ? mark on the top of your forehead. For those who enjoy the 'hello world' approach, don't bother with this book; the only words you'll be seeing in the end are 'hello class repeat'. I'm very sure there are other books than this that can teach assembly more fluently.

Put simply, this book is terrible. The lack of examples throughout the text keeps those without prior knowledge of the subject from fully grasping the concepts. Dr. Lewis failed miserably with this book. Please do not purchase it unless you would like very expensive fire wood.

I have been teaching X86 assembly language for 6 years as an undergraduate course in Computer Engineering in San Jose State University. The students have been always concerned about the value of this course after graduation. Many have the false perception that learning assembly is no longer needed since most of our programming is done nowadays with high level languages. Last semester I introduced assembly language as a tool to program embedded systems and I used the first few chapters of this book to demonstrate to students the fact that 98% of processors sold are embedded. As a result, most students selected their class project based on one of the embedded examples shown in this book. For students who needed more X86 details, I referred them to a complementary text book. But, for those who needed to understand the fundamental link between c/C++ and assembly, this book was very helpful. I would recommend this book for Juniors or Seniors who would like to have a better understanding of the high level and assembly language interface. To maximize the effectiveness of this book, I recommend the use of more complex real-life design examples, the use of commercial Assemblers, and more emphasis needs to be given for embedding assembly into high level language and vice versa.

I hate that it was told from 1st person POV, and that really
took away from the book. Also, there were almost no familiar characters. I only suggest this book if you are a die-hard Barb Lightner fan.

TITLE- SPIDER-MAN: EMERALD MYSTERY
AUTHOR- DEAN WESLEY SMITH

SUMMARY- A PERSON DIED IN THE ALLEY AND THERE WAS A RADIATION SPOT NEXT TO HIM. THEN THERE WERE WEIRD ROBBERIES AFTER THE KILLING HAPPENING. SPIDERMAN AND BARB LIGHTNER JOIN UP TO STOP THE WEIRD ROBBERIES. THEY FOUND OUT WHO THE CRIMINAL WAS THAT WAS CAUSING ALL THE WEIRDNESS IN THE CITY FOR THE LAST 2 WEEKS. THEY FOUND OUT THAT A EMERALD IS THE CAUSE OF HIS POWERS. THE PERSON WHO DIED WAS ON A CASE SO HE SAW THE EMERALD COME FROM THE SKY AND SO DID THE CRIMINAL, SO THE CRIMINAL SHOT HIM IN THE ALLEY AND GOT THE POWERS.

IMPORTANT SCENE- WHEN BARB WENT TO SHOOT THE EMERALD SPIDERMAN SAID, "NO! I SHOUTED AND TRIED TO KNOCK THE GUN ASIDE BY JUMPING IN FRONT OF HER." THIS IS IMPORTANT BECAUSE IF SPIDERMAN DIDN'T JUMP IN FRONT OF HER SHE COULD HAVE DIED.

OPINIONS- THE BOOK WAS GREAT. IT HAD A GOOD CLIMAX AND A GOOD RESOLUTION. IT HAD A GOOD ENDING LIKE ALL BOOKS WOULD END IN AN ACTION BOOK.

RECOMMENDATIONS- I WOULD RECOMMEND THIS BOOK TO MY PEERS BECAUSE EVERYBODY LIKES SPIDERMAN.
I WOULDN'T RECOMMEND THIS BOOK TO ADULTS AND OTHER SCHOOLS BECAUSE THEY MIGHT THINK IT'S NOT WORTH READING AND IT'S NOT A GOOD BOOK TO READ IN SCHOOLS.

PONDER THIS- SPIDERMAN ALWAYS WINS, THE CRIMINALS ALWAYS HAVE HOSTAGES AND THEY ALWAYS LOSE

I was surprised to see the reviews of this book were so bad! I spotted this book at Borders the day after buying the movie on DVD. One of the reasons I bought it was because it was the only Spider-Man book available.

But once I got home, I didn't regret the purchase for a minute. The author did an excellent job characterizing Spidey, the mystery was very well done and the siege towards the end was wonderful. This book actually got me interested in Spider-books again.

My only complaint was the illustrations being so... well, they were bad.

But the book was highly enjoyable. I suggest people read excerpts or browse in bookstores, rather than use reviews from this site when considering the purchase.

Geonn

Less than half of this book really deals with what the title suggests. Chapters 6, 7, and 8 are the only things of value to someone already familiar with the UML. The previous chapters try to give the database designer an overview of using UML for all project aspects; however, this is done much more cleanly in other books like UML Distilled or Visual Modeling With Rational Rose 20XX and UML.

