Last April I had the distinct honor of making the aquaintence of Dr. Bert Dunlop. As an adoptee from Vietnam, I left on the same day Dr. Dunlop left Saigon with that plane full of babies in 1975. My husband-to-be was on the plane Dr. Dunlop provided medical care for. I found Doctor Dunlop At Your Service Sir to be quite an engrossing book that had me drifting in and out of my daily routine, pausing to reflect on his life that is quite amazing.

This book is an invaluable guide for anyone who owns a home, or is planning to buy or renovate one. The different systems of the house are explored, from the heating system to the roof, with clear descriptions of the typical problems which occur in each of these areas and what to look for.

The pictures, which come from the "Illustrated Home" series of books are clear and certainly worth a thousand words each.

In addition to the technical explanations of the various systems of the house, there is a section devoted to the renovation process, dealing with architects, and information on contracts and budgeting.

From the cavemen to the modern days, this book covers everything known to the history of veterinary medicine so far: from the ancient means of diagnosis, to the discoveries of new treatments, to great people who helped to develop the veterinary medicine. It's not a book for specialists, but for anyone interested in history. I particularly bought this book because I'm a vet, and wanted to know the origins of my profession. And I had a very good surprise.

You're a Home Inspector or simply in search of picture after picture with little other detail other than technical information. If you are looking for advice on how to repair or fix items, DO NOT BUY this or other Carson Dunlop books in this series, or the $$$ - The Illustrated Home. Carson Dunlop is a firm out of Canada that does produce good materials for Home Inspectors, but these are not "how to" manuals, nor are these books good for the average home owner. The reviewer g_clarke is, in my view, clearly associated with Carson Dunlop and his or her review should be ignored - check out his/her other reviews, they are worded exactly the same for each book in this series. Kind of sad when people write misleading reviews to simply increase sales. On the positive - DO BUY this book if you are simply looking for very detailed technical information.

With almost 500 illustrations, "Electrical, Plumbing, Insulation and the Interior" shows you exactly what the finished job should look like.

Alan Carson and Robert Dunlop prove in this easy-to-use book that pictures really are worth a thousand words. Through clearly detailed illustrations Carson and Dunlop walk you through your home, showing you just what your repairs and renovations should look like, inside and out. This book is an excellent tool for the new home owner or home inspector, showing you which pitfalls to avoid and what to look for when searching for potential problems in the electrical work, plmbing and insulation in your or your client's home.

You're a Home Inspector or simply in search of picture after picture with little other detail other than technical information. If you are looking for advice on how to repair or fix items, DO NOT BUY this or other Carson Dunlop books in this series, or the - The Illustrated Home. Carson Dunlop is a firm out of Canada that does produce good materials for Home Inspectors, but these are not "how to" manuals, nor are these books good for the average home owner.Kind of sad when people write misleading reviews to simply increase sales. On the positive - DO BUY this book if you are simply looking for very detailed technical information.

With over 500 illustrations, "Structure, Roofing and the Exterior" shows you exactly what the finished job should look like.

Alan Carson and Robert Dunlop prove in this easy-to-use book that pictures really are worth a thousand words. Through clearly detailed illustrations Carson and Dunlop walk you through your home, showing you just what your repairs and renovations should look like, inside and out. This book is an excellent tool for the new home owner or home inspector, showing you which pitfalls to avoid and what to look for when searching for potential problems in the structure, roof or exteriorof your or your client's home.

Rob Kling has created a seven-part book of issues that surround the integration of technology into businesses and education. He validates his beliefs with case studies and testimonials from experts in their respected areas. Kling begins each chapter with a very thorough overview of the section.

Don't let the size of the book intimidate you; the material is well prepared and easy to read. My advice is to pick and choose chapters and sections within those topics that are of interest to you. Keep in mind that a lot of the material in the book is "out dated", which caused me some cognitive frustration. The book was written in 1996 and I surmise from the preface that it was conceived in the early '90's. Topic titles are revenant to Computerization and Controversy but the case studies are only useful as a historical prospective.

JCalhoun

With the dawn of the Information Age waning and social, economic and political changes underway, Robert Kling's anthology adds form and character to the futurist, anthropological debate of what will happen to us now.

In an impressive and hefty volume, Kling et.al. questions the ramifications of eight areas of human interaction; areas as varied as privacy, social control, human relationships, work, and human interaction. In this examination, Kling provides a depth of discussion that will overwhelm the technology neophyte. For those in the industry or for the more advanced casual user, this volume will fill in holes of knowledge that guarantee to stimulate deeper appreciation for the changes underway in our society.

Rob Kling's Computerization and Controversy offers a vast and diverse range of perspectives about the social effects of computerization in the future. This compilation of 78 essays was published in 1996, making the material somewhat dated. Nevertheless, the authors showcased in this anthology are insightful and visionary and much of their commentary is still relevant today, despite the fact that everything is not exactly as they had projected. The burning issue endures: What is the social cost of computerization? The book does not answer this question, but equips the reader with lots to consider. The readings in this anthology address not only the way that computerization affects society, but also how society shapes computerization.

This collection is divided into 8 sections. The first section is authored entirely by Kling and sets the stage for the other sections that follow. In it, he poses questions about the ability of computerization to make life easier. His essay entitled "The Seductive Equation of Technological Progress with Social Progress" speaks to the theme of the entire book. Technology can both help and hinder social interactions. By juxtaposing contrary opinions on the effects of computerization on education, work, business, government, privacy, economics, and science, he provides a text that is comprehensive in scope and perspective.

