The biggest problem with the WSH and VBScript is that it is marketed as being a powerful but simple "macro" language. Nothing could be further from the truth. VBScript is essentially VB without the forms and graphics. VBScript is just as powerful, has the same controlling capabilities, and uses almost all the same commands and syntax as VB. To think of writing scripts for the WSH as anything less than programming is a mistake.

When I first got this book, I read a ways into it, decided I didn't have the time or energy to go on, and put it aside. Had I written a review at that point, it would not have been favorable. Then I learned more about the WSH, what it was and what my expectations should be, what a person could do with it - and I picked it back up, and really applied myself. And apply yourself you must for this book. The first 154 pages of this 600 page book teach you the syntax and structure of VBScript (and some JScript). It's a little dry, and easy to get lost in. But once you have that down, the rest of the book can really open things up and show you quite a bit.

Besides an introduction to the language, the book covers "upgrading" your old batch files, writing logon scripts for users, automating network tasks, SQL server, IIS server, as well as showing you how to use ActiveX objects for the file system, CDO, ADO (Database), etc. The book even goes so far as to touch on ADSI scripting for Windows NT and Windows 200 Active Directory.

Even though at this point in time the book is a little out-dated (written in the Windows NT 4 time), it is still a good learning tool. Not so unlike other "... in 21 days" books, the average person won't complete the book in that time, and you learn just as much correcting the errors in the code and doing the workshop material as you do from the actual guided lessons. If you're looking for a scripting solution that is quick and easy, WSH and VBScript isn't it, and neither is this book. If you're looking for a powerful automation tool for network and services automation, and you're willing to spend the time it will take to complete this book, then this could be the title for you.

This is a great book. The examples and the amount of information covered and the clear explanations are nothing less than amazing. This is a book that will take you from having no experience with programming (vbscript/jscript), COM, WSH, etc. to using all of these too write useful scripts.

If you are network administrator using NT/2000 do yourself a favor and get this book. If you simply want an introduction to high-level programming without buying VB then get this book. What you learn in this book will provide a foundation to learning Visual Basic if you decide to go further into programming.

For a programmer who has used VB, Java, or any ASP, this book will boost your skills incredibly with a minimal learning curve. It shows the basics of the WSH objects and an overview of VBScript and JScript within the first few chapters- it is worth buying the book just for those chapters alone.

If you are not familiar yet with the concepts of OOP and looking at object models, you might need a primer found in another book before looking into WSH. It is built purely on objects that your code will refence and it can be a bear to take on unprepared.

It will be interesting to see how the .Net framework will integrate the objects in WSH- there is a significant chance that little in this book will be completely valid after Windows XP and Visual Studio .Net have become standard. Nevertheless, this book is an invaluable tool to the Windows programmer who wants to simplify life by automating as many tasks as possible.

I'm so glad I didn't do English Lit at college. I've just read the customer reviews of this wonderful book and seen how being forced to read something you wouldn't normally read makes you bitter, twisted and intent on ensuring no-one else gets pleasure out of it. It also makes you cemented in your opinion that if you don't like it, it must have no redeeming feature (after, all "I did a degree in Eng Lit, so I must know what I'm talking about"). All great difficult books suffer from this -- Ulysses, At Swim-Two-Birds, Lanark, The Trial, and that's just the 20th century. Oh well. People should read what they want, when they want: they should also accept that there is little out there with no value, it's taste that causes us to like different things.

That said, what do I think of it? I think it's one of the most fun reads there is, once you get yourself back into an 18thC mode of reading (MTV has so much to answer for with our attention spans). Also, forget all this bunk about it being postmodern or deliberately experimenting with the novel. When this was written, there WAS no novel, that came in the 19thC. Before this there was Don Quixote, Robinson Crusoe and little else that could be called a novel. All Sterne was doing was writing to entertain, and that he does marvelously. He had no boundaries to push - they weren't there - so he made his own (and they just happened to be a long way away from where he originally sat).

Anyway -- if you like the idea of a book that coined the phrase "cock and bull story", includes blank pages to show discretion when two characters make love, that draws wiggling lines indicating the authors impression of the amount of digression in the previous pages, you'll love it. But just stop if you don't like it, instead of perseveering and then taking it out on everyone.

