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However, there are limitations to the book that are not apparent from the description. First, the book is primarily about Novell networks. If you are looking for an in-depth treatment of other networks, this is not the book for you. Second, the specific hardware and software recommendations are few and far between for a book of this type.
I recommend this book for people wanting to learn about installing and repairing networks, particularily Novell networks. Just be aware of its limitations.
Though a few years past its prime, Craig Zacker and Paul Doyle's "Upgrading and Repairing Networks" remains one of the best, broadest, most authoritative and most comprehensive guides to local area networking in print. Published prior to the certification frenzy, this book was designed to teach the journeyman technician both the theory and practice needed to perform effectively in a crisis situation. Subjects covered range from "the stuff in every book" (like the OSI model, hardware, and a plus/minus analysis of operating systems) to arcane but incredibly useful information for those new to the care and feeding of LANs (such as a chapter each on UPSes and tape drives).
I strongly urge beginners to the networking field to put in the extra effort necessary to get this book; its scope all but guarantees that you'll learn new and valuable information, and its tone and style make this knowledge fairly painless to obtain. Seasoned networking professionals might also consider picking this one up (especially at marketplace prices)... that is, if the copy they've relied on since 1996 has worn out.
Un abrazo al Escritor
Faustina Garcia Cuenco de Arguelles
GRUPO SOFIA S.A.
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The facts related in Father Chacour's literature are not only truthful, but mild in comparison to the full facts facing the myths that Israel propogates about its inception. I am very displeased to find that so many people found his review helpful. If one takes a look at his previous record, he also very boldly refutes other scholarly work on the subject, particularly that of Israeli New Historian Tom Segev.
Before taking "lars399"'s word as gospel truth, the reader of this review should spend sometime having a brief history lesson of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, as well as the theological underpinnings of Christian Zionism (based in dispensational theology). As a Palestinian (Protestant) Christian who has visited and studied this area, I can attest to the truth of Father Chacour's historical analysis. If you hoping to free yourself from propoganda and theological error, challenging the perceptions that American (Christian Zionists) blindly hold on this issue, Fr. Chacour is a good place to start. Most respected academians and states around the world have recognized this truth-including Israel. It's time Americans started thinking critically and challenging the bias that is so ill-informed.
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Elias selects three comparative cases, France, England and Germany, and performs a content analysis of medieval texts on manners, etiquette, and the transformation of the nobility from warriors into courtiers. These texts are the empirical evidence offered for his key variable, pan-European courtly manners delineated by social structure (classes and "monopolies" of power). The other key variable (it's rather unclear which one is "dependent" on the other) is the rise of the nation-state, which was brought about by an exogenous variable (population growth) as well as two intervening factors: 1) the decline of the nobility relative to national absolutism (both economically and militarily); and 2) the rise of a money economy. Elias shows how centrifugal forces in these societies (mainly the warrior-noble class) resisted the "integration" of absolutism/nationhood, but that these forces in the end were overcome by economics coupled with the centripetal social groundwork of pan-European "civilite" and social customs, leading to an increasingly complex interweaving of social functions. "Society was 'in transition' . . . 'Simplicity' . . . had been lost. People saw things with more differentiation" (61). "Social control was becoming more binding . . . with the structural transformation of society . . . a change slowly came about: the compulsion to check one's own behaviour" (70).
The near totality of Elias' evidence is qualitative, often selected from medieval writings and secondhand observations. Although he means to proceed inductively from these facts, Elias often reads like a deductive historian, especially when positing lawlike generalizations such as "the more or less sudden emergence of words within languages nearly always points to changes in the lives of people themselves, particularly when the new concepts are destined to become as central and long-lived as these" (48). In fact, his entire thesis can be summarized with another of his apparently deductive axioms: "The growth of units of integration and rule is always at the same time an expression of structural changes in society, that is to say, in human relationships" (254). Marxists, of course, would say that such social changes are themselves dependent upon changes in the relations of production, but Elias gives equal weight to social causes as to economic ones. The economy is by no means neglected in his analysis, since he gives currency, demand for property, and population growth prime explanatory roles in his causal process (despite the fact that there is no quantitative evidence given for these socioeconomic correlations, unlike the analysis of the same topics by North & Thomas). However, Marxists would surely have a fit over Elias' assertion that the civilizing process leads to a wholesale leveling of distinctions between social classes (430), as well as his claim that the modern state arose out of a virtual stalemate between the bourgeois and the nobility (327).
On the topic of state-society relations, Elias makes the provocative argument that for the past 300 years, "monopoly rulers" (including, but not limited to, absolutist kings) are mere functionaries, with the real power resting in the hands of their "subjects" (271). "Control of the centralized institutions themselves is so dispersed that it is difficult to discern clearly who are the rulers and who are the ruled" (315). Of course, under an instable balance of power (including today's Third World) the playing field is presumably up for grabs between different classes and parts of the state, but in a developed society, Elias would argue that the internalization of "civilized" norms means that the "strong" state, while resting on a cohesive social order, is not as autonomous from social forces as one might think.
In this very ambitious book, Norbert Elias examines both how our consciousness has been transformed by society, and how society itself has "progressed", that is, what mechanisms have propelled the transformation of our western civilization from a violent and unrepressed, autarkic existence, to our infinitely interdependent, specialized and pacified modern nation-states.
By first exploring and analyzing historical documents, the author let's us experience with much detail how human's relations with others have been transformed, how our manners and behavior have been modelled by a changing environment, illustrated by the most diverse situations like table manners, attitude toward those of an inferior condition, hygiene, and sexuality.
It is like glancing at our collective youth, oddly familiar and intimate, yet repulsive.
Elias then meticulously articulates by what forces feudalism eventually gave rise to ever more centralized and interdependent forms of government and the corresponding specific changes in human behavior and attitudes.
A couple of interesting ideas in this book specially relevant to current debate: how society's transformation isn't the design of anyone or a "conspiration" of sorts, but a process that obeys its own laws; how our form of government is very deeply dependent on all classes and peoples, thus enjoying very little freedom for gratuitous action; and how war isn't necessarily the opposite of peace, but the opportunity for ever larger zones of pacification to emerge.
All good lessons to re-learn today, specially by the Left, with its visions of evil conspirations and it's stubborn insistence on perpetuating strife and conflict by opposing lasting resolution by means of war.
He provides an organizing principle for understanding how and why life and people were different in different periods of Western history. Until I read Elias I could only guess at what life was like in earlier eras by inferring from social, economic, and technical conditions. Elias provides a clear and reasonable way to look much closer.
I strongly recommend this book.
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And I had the chance to glimpse through this book just before the test. Well, about this book.
The reviews are superb!!!
It's full of economics that you will need on the test day.
Also I liked the review questions in the end of every chapter.
But there was one thing I was not satisfied with...
The sample test... They are terrible.
They're nothing like the test you'll see on the AP.
Apart from that I found this book great.
and to anyone who's studying for the AP economics, I recommend this book.
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It has proven to be very useful. I find the book's organization to be very intuitive. Each section (patents, copyrights, trademarks, etc.) has alphabetical definitions of the related terms. There are even examples of official correspondence.
Although my main goal was to learn more about trademarks, I have learned a lot more about patent terms by reading the book. This book finally helped me understand continuations and divisionals.
My only complaint is that the book tends to focus on U.S. filings and doesn't include a lot of foreign information. I know this would probably make the book longer, heavier, and more dense -- but I tend to have more foreign maintenance fee questions come up in my day-to-day job.
Still, I'm very happy with the book and find it very useful and well-written.
I would recommend this book, esp. to a non-lawyer. But as for what I was expecting it just needed more depth.