I took the intro test and I've got an MSEE (almost finished a PHd. Admittedly I've been away from practice for years. However, I found at least three arguable choices and one outright wrong answer in the first exam. "Autoranging" does not mean the capability to change scales, it means scales are changed automatically. Anyway I enjoyed the test and found it fairly comprehensive and a good refresher. I just HATE finding typos in technical books, especially if it's something I'm being graded on. I hope the rest of the book is more accurate and I'll be happy to trade email with the editors if they wish to do so.

J.J. CORTEZ SAYS IT IS GREAT

As a scientist that uses MRI on a daily basis I have often wanted to write a book for introducing the subject to the many students, technologists, and other interested parties that wish to use MRI in their work. Fortunately, Brown and Semelka have written it for me (the royalites would be nice though!). The book is excellent in presenting the complexities of magnetic resonance imaging in a straight forward intuitive physical picture. The authors then proceed to descibe most of the main MRI techniques leaving the reader with a firm understanding about each imaging sequence. The book addresses in short but nonetheless satisfactory fashion such issues as image contrast, prepatory pulses, imaging artifacts and methods to reduce artifacts. The authors include a chapter covering the main components of any MR imager which should reduce the bewilderment that most novices have when they must walk into the equipment room. Finally, the authors cover several areas of application in the last few chapters reviewing the main topics of each. A list of leading references and suggested readings are included at the end of the book if the reader desires more in depth information. The book is compact, inexpensive and should be the first book for anyone looking to MRI as a tool for their work.

Although I am only in the chapter 2 right now, I can't wait to share my feelings. Compare to other books that I've read before, this book is easier to understand. The author didn't use some beautiful words or unmeaning words. He just got the point. For further reserching, this might be insufficient, but for technician like me or anyone who wants to know about MRI, this book will be the best choice to the avenue to understanding.

It is definitely a good overview, but I think it's understandable why you might wind up wishing you'd bought the individual countries instead. My previous experience with Lonely Planet publications has been excellent; therefore, I may have set my expectations a little too high. There were a lot of major cities of interest and note missing from the France section and corresponding maps. This book is best for anyone who tries the "21 countries in 30 days or less" style of travelling. Personally, I depend on the Lonely Planet guides to help me stay a little off the beaten track at a leisurely pace and within my budget. I certainly credit their Costa Rica guide with keeping me safe, well-fed, and satisfied for a month! Do note, that I've come across accomodations listed which are no longer in existence or closed for longterm renovations, so phone ahead!

Lonely Planet is definitely the guidebook to beat, and I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it ahead of the others.

However, buyers should be aware of a few problems. The first is the popularity of the Lonely Planet guides...since they're so popular, following the guides too closely steers you entirely to the same well-recommended hostels, restaurants, and so forth, that every other LP reader goes to. These institutions start specifically aiming themselves at the LP crowd. Definitely loses some of the cultural experience, and well-reviewed hostels are something like an American/Australian frat party. I'd view the Lonely Planet guide as a necessary evil. It's very convenient, but their recommendations are self-defeating, especially in the more heavily-touristed areas.

Secondly, most people visiting Europe seem to be doing massive every-big-city-in-three-week tours. This guide is suited for that, but for those spending more time in the indivisual countries, definitely buy the single-country guide.

i thought the authors provided a wonderfully comprehensive account of western europe. on those long train rides i found myself reading up on the political history of greece or the history of the plantaganets in great britain. i loved this book! there is so much to see in western europe, i'd like to ask those who don't like it exactly what they expect for a book which covers a couple dozen european countries. you buy a book about 20 different countries, and then don't like the fact that it covers them too quickly? what do you expect? anyway, lonely planet provided a good, concise guide to the most interesting countries in the world.

I strongly recommend this book as well as any other Tom and Scott mystery. Mark Richard Zubro always weaves a web of mystery that will keep you guessing right up until the end. And you would be hard pressed to find a more perfect example of gay heros.

Well, you always knew that when high school teacher, Tom Mason and baseball ace pitcher, Scott Carpenter ever decided to officially tie the knot, you should get ready for the media event of the century. And that's what happens in this the ninth book in the ever-popular Tom and Scott mystery series.

