I purchased this book to use as a reference. I had hoped it would be friendlier & perhaps a little more intelligent than MS documentation. This book simply cannot be called complete and the authors do a poor job of anticipating the sorts of question one might ask when working with VS6 on a day-to-day basis. I haven't investigated other books on VS6 but with this in mind, it seems to me that almost any other book on the subject is likely to be better.

Most of the computer books that I've read concentrate on one language. So, if you buy a book on Visual Studio, what you normally get is a single language view of the product, with an assortment of small examples in other languages thrown in for good measure.

John Mueller has gotten past the single language perspective in his book. What you'll see is examples where all of the languages are used together to create a complete application. The examples are non-trivial and well designed. John also makes it clear as to why he chose a specific language for a given task. While this book didn't necessarily teach me as much as I would have liked in new programming techniques, it taught me something much more important, how to make best use of Visual Studio as a whole.

There are some real plusses in this book. I found the examples all concentrate on the enterprise, rather than on the desktop. That's a real advantage because I don't write many desktop applications anymore. I also enjoyed all of the tips and especially the Web site pointers.

About the only omission in this book is a lack of any FoxPro coverage. I don't consider this a very big loss because FoxPro is hardly a good choice for enterprise applications, especially new development. The author's choice of SQL Server is a good one.

The title of this book is completely wrong. For one thing, itsensibly rejects Visual Foxpro and uses SQL Server instead. Inaddition, the book is oriented toward team development, not the individual developer. I probably would have called this book Team Developement for Visual Studio 6 or Enterprise Development for Visual Studio 6.

Once you get past the title and accept the book for its intended use, you'll find that it's a real gem. I found that I got a lot of very good team development strategies, along with good tips on what to avoid. I also loved the Web site pointers--they've really made it easier to find what I need quickly. The tips and notes were well thought out and have helped me to avoid many programming pitfalls.

The example programs aren't as complex as I would have liked, but they were adequate to demonstrate how to use the various pieces of Visual Studio together in a team environment. I feel the author was trying to make this a problem solving book, but failed to convey that as clearly as he should have. The book contains outstanding troubleshooting information, but you have to dig a little too hard to find it at times.

I gave this book five stars for several reasons, but the most important is that the author has provided the team development information that Microsoft failed to provide. If you're looking for a real world guide on how to use Visual Studio with teams, this is the best (and only) book out there worth getting. END

The Wheel of Time saga is an uninspired, hardly original, badly written pile of junk. It is difficult to see a plan into its development, and the story sounds like a free association of words at the psychanalist's office. If The Lord of the Rings had not been around may be the Wheel of Time would have had a shot...but, to be honest, if the Rings had never been written, Robert Jordan would have had nothing to (badly) copy.

What this is: an epic adventure. It would be imappropriate to review the WOT series when speaking of the Prophesies of the Dragon book; it's also not really a supplement akin to, say, The Monster Manual for D&D--the only extra skills, feats, backgrounds, etc are those directly related to NPCs in the campaign. What Prophecies is designed to do is take a party of characters through their first six levels of adventuring, which correspond roughly to the first six books of the series of novels. The players are allowed to play a key behind the scenes roll in the story of the novels and cameos have been scripted for many of the book's key characters. It's a really ambitious undertaking; players have to be given a compelling storyline, feel like they're making a difference in a campaign that covers over a year of game time, without letting them change what happens in the novels.

Does it work? I am currently GMing this adventure. On paper, it looks really good. Some of the scenes, especially in the later parts of the story, look exciting, moving even. Faile's cameo is perfect, for example. In practice, though, it's been an extremely frustrating experience. First, the early encounters (as pointed out by another reviewer) are unnecessarily difficult and add nothing to the plot. As things progress, the authors presume too much on the goals and motivations of the players. There is one chapter, for example, where the introduction says something along the lines of, "Upon entering the city, the players will want to find (a certain NPC) as soon as posible and will definitely want to investigate the actions of (another NPC)." The players in my campaign knew they wanted to talk to one of these guys eventually, but the other one was off their radar completely. Throughout, I've had to improvise ways to keep them approximating the plot line of the campaign and by chapter 3, they're feeling very manipulated.

