I have never disliked a book as much as I did this one. This book was choppy, random, and too much like a movie! It left no room for imagination and I probably could have fallen asleep at many parts. There was nothing about this book that made you excited to pick it up again! Do not waste your time! I would say see the movie, but it wasn't much better!

Okay, lets face facts...
Madonna is a much better musician than an actress, but credit is due for perseverence.
"Swept Away" is another great film by Guy Ritchie...edgy and too the point. Madonna isnt all too bad either.
The first half of the film she is a little over the top with her bold bitchiness...but the later part of the film she softens and her character becomes believable.
The ending was a total surprise and a very un-Hollywood romantic ending.
You may not have seen it at the theatre, but its worth seeing on DVD/video.
Plus Madonna looks great!

I popped this dvd in without expecting it to be good or bad; knowing not to completely believe the critics' reviews on the film. Immediately, I loved Ritchie's dark humor that we have already seen in Snatch and his other films. This film makes fun of "high society", but also pokes humor on itself. The actors I thought did a good job with their performances (there are other actors who get away with less acting abilities!). This movie isn't only about its love story, but brings up many other ideas that we are all currently living with. The movie kept me laughing all the way through to the twist. I really reccomend you to watch the movie and just enjoy it.

I agree with other reviewers who have said that this book lacks issue for developers. The examples, and diagrams, are absolutely atrocious. In addition, I don't think that it offers a decent overview of CORBA. Indeed, the information is all there (that is, overview info), but it is embedded in a dry, repetitive, and big-worded style. Also, I wish that writers would someday learn what a split infinitive is, in order for them __to hopefully stop__ using them all the time!

Some good titles coming out soon. Let's hope.

-Nathan

This is a good book for a broad overview. Essentially, it is an executive summary in book form. The content is complete and useful, but the style is dry and the presentation uninspired. This is the bran-flakes of CORBA: good for you, but not particularly enjoyable. It is also almost useless for developers (but it doesn't seem to be targeted towards them either).

What it is: A good introduction to what CORBA is and what it offers. The sections on the services and the IDL should provide a nice summary for the technical manager. The descriptions and comparisons of other distributed technologies are informative, and the systems engineering section is littered with information a manager needs to consider for a distributed development effort, with or without CORBA. What it is not: The book does not provide much for the developer. It does not contain any nuts and bolts insight for the new developer, but does state that their is approx 6 mo. rampup required. Overall: I thought that this is a book which should be read by any new manager and developer considering CORBA. Likely to be a reference for a manager and less to a developer, but definitely worth reading. A good companion book to this (opinion) would be Java Programming with CORBA, Vogel - Duddy (ISBN 0-471-17986-8) Small quip : Smalltalk community would appreciate "Smalltalk" instead of "SmallTalk".

Donald Patten has continued in the proud tradition of Immanuel Velikovsky: producing a document which is indicative of the author's lack of scientific literacy. This book contains sweeping re-interpretations of the history of the human race. In this book Donald Patten attempts to reach the unusual goal of disproving evolution and creation simultaneously. If you look no where else, that goal is achieved. In this book every event in the Old Testament, from the Tower of Babel to David's victory over the armies of Sennecherib, are the result of the tidal forces created by Earth and Mars closely passing each other in their orbits. It also contains the "truth" about the formation of the solar system. Instead of the erroneous theory about coalescing interstellar dust and hydrogen gas forming the sun and planets, we are presented with the revelation that our sun wandered throughout the galaxy and "collected" the planets from other stars. When enough planets were obtained in this manner, our sun had an "ignition event" and became the bright star we now see. Patten has similar insightful knowledge about Mars. He has determined that Mars once existed with another planet which he designates as "Astra" These two worlds rotated about each other like a binary star system. Through an unidentified cataclysm Astra exploded about 2700 years ago and formed the asteroid belt which now exists between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. A large chunk the the exploded Astra struck Mars and caused its orbit to become very eccentric. This eccentricity created a orbital relationship between Earth and Mars which he designates the "catastrophic era" that lasted about 600 years. One outstading feature of this era is that Mars would approach to within 10,000 miles of Earth every 52 years. The results of such a truly catastrophic approach are all of the events we see recorded in the Old Testament. The Tower of Babel was destroyed by lightning exchanges between the two planets, Noah's flood was caused by tidal surges of the worlds oceans created by the gravimetric mass of Mars, all of the plagues faced by Egypt were caused by this close approach, Sennecherib was destroyed because his army had metal swords which acted as lightning rods, and Joshua's long day was because the Earth stopped rotating on its axis for a period of time. Patten also has a solution for why wooly mammoths have been found frozen in the arctic region. It is his contention that Mars had a third moon at one time. He calls this moon "Glacis" because it was composed entirely of frozen water. On one of the close approaches of Mars to Earth, this "moon" passed within the Roche Limit and exploded. The vast quantity of ice crystals from this event were "vortexed" down the north and south poles. The resulting rain of -300 degree celcius ice flash froze everything in its path. This book will present a person with numerous "scientific" proofs for this event. The one which caused me to roll on the floor in laughter was found in Jonathan Swifts' "Gullivers' Travels". When Gulliver found himself in the land of Laputa, the astronomers there told him that Mars had two moons in a nearly circular orbit. According to Patten the only way Jonathan Swift would have been aware of such a fact is that he must have read an account of someone who witnessed the Mars-Earth close encounter. After about 600 years of these catastrophic encounters Mars settled back into the orbit it had originally and all has been well with the solar system since. This book is interesting if for no other reason other than the ridiculous claims it contains. There is much entertainment value in this book. I would recommend keeping a copy in a home library for use whenever a good laugh is needed.