The authors also present things with assumptions made about how the organization is structured: separate application and database design teams. This slant requires that the reader translate what is written to their particular situation. A more useful book would have stated principles that can be applied to various organization structures with appropriate practices.

Also, there is no advice given as to how to actually implement any of these UML extensions for database design in the available tools. This makes the ideas presented hard to put in practice and makes the book much more theoretical than practical.

Bottom line, there is not enough unique information here for the book to stand on its own. It would be better to roll this information into texts like the ones I mentioned at the beginning, and also give examples using currently available tools.

Despite the previous reviews of this book I decided to read it and am glad that I did. The authors took me through a thorough yet easily understood path of both UML and database design. Not being an expert in UML, but having a background as a data analyst, I found the book useful to understand UML as it pertained to how I would use it. The callouts for database designers were very helpful and by following a consistent real-world example, I was able to understand how I would design my databases using the UML. I now understand that I don't have to know or even use the entire language to succeed, but only the parts that are relevant at the time I am designing and now I can be on the same page as my development team too.

I wanted a book that would show how to start using UML for data modeling. This did. I too liked the DB Designer sidebars and the detailed case study. I thought the case study "story" sections were a nice change of pace from most software books' straight technical style. (And I've see such stories happen on the job too often.) This book worked for me.

There must be some kind of curse with books on objects and persistence. After being deceived with some book by Sessions some years ago, now I got seriously disappointed with this one. This 300-page book suffers from the "big wait" syndrome: it introduces the major topics again and again, each time maybe being a little more specific in some areas, but does not delve into central stuff until 80 pages have happened. That is reinforced by a broken rythm and too short sections that end when they are leaving introductory stuff and starting to turn interesting.

Also, it contains a number of inaccuracies and inconsistencies. Naming conventions are awful or absent, both from the syntactical and semantical viewpoint; see code in p. 68 for a specially relevant example. A book with so much printed code should pay attention to this. Also, some concepts are plain wrong: tables using foreign keys pointing to other tables are not "joined" but linked or related (p. 51). Joining may come later through specific SQL queries using the JOIN keyword. Classes related to other classes don't necessarily result in objects "containing" other objects (p. 52), but referencing them.

Most central to the book, the author claims that IM resolvers solve the problem of making library classes of which we don't have the source code persistent. What about privately held state? You cannot solve this problem as an afterthought without a good metainformation-based reflection infrastructure such as that of .NET, for instance. I don't think the Scoop architecture is much better than any other way to make objects persistent.

Also, attributes are usually considered scalar properties of classes, but the author omits the "relation" or "reference" concept and uses "attribute" to mean any property of a class (p. 58, p. 71). Later, he discusses the issue (p. 176) but the conclussion he draws contradicts his previous use of the concept!

Overall, the book shows a lack of sound conceptualization of object-oriented ideas, and is too geared to the pure programming of persistent objects from a clearly narrow perspective. The author ignores high-level persistent libraries (such as ADO in the Windows platform) and puts too much importance in C++, which definitely is not the most used language in database environments. For instance, the identifier of an object is not the memory address it occupies. That's just a not so convenient way to build object ids. The author builds on top of this by saying that an untrained programmer could start using Visual Basic in a few days; of course, my 3-year old daughter could also start moving pieces on the chessboard right now. But that does not mean she plays chess!
Also, I totally disagree with his proposed parallelism between databases and user interfaces. His viewpoint only can be defended if you consider purely _structural_ UIs such those generated by (bad) 4GLs and some ERP parameterizable environments. Complex application domains (are there simple ones?) require highly _functional_ UIs that do not map the database in any sense.

I feel deceived about this book. I spent my money in a work edited by Addison-Wesley, which is a reputated firm from which I have read dozens of brilliant books, and this one does not keep the minimum level. The book cover shows the names of Mary Loomis and the Three Amigos, which undoubtedly endorse the book's value. What's their value?

Adapting the particular solution for non C++ languages is difficult.

The use of operator overloading in this book only obscures and does not illuminate.

I completely disagree with his "DataExplorer" GUI classes.

On the plus side there are a few good ideas to be mined.

