After reading the first in this series, I was more than happy to pick up the second one. Thank god I read it in the bookstore and didn't buy it first. This book doesn't even come close to the kind of professionalism and overall quality of the first one. The plot is rehashed, hackneyed, and the Huntress is an unwelcome addition. I must say, as a fan of both Batman and the Predator, I think most readers preferred the notion that Batman had to use all of his technology and brains to defeat the badguy, not some buxom nitwit with a bow and arrow. The story could have been a lot better, I guess it gets 1 star cause the drawings not bad.

I guess this goes to show, that just like in videogames and movies, comic crosssovers have their weak points. This proved it in the the return of the Predator to take out Batman. This time it's out for revenge. Meanwhile Batman has a bounty on his head and has attracted 7 of the worlds most dangerouse assassins to hunt him down. Meanwhile he also gets some unwanted help from the Huntress.

The Predator however is not in the complete clear as two of it's kind are hunting it down. Eventually Batman, Huntress, and the Predator face off in a pretty good final boute. Overall thsi is for die hard fans of both series only.

Oh, this is a great read! While the first one was way cool I feel that this sequel was far more complex and engaging. Rather like how Predator 2 felt in comparision to the original. There is no need for mystery as Batman knows who the Predator is. And old Pred figures Batman as a worthy quarry seeing as how he's already knocked off one of his alien brothers.

The story, characters and artwork as so much more detailed and sophisticated this time. And it seriously lends a huge gothic feel to the story before it was all ruined by Batman vs Predator III. That is kind of like comparing Burton's Batman to Schumacher's Batman. The same thing applies when considering Batman vs Predator; only the first 2 are good.

...but UCLA swallows. "My maid went to UCLA", "University of Spoiled Children" "University of Caucasians Lost among Asians"...yada yada yada. You have heard all of this tired garbage before. Save your five bucks and put gas in your moped.

THIS BOOK IS FUNNY! I'M GOING TO BE A BRUIN IN A FEW YEARS AND THIS IS ENTERTAINMENT. tHIS BOOK YOU CAN READ OVER AND OVER. BUT ANY WHO, WHAT'S UP WITH THIS AUTHUR (HE WROTE DIFFRENT BOOK CALLED "I HATE UCLA") cAN ANY ONE EXPLAIN?

I am a student at UCLA and this book was AWESOME! When I first read it, I died laughing, because a lot of the jokes are so true! It also gave me some good ideas for when the next football game rolls around. I recommend it to anyone who loves UCLA as much as I do.

This book talks in general about everything! NT Domains, TCP/IP, Networking, and so on. I kept looking for information on IIS and was hard pressed to find it. If you are looking for a book ABOUT IIS, and not Everthing about Windows NT, then look elsewhere...

This book is one of my favorite references. I don't think that any book could contain everything you need to know about IIS, but this one comes close. I found that it provides great security coverage. The usage information is also easy to understand. About the only area that's completely lacking is performance tuning information. I'd also like to see how to create complex Web site setups (this book seems to concentrate on sites of simple or moderate complexity). The author is also very friendly and helped me with questions I had in some areas of the book.

This book solved problems I was having with configuring IIS 4.0 for months. It clearly talks about security and how to setup a web site from the ground up. It also talks about FTP access and how to protect areas of your server while giving access to the correct users. Excellent!

This novel is spread out over three years in the late '60s. The Doctor's foe is this novel is the 'Revolution man', an international graffiti artist (whose most threatening act is to leave his mark in public places). He is enabled to do this by abusing Om-Tsor, a drug with the capability of really distorting reality. Paul Leonard does some nice philosophising about the TARDIS' telepathic circuit, but then everyone in this book seems to be a philosopher. While this may be true of the age, it actually makes for a truly dull book. Paul Leonard should have called it 'Doctor Who in an exciting adventure with the Dialectics!', since he uses the latter word a little bit too often. Now, I'm all for using high theory in contemporary fiction, as long as it's done in an entertaining way. Paul Leonard could learn a lot from Lawrence Miles here.

