Although this book is but 15 chapters and 336 pages long it took me an incredible amount of time to read through it due to the complexity with which it was written. I've read several Cisco Press books in the same time it took to read this one! Further, I found myself asking the question over and over again, "If this book is about the fundamentals of Voice over IP and is 'A Systematic Approach to Understanding the Basics of Voice over IP', why is it difficult to grasp even the 'basics' as presented by the authors?" As stated in a previous review, the authors have a great understanding of the topics, however, like my Theory of Operating Systems instructor, they do not do well in 'dumbing' down that information to me, a layperson in this field. This book was definitely written by VoIP engineers for VoIP engineers, not for beginners like myself.

Jon and James have a conversational writing style that was easy to follow for me. They have included a lot of historical information that should help the reader understand the momentum behind the transition that is taking place today, creating a "new-world" model of internetworking that has its own rules.

As previously mentioned, this is not a design and implementation guide - the forthcoming Cisco Press title "Cisco Voice Integration" will be when it is released. This book does, however, give the reader a very detailed introduction to the underlying technologies that make Voice over IP, Voice over Frame Relay, and Voice over ATM work.

The book was a good read even for someone like myself with over 12 years in telephony and networking. Jon and James have done a good job of collecting and communicating relevant information about each of the VoIP building blocks.

This book is the one to read if you want to know something about the basics of Voice Over IP and the protocols which are involved like H.323. It also gives you an introduction to the POTS ( plain old telephony service ) standards. So, if you are new to VoIP and want to read about it from the ground, buy this.

But it is not the right choice if you are searching for preparation material for the cisco #640-647 cvoice exam. For that exam you also have to know something about VoFR and VoATM, which is not covered deeply enough here.

Here we have 3 smart kids (nat, izzie & grace), The twins, Izzie and Grace are stratospherically wealthy. Nat is poor. When Nat's mother loses her job ending Nat's collage edu., the twins come up with a plan to pull a kidnapping on themselves? Yeah right, I don't think so. Given the two wealthy girls prior generous and forward behavior with money and people they would have just gone and paid Nat's (and his mothers!) bills whether he/she liked it or not. So for me the story ended on page 221 with this way-out of character kidnapping scheme.

I did read the rest regardless tho because I sometimes like the way Mr. Abrahams weaves his stories and characters.

But right away comes another glaring out of characterization. Nat, who has fallen in love with Izzie and can tell her apart from her twin sister -easily- suddenly fails in recognizing Grace when the girls switch places at the last minute (Izzie becoming the kidnapped instead of Grace).

I think Mr. Abrahams would of done this story a favor if he'd of toned down Freedy (the bad guy) with his Andro/speed/bodybuilding obsession and gone into and expanded on the Freedy and Professor Uzig connection. Professor Uzig being Freedy's "Father: Unknown".

Also, why would Nat be prosecuted for attempted extortion? The kidnapping wasn't his idea! He came down against it but the twins had acted before he saw them again. Why didn't Izzie come to his defense?

All 'n all this reads like an unfinished draft. I don't see how something like this could of made it past anyone! especially anyone in the business. Too many discrepancies. Too many
avenues left unexplored.

Body>This book is a victim of the author's previous works. Once you've read other offerings, you come to expect dynamic chacterization, a rock-'em-sock-'em pace along with a surprises thrown in. Crying Wolf doesn't quite cut it in all areas. The characterization is there. First we meet Freedy, a swimming pool cleaner who just doesn't get it, an Abrahams' trademark. Freedy thinks he's smarter than he is; he thinks he's sexier than he is and in demand, and he doesn't understanding what the woman's (whose pool he's cleaning) problem is when he tries to have sex with her. On the other end of the spectum is Nat, the mid-west son of a single parent, basketball playing high school kid whose intelligence and essay wins him enough money to go to Inverness. While Freedy momentarily fades from the picture, Nat goes off to college. Because he can't afford to go home for Christmas, he must spend holiday on campus--until he meets the twins, Grace and Izzy. The twins, who are filthy rich, introduce Nat to a seductive new world he could not even begin to imagine. They take a jaunt to the Carribeans on the twins' family jet where Nat meets Leo Uzig, a philosophy professor at Inverness. From there, the plot thickens and the pace, which has faltered up to this point, picks up consideraly. Under the guidance of the professor, the twins and Nat become involved in a "harmless" plot that turns deadly very quickly.