bmscrh summary of this book demonstrates that he/she didn't read it very carefully (prior bias?); there are many ERRORS in the review. I found it fascinating and mostly plausible. Serious students of the Bible should read this book.

I've never chucked a book out before in my life, but this one I did. The basic writings by Arthur Wesley Dow are very good, however the introduction written by Joseph Masheck occupied most of the books pages in a stilted language that was obviously written to put a check in one of this person's achedemic requirements boxes. It got me so riled that I had paid considerably for Dows comments and got Mashecks voluminous dribble, that I cut out the introduction with a razor blade and kept the small informative portion by Dow. If you're impressed with disjointed, convoluted, achedemic banter, buy it, you'll love it.

Having read the earlier review, I felt it necessary to chime in. The introduction, which I skipped, was lengthy, but there's a lot of information in the main text of the book- enough to warrant the price. It's as much a workbook as a text since there are suggested exercises to follow. There are also lots of pictures of examples which I found very helpful. Dow "wrote the book" on composition, and this is it!

I ordered this game after reading Mr.Bunny Guide to ActiveX. That was a great one! But this game doesn't seem to be useful or at least ironic. Disappointed.

This is a fabulous game. My husband and I have played this one over and over again, and have dragged it to friends' houses to teach them the awesome power of Mr. Bunny.

A minute to learn, a lifetime to get all the jokes.

Seriously, folks, it's a fun little game, even though the pieces go all over the place when you're trying to play it on the plane.

A fair book. It is about the life and times of John Wesley Hardin. Please read it with a grain of salt. Mr. Hardin was not the hero he appears to be in the book. Some is fact but lot is fiction. He kills his first man at age 15, I think, then is really on the run from then on. He is quick with a gun and very good with a shotgun. He finally gets married and has two children. As usual, he is caught and pays the price, as set out by a judge and jury. Lots of shooting, lots of western clans involved. I am sure true to life at that time. Just don't believe he was as good as book leds one to believe.

Overall, I enjoyed Braun's Noble Outlaw. It was very well-written, and Braun managed to transform a thug with a nasty temper into a sympathetic and misunderstood Texas hero. Though I'm not so sure the men Wes Hardin killed would appreciate the author's skill, I enjoyed the book and intend to read more of Mr. Braun's work. I would, however, be careful and not use the term "Historical Fiction" too loosely, for according to my history books, Wes Hardin was no hero.

I regrear to buy this book don't spend any penny on it

This is a very approachable book on software engineering in the language Eiffel. Every aspect of the language is covered in great detail, and there are plenty of exercises and illustrations throughout to help readers stay on course.

Some of the material here is quite hard to find in other computer texts. For instance, there are chapters that discuss the theory behind Abstract Data Types, exception handling, the client/supplier relationship, and polymorphism in much greater depth than one will find in about 95% of the OO texts on the shelves.

No matter what the language in which you program, you owe it to yourself to read this book. And while you're at it, pick up a copy of Meyer's Object Oriented Software Construction 2nd ed.

This was a really dreadful book that I had to return. It is poorly written and badly edited. The typography is amateurish. It's too bad, because the authors obviously believe in what they have written but they apparently could not get a reputable publishing house to handle it. A much better book along the same line is "Too Good to Leave; Too Bad to Stay" by Mira Kirshenbaum.