The campaign assumes the party wants to do nothing more than hunt down dark friends and expose evil plots and will take great personal risk and go through great hardship (including, at one point, a monthlong trek through a winter wilderness without adequate provisions) on the chance of thwarting same. Characters with any other motivations (say, a character modeled after Mat or Nynaeve in the books) will feel forced into situations unnaturally. There has been more than one point where one of the players saying, "I *think* this is where the plot wants us to go."

So, in conclusion, while this adventure is excellent in its dreams and scope--and it's definitely better than something I could have designed myself--but it will fail often fail as a game. If you are intending to run a WOT campaign, buy this adventure, read it so that you thoroughly understand its scope BEFORE you even let your players make up characters. The characters need to be in the philosophy of the story or the story won't work.

It's not a supplement. That'd've been useful. It's a big adventure set. That could've been useful.

Then we met the Demon-Bear.

Allow me to explain. In d20, animals don't get feats. One of the early mini-adventures has a BIG bear that has lots of bonus feats...and a party of first and second-level PCs is supposed to defeat it. When it can kill a PC with one swipe of its paw. Right.

That's emblematic of the problems with this adventure set. It's written with little attention to rules or game balance, or even party survival. Some adventures throw opponent after opponent at the PCs, but with such poor healing capability, you'll inevitably have PC casualties. While those aren't necessarily bad, having the odds stacked so heavily against you isn't fun.

Another flaw is that, in many instances, PC decisions don't matter. You are, in fact, on rails in a good many adventures, and that's BAD. The adventure in Falme, in particular, comes to mind.

It could've been good. Really. Almost anything would've been better than the ... introductory adventure included with the main book (1st-level PCs...against 3rd-level trollocs that outnumber you, and, oh yes, have high strength and high-crit-range weapons!)...save this.

If you're intending to GM Wheel of Time d20 adventures, save your money and look elsewhere. You can come up with stuff that's easily better.

After I got the book and looked through it, I found there were many places were the ink was so sloppy that you couldn't even read certian parts, It looks like a copy of a copy.

This book has nothing to do with either Judaism or Moses. It has long been regarded as a medieval forgery. Jews were often burned at the stake by the Inquisition for supposedly practicing sorcery, and books like this were used as the "proof" that such sorcery existed. In other words, it's the Jewish equivalent of the bogus "Malefactorum" used against pagan witches. It probably has some value in terms of the history of witchcraft and other gentile magicks in Europe, but if you are looking for authentic Jewish mysticism, this ain't it. The spells are absolute gibberish if you know even rudimentary Hebrew, and they contain so many Catholic elements that I burst out laughing. I mean, how could Moses, who lived around 1200 B.C., have used an incantation invoking the Virgin Mary? Talk about ridiculous anachronisms!

The book is well written and goes on pretty well, but you tend to lose track in the middle, lot of elements are been brought into at the same time, but once you get a hang of these elements, makes it a good reading and reflect upon life and the elements from a different point of view, I enjoyed it personally, but I also feel that the spirit could have been much better, the author could have increased the tempo a little bit more to make it more interesting.

I was pertty worried about the "thinness" of this book when it arrived - well, well well. GRE is a pretty comprehensive exam, and the questions can be pretty picky. If you were to take the actual exam just on the basis of knowledge from this book, you're pretty hosed up. It would have been better for you to just drag out your introductory bio textbook and look through the figures there, that would be much more helpful. I actually bought an official bio study guide from ETS as well, and I found something funny. The simulation test that they have in Cracking the GRE... is pretty much the same as the old exam in the ETS book, with only a slight modification! I guess they could have done it in one of two ways - one, drill-type book, a question after question, whereby you can train yourself to any type of problems imaginable. Two, they could have made it like a small dictionary/reference type of book which emcompasses must-know stuff, condensed version of textbook, if you like. They tried to make this book to do both of these - bluntly, they weren't successful. I personaly didn't like the way they write the book (this can be said to the general test prep book as well), too casual sounding hey-I'm-your-buddy tone of voice, and the way they waste pages and pages by using a large font (with a bunch of typos!) and taking SO MUCH space in answer key pages....