I'd purchased "Crying Wolf" for a friend at work. Because he was out of the office and I'd run out of books, I borrowed this from his stack. I actually went to work half an hour early the day after I started reading it, so that I could finish the book before he came in to claim his prize.

I was looking for the suspense since, on the cover, Stephen King is quoted as having said that Peter Abrahams is his "favorite American suspense novelist." I really didn't find suspense. However, I found a good plot with likeable characters. While this book takes place in college - a boarding school, if you will - I kept thinking that Inverness was NOT Hogwarts...

Nat is a young man who wins a scholarship that takes him from his working-class town to Inverness College. Freedy is a young bodybuilder thug. Their paths parallel but never quite meet until...

Nat happens upon Grace and Izzie, very rich twin sisters who attend Inverness (and very different from Patti, his hometown sweetheart). The three students hatch a kidnapping scheme to try to obtain some much-needed money from the girls' father. However, as we learned as children, if you Cry Wolf often enough, when a crisis emerges no one will believe you.

While seldom actually "suspenseful," "Crying Wolf" was nonetheless a good book and a good purchase. I do recommend it; and I will be looking for more books by Peter Abrahams

We recently traveled through Malaysia, Thailand and Cambodia and found this guidebook practically useless and certainly frustrating--definitely not worth its weight. We have used other LPs in the past and found them to be at least adequate but this one doesn't even rate that well. It lacked many important details--such as the time/distances between many points, availability of various transportation options and routes, decent maps--the list goes on and on. Even though prices change often and currencies fluctuate, even a vague idea of prices (is it $10 or $100??) would have been quite useful to help us plan better. Although we ran into many people all 'armed' with the LP, they all had the same complaints.

This book is an adequate guide but it needs improvement in several areas. I used this book during Janurary and February of 2000 when I traveled through Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, Myanmar and Laos. Last year I used the Lonley Planet-India and found it was much better than Southeast Asia. Here are the weaknesses. 1. The numbers of the locations on the maps should be used in the text describing the location. This would grealy improve you ability to plan your day or route. 2. Maps should be improved. I would be willing to spend a few dollars more for better maps. 3. Hotel, restaurant, etc. names are not printed in bold type. This makes it more difficult to use. 4. It would be very helpful to grade the sites with a priority to reduce the time one spends reading fine print and get on with seeing the country. When I return to this part of the world next winter I will try to find additional books to correct these weaknesses.

I travelled through Thailand, Philippines and Hong Kong using this book. I initially bought this book with weight in mind. I did not want to carry three more LPs along with the other country books (LP Taiwan, Japan). Although much of the information needed to survive was written in the book, it certainly did lack the detailed maps and background information needed to have a care-free journey. SOmetime it certainly was a struggle , especially in Thailand. The Thailand Section prices were extremely outdated. Even in the height on the "asian economic flu", I had to triple the prices listed. The Hong Kong section was adequate, but HK is an efficient and easily travelled city. Of the three, I found the Philippine section the best, but some of the hotel quality ratings are out dated. Please do not stay at the Hotel Mercedes in Cebu!