The grandest ballroom in Chicago has been rented for the ceremony with a multi-denominational band of clergymen and women set to officiate and all the family, friends, political and sports elite and a multitude of irate and uninvited protesters in attendance. Unfortunately, one of the unexpected guests is Tom's first gay lover, Ethan Gahain, who says he has to talk with Tom. Their affair had taken place when they were both seventeen, and before Ethan dumped him two years later.

The ceremony itself went without a hitch other than the intended one. But before Tom can talk to Ethan and the planned indoor fireworks can take place, fireworks of another sort go off in the men's room when Ethan is found brutally murdered. As you night expect, Tom is the one to discover the body and in the process he get properly bloodied. Everyone knows Tom couldn't be the murderer, and Ethan's parents ask Tom and Scott to investigate the murder.

Along way Scott's teenaged delinquent nephew gets involved, as well as hidden camera pornography and blackmail. Tangled webs have been woven and Tom and Scott have to unravel them.

Though the series is growing a little old and the book is lacking in the surprises of the earlier episodes, Zubro still has a great way with words and his wit and realistic style get you through the book in a totally interesting manner. But it might be time to put more emphasis on his Paul Turner series, or to explore possibilities of a new series.

One of the features of this book is a trip Tom and Scott make to Saint Louis. I always enjoy rating authors on their ability to plot their action through the local streets and landmarks. Zubro scored a 9.8 with only two minor errors. Hey, that's better than what a local mystery writer scored on his last book.

This book is a story of two brave gay men uniting in love and life. Unfortunately, many people are still intolerant of the rights of others who do not behave as they think people should and will cause trouble for them any way they can.

I love the books that I have read by Mark R. Zubro. Anything he writes is entertaining, interesting, and a GREAT READ!

This book has some good examples, but lacks any detail.
It skims over all the complicated topics.
Does not do a very good job at demonstrating how to build applications that integrate a web browser and an ip phone.
Very introductory.

Developing Cisco IP Phone Services takes the reader through all of the steps necessary to create usable service applications. A lot of the info covered here just isn't mentioned anywhere else, including Cisco's web site. Even though services are constructed from standard protocols, creating ones that work well can be surprisingly challenging. I keep a copy of this book on my desk at all times as a reference. The user interface sections are quite useful. Spending time on how to design a service is at least as important as how one is written. On the down-side, however, I found the included code to be Windows-centric, and also wished they had included source code for the tools. But, the included information enabled me to write my own tools. I think that speaks for the quality of what you'll find here.

I needed to get an in depth understanding of the way services for the IP Phone were developed so as to develop security policies to help protect network assets. This book gave me exactly what I needed to know. It will be very useful to anyone who wants to develop XML based services for the Cisco phones.

The book was a compelling read for chapter to chapter, but at the end you feel cheated. While it makes an interesting Fiction, it did not have the makings of a good Mystery. The solution was rushed in the last two chapters of the book.

Nowhere were clues during the read that could lead even a careful, experienced Mystery reader to try and even speculate on who did it. For me, half the fun is trying to deduce the murderer(s) before the author reveals it.

There are clues dropped as to why it happened, but you'll just flat be told who it is at the end. You just sort of plod along, hoping to find something to bite on and BAM the author spills his guts in the last chapters. The author did a great job running a second plot along; although it suffered the same clueless, fast wrap up.

The characters that did do it were really underdeveloped. If they were better developed, and some clues dropped along the way, this would be an amazing Mystery book.

It is, however, a damn good book for specifically [weak] content. A good book, not a good Mystery.

Great Mystery....Mark Zubro has done it again! Paul Ben his 2 children Mrs. Talucci even his partner all came to life again in another ongoing Turner mystery...thank-you Mr. Zubro for continuing this series

This was an very well written mystery novel! I fully enjoyed the suspense that was driven into this book. Being in the technology industry myself the references to computers and technology was great! It fully added to the suspense!