I got this book because it was the most recently published, so I figured that it would have the best review material that encompassed the most relevant subjects on the test. Unfortunately, after taking the practice test included in the book, the practice test offered by ETS, and the real subject test last weekend, I found it to be a pretty poor indicator of what actually showed up on the test. The only thing the review in the book is good for is to give an outline of things you need to know to take the test. I actually used an MCAT study aid to review most of the material, which was a lot more detailed, and a lot more helpful. What's worse is that this book makes you think you're actually learning a lot, when it's really just skimming over a lot of different topics, leaving out a lot of the detail. When I took the practice test, I realized that it was extremely biased towards what the book reviewed so that when you scored yourself, your score would be a lot higher than it should be. Overall, this book could only be used as a general study guide and the test gives you little idea of what the test is really like. The one redeeming thing about this book is that the answers to the tests come with detailed explanations, which I found pretty helpful.

This book is all right--unmarred by the egregious errors and typos that characterize most of the GRE Bio test preparation texts currently on the market. However, it's insufficient if you're trying to achieve really high scores. For that, I recommend the book put out by ETS (Amazon sells it). I found that to be the only practice test that strongly resembled the actual test.

As background, I took the GRE Biology Subject Exam in December 1999, and scored in the upper 97% (if that makes any difference.) I personally found the ETS practice tests the most useful study aid, in conjunction with textbooks Campbell's Biology and Molecular Biology of the Cell by Alberts, et al. This book was a distant fourth, but those whose Bio is quite rusty, or whose scoring goals are more modest, might be quite pleased with it. (The other review books I used--the Barron's book and the one by Ogden--were a waste of time and money.)

This Book stinks!!!!!! I'm sure you will think that too

I've spent my entire life rooting against Kentucky (living just north of the river from it). And I found this book entertaining. It's nowhere near great sports literature, it's not even the best book by Paul Finebaum, but it's worth reading for all the IU/UofL/UT/whoever else fans who hate Kentucky. I can think of plenty more than 303 reasons to hate Kentucky

Problem is, last year I aggravated Hal Mumme the football coach, and now he won't talk to me. All over some comments I made about South Carolina just to sell a few papers. I really know nothing about sports, and very little about horses (you can write anything you want to about horses and who cares, nobody goes to watch the horses, they go to dress up pretty, drink heavily and have a good time).

Really I am about the best reason going to hate Kentucky. I wish they would bring back the old words to "My Old Kentucky Home."

Be sure to read my column and email me at breedII@aol.com

The book is easy to read, however, the information does not feature the theoretical clarity and depth of a real engineering text. The content is interesting, however, there is zero chance of it turning you from an also-ran into a champion.

Uninformative.

Over simplistic, out-dated and lacking sufficient relevance to anyone except the uneducated and the inexperienced.

Deeply dissapointing in many respects.

After e-mailing Paul Haney numerous times, I found myself subscribing to his newsletter and visiting his website frequently. He always showed me respect and answered my questions promptly. His book, Inside Racing Technology, was suggested to me from the Forsythe Racing team. I must say that it is aging a little bit, but that its basic concepts are a must to anyone who wants to understand Champ car dynamics at all.

As an anthropologist working in Nicaragua, I found this book not only inaccurate in many regards, but offensive. To portray Nicaragua as a country "untouched" by change in which "time stood still" is ridiculous, especially given Nicaragua's political history and its contemporary linkages to structures of global finance such as the IMF and World Bank. If you want to visit Nicaragua, there are scores of books that offer a far superior understanding of Nicaraguan history and culture and Lonely Planet gives far more practical info for travelers in their Central America guide.

Sorry to say, but living in Nicaragua convinces me that this book is fine as a suppliment, but don't rely upon it as your main guide. I feel Mr. Glassman has missed the mark and his opportunity. Its a good effort for a non-major travel guide, but I always had to refer back to Lonely Planet and the rough guide for reassurance.