Do not waste your hard earned money on this book. I bought it thinking short stories about WWII would be a great easy read book with very exciting story lines. In no way was this book even close. The only thing that keeps you going to the next story is the hope that the next one will be a little better than the last, which never really happens. Out of all the writers there is one or two that keep your attention but for the most part the writers have done a very poor overall job. You buy this book thinking you will be reading about hero's of WWII and you get stories about a little boy who helps in an aircraft hanger building an experimental aircraft. Not to spoil the ending the little boy turns out to be an alien and goes back to his home planet via a bicycle space craft. "WOW GREAT STORY"

This book is in the same classification as the Combat book.In
this book you have ten authors write stories about World War II.
Stephen Coonts writes about a Catalina flying boatwho are doing battle with the Japanese in the Pacific.Harold Coyle does a story about the battle on Guadalcanal with the Japanese that earned this area the name of Bloody Ridge.Jim Defelice tells about an American pilot who parachutes into Germany to gather
intelligence and gets decieved.Harold Robbins tells a story about someone whi is sent to kill Hitler.Dean Ing tells a story about an effort to build an interceptor to stop a Nazi super weapon.Barrett Tillman tells of the role of a flamethrower operator in a battle at Tawara against the Japanese.James Cobb
tells of a Catalina searching for Japanese radar in the Pacific.
David Hagberg tells of allied agents trying to stop a Nazi superweapon that can cause havoc in the United States.R.J. Pineiro tells of an American pilot who trains Russian pilots in new Aircobras.Ralph Peters tells of a German soldier going home on foot after the war has ended.All in all this was an interesting book.It ranked as an equal to Combat.

They really aren't around anymore, but from the 1930s through the 1970s, there was a proliferation of what became known in the trade as "adventure" magazines. These ranged in quality from the semi-respectable (Argosy) to the not so respectable (a veritable slew of titles, such as Stag and the right-out front For Men Only). They featured stories of spies, derring do and jungle intrigue, but they primarily contained war stories. Lots and lots of war stories. The covers often told the tale regarding the type of quality you could expect within; this was particularly true of Stag, which featured damsels who were either in distress (especially with respect to the state of their undergarments) or inflicting distress upon U.S. soldiers who were tied to chairs and doing their best to appear panic-stricken. All of these magazines, alas, are long gone, or at least don't seem to have the circulation they used to. I was reminded of them, however, by the publication of a mammoth volume of war fiction titled VICTORY.

VICTORY is a companion volume to COMBAT, both of which are edited by intrigue-meister Stephen Coonts. VICTORY is a doorstop of a volume, weighing in at well over 700 pages and consisting of ten previously unpublished pieces by masters of the war story. The stories in VICTORY range in length from fifty to over one hundred pages; if they had appeared in any of the adventure magazines, they would have been serialized. Most of the stories in VICTORY would or could have found a home in Argosy, though one --- "Blood Bond" by Harold Robbins --- is definitely Stag material. More on that in a minute.

The stories in VICTORY do not glorify war. Far from it. All of the stories are set during World War II, with the exception of "Honor" by Ralph Peters, set immediately thereafter. It is difficult to pick an immediate favorite; the average reader may have several, for different reasons. Coonts's own "The Sea Witch," which opens VICTORY, begins as a fairly predictable tale with an unpredictable ending and that utilizes an unexpected technique to catch the reader flatfooted.

"Blood Bond" is typical Robbins. It is a spy story, dealing with a plot to kill Hitler, and stands apart from the other tales due to its unrelenting scatological narrative. Robbins writes the way James Bond really thinks. Though Robbins, gone for several years now, had his share of detractors, he never inflicted boredom on his audience, and this previously unpublished work continues his streak, even in his absence.

David Hagberg's "V5" concerns the German rocket that could have turned the tide of World War II and the Allied military and espionage components that feverishly work together, though at some distance, to ensure that the project never makes it off the ground.

Peters's "Honor" deals not with Americans in the war but with a German officer in the war's aftermath, trudging through the nightmarish ruin that is postwar Germany as he tries to return home to his wife. The conclusion of "Honor" is predictable, almost from the first paragraph; it is the journey, not the close-to-foregone destination, that is important here.

The biggest surprise in VICTORY may be "The Eagle and the Cross" by R.J. Pineiro, a tale of an American pilot who is sent to the Eastern front to train Russian aviators during the final months of the Battle of Stalingrad. The bittersweet ending is perhaps the most haunting of any tale in the book.