Near the beginning of the book, the author acknowledges two facts. First, much of the database development being done today is using RAD techniques with little formal design discipline. Second, object-orientation is a philosophy, not necessarily connected to the tool you use. Just because you are using C++ doesn't mean you are OO, and similarly you can use OO principles to improve the architecture of programs written using languages that aren't traditionally considered object-oriented. Unfortunately, if you aren't a C++ programmer, you won't get as much out of this book as you could. Chapters 1-4, 13 and 14 are brilliant. These chapters describe the mismatch between object architectures and relational databases and they lay out a philosophy that can be used to develop a solution. The middle chapters, where the author describes his particular solution to the problem (the Scoop architecture), are not nearly as helpful. As a Visual Basic developer who reads a lot about object-oriented programming, I am used to having to adapt what I read to fit within the limits of my chosen language. It isn't usually as much of a struggle as it was with chapters 5-12. I found two problems. First of all, where many authors would use examples to illustrate concepts from the text, this author seems to believe that his examples speak for themselves. The text is little more than filler between code segments. As I said, I am not unfamiliar with C++ examples, but the ones in this book are a chore. I had so much difficulty deciphering what they were doing, that whatever message they were intended to communicate was lost. Second, the examples are so dependent on C++ features like inheritance and operator overloading that they were utterly useless for me. Not to mention their dependence on a particular third-party SQL library (Dbtools.h++). It will be easier to find my own solution than to adapt his. Perhaps a C++ programmer would be able to use the examples in production code, but I would have been better served by higher level, more philosophical examples. UML diagrams that did little more than describe what functionality goes where would have been perfect. So in summary, I guess I still recommend this book to any programmer wrestling with how to apply object oriented techniques to database programming. You'll gain a clearer understanding of the problem and the choices you will be forced to make. Just ignore the author when he tells you that he has solved these problems for you.

The Parkin book is dumb down but so much so that you dont understand Microeconomics the way you'll need to if you plan on taking advanced theory, money and banking, etc.

I prefer McConnell Brue who has been the staple and bible of Microeconomics for years!

Smart universities choose McConnell Brue and dumb ones like Micro econ at Rice seem to choose Parkin.

Parkin's text was designed for the beginning economics student. Those who state that the text is not rigorous enough should understand the text was not written for the advanced student. Those who complain that the text is replete with explanations of basic topics do not understand that beginning students need reaffirmation of presented concepts. Parkin's text strives to appeal to the broad base of students without the dilution that seems to occur when a text is written with "non-majors" in mind. I read several introductory texts before adopting the Parkin text for my advanced placement class. I chose the Parkin text because it provided the optimum mix of rigor and explanation, without sacrificing analysis (within a mathematical context) for a purely verbal approach.

I have used Parkin as an auxilliary source for my micro 102 classes for years. His examples are products that can be related to by 19-year-olds, AND he does not use wheat or other perfectly competitive products to exemplify a downward sloping demand curve! Many other do, which causes great confusion among the students. What is wrong with careful, thoughtful, comprehensive explanations of concepts that are difficult for first time micro students? He covers several complicated topics that are left out of the more highly rated texts by Mankiw and others. I am wondering if we are even rating the same book...I give it the maximum rating!

Smith tries desperately to introduce this new series with an incredibly simplistic story with almost no real motivation or character drive. In fact, the characters introduced in this story seem almost cardboard. If this were the pilot for a Trek TV series, it would rank as the worst of the lot. There are now a number of these Trek SCE stories available. Hopefully, it gets better with age. I'll let you know.

This was a very decent Star Trek Review albet a little bit short.

It is interesting to see the Behind the scenes team at work. The team that goes and makes use of everthing that is discovered in the show. This book was a very quick read and it was alot more shotting then I expected but I still enjoyed it.

The Enterprise defends a peaceful planet from an unknown and powerful alien Star ship. The Enterprise finally is successful in overcoming the enemy and temporarily rendering it vulnerable. It is now up to a team of engineers to find out if the enemy ship is truly vulnerable and crippled or is the enemy playing dead Trojan style. LaForge (chief engineer of Enterprise) stays behind with another crew member to help the engineers. While the Enterprise goes to its next mission.

This is a great book. I bought it in Adobe E-book format. The book is well done and in the tradition and form of Star Trek. Once I started reading I couldn't stop. I couldn't get enough of it. Luckily I put it on my laptop to start with. This story is suspenseful, intriguing, provocative, everything Star Trek is.

There was a problem with downloading. Whatever you do don't interrupt the process, don't even change windows or try doing other computer tasks. I tried to do some work while I waited and that interrupted the process. Then they consider it that I downloaded successfully and I didn't get the complete book. Amazon was helpful and allowed me to Re-download the e-book.

One bad thing about Adobe e-books, you cannot transfer the book from computer to computer. I could see how copying an e-book to another computer is copyright infringement, but they should still allow a complete e-book transfer.

I plan on continuing to buy e-books in this Star Trek series.