The gist of the book is Chicago homicide detectives Paul Turner (who is gay) and Buck Fenwick (who is straight), in their investigation into murder of Internet tycoon Craig Lenzati, stabbed over hundreds of times in his security-laden apartment. When Lenzati's partner Brooks Werberg is killed and parts of his place smashed into smithereens, the pressure is put on from the Mayor's office.

But these dot-com boys' nack for putting aggressive little startup companies into trouble, and possibly even bankruptcy by stealing their ideas had won them a great deal of enemies.

What could possibly make this story even better? How about a secret storehouse of theirs filled with names, addresses, and tapes of the boys' sexual misconduct? In fact as it turns out, Lenzati and Werberg had enjoyed an ongoing sexual-conquest game, their preferred prey heterosexual couples, including a pair who'd been suing them and another pair who'd been working for them. A freelance "cracker" (a computer whiz who breaks into and paralyzes systems) employed by the boys will die, and Paul will receive boxes of chocolates and scary e-mail from a serial killer targeting police detectives all along Interstate 90.

Before Chicago finally settles down and Paul can reassure his son Brian of his safety and fall into the arms of his lover Ben. Brittle but funny dialogue between Paul and Buck; tender moments between Paul and Brian; sentimental relationship shows between Paul and Ben.

I personally would have liked a bit more drama at the point of the different confessions, but it did not distract from this book in any way.

You need to read this book... !!!

I agree with many of the reviewers below that this book was helpful and often interesting. It gives a readable orientation to one of the most important movements in the software industry today, and the editors have been fortunate to gather together so many contributors who obviously know whereof they speak. In particular, the editors' Introduction, Eric Raymond's "Brief History of Hackerdom," Richard Stallman's account of GNU and FSF, Bruce Perens's discussion of Open Source, and Tim O'Reilly's essay on "Infoware" were informative and thought-provoking.

That said, it should be noted that the Amazon reviewer above gets it wrong when she writes that the book gives a "fascinating look at the raging debate." In fact, *nothing* about Open Source is debated in this book, which is a major disappointment. As the reviewer from Princeton below notes, the goodness of everything Open Source and the badness of everything Microsoft seems to be a given for many of the writers. At the risk of criticizing the book for not being something its creators didn't intend, I think it would be greatly improved with the addition of a wider range of viewpoints and even a dissenting voice or two. (There are a number of essays that could give place to some alternate content: Eric Raymond's second essay, "The Revenge of the Hackers," leans heavily toward the self-congratulatory, as does the Netscape cheerleaders' "Story of Mozilla." And Larry Wall's "Diligence, Patience, and Humility" seems to have been included not on its own merits but on the author's reputation as the Perl Deity.)

A final wish is for the book to address a broader range of readers. As a longtime computer user but a relatively new programmer, with no formal business training, I found many of the essays to rely heavily on the jargon of hackers and MBAs. More editorial control here, in addition to a broader range of content, would make this book seem less like preaching to the choir and more effective at spreading the Open Source gospel.

This is a good idea on O'Reilly's part to try to document the history and goals of the Open Source movement, which had roots in several college campuses and research labs in the '70s and '80s, and became news in the late '90s with the popularity of Linux, Apache, and the decision of Netscape to open its browser source. The best introductory piece, however, is probably Eric Raymond's "Cathedral and the Bazaar" which is not in this book(O'Reilly publishes it separately, but it's available free on the Web and short enough to be read in one sitting). As for this collection, I liked Robert Young's business case for distributing open source - his story of how Red Hat was launched reminds me of the Compaq tale of "three guys in a restaurant". The Apache article is also quite good, and Linus Torvalds offers a brief but interesting (and characteristically opinionated) article about how Linux evolved technically. There's also a good article discussing the various open source licenses (BSD, GPL, Netscape, etc) and what they do and don't restrict.

Others I was less impressed with. Stallman's article is predictable and self-serving. He explains how he evolved his software-as-gift philosophy but doesn't come close to terms with how the software industry can support substantial employment if all source is given away. There's yet another history of the different branches of BSD Unix. There's a breathtaking inside account of the launch of Mozilla which ends with the fancy Silicon Valley party when development has finally gotten underway. The low point is Larry Wall's "essay", which is a frankly ridiculous waste of time and print.