If you expect a book to be as much help as all the advice you get from your friends bundled up into one item, than this is the book for you! It is easy to read yet makes one think for a long time to come. I did find the title misleading at first; the introduction does focus on the other books available by this team of authors, the 16 compatability guideposts, but then it is stock full of practical thoughts. All these little notions you've had are talked about right hear; the book does not leave you wondering but validates your feelings and lets you put your thoughts into action. If you decide to end the relationship, you know why it did not work and how to do better next time. Otherwise, you'll know after reading this book why this person is right for you and can pass it on to your friends!

Either this book will make you very angry, or this review will.

This is an "as told to" story of a fundamentalist Christian father who takes away his 11-year-old diabetic son's insulin in order to demonstrate his faith that God will heal the child. (Never for a moment thinking that by making insulin available, God has already healed the child.)

Over the next three days, as the child rapidly deteriorates and then dies, the family and friends gather and pray louder and louder for God to overcome Satan's lies about the child's healing (Satan's lies being the child's vital signs). Nobody calls a doctor; someone does call the police but only after it's too late.

The rest of the book is concerned with the trial, and with the Mistakes that the couple eventually realizes that they made.

The couple are arrested. They go to jail and wallow in self-pity. The jailers are MEAN to them. People are SARCASTIC. Even other Christians don't UNDERSTAND.

On the other hand, the narrator finds much to be smug about. The prosecutor shows up for their preliminary hearing drunk, which shows what kind of person he is. The reporters and court room observers are rude and ill-behaved. Of course, none of these people has offed a child, but hey. Christians aren't perfect, just forgiven.

The jury hands in a verdict of guilty, and the sentence is the proverbial slap on the wrist: five years' probation, as punishment for the death of an eleven-year-old child. God is good!

You keep hoping this is all going to end with the narrator experiencing an epiphany and realizing that God isn't Santa Claus and that faith doesn't excuse humans from thought and action and responsibility. But he doesn't. He comes up with a flurry of bible quotations, several pages long, all of which go to prove that he and his wife chose the wrong TIME to stop giving their son insulin; they should have waited for God to effect the healing. At no time do they realize that the insulin itself is God's healing; that many diabetics don't have access to this life-saving treatment.

Another point of view that is utterly missing from the book is that of the victim. The narrator whines constantly about what he and his wife had to endure: the censure of the community and even of their own church, the hostility of the prosecutors, the humiliation of prison (for a whole week). But he never mentions his son's suffering --except as one more thing he and his wife had to endure-- or sees the child's death as a loss to the child, his life as something that was unjustly taken from him.

This book is pretty near the worst perversion of Christianity since the Salem witch trials.

Going to church an beating christ into are childrens mineds are one thing but thats just what Mr & Mrs Parker was hearing ' when Church People would come over an say hey if you had more faith in the lord then he would heal little Wesley ' they was brain wash right from the start just like Jim Jones an Charles Manson did ' What Mr & Mrs Parker did not see is that the shots that they was giving Wesley was a gift from above someone should have told them that. this movie an the book are sad but it can teach us where the gifts are really from just like my on Dad he was a believer in faith one day the preacher said in church that if we had enough faith that God would heal are pains my Dad had Heart trouble one morning he stop taking his Heart pills a month after his Heart stop beating he died in an old county store while his head layed upon my Mothers lap .. I wish this movie had came out sooner if so maybe Dad would still be with us ' If you can get your hands on this book and Movie Please do so .

Even though I'd read many books on C.S. Lewis before reading this one, the author was able to highlight several themes in Lewis's writings that I hadn't really noticed before. It did seem to me, however, that he took an unnecessarily large amount of space to make his points, and no one will confuse Kort's writing with Lewis's own vibrant prose. (I think this book must have set a record for most occurrences of the word "militate".) This is not the first time that I've read a socio-cultural analysis that has seemed to drain much of the life, energy, and interest out of its subject.

Kort seems very sympathetic to Lewis; he is less sympathetic with typical Lewis fans (although he is unfailingly polite in expressing that lack of sympathy). Kort makes sure to use the shibboleths of political correctness--"racism", "sexism", and "homophobia"--without taking the time to define their meaning or to justify their use.

The book's concluding chapter is the most interesting and the most controversial. Kort seems to think that the most important way to continue the Lewis legacy is not to appreciate and propagate Lewis's ideas but to do the work in our day and society that would be analogous to the work Lewis did in his day and society. So, what would be analogous? Kort writes that "[o]ne advantage that our own time and place give us over Lewis is that we will not be tempted, as perhaps he was, by nostalgia for a Christian culture", and he proposes the celebration of diversity as a major thrust of a proper modern Lewisian project. Kort's description of a C.S. Lewis for our times, makes me less interested in awaiting his appearance and more interested in reading the writings of the old one.