Have you wanted to read a book where the author decides to "rip out" one of the chapters, or leaves a blank page for you to 'draw' one of the characters? Would you enjoy a story which takes many chapters before the hero manages to be born? This 18th-Century tale is touchingly told. The characters are real, and fascinating. It's not their fault that their story is frequently and impishly interrupted by outlandish "digressions" on the part of an author so creative that his modern descendants are considered to be Joyce and Beckett, as well as many others. Would you enjoy a chapter on Chapters? About buttonholes? About whether parents and their children are kin to each other? A chapter on curses? Poor Laurence Sterne has so much trouble getting two of his characters down the stairs that he finally calls in a "critic" to help! Advice on reading such an unusual, even unique, book: read the first several chapters, then stop and reread them. Continue that process and soon the book will feel quite familiar, and that's when the fun really starts. The Oxford World's Classics edition follows the first edition of the book, and is preferred. Amazon also offers the fully-annotated edition, the "Florida" edition, in three volumes.

Tristram Shandy has a cult following -- although few people have actually read it, most of us have read something directly influenced by it. Sterne was a creative genius, and pulled no punches when telling the story of Tristram Shandy, gentleman. Not only is this a shaggy-dog story, and a prototype for "experimental" writers like James Joyce and William Burroughs, but it is also a (remarkably early) meditation on the self-referentiality of literature, and the fine (nonexistent?) separation between a book's abstract textual form and its physical, material, paper-and-ink form. Like a good postmodernist, Sterne realizes you can't very well separate the two.

You didn't like this book? Well maybe Sterne didn't want you to like it. Maybe likeability should not be the primary project of a text. One of the meta-statements Sterne seems to be making is he has no respect for your time, nor your desire for narrative cohesion -- and why should he? Defiant, Sterne is. Very defiant. Cool.

The first few chapters seem rather heavy as Ian provides the details and background. But once the action starts it is afterburner all the way. The Fifth Cylinder leaves you both exhilirated and horrified at Ian's premise!
The book travels like a runaway express train from one shattering climax to the next!!
Considering the news headlines in the past few months, we can only hope that The Fifth Cylinder never becomes reality!
Here's your next movie Arnold Schwarzenegger!!
You would be phenomenal as Immannuel Thor!!

Ian Campbell begins with three unrelated incidents and then inexorably ties them together and draws you into the terrifying story. I found the pace started slowly but page by page it increased until during the last half of the book I could not turn the pages fast enough! Ian gets you seeing the action roaring past your eyes like an express train. The characters stand lifelike in this quest for eternal youth and its horrifying consequences. One can feel oneself drawn with the characters to the very brink of apoaclypse, looking down over the edge into the abyss beyond. Then, just when you think you have stopped sliding, Ian pushes you again! I loved his ability to draw different events, characters and scenarios into one cataclysmic climax! Good solid heart-stopping action and suspense!

An excellent research on integration of technology and organizations was done and described in this book by the author.

The authors did discuss the problematic processes for an organization to adapt a new technology. However, the features of GIS-common functions, possible programings, were not fully described. Subsequently, solutions on the integration of GIS and organizations was not developed.

On the other hand, the issue which the authors want to bring about is indeed the bottle neck of implementation of GIS. It needs more attention and research on the human aspect when we try to apply the GIS technology. Otherwise, the new technology GIS would be finally "irrelevant" instead of "invention".

OK I admit it--I love Jonathan Swift--An unbelievable satirist and a very talented writer and poet. This book has some great essays about Swift, his history, and contemporaries. These essays are somewhat esoteric and scholarly but worth the effort. Especially the Blackwell essay. If you are writing a paper on Swift (or you are a sincere fan) and you want info--read this book.

Whoa boy. Now these are what I call villains. Fae so evil they even manipulate the manipulators of Camarilla, Sabbat and Wyrm, not to mention the Thallain, the really, _really_ dark reflections of the normal fae. The next time someone calls your Unseelie troll an Ogre, introduce him to a real one...

I was eager to see what Wilmut thought about cloning after reading his excellent essay in the best-selling anthology The Human Cloning Debate. But I was stunned when I read this book. Unlike the other work, this book comes across as silly, even patronizing. The book reads as though Wilmut is attempting to capitalize on Dolly, rather than as a thoughtful reflection on veterinary biology or genetics or human families. It is also very boring, even with the ghostwriter! Save your money; this expensive vehicle is not the best or the most interesting of the crop of cloned cloning books.