The characterisation is also flat and colourless. New companion Fitz goes through the Himalayas and back, but it's hard to feel anything for him. Uncle Sam is shown to be absurdly trigger happy. The resolution is quite silly, never mind the new excuse for a guilt trip. All in all, 'Revolution Man' is competently written, but lacks both excitement and stimulation.

Dr Who meets psychedelia, courtesy of a mind-expanding drug of the 60s that we didn't know about; it's called Om-Tsor (ie. "Ommmmmmmm...", assume the lotus position first, please, and feel happy). But this wonder drug is actually flower petals from another planet, and once the Doctor realizes it has surfaced on Earth in turbulent 1967-69, he knows it could well end up in the wrong hands. In fact, a readout on the TARDIS designates the exact date the world will end, thanks to abuse, by the so-called Revolution Man, of Om-Tsor.

The best part: Fitz's sojourn to a lamasery in Nepal, along with Maddie, whom he's considering abandoning the Doctor for. In a sticky situation involving a squad of Chinese soldiers, Fitz must ingest some Om-Tsor and become rather godlike just to stay alive. His transformation to giant-size, along with his cloudhopping and titanic aerial skirmish with a similarly transformed madman, reminded me very much of Monkey King from the great tale called The Journey To The West. Fitz as cloudhopping Monkey King was cool. The whole Tibetan connection was cool.

But, alas, this story gets bogged down in repeated sequences of the Doctor scurrying into his TARDIS after being summoned by one of his companions to come save the day. This seemed very odd, and only seemed to highlight the notion that the Doctor never really has a plan in this episode. I mean, Fitz as Monkey King, Doctor as Chicken with his head cut off, basically being yanked about by his companions (hardly what usually occurs!). Also, the plot frequently stops to emphasize how much of an out-of-place time-newbie Fitz is at this stage, and this is further played up by the Doctor and Sam practically speaking in code, and refering to oft-used strategies, which suggests they have boiled their adventures down to some kind of routine that can be carried out without much passion--all of which makes things seem kind of dull and automatic.

Then we have the shocking ending, which clears up why there's a picture of a big gun on the cover. Violence as quick solution is not usually where it's at, man, in a Doctor Who adventure, can you grok it. But the tension caused by the violent choices made by Fitz and the Doctor does at least create much guilt, anger, and frustration between the three time-travelers, once the denouement comes round.

Not a particularly memorable adventure, with some strange warts that don't usually pop up in this series. Hopefully, The Turing Test, by the same author, will be better.

The cover of REVOLUTION MAN is gorgeous, simply marvelous. It's almost worth picking up the book just for the cover-art; digital reproduction just doesn't do justice to the colours. Fortunately, the book itself is also worth owning for the stuff printed on the inside, despite a number of near-fatal flaws that detract from the main feature.

The regulars are handled adequately here, with special credit going to Paul Leonard's treatment of Sam. When I read that Sam Jones was going to be spending time hanging out with sixties radicals I experienced a sick feeling in my stomach. A lesser author might have brought the worst of Sam's qualities to the foreground, having her deliver an infinite number of speeches on how backwards and out-of-touch that decade was from her oh-so-enlightened point of view. However, Leonard manages to give us an insight into Sam's thought processes without allowing them to come across as overbearing and arrogant. He did go a little overboard in describing her reaction to the sexism inherent to the sixties, but then anything less would be out of character.

Fitz on the other hand seems much weaker than in previous stories. Granted, he hasn't been shown as the most aggressive of companions, but he manages to go from completely normal to utterly brainwashed by a totalitarian government back to being (almost) himself again within forty pages. Within the structure of the book, the brainwashing procedure lasts for about a year (none of which we witness) and appears to be totally successful, yet it takes much less than a day for it to all work out of his system. This could have been handled in a much more interesting way, yet the rushed ending (which I shall discuss in a moment) to the book and to this section are very frustrating. We don't experience any of the reaction to his entire world-view being shattered twice within a relatively short amount of time. It just seems like a quick plot device that should have been either further developed or just dropped completely.