Although this is a mixed bag, there's enough reference material and interesting points of view to keep the book around.

Open Sources is a collection of essays by people who have been involved in a prominent way in what is being called "the open source revolution." The authors are all very bright people with good intentions and diverse viewpoints; this makes for interesting reading. However, I had a problem with the introduction. In fact, I hated it. It attempts to couch the issue of free vs. non-free software in religious terms: in the bad old days, free software only came from universities or other government-funded research. Then, a few companies saw the light and began to open-source their software; currently the industry is divided between these companies (the saved) and the rest of the companies (the damned) who will spiral into oblivion due to their proprietary selfishness. I thought the presence of this sort of rhetoric in the introduction, which sets the tone for the rest of the book, was particularly unfortunate.

The essays in Open Sources are a mixed bag. Kirk McKusick's history of Berkeley UNIX is great, as is Michael Tiemann's history of Cygnus Solutions, RMS's article about the GNU project, and Bruce Perens' article about licensing issues. Also, I really enjoyed the transcript of the infamous 1992 flame war between Linus and Andy Tanenbaum about the merits of Linux vs. Minix. On the other hand, Paul Vixie's article about software engineering is pretty random, Larry Wall's article does not seem to have a point at all, and Eric Raymond's

second article and Tom Paquin's account of the open-sourcing of Netscape are too self-serving to be useful.

Overall, I enjoyed this book quite a bit. However, the year that has passed since its publication has exposed some of the more outlandish predictions made by its contributors (Eric Raymond said that Windows 2000 would either be canceled or be a complete disaster). My guess is that Open Sources is not destined to become a classic. Rather, in a few years it will be viewed as an interesting but somewhat naive period piece.

This is NOT a book for beginners who wish to learn JSP/servlets and EJBs and the techniques of J2EE. On the other hand, if you already have some knowledge with these techniques, the book may help to improve your background of J2EE and its components.

1.The strong points of the book are:

- the book does a wonderful job in explaining different key points of J2EE techniques especially at the beginning of each chapter; although the discussion sometimes becomes pretty vague and less clear at the end.

- the book's code examples use j2sdkee1.2.1, orion and jboss which are available for you free with unlimited time.

- the book looks quite impressive, 1600 plus pp. hardcovered.

2.The weak points of the book:

- all the code examples are fairly easy. In fact, too easy to do much help to the readers who need a better workout to pay attention to some key points of the techniques.

- Since only half of the book is devoted to really J2ee techniques, people who already experienced with jsp/servlet may find the other half of the book unecessary.

In conclusion, you may want to check this book out if you alread know jsp/servlet and j2ee( through the Sun's tutorials and examples and wish to have a better understand of this popular but pretty complex technique.

This is one of the earliest J2EE 1.2 book that hit the market and it does a decent job. Coverage on individual topics such as servlets, JSP's, and EJB's are good and coherent. I especially like the EJB topic which spans 6 chapters that gives a lot of details and guidance in architecting your apps using EJB's. Other J2EE topics like JDBC, JNDI, RMI, XML, JMS, and JavaMail also received adequate coverage in the book. Compared with the book by Perrone et al. (Sams), this one is more focused and more in depth.

However, I am somewhat disappointed by the lack of substances (i.e., code, code, code to a developer like myself!) in the later chapters that deal with design strategies. It will have been a lot better if the book used an integrated sample to illustrate how to implement the design principles layed out in chapters 24 and 25. Instead, we have a chapter (30) which basically borrows a canned sample from Orion Server release, which in itself is OK but is not tightly related to earlier chapters. So if you already have servlets and JSP experience and would like to add EJB/JMS to the mix, I wouldn't recommend this book. Pick up the new book from Wrox on BEA WebLogic Server instead.

This book is one the most comprehensive ones that I've bought. It provides you with most of the possible technologies that you could use in a basic J2EE application. I love the section on the J2EE architecture. For newbies I typcially request that they read that section first. It does justice to basic topics like JDBC & Servlets & tag libraries, and the concepts about them. As well as introduces EJBs and other technologies. I am a long time java developer and I use it as a constant reference. Great job WROX!