Computerization and Controversy is less of a "futures" book, and more of a "history" book - evidence of where we have been in our thinking about the effects computerization on society. It is poignant evidence of how quickly society is changing as a result of technology and computerization. One essay, by Anne Okerson, outlines the future of the Electronic Journal. She describes how quickly information "expires" and how technology can meet the need for up to date knowledge and facts. Were Computerization and Controversy published as an ever-changing e-text, we might be better off (or would we?).

I try to know how to do this application to buy the book on shopping but something I don't understand if my card was right if anything happen I don't know if it safe to used my credit card and I hope you with send me the book if my card alright

If you just want to look at every single heating method available, then this book is for you. If you want some help repairing a problem, or adding ducting, this is not the book for you. All it has is many many pictures of various systems.

You're a Home Inspector or simply in search of picture after picture with little other detail other than technical information. If you are looking for advice on how to repair or fix items, DO NOT BUY this or other Carson Dunlop books in this series - The Illustrated Home. Carson Dunlop is a firm out of Canada that does produce good materials for Home Inspectors, but these are not "how to" manuals, nor are these books good for the average home owner. The reviewer g_clarke is, in my view, clearly associated with Carson Dunlop and his or her review should be ignored - check out his/her other reviews, they are worded exactly the same for each book in this series. Kind of sad when people write misleading reviews to simply increase sales. On the positive - DO BUY this book if you are simply looking for very detailed technical information.

I bought this book mainly for it's 3D section, but also to learn about DirectX in general. I had hopes of writing a simple 3D game (maybe even a 2D one), however it quickly became apparent that the Author has probably never used DirectX for that purpose!! I honestly found myself wondering, "Why else would you use DirectX if not for programming games?"

I worked through a few of the lessons (attempting the 24 hour goal), however after the first few lessons, I just couldn't continue. The lessons were so damm boring. I mean - the whole point of DirectX is to bring games to life, if not games, then at least bring the screen to life! This Author killed any spirit I had to create a "laser gun battle while driving to a fight scene in my Hover-Ferrari dodging laser fire from monsters with laser-cannons grafted to their chests!"

Instead we get a [bad] picture of a two dimensional, badly drawn taxi, moving to the left of the screen slowly (but smoothly), while the background moved a little bit and a sound moved from one speaker to the other. I mean really!!!! I have not seen a game like that EVER in my life - except for something designed for toddlers whilst learning to tell the difference between a horsy and a cow! Granted, this particular topic was only a demonstration of some DirectX techniques, but I had to wonder in what kind of game I would use these techniques? It just wasn't interesting at all - completely boring beyond belief!

The most complex example in the book involved several textured buildings, with a single stationary car and a moving helicopter that you got to fly, except fly is the wrong word! It quickly became apparent that the Author doesn't know how to program the DirectX 3D stuff. When the helicopter rotated, the buildings changed shape! I was absolutely dumbfounded!

SAMS put their name to this book, but instead of that being a good thing, it's now a warning label when I go shopping. Obviously SAMS do not require a high standard for their books, or their Authors.

I'm a professional windows programmer and got this book as a simple quickstart into DirectX which I haven't dealt much with in the past. I haven't read the entire book yet, but I have read the first couple of chapters, and skimmed various others.

o The coding style is awful. The naming convention is a hodge-podge of szHungarianNotation, unix_style_underscores and variations. Formatting is uneven and makes following the printed code rather difficult. Tons of global variables. I'm generally willing to overlook this as I don't copy code verbatim from books anyway, but I'd hate to be using this as a beginner.

o The code is written in a combination of C and C++ styles/APIs. I would have preferred if the author is going to use C++ that he actually made full use of the language, otherwise the code would be much clearer in plain C.

o The more I browse the the book the more obvious it becomes how badly layed out it is. Part IV is labelled "Welcome to 3D" however the first two chapters are on DirectMusic, wouldn't this have gone better in Part III "Adding Music and Sound"? It does contain two chapters on 3D topics, but you don't actually create a 3D application untill the first chapter of Part V "Input Devices", which in fact does not cover input devices, but covers basic 3D, textures, lighting etc... Part VI "Direct3D Immediate Mode" contains chapters on DirectInput and Force Feedback (what happened to Part V ?) as well as 3D Sound (Part III?)

o The first outright error that I noticed was in chapter 4, which states "In the last hour, you used a timer message WM_TIMER, to notify...." which is false. (the code on the CD may have, since I haven't looked at it, but the book did not)

Apart from that, the information presented so far does seem more or less useful and applicable, if not elegant.

To anyone that has some experiance in windows developement, you may be better served browsing through MSDN (which you are certainly familiar with) and it's samples, unless you have money to burn and just want to check this out.

To anyone that has little or no experience and anyone who just prefers to work from a book, this one is likely to frustrate you and teach you quite a few bad programming habits, try and find a better one. "Beginning Direct3D Game Programming" and "Isometric Game Programming With Directx 7.0" look promising and so far have great reviews.

i borrowed this book from a friend, and must note that there are SEVERAL SEVERE errors in Hour 5 (i havent got past it now)

for instance, they modify the bitmap_surface function, yet do not disclose the new one, or how to modify the existing one to handle the RECT they've added... im not a new programmer, and i STILL cant get this working via the book...