Plot-wise this book is a real page-turner for its initial two-thirds. There's a powerful drug that is being used by different military and civilian factions, most attempting to harness its energy for their own irresponsible deeds. The Doctor must attempt to defuse the situation and restore the status quo. Unfortunately this book suffers from the lack of a proper resolution to several fundamental plot-threats. By the end we haven't been told where the mysterious drugs have come from, or what damage has been done to the time-line. It is implied that these events have only been set in motion because of some outside, unseen, time-sensitive force, but apart from the mention at the beginning, these are completely ignored. These may be addressed in future "arc" books, but as I have been avoiding spoilers, I have no way of knowing. It certainly doesn't excuse the lack of acknowledgement of these problems within the narrative of this particular story though. This is a shame, because as I noted, the opening and middle sections of this book are fabulous.

The very ending of the book has been surrounded in controversy and I'll attempt to discuss this without the need for any spoiler warnings. In short, the Doctor is quickly forced to do something that seems quite shocking. While it may be bordering on being out of character for the Doctor to do this, I think that the situation he had been placed into required his acting in the manner in which he did. I do not think this would be a big problem if only the book had not ended so abruptly just after this point. Leonard seemed to be deliberately manipulating the situation so that the Doctor is forced to act in the way that he does. In fact, several events occur purely to bring him to that point. And I have to say that the situation that the Doctor is placed into is an interesting one, worthy of more attention. It appears as though Leonard deliberately put the Doctor into the situation that he wanted to, which forced him to act in a certain way, but then forgot to put in the big payoff at the end. As it stands now, the narrative seems incomplete, as if it is relying on the following book to clean up the mess that's been left behind. We only get a few sentences from the Doctor saying he's upset and a few passages from Sam relaying the same information to Fitz. What we don't see is how this has affected the crew. While this may or may not lead to great and wonderful writing in the next part of the series, it does detract from the enjoyment that one takes out of this particular volume. An extra thirty pages at the end that dealt with the reaction would have done a lot to put these concerns to rest.

All in all, if more care had been taken to the conclusion of this story, I would probably have a higher opinion of it. It certainly is not a poor book and I quite enjoyed reading it, but the flaws that I have pointed out negatively affected my enjoyment of the novel.

This volume, an update of an earlier work by the late Peter Bebblewaite, is little more than an obsolete exercise in wishful thinking by the Catholic radical left. For the book to be at all relevant, it needs to be updated again, to reflect the changes in the College of Cardinals (fairly significant in the last few years). Even such an update would do little to further recommend it, as there are other, more recent and less biased works on the same subject.

Give this one a miss.

The most interesting part of the book for me was the first half where past conclaves in history are discussed. Some of the history is really fascinating. Although the tone of the book optimistically predicts a less severe papacy next time around, there is little evidence presented to back this up. The criticisms of John Paul II, while quite accurate, do little to help us understand who we might expect as the next pope. It is a well written book and very readable, but as time continues to go by and the current pope continues to live, the latter section on potential popes becomes less and less relevant due to the age restriction and deaths. Still, there is enough here to recommend a read.

"The Next Pope", though quite out of date now, is a very good and comprehensive study of the Catholic Church and how Popes are elected, and an attempt to give an idea of who the next Pope will in fact be.

It covers, very well and in quite clear language, a history of the papacy from the time of Pius VIII (1829 to 1830) up to John Paul II's historically crucial letter "Ordinatio Sacerdotalis". Each conclave in that period is discussed very well and with quite reasonable language that I have found very helpful in gaining an understanding of where the papacy has travelled in recent centuries.

