The authors pull concepts and recommendations from three Y2k disciplines: program management, business management, and technology management. This is possibly the first time all three disciplines have been presented in a manner such that a company president can understand the real business threat due to lack of Y2k readiness.

Y2K risk management and contingency planning is the hottest Y2K topic right now. Readers need to know about this book, and fast! For example, agencies of the federal government have until April 30 to submit their year 2000 contingency plans in the event of system failures. Why isn't _Y2K Risk Management_ part of the Amazon Millennium Store? According to all the reviewers, this is THE book to read for anyone who needs to mitigate Y2K business and legal risks, and develop a sound contingency plan.

In my presentations on the impact of Year 2000 in healthcare I am often asked to recommend resources. There are only two recommendations I will give and one of them is "Y2K Risk Management" by Steve Goldberg, Steven Davis and Andrew Pegalis. I equate this book to "just in time information." It is precise and right on the money in terms of the final preparations for January 1, 2000. I use it, our Risk Manager uses it and it is appropriate reading for all involved in Y2K preparedness. If I had only one choice, with the time remaining, this book would be it.

I've found the first edition of the book to be quite useful for teaching radiology residents and studying for board exams. One of the best features of the book is that it is emminently readable and relatively uncluttered with jargon. The second edition expands on the first with additional material in each chapter, and considerably more pictures that are illustrative, rather than just eye candy. Concepts in radiation protection are further illustrated and reinforced by case studies. Any one in the radiological field would do well to have this text as part of their bookshelf. Those with the first edition, I recommend upgrading to the second edition.

This book good for student who study in medical imaging. It can help us to understand how to protect ourselve from radiation and also to our patient, where the radiation can effect to our health. so, it very good to our read. Nice to undersatnd it.

A reference in matter of picture and colour photography. Most of the description are too succinct. In a roughly 66 pages and over a hundred photography, you get a good view of some parts of the Waffen-SS uniforms. Dont expect specific Waffen-SS portion to be exploited. Photographic reference only, but for a reference ..., it's a pleasent book to look at and at this price it's a perfect book to add in a collection...

_________________________
Paul Bourgault
2Lt/Fus MR21/34thCBG/RCAC

Although the photos are mostly of reproduction uniforms stagged by re-enactors, they do give a good all around look at the uniforms worn by the SS. Two thirds of the book is dedicated to their cammouflage and there many differant types and paterns. In all a good referance book.

As an artist, finding color WWII reference material is quite tricky, and usually limited to color plates done by other artists! This is just top shelf to me! -A real visual treat. The pictures are large and in very sharp focus allowing for good appreciation of detail and color, and there is a wide spectrum of mini-eras represented.There are several other german WWII color photo books out there, but none can boast the sheer number of Waffen-SS variations depicted here.Buy it right now, for one day you will look back with disbelief when you think you ever debated about adding this to your collection. -It's that good!

I originally read this book long time ago in its original British edition. One currently offered has some extra parts that may not really change the context of the book but will shine some more light on the unclear situations. It's not a masterpiece but a relation of events that really gets down to the basic facts and realities of concentration camps and mass murder. One constantly may have to refer to appendixes due to the fact that Hoss (unconsciously or not) is trying to defend himself; that's why information given by him may be distorted a bit from the truth. This book provides very interesting insight on the mentality of the hard-core SS officer as well as on the gears of Nazi war machine. Putting aside his excuses and explanations even if they are convincing one will see a human nature being ruled and overtaken by natural instincts and hate. It's one of the better books I read on the subject. I'm sorry I'm a forensic psychologist and perceive this book a little different.

I have read many books about Nazis and the holocaust, but this one is unique in that it is one of the few written in graphic detail by an SS man himself. I think Hoess definitely had qualms about his role, but was too much of a bureaucrat to openly challenge the regime. His credibility has been doubted, since he was often inconsistent about the number of deaths while at Auschwitz. I don't think Hoess was personally a cruel man; he seemed to have taken a dispassionate role in his work. He did emphasize, before his execution, that he still considered himself a National Socialist, and acknowledged his guilt for taking part in the Final Solution. Hoess seemed to place all the blame on Himmler. Hoess, in the first third of the book, wanted to portray himself as a normal, decent family man who simply ended up in the wrong place at the wrong time. In short, this book conveyed a very powerful message and warning, despite some of the irrelevant personal details about Hoess's life. Especially interesting are the profiles of various SS members at the end of the book.

Torture, death, & the atrocities of war are not easily swallowed or digested by those who were neither there nor on the receiving end of the realities, but one has to read the words of Rudolf Hoess and belieive them to be what they are -HIS BELIEFS. Too many historical biographies of the SS leave one with the taste of the writers interpretation of the person, and we are all left to wonder about truths, half-truths, desires & perceptions. Some even take their word as gospel. History becomes anything the writer wants it to become for whatever reason he feels he needs to express the information. This book gives one the reality of Hoess according to Hoess - and a foundation for our own interpretations of his psychological make-up. I am an American of Polish descent, having many friends & family (both Polish Roman Catholic & Polish Jew) personally affected by this man during WWll - and it was like a breath of fresh air to hear his side so that I may put the pieces of the puzzle together to get a more complete picture of what was really going on. I try and live my life as non-judgementally as I can, believing understanding is far better than blame - and understanding how this man was raised gives me greater insight into what he had become. Like many who found this book hard to read, I found it easy - for it was his perception of the truth. I may not like his "truth" and I may not agree with his "truth" - but I am not in a position to deny it. If you are really seeking the truth behind the man and his actions, this is a remarkable book

Sadly, too many people can't begin to imagine where the power of the Toreador clan comes from. This book is not helpful to those unable to see how this underestimated clan could grow to be one of the most powerful among all of them. Instead, it discusses the art world and invents a way to create art through dice rolls. They even forgot to include Clan Attitudes towards other clans. All in all, a sad attempt to clarify the clan, not helpful to those who already enjoy the Toreador and uninteresting to those not bright enough to appreciate them without aid.

