The 5-minute pediatric consult is written in an easy to read outline format. The writers have eliminated unnecesary obscure data and offer a concise outline of all major pediatric diseases. The topics are designed to be read in 5 minutes or less and all the up to date information to diagnose and treat a specific illness is included. The topics are alphabetized, so they are easy to look up. The writers are accomplised experts in their fields and the book has been edited by the distinguished Dr. Schwartz, at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. As a professor of Pediatrics, I highly recommend this book to practicing pediatricians, family practitioners, nurses and students.

when will the CD be available? I travel to several schools providing healthcare to uninsured children and would like to use this valuable reference. (a PNP)

love the format. listed alphabetically, the items are presented in a easy to read format. Just about all I want to know about the problem when working in a busy office. I can read more later but this gets the job done. an excellent 90's type of book. where is the CD?

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This an historically significant work worthwhile for a number of reasons--of course--, but I am particularly interested in its treatment of figured bass. Why? Although it was composed after Rameau published his revolutionary theory of root progression, C.P.E. Bach repudiated Rameau's theory, and this work remains untouched by it. Consequently, reading this is the easist way to get a feel for how things stood before Rameau and (ironically for C.P.E. Bach) to appreciate truly Rameau's achievement.

Also recommended: PENTATONIC SCALES FOR THE JAZZ-ROCK KEYBOARDIST by Jeff Burns.

SPADA is a journal that contains some of most current ideas on historical swordsmanship by a number of the field's leading researchers. As a student of historical swordsmanship myself, I think it is an excellent step in the right direction for the progression of this school of study.

As far as the contents of the book are concerned, my hat goes off to the editor, Stephen Hand, for distilling such a diverse, and yet interesting range of papers from the vast array of excellent treatises available.

The book also features some interesting reports on some of the most recent activities undertaken in the WMA community. This provides the reader with a very good 'big picture' perspective into what advances are being made in what fields, and an appreciation for the vast range of people who are now interested in historical swordsmanship.

With regards to it's practicality, the book caters for many different tastes - whether you are interested in the finesse of renaissance fencing, or simply a medieval re-enactor using the trusty 'sword and shield' method. SPADA provides useful insights and a greater understanding of historical methods of fighting.

I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in gaining a greater appreciation of historical swordsmanship, and anyone who is curious to know what the swordmanship community out there is doing. I rate it as a 'must have' item, and I look forward to more SPADA releases in the future.

cheers

Matt Partridge
Secretary
Order of the White Stag

Mitchell provides a well description of today and very near future. Covering most of the ideas possible with the current state of technology. He tells us what is available today and perhaps what is available later today. However, he fails in telling what is going to be a little later, say next week. A reader expects more from a book called "e-topia". A better title for the book would be "e-today". If you are a stranger to the field, you can learn a lot from this book. Otherwise, you already have many ideas addable this book.

This is a great book, and you can't say 'great' without choosing the word carefully. Think of the book as very rich food, it is difficult to digest it at one sitting. The starter was like a think broth but it did help me settle into the author's writing style. The main course was enlightening but filling, and the desert comparatively light and attractive. This is no madman's ranting it is very well balanced and honest. I felt the author was sitting beside me reading the whole thing aloud as the style is friendly if a little bit too heavily laced with 'advanced English'. And this is it's flaw, this wonderful book is really only suitable for the native English speaker, I gave my copy to a Czech friend with excellent English and she was unable to enjoy it as I had. If you have an interest in what the physical shape of our existance might look like under the future influence of the virtual world we are creating then this is the book for you. This is not just a book for architects, it is a book for a very wide audience, it is not too heavily littered with technical jargon so native English speakers will be able to enjoy it.

The book helped me to put some commonsense about the Internet/technology and their impacts together. But it lacks of depth.

After more than three decades since the Jupiter II launched the Robinson family on its ill-fated journey to Alpha Centauri, the Irwin Allen show still has its fans. As one of them, I find this book to be a welcome member of my library "family." Featuring cast bios, writers commentary, a great collection of stills, and a comprehensive episode guide (with a few errors), the book is perfect for those of us that grew up longing to be a part of the voyage to the stars.

Sure, it was cheese in comparison to the more cerebral and adult "Star Trek", but it was a teenager's dream to see that cool Chariot roll across the alien terrain or the Space Pod emerge from its berth.

Hopefully, the authors will update the book and issue a 30th anniversary edition with color.

This book gave me the knowledge required to understand the syntax of MPEG1 sytem and video streams as well as understand the compression algorithms utilized.
As a Digital Video Specialist, I still refer to this book four years after buying it.

Unlike some of the other reviewers, I found this book to be a great resource! The MPEG-1 codec is covered in some depth, including syntax. Other topics like MPEG-2 and rate control are also touched on. What this book (and most others on the topic) is missing, is an in-depth discussion on motion estimation techniques. The Kluwer book on motion estimation by Borko Furht will fill in some of the blanks, but is too expensive for what you get. All in all, I think this book is suited for someone wanting to impliment or understand an implimentation of the codec. It is not so much for the person looking for theory on video compression. The book, "Video Compression", by Peter Symes is a great one for that !

This is a great book to learn the mpeg1 format from. With its help you can confidently write a mpeg1 decoder. I have not read the official spec, but I found the descriptions given in the book quite lucid, in spite of the fact that I started to read this book without any video compression background. However, this is not a book on video compression in general. Surely a book on THAT topic would not have a title bearing the words "mpeg" and "standard". I have some experience in reading file format standards, and I only wish every file format standard would have such a nice book to explain it!