The next part of the book looks at John Paull II and explains his thought. It does an easy-to-understand job that could, I feel, give a better understanding of his Polish nature.

The last part written before Peter's death deals with "Ordinatio Sacerdotalis" and the reaction to it, however it fails unfortunately to reach the notes of Ratzinger about the infallibility of the document and to explain in simple, if for many harsh, language what this will mean for the next centuries of the Catholic Church.

Margaret's article is a very detailed (compared to her late husband's) analysis of the College Of Cardinals as it was comprised in 2000.

Though this is now completely out-of-date, contrary to what others have said about Margaret's writings, I find her very balanced in her exceedingly sensible admission that the next Pope can only be just as conservative as Wojtyla. She is very willing to face and accept the fact that many cardinal want an even more conservative papacy in the future, and looks at such cardinals as Dario Castrillon Hoyos and Rouco Vadela as possibilities for the next Pope.

My main criticism of Margaret is that her language is so unclear and that she seem incomplete - it is as if one would need a detailed analysis of those cardinals who nobody, outside or inside the Vatican, would consider as possibilities for the papacy.

Though out of date, this contains some useful information.

As technical documentation, this book fails because no matter how carefully you follow the instructions, you can't get the task done. In the installation process, you don't even get to see all the screens they describe. Also, this book warns you against installing Linux side-by-side with Windows, then describes ONLY that scenario! Against the backdrop of such fundamental flaws, the approach of the Dummies series is about as cute as a rattlesnake.

This book makes too many assumptions - i.e. that you want to run Linux alongside Windows on a partitioned HD and having a workstation alternative - which you may not.

I am interested in a developement environment. The appendix hardly has any references to "Apache" or "Web Server" - and only covers one kind of install.

They never address if you would like Linux as the only OS. Many of us have 100mhz clunkers that we're willig to wipe Win95/98 off of.

I'm interested in having a local web server to test CGI's write code, and more. The book falls short. In fact I had to go out the O'Reilly Running Linux.

I'm still getting frustrated trying to have Apache on the machine with the Gnome install. This book offers nothing in the way of setting up a web server (or very little to be exact!)

This title, as it suggests, is great for the complete newcomer to Red Hat Linux, and it focuses on those migrating from Windows operating systems. It teaches basic commands to navigate and very basically run a personal RH Linux machine.

DON'T buy this book looking for a resource that will show you how to administer a Linux machine. DON'T buy this book looking for a resource that will show you how to set up a Web/e-mail/FTP/SSH, etc. server.

DO buy this book if you have never really used a Linux machine, and are looking for an introduction. DO buy this book if you are sick of Windows and are looking around to see what other opportunities are available.

Once again, this book serves as an excellent resource for beginning Linux, but don't expect it to offer any more than that.

Much of this book is quite helpful when it sticks to basic Bible truths historically held by genuine Evangelicals regarding the Gospel, Deity of Christ,Justification, Sanctification and so on.

But 4 stars deducted for labeling liberal, non-evangelical philosophies/fabrications as 'Across the Spectrum' i.e. within the bounds of Evangelical Historic Christian Faith.

Right off the bat, Boyd (a Bapt. Gen'l Conference pastor of Woodland Hills Church and Theol. Prof. at Bethel College) denies his own denomination's Affirmation of Faith regarding Bible Inerrancy. BGC used to require all pastors/professors to uphold and abide by its Affirmation of Faith in all matters.(Will BGC Pres. Sheveland and upcoming Annual Convention enforce their Affirmation by requiring a retraction or resignation from the wayward false-teacher??) But Boyd for upwards of a decade has not only jettisoned much of his denomination's Doctrinal Statements,(see his first book Trinity & PROCESS, liberal,unbiblical non-evangelical philosophtheology that is the fountainhead for all his beliefs/books) but publicly teaches and authors books promoting clearly heterodox, aberrant and liberal (Princeton/Yale variety)neo-Processism theories about God's attributes no longer being literally OMNI in nature; theo-repentism, God 'changing as it is beneficial to change' including the Divine Mind/Will; 'the future doesn't exist until free agents create it for God to know as fact';etc.