I had to read this book for an introductory programming class and didn't find it at all helpful when going on to Java. It wasn't worth the time I spent working with it. You'd be better off just beginning the object-oriented language you're interested in. If you want my advice, try Beginning Java Objects by Jacquie Barker instead.

This book reminds me of the older LOGO programming language. You have a small "robot" that explores his world. You tell him how to move and what to do. The only reason this is good is that it helps you think of object oriented programming. (The robot is considered an object). There are also special editions of the book in case you want to specifically move to C++ or Java later. Basically, the book is a good start. If you have any programming experience - skip it. Otherwise, it will get you in the rate frame of mind to move toward OOP.

This book is meant for the earliest of beginning programmers. If you have any programming experience whatsoever, even with macros, the information in this book will seem extrememly remedial. Also, some of the terms used aren't even real C++ code, so you'll have to adjust your thinking just a little when you move on. Finally, the price is pretty steep for the amount of information you get. I would probably only recommend this book for someone needing a very, very, VERY gentle intro to programming.

It's both amazing and pathetic how many rucksack travelers to India follow every word of this book as if it were some holy scripture. So many travelers spend their all of their time with their noses in this book, trying to fill every last moment following each and every step recommended by the book. In the meantime, all too often, they fail to experience India itself. Such devotion to a travel guide is a bizarre phenomenon. Without a doubt, this book is an indispensible guide for those who truly need assistance in knowing on which Bombay street corner they should tie their shoe laces. There's too much chit chat and lame humour in this book (although, granted, it evidently appeals to some). To the book's credit, there are some nice city layouts and state maps. However, for travelers who prefer information without all of the weak attempts at humor and for those who prefer to make their own opinions rather than to blindly follow someone else's words, I would wholeheartedly recommend Robert Bradnock's India Handbook. I've traveled India with both books, and clearly Bradnock's is, in my opinion, the superior of the two.

This is the second time to visit India.Both time I took the same Lonely Planet. Always I choose hotel from it and felt not bad. In some small city, hight rank hotel means good servie and the price was not so high as you image it. First all the price listed in the book is as same as in the hotel, so try to cut off nearly 30% off is the very important thing to do during the trip.
Also I visited Jaisalmer on May, but if you following the book you will never go there in such cray summer. In fact, the summer was high enough, but still interesting. No more tourist means you can enjoy alone, and only myself in the hotel you can get nearly 50% discountdown for low season. If you read you can find a lot of things from the book, but on the trip everything is changed, you never image the book can guide you everything. Try to ask person around you, and get the most reasonable price.
I will plan to go to india again, by the guide of Lonely Planet, but I think I need a new version.

When Lonely Planet India first appeared in 1981, it raised the standard for all India guidebooks in the comprehensiveness of locations covered and the detailed information useful to independent travelers, especially those on lower budgets. Twenty years later, it remains the guidebook I personally rely upon most, despite my familiarity with India from extensive travels since 1980 researching my historical novels such as India Treasures. I first learned about that wonderful nonprofit home-stay organization Servas from a Lonely Planet guide, which led to many of our best experiences in India, including lasting friendships. Although my wife and I aren't backpackers, and we're probably mid-range in terms of the amount we spend on accommodations and food, the book is extremely helpful. It's the most up to date and highly detailed regarding such information as transportation options within India, the scams travelers can encounter, and a wealth of other tips too numerous to get into in a brief review.

Given the India guidebook's thickness and weight, I've found it convenient to cut it into sections and only take the parts with me for the regions I plan to visit. It's still desirable to get supplemental maps for any city or region one plans to spend much time in, as the maps in the book are usually pretty minimal in terms of detail. And other guidebooks do indeed have useful information this one doesn't (browse the travel shelves in your favorite bookstore to find the additional guides most suitable for your own interests and style of travel). I also advocate reading the better novels set in India, to experience insights into daily life that guidebooks can only hint at.

No single guidebook on India can be all things to all persons for all occasions, but this one surely comes the closest, especially for travelers who don't have their arrangements taken care of on organized tours.