With VICTORY Coonts again demonstrates that his talent as a writer is matched by his editorial abilities. While this volume is aimed at a more narrowly defined audience, the quality of the stories involved should, for the most part, satisfy the more discerning reader of any genre. Recommended.

--- Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub

This book was chosen as the textbook for the AP Computer Science C++ class at my school. Having programmed in C++ for quite a while, I must say I was disappointed. Most all of the basics are covered, and I believe a beginner would, after reading this book, "know" C++. However, the style of teaching isn't that great, and the order in which things are taught isn't the best either. Also, much of the code appears untested, and contains errors. The code also does not conform to the ANSI/ISO standard. I've read much worse, but I wouldn't recommend this book to anyone who asked me about C++, and I definately would not use it to teach a CS class.

-Alan Johnson

This book is intended to be a textbook for an introductory programming course for students who have never programmed before. You may agree or disagree with the premise (I disagree), but you have to admire the authors for trying.

What's in the book is pretty decent. The writing is clear. The examples are simple and clear enough to read without straining your brain. The authors do cover some fairly advanced topics, such as multiple inheritance and templates, but they concentrate on explaining the basics and make little attempt to cover the weird stuff and pitfalls of the language. You need a more advanced book for that.

Because the organization, writing, and index are better than average, I find that I am continuing to use this book. (I don't usually keep tutorial-type books after the first reading.)

I would recommend this book to undergrad students and beginning programmers who want to learn C++ or to anyone who wants an easy-to-read overview of the language. For advanced programmers who know C, Bruce Eckel's book "Thinking in C++" is a better choice.

This guide provided fairly reliable, basic information when I was trekking through Southeast Asia for seven months. When I landed by bus, taxi, motorcycle, truck, boat, trishaw, foot, or (sometimes) horse in a strange town at night where I didn't speak the language, it kept me alive. With its help I could always find the town center, the police station, and a bus stop.

Just don't expect it to enhance your experience, or even guide you safely. It's written in a rather smug, perfunctory style, and despite its budget approach seems aimed at very conventional travelers. There are none of the colorful, devil-may-care suggestions one finds in other guides, and it brings to mind the dour, conscientious tourists one meets on the road who are very nice but could backpack through Borneo without bringing back a single interesting story. This book has no spirit.

Maybe the reason it seems a bit inflexible and "un-hip" is because the editors are not responsive to the feedback of readers. I was very badly robbed a couple of times while using services recommended highly by this guide (for instance by the owners of the "Good Luck" Guest House in Bangkok), and after writing Lonely Planet with a polite request that they caution future travelers, I received no acknowledgment of my letters, and in fact the services in question are still touted by their guide.

This sort of apathy illustrates to me why their latest editions often seem years out of date, and why hotels and restaurants highly praised by them turn out to have closed down years ago. I understand that they have a limited number of researchers, but if they ignore input from readers who actively explore these regions, their book is naturally going to be out-of-touch, behind the times, and useless.

My advice is to buy the book if nothing else is available, because it does provide detailed factual information like phone numbers, addresses, etc. Just don't assume that it tells you all the interesting places and activities in a given city, because that's a laugh!! And don't ever take its advice on quality or safety.

A very useful and reliable, concise guide on South East Asia. Very good information on different highlights in each of the countries, good info on getting there and travelling around. Good to know where and when to go, as every other Lonely Planet guide featuring multiple countries.

My opinion of the book may be somewhat biased since I lived in a house mentioned in the book and I also am involved in Law Enforcement. The book is well written and concise, dealing with difficulties and stresses encounterd by cops and the need for camaraderie between them. Unfortunately, the camaraderie that is the topic of this book borders on obsession. There are twists and turns and amazingly bizarre actions between the two partners who are the books center. Imagine two NYC Police Officers pretending to have a gunfight, with one shooting blanks on the front lawn of a neighbor's house (mine) as a "joke"!

I used this casebook for my Computer Law class in 1996, and even then we had tons of supplements because of the rapidly evolving law with the growth of the internet. Still, the text is a good starting place for examining intellectual property rights associated with computers and software, privacy, and anti-trust concerns. Can a second edition be too far behind?