Where does Boyd get all these ideas? Not from an Inerrant Bible. He believes in 'Limited Infallibility' which is theo-speak for the Bible is error-ridden in matters of science, history, nature, philosophy, biology, geology, etc. It is only 'infallible in matters of faith and practice' according to Boyd (see his Woodland Hills Doctrinal Statement re the Bible). Of course, Boyd does not address in his essay in the book how the Bible can err in matters not relating to faith/practice (things we can see, taste, test, verify), but not err in areas we can't verify. Evangelicals historically have believed the entire Bible relates in one way or another to 'faith & practice', even history, science, nature, etc. If the Word of God can't get the one motif right, how can it get the other one 'without fail'???

If God can author the universe by saying, 'Let there be Light!'
Can't the same Author author a flawless Book and get it right?

Another problem is Boyd's dismissal of a literal, real, eternal hell for the lost. He speculatively advocates a form of annihilationism or reprieve or some other neutralizing of the full force of the Biblical description. (Why he doesn't advocate making similar neutralizing adjustments to the language for the 'Heaven side of Eternity's coin' makes his position even more dubious and lopsidedly inconsistent.) Boyd claims that the Bible's language for hell is contradictory: 'flames of fire' and 'outer darkness' are "mutually exclusive". Boyd can't envision how darkness and flames of fire can co-exist simultaneously.

But genuine Evangelicals can. Look at aerial news footage of a volcano lava flow or forest fire at night. Pitch dark atmosphere, but glow of deadly, devastating fire in the damage path. Dark and fiery at the same time. Boyd cavalierly dismisses the metaphoric language of Jesus Himself in describing the horrors of a real, literal, burning, outer darkness eternal punishment. That's his privilege. But to call his contrived 'non-literal,non-eternal' hell an evangelical belief is Beyond the Bounds of Christian and academic integrity. Revelation says, "They will be tormented day and night for ever and ever", "will be tormented with burning sulfur in the presence of the holy angels and the Lamb", "the smoke of their torment rises for ever and ever". If anything, the real darkness,literal fire, endless conscious torment of hell vastly exceeds the limits of inerrant Biblical language to convey. The Bible understates the facts, where Boyd would have us believe it overstates/exaggerates the literal truth.

Sorry, Gregory Boyd. We'll stick with Revelation, and what Jesus, John, Peter, Paul, Jude, Isaiah and the Word of God inerrantly declare as fact about eternal conscious punishment.

This book is helpful to see just how far some Christians will go to stretch the tent ropes to include all sorts of contra-Biblical modern theories and presuppositions under the label
'evangelical'. But calling a sterile mule or diseased donkey by the name of Stallion does not make it so.

If this book is compared to "Beyond the Bounds", "God's Lesser Glory", "God Under Fire", "Bound Only Once", "Battle for God" and the forthcoming "God's Greater Glory", Boyd's aberrancy can be clearly documented in detail for the concerned Evangelical.

It is dismaying to see how Boyd's processist philosophy lens has blurred his theological teachings into myopic heterodox nearsightedness. He needs a new Optometrist: the Holy Spirit and a Large Print Bible.

This book rates 1 reluctant star. Engagingly written, but serves only as a mask of Boyd's true intention: to claim his personal positions 'Evangelical' while subtly undermining the Genuine, Historic Biblical Doctrines of Christianity.

While posing as a 'devil's advocate' of the opposing side on many issues of contemporary Christian Theology, Boyd unwittingly goes too far in his essays revealing his antipathy for the Evangelical position in many cases, especially Inerrancy. He couldn't be more patronizing to true Evangelicals.