Science is breeding new technologies at an unprecedented rate, and with the birth of each advancement comes a new generation of ethical concerns. Few developments have rattled the world's moral cage more than cloning, and it behooves any professional to have a working knowledge of the foundations of the current debates surrounding the genetic sciences. Of course, understanding how Dolly the Lamb was cloned from an adult sheep is probably beyond the grasp of most readers. But authors Ian Wilmut, Keith Campbell (the two leaders of the cloning team) and Colin Tudge (an experienced science writer) examine every inch of scientific ground the project covered. While many details are presented densely, this clearly written, first-person account of a momentous, history-making event is fascinating, particularly for readers of a scientific bent. We [...] recommend this book to any and all readers as a basic education in a field that has the potential to impact all of our businesses and our lives. Hello, Dolly.

Ian Wilmut and Keith Cambell are the creators of Dolly the cloned sheep. They are also two of the three authors of this book. The book is all about how the historic event of cloning a mammal for the first time in history came about. It is wonderful reading and contains some great scientific insights. The only problem is that these two scientists have not embraced human cloning and all the good that it can do. It seems as if they stepped out of scientific mode and were forced to be against human cloning to keep their funding, placate their religions, and not become pariahs to the religious right. Great book. I highly recommend it for the fascinating story of cloning.

THE EUROPEANS IS NOT ONE OF HENRY JAMES BETTER NOVELS. NEVERTHELESS, FOR FANS OF JAMES, IT'S QUITE READABLE.
THE NOVEL IS ABOUT 2 EUROPEANS - A YOUNG MAN AND WOMAN, BROTHER AND SISTER, WHO TRAVEL TO AMERICA (BOSTON) TO VISIT THEIR LONG LOST AMERICAN COUSINS.
THE PLOT INVOLVES THE AMOROUS ENTANGLEMENTS OF THE COUSINS AND THEIR AMERICAN FRIENDS.
MUCH OF THE STORY DEALS WITH CONTRASTING THE EUROPEAN AND AMERICAN "WAYS" AND "LIFESTYLES" - A FAVORITE TOPIC OF JAMES.
THE BOOK IS NOT A COMPLEX READ LIKE SOME OF HIS LATER NOVELS. IT'S QUITE ACCESSIBLE AND MILDLY ENTERTAINING.

THE EUROPEANS IS NOT ONE OF HENRY JAMES BETTER NOVELS. NEVERTHELESS, FOR FANS OF JAMES, IT'S QUITE READABLE.
THE NOVEL IS ABOUT 2 EUROPEANS - A YOUNG MAN AND WOMAN, BROTHER AND SISTER, WHO TRAVEL TO AMERICA (BOSTON) TO VISIT THEIR LONG LOST AMERICAN COUSINS.
THE PLOT INVOLVES THE AMOROUS ENTANGLEMENTS OF THE COUSINS AND THEIR AMERICAN FRIENDS.
MUCH OF THE STORY DEALS WITH CONTRASTING THE EUROPEAN AND AMERICAN "WAYS" AND "LIFESTYLES" - A FAVORITE TOPIC OF JAMES.
THE BOOK IS NOT A COMPLEX READ LIKE SOME OF HIS LATER NOVELS. IT'S QUITE ACCESSIBLE AND MILDLY ENTERTAINING.

THE EUROPEANS IS NOT ONE OF HENRY JAMES BETTER NOVELS. NEVERTHELESS, FOR FANS OF JAMES, IT'S QUITE READABLE.
THE NOVEL IS ABOUT 2 EUROPEANS - A YOUNG MAN AND WOMAN, BROTHER AND SISTER, WHO TRAVEL TO AMERICA (BOSTON) TO VISIT THEIR LONG LOST AMERICAN COUSINS.
THE PLOT INVOLVES THE AMOROUS ENTANGLEMENTS OF THE COUSINS AND THEIR AMERICAN FRIENDS.
MUCH OF THE STORY DEALS WITH CONTRASTING THE EUROPEAN AND AMERICAN "WAYS" AND "LIFESTYLES" - A FAVORITE TOPIC OF JAMES.
THE BOOK IS NOT A COMPLEX READ LIKE SOME OF HIS LATER NOVELS. IT'S QUITE ACCESSIBLE AND MILDLY ENTERTAINING.