...It represents a new fashion in book publishing, where one author approaches a series of artists to share one of their projects and how they did it... The publishers love it because these books are so easy to do. The authors love it because no one person has to do the work. The result is a badly thought out, mish-mash of techniques and one total worthless book.

Too bad Amazon.com does not have a way to give "0" stars or even a minus category, like "I give this book -5 stars for failing on the most basic of criteria." These people should be drummed out of the profession for such rank amateur...

This book is a weird one. on one hand it's inspiring & not at all like a AE manual which I appreciate. On the other it is also borderline useless. None [bar one] of the projects featured have a simple Quicktime or Windows movie of the final piece that you can view what it is the author actually did. They have AfterEffects working files of which you have to export the movies yourself, BUT each project also uses different third party filters [no demo's on the cd] which throw error's soon as you load the AE project so you STILL can't see the finished product. Just plain stupid if you ask me. Most of the projects seem to have between 100%-50% of the working files missing. in the case of renescant all you get is the finished movie & nothing else. seeing as you are paying for the oppurtunity to 'pick apart' the files & explore I think it's fair enough they hand them over.
Overall I kind of like the book, but it is really on the whole disapointing & frustrating. I doubt whether I will by another Friend of Ed book based on this one. it really feels like a stooge job in the end.
PS I visited the FofED site to try & find files of which I found some for one project. but nothing else.
My advice is steerclear unless you REALLY want this book. I am sure there are others out there that do what this one does ALOT better..

The book has some great examples, which the reader is talked through. Not all of them are great, but a lot of them are, and they're from the sort of projects that form the bulk of AE work. It beats most of the AE books out there hands down (most of the others are just a rehash of the manual). I noticed a few people on the list hated it, but if they're really that advanced, why would they be bothered reading "how to" books? My biggest gripe with the book is that there were not MORE examples in there (books are expensive these days) > but I could say the same for most books I see now. Anyway, the book helped speed up my AE learning time, which is the main thing I'm after - not just an illustrated rehash of the manual.

Several of the "Star Trek" actors have written autobiographies, and I've read most of them. I found "Beam Me Up, Scotty" to be somewhat disappointing. The book is quite short, and doesn't have as much Star Trek info as I would have liked. A little more humor would have helped too. William Shatner's books on Star Trek, although some have questioned their accuracy, are certainly much more entertaining to read.

I liked this autobiography by James Doohan because he didn't try to "pretty up" the events that occurred in his life, or sugar-coat his opinions of others. In short, he is more honest than other writers of autobiographies, and seems to be taking a lot of flak for it. James Doohan was the personal assistant to Meisner at the Playhouse for years, and you don't get in that position for nothing. Those who criticized his "unauthentic " accent in their review obviously didn't read the chapter he devoted to how he came to adopt it, rather than the completely unintelligable accent authentic Scottish brogue can be.

My only two quibbles of the book were that I wished he'd gone into a little more detail about the general goings-on during Star Trek, and that, while certainly a unique experience, that he'd kept his early sexual encounter private. Some private things are, well,...private. The reader may not like some of the things he says or take issue with his attitudes, but he honestly expresses his feelings about things, which allows us to see the person as they are, and should be the goal of an autobiography. Overall, recommended to those who prefer honesty over poetic verse.

I read this book about 2 or 3 weeks ago. I thought it was pretty entertaining. No, he doesn't really talk much about ST. This isn't really a Scotty book. I mean, if he was talking about Scotty he would've started talking about ST on page 1. No, not a Scotty book. This is the life and times of James Doohan. It makes an interesting read, especially if you want to read about James.

I must say that I'm proud of James leaving it simple that he didn't like Shatner. I'm sure we would've had 1 star reviews still if he dissed Shatner all through out the book. After reading the other ST autobiographies, I feel each one had the chance to do some major dissing. The didn't take that route. They have sense enough to realize that ST fans are interested in the show and not with the backstage battles of Shatner vs. Everybody.