Cleverly calling his position 'Infallibilist', he violates his own BGC Affirmation of faith at Bethel College (where he is a professor) and his own church Woodland Hills. BGC clearly states in Affirmation of Faith: Bible is INERRANT. But Boyd slyly and short of intellectual integrity writes the essay refuting Inerrancy in favor of an ERRANT BIBLE. He leaves the reader hanging about apparent discrepancies in the account of the "70(sic) missionaries" in the Gospels. 'Staff or no staff?'

Embarrassingly, not only is Boyd himself ironically ERRANT (it was the 12, not 70!), he fails as a serious scholar to admit this issue has been chewed on and resolved satisfactorily by the Reformers and recent real Evangelical scholars like Geisler (When Critics Ask)and John MacArthur's Study Bible (Luke 9:3). Mark says 'take nothing except a staff'; Matt./Luke say 'do not acquire/go get a staff'. Boyd cries, Aha! Mistake! Gotcha!

Sorry, Gregory. All Jesus is saying without contradiction is basically, "Take along only what you have in hand; if you have your staff, fine. If not, don't go get/buy/procure one. Don't bring anything extra but the sandals on your feet and the clothes on your back." The accounts are most likely composite of several trips or likely Mark is one specific representative trip. All are excerpts. We don't have full transcripts or the whole packing list. Boyd is looking for errors/conflicts when they can readily, plausibly be explained(since Church Fathers).
Why not give the eyewitnesses who were actually there - and the Holy Spirit Himself - the benefit of the doubt?? Fair enough??

Since he rejects his own BGC denomination's Affirmation on Inerrancy, his presuppositions are showing in his 'devil's advocate' essay.
Why his own denomination President Jerry Sheveland or Bethel trustees don't resolve the matter by Boyd's public, repentant retraction or resignation is not Across the Spectrum, but Beyond the Bounds.

This book is Boyd's 'coming out' as clearly NON-Evangelical, aberrant, heterodox, false doctrine, pseudo-theology.

However the book is recommended to see how far some who claim Evangelical status have strayed from the Inerrant Word of God.

This is an excellent book.

Its excellence is not so much in the contents discussed but by the fact that the differences within Evangelicalism are finally laid open for all to examine. In the spirit of Zondervan's "views" books "Across the Spectrum" will only serve to improve academic, intellectual, theological, and philosophical reflection.

Differences in theological issues are many. However, they need not divide but make up the richness of what Roger Olsen calls the Mosaic of Christian belief.

Those who attribute to Boyd malicious ulterior motives are misguided. "Across the Spectrum" to anyone who reads it is not meant as a defense of any particular view. Opposing views are each fairly represented and easy to understand.

Rather than labeling our brethren as heretics for holding diverse viewpoints (within the pale of orthodoxy) and accusing some of attacking God I wish others would look beyond their own insecurities, biases and presuppositions and enter into humble dialog with opposing views.

For starters, the first apparent detail of this book is the glaring grammatical errors. Ok, no big deal, but still, it's an eyesore. The book is complex for the sake of complexity. Each chapter could easily be 2/3 or less the length it is now. The M4 macro is over-used and under-explained. If it used this much, a whole chapter should be devoted to it (at least more than a four page section covering few basics). The examples are poor and many of them simply don't work. A total lack of explanation as to what is actually going on "behind the scenes" as the macro does its work left me hung out to dry on many occasions. With way too much work, I reaped very little knowledge from this book. I can see this being a half-decent reference for those who have extensive knowledge of the M4 macro and previous experience in assembly language. If you're a beginner, stay miles away from this book. Books on a topic as inherently confusing as this need to be clearer and more extensive in their explanations and have examples that work.

This book is the text for a CS course I am taking. Its not easy to read, but neither is assembly language. No doubt, the book makes you dig in and I hate the HP assembly but its a good way to introduce stack machines. I also liked the constant comparisons to C. Bottom line - don't buy unless your ready to work your butt off.

This book discusses everything in detail that you need to know in order to learn Assembly and work with assembly.