I used this book to travel through Nicaragua and found the information provided, or lack there of, to be very dissapointing. The book is full of useless chatter while giving no specifics such as phone numbers, exact directions, or prices. Save your money and buy the lonely planet book.

Been a Wrox fan for some time. This is the worst book their team has produced. The material is cursory at best and totally theoretical. Very few practical examples. Never thought I would point to an MSPress Step-by-Step book, however it is far superior to this junk.

I found this book to be helpful in understanding how to utilize multidimensional database design. It was nice to see that Microsoft has some affordable alternatives one can turn to in the data mining and data warehousing market. Once again WROX has produced a helpful product for professionals in the computer industry.

I bought Sakhrs version of this book for SQL Server 7. This is not just an upgrade but a look at the new functionlity found within SQL Server 2000.

This book is a dream if you are involved within Analysis and even looking at the new DTS Analysis functions has helped me.

Comparing this with other books, by far this is the one that is well written and doesnt just come out with the obvious.

One star is a little much for Slave Island. The plot was not followed through and the few pieces of sex it had were not very well descripted a 9 yeaar old could write a better book about a butterfly.

This book is nothing like I had thought it might be. I am a fan of Paul Little's "The Story of Monique / The Metamorphosis of Lissette Joyeaux" and thought "Slave Island" would be similar... I was very wrong. It was very violent and revenge-ridden. It isn't a fun and forbidden erotic fantasy book. If you're a fan of big time S & M, then maybe you would like it, but it's not for me.

I had high expectations for Slave Island. The basic premise of held great potential, and it has been wonderfully exploited in novels by Anne Rice and others. But Slave Island is no novel. It's pulp, worth little more than the paper it is printed on.

Slave Island is badly written. It is full of spelling and grammatical errors which distract and annoy the reader.

To be effective, erotic literature must encourage the reader to identify with one or more characters. But Slave Island is populated with vile caricatures. The victims are such haughty snobs they must offend even themselves, and their captors have left all redeeming qualities on the mainland.

The author must have a great resentment for society and civilization. His villains (heroes?) are whining malcontents whose only purpose seems to be exacting revenge on those unfortunate enough to discover this mysterious island.

Like several people before me said, it has typos and unreadable screenshots. But that's not the worst. Sure, you get some CDs with the book but don't think they are a distribution. They are an incomplete, butchered distribution for which the installation software was NOT modified and getting anything done - like installing - with this big piece of *&#$ is next to impossible. Maybe a Linux 'expert' could piece it back together but not a newbie or somebody learning. They call it an 'evaluation version' but it doesn't give you a chance to evaluate it.

The only way this book might be of use is if: a) you ALREADY have SuSE, and b) it has particular info you want. Since it commonly seems to take you to the edge of complete info and not get you there I would say there are probably better books to be had. Stay away from this junk.

This is without a doubt the worst book I have ever read. The screen captures are virtually unreadable, and the book is full of errors. Typos, technical errors, references to the wrong figures, references to lines in examples that were not there, etc. The errors became such a distraction that I ceased really being able to focus on the technical material in the book - such that it is. Syntax examples are in the wrong case, fonts are not used consistently to call out commands, programs, etc. Stupid stuff like periods missing from IP addresses, etc. that any proof reader should have caught. I quit reading it around page 214, and threw it away. I emailed the publisher, and their response after several days was, in so many words, "thank you for taking the time to express your thoughts." My email to SuSE came after only a few hours and was far more personal. Don't waste your money on this book. I'm really sorry that I did. And I'll be very very careful before I buy another book by this publisher. (I guess O'Reilly has spoiled me!)

SuSE is my distribution of choice and although I have more Linux books than I need, I took a peek at this one and decided I had to buy it. I think the book is set up very well, is easy to read and comes closer than other books I've read to being written in "English" rather than "Engineer". It isn't terribly SuSE specific (which I think is a good thing) but it does cover a good range of topics from installation to configuration including SuSE specific tidbits here and there.

I read the other reviews here and was puzzled by them... I am a terible speller which may explain why I didn't notice the typos in the book. Your milage may vary...