The book even covers fundamentals like DCT and Huffman coding (as much as is needed in this book). It has entire chapters on motion estimation and motion compensation. I like the way the book starts off with a general informative overview, rather than as a typical "standards manual" starting with a list of notations and fonts to be used.

The pseudo codes given in the book are taken from the original spec (with due references). These are explained with flowcharts.

If you are trying to learn video compression in general, then this is not the book for you. There are plenty of books on that topic. This book serves a much more esoteric purpose of elucidating the gory details of one of the most important video file formats, and it fulfils this purpose with complete applomb!

Do not buy this book, and for your own good, don't even read it!

First of all, I am an experienced computer programmer, and have developed code for the Java core programming language. I have read many-a-programming book, and can tell you to stay away from this one. Why?

This book:

* is not practical
* is filled with *serious* errors - not just typos
* fails by attempting to cover too many topics
* lacks examples and good diagrams
* lacks a sense of continuity from chapter to chapter

Many of this book's chapters are written as if they were a theorem: generalizations and buzzwords that don't get you anywhere. For example:

"If a set of permissions can between them imply a permission - even if no single permission in the set explicitly implies it completely by itself - you will need to provide your own implementation of PermissionCollection." Ha!

"Because sockets are just *programming* abstractions for network protocols, the other side of the connection does not have to use them. For example, the network program on the right side of this example may be coded in an exotic system that does not use the socket abstraction. That is, sockets don't use any additional communications mechanism other than that provided by the encapsulated protocol." Gimme a break!

Some of the errors in this book are the following:

* Chapter 5's author says that java.io.InputStream's "public int read(byte[] buf, int offset, int length)" method reads the input stream starting at 'offset' bytes deep into the input buffer - skipping the bytes toward the front of the buffer. This is incorrect. The author even has a diagram and examples to complement his error. This method actually reads starting at the front of the input buffer, and reads the bytes into 'buf' starting at buf[offset].

* As if all of the previous chapters' authors' errors weren't bad enough, Chapter 9's author took me to a screeching halt and compelled me to write this whole review when he said this: " It should be noted that the java.net.Socket object returned is bound to an ephemeral port number that is different from the one the ServerSocket is listening to (most applications don't care about that port number)." Whoa! This is absolutely, fundamentally wrong. In truth, the returned Socket has the *same* receiving port number as the ServerSocket. (Otherwise the client's Socket (whose destination port number is the same as the ServerSocket's receiving port number) wouldn't know what this "ephemeral port number" is, and so wouldn't be able to send packets to the server's newly created Socket.) IP packets are demultiplexed according to their *connection* (The 2 connected sockets, i.e. 5 parameters: the common protocol, the source's IP address & port number, and the destination's IP address & port number) and according to socket specificity, not just according to the receiving side's socket.

* Wrong diagrams. p.163: The diagram is of a program's output which shows "access denied", while its caption above says, basically, "tada, and it works." p.52: This diagram belongs in the I/O chapter.

The only chapter I found to be somewhat good was the Thread chapter (and a chapter on threads shouldn't even be in a book on networking). This book also suffers from lacking continuity due to the fact that it was written by 10 authors! For instance, this book has no consistent (or good) way of listing the API's and diagraming class relations. Chapters do not pedagogically build on the previous ones. I could go on...

If you want to learn about networking using Java, then here are your prerequisites. You should learn each of these from a book which specializes in the given topic.

* Basic Java Programming including I/O and Threads
* The TCP/IP protocol suite and TCP/IP networking
* Cryptography (optional)
* Java Security

After you do that, I highly recommend the book "TCP/IP Sockets In Java: Practical Guide for Programmers". This book gets the job done at only 110 pages. Another reason I recommend this book is that it lists references to 22 other good and relevant books/documents.

If you want to learn about HTML, Javascript, Servlets, JSP, RMI, CORBA, etc., then you should find a book specific to that topic. For instance, Marty Hall's books on Servlets and JSP are great.

Just because a programming book is thick, doesn't mean it's good. The book's publisher, Wrox, does put out some good books, but this just isn't one of them.

I bought this book in hopes that it would help guide me on the path to learn Java programming. Numbering over 1000 pages by several different authors, this book does not have a very consistent feel to it, and jumps around to various subjects about Java and various networking principles. The first 200 pages would be good for a university networking class, but as for being a decent tutorial, it is horrible. This book gives little code snippets here and there, but never fully combines them into one large, solid, and useful application.

If you are looking for a book to act as a Java tutorial to networking, this is not the book for you. It is very comprehensive in some areas, and much more than many people are willing to spend in getting through sections of this book. However, if you are looking for a little more general purpose Java networking Bible, then this book might be more suited for you.

I was looking to do more than what you normally find documented in Java and this gave me the details I needed. It has a lot of network protocol details right in the book so you don't have to keep switching between a protocol book and a Java book. Although it's titled, "Beginning Java Networking" it would also benefit an advanced Java programmer interested in writing networking programs.

Frank Smith was truly a man with ideas before his time! He fought and sacrificed to ensure everyone had the same rights that are guaranteed all under our Constitution. This was unheard of in the segregated South in the '50 and '60s. "Mississippi Liberal" is an excellent history of the Mississippi Delta and the environment that shaped the ideas and life of the Congressman from Mississippi--Frank E. Smith. A man who worked hard to make a difference for all races... and he did! A very comprehensive work by Dr. Dennis J. Mitchell--A superb job!