It even discusses and explains Assembly code that does exactly what some of the C Control Structure (for(), while(), etc) code looks like in assembly.

This books contains two chapters that discuss different number systems as well as how adding, subtracting, multiplying, and division work with binary numbers including the Assembly code.

Any one that wants to have a better grasp of how the machine actually runs your compile program or wants to write/read assembly should get this book.

Since I already understand a decent amount of French, this is a dandy way to bring back what I've lost in memory. But I really have to wonder if this would work for someone completely new to the language. If you are completely new to French, the tapes are definitely a must by sheer virtue of French not being a phonetic language. It's much like English in the sense that the way a word is spelled has little to no bearing on how it's pronounced.

Be careful if you're a fellow American trying to learn from TY; the pronunciation guides are not very useful because they're based on British pronunciation. Because of this you get explanations like "The French 'a' is pronounced like the 'a' in 'cat,'" while for us that sound would look more like "cot." Rely mostly on the tapes for pronunciation. Also, watch out for odd (to our eyes) punctuation; it's not explained because the French and British systems are pretty much identical, and you'll just have to pick it up yourself. I haven't taken this French course, but this warning applies to all TY courses. Good luck.

I used the "Teach Yourself: Beginner's French" book and cassettes first, which made it easier to use this more complex follow-up book. I think this is what made this book easier to follow, given the complaints others have listed in their reviews. I think the two should be used in conjunction, and I am satisfied with the results, although I credit some of that satisfaction to having already been exposed to a Romance language, Spanish. Overall, I think this book is worth the money, considering how expensive many other learn-at-home programs can be.

The title implies that this book is an "Exam Guide" for Sun's
Solaris 9 certification tests. As such it was a complete waste
of money.

It contains many topics which are not on the exams (I've taken
the first two so far) and does not cover other topics that are on
the exams. I noticed so many typos and wrong information in Part
I (the first exam) that I seriously doubted that anyone proof-
read this before publishing it. The author clearly does not have
an understanding of Solaris at an expert level, nor does he have
a clue as to what is really on the exams.

If I hadn't expensed this I'd be really angry. Shame on McGraw-
Hill/Osborne for publishing this garbage and Paul A. Watters for
not doing his research.

I'm a bit disappointed with this book. LOTS of errors and several are just plainly wrong. Lots of typos as well.

Some chapters are pretty good while others a VERY lacking in any kind of detail or substance. Lots of fluff content that doesn't really help you for the test. Remember, getting Solaris certified means you are expected to already understand a good deal of information. Some of the information presented is stuff that is a waste of paper. The book should FOCUS on the test material and drop the fluff.

The tests don't really test your knowledge like they should. I took the 1st exam for the Solaris 9 cert and passed it. Yes, this book did help but not like I thought it would. Another problem with this book is in some areas it doesn't follow the material on the test very well. In the TEST II section of this book, it begins by talking about stuff that you are tested on in the real TEST #1. Frustrating ...

One method that helped me was reading this book, finding the obvious holes in my knowledges, going to a book store and sitting down with the new Bill Calkins Solaris 9 cert book and reading its chapters on the areas I was weak in. Also, I walked through the questions at the end of each chapter in the Bill Calkins book. This helped greatly. His questions are good, make you think, and have EXCELLENT explanations for each answer. The Paul Watters question answers do not go into any deal at all and the questions don't make you think.

If you want a GOOD study guide, buy the Bill Calkins book. Don't waste your money on this Paul Watters book.

Did I mention the Bill Calkins book is a GOOD BOOK and you should buy it ?

Very resourceful (with more than 700 pages!) I also find this book helpful in that similar topics or commmands appear here and there in a book which keeps me from forgetting esp. new commands I have, or have to, or am supposed to memorize. This sometimes gives a kind of redundancy, leading this book to be a little bulky though. But worth buying it! This author is also writing some other books on Solaris, then you can give him a credit!