Do you know what it means to be an outstanding artist? Do you REALLY know what Vampire means?Well, take a look at this book and let their passion dance in your mind. Piece of art, I tell you. I love it. GC.

This book is a must by for all you Vampire the Masquerade players out there who just enjoy annoying the other players with cruel comments about thier taste in clothing and such!

I quickly found out what the "Ask Dr. Weil..." series of books are like. I have read two of Dr. Weil's full length books and was expecting more of the same. This book is 75 pages of Question and Answer format articles about vitamins and some herbal remedies, almost like a high quality Internet FAQ.

The book is interesting with a number of specific recomendations on how to take vitamins for particular illnesses. It is good information for the price (...).

If you have read one of Dr. Weil's previous full length books that deal with vitamins you will feel like you are reading a condensed version of the same information. Like all of Dr. Weil's books there is a good Resources section to help you find more in-depth information.

In this 83 page book, health guru Andrew Weil, M.D. offers his expert advice and guidance to help you remain healthy and fight off illness with the help of selected vitamins, minerals, and herbs. He sets the record straight regarding multivitamins and minerals, Vitamin B12, herbal remedies, antioxidants and other products that are in vogue today. Dr. Weil helps you get on the best road to recovery from sickness and/or improve your overall health. There's an awful lot of valuable information and advice in this little book. It's certainly worth the price and the quick read. I find myself referring to it often. It's a great companion to his other books.

Dr. Weil gives a brief description of many vitamin and mineral supplements. While many authors today are selling supplements that do not live up to their promises, Dr. Weil gives common sense advise on what to spend your money on that actually will make a difference in your life, and health. This is a pocket book that your will use over and over. Buy it and use it with all of Dr. Weils' books to heal your life.

Holzner's Advanced Visual C++ 4 is a good quality intermediate level reference. He uses a large amount of code to illustrate each topic. Graphics are the principle weakness of this book. While he does use a variety of screen shots, there are numerous dashed line drawings which detract from the overall appearance of the work. I still have no problem recommending it

This book is an excellent referance and written in a clear and concise way. The only thing I do not like about this book is that the graphics section is a bit limited.

Ask Dr. Weil Your Top Health Concerns is a collection of questions and answers from his web site. The book addresses various complementary medical approaches to health problems ranging from athlete's foot (tea tree oil) to carpal tunnel (Vitamin B-6). He also addresses preventive medicine topics including exercise, multivitamins, and mammograms. His tips on health habits including smoking and drinking are helpful.

Not meant to be exhaustive, your top health concern may not be included. There is no table of contents, but the index is helpful if you are looking for a specific topic. Good reading material if you are caught somewhere waiting as the topics are short and can be read in snatches; but the book's greatest value is to introduce the reader to integrative medicine, the specialty of this upbeat and lively professor-physician.

I guess I expected that a platform independent standard such as XML would have been better expained using a platform independent language such as java. For the unix/java engineers out there....this book contains much useful information and don't get me wrong, I learned a lot. The question is, would I have learned as much or possibly more if I didn't have to put up with 90% of the code examples written in VBScript? Many examples require Internet Explorer. Content was up-to-date and informative but somewhat repetative (12 authors).

The book covers too many topics and just few are developed in deep while others are superficially introduced because not yet standardized at the time of print. The book claims it covers the following topics: XML, XSLT, DOM, DTD, SOAP, XLink, XPointer, XPath, WAP, WML...and more; but just XML, Schemas, DTDs and SOAP could almost fit the book's size.

Chapters don't follow a very logic thread and it doesn't deal enough with very relevant subjects. Wrox probably planned to make this book the XML bible but I think they are far from the target.

The XML declarative language, with its adaptability and expressive power, is continuing to become the language of choice for reporting and classifying information. XML is a formal grammar that captures the syntactic features of a document type definition, and its properties, syntax, and applications are discussed effectively in this book. It covers XML as formalized by the W3C and the authors show how to use XML in Web-based and database applications. Readers who have developed applications in HTML will probably view XML as somewhat more abstract, since the visual representation of the content of a document is not emphasized in XML. Readers are expected to have a background in HTML, JavaScript, Java, and ASP in order to read the book. Although XML can be learned by reading the W3C specifications, these documents are frequently difficult reading, and this book makes the learning of XML much easier than reading these specifications. They include the W3C specifications for XML 1.0 in an appendix to the book for the interested reader. The book is a little dated, since the W3C has been updating XML specs since the time of publication (especially with regard to schemas), but there is a 2nd edition coming out soon.

In Chapter 1, XML is introduced as a mark-up language and its inherent extensibility emphasized. This is followed by a detailed treatment of XML syntax in the next chapter, with emphasis placed on the hierarchical nature of XML. The authors do include a discussion of Processing Instructions (PIs) for users who want to use XML in this fashion.

Document Type Definitions (DTD) are the subject of Chapter 3, where the authors communicate effectively how DTDs formal grammar is used to specify the structure and permissible values of XML documents. The formal DTD structure is discussed, and the principles behind writing DTDs are effectively outlined. They also discuss the problems with using DTDs.

Data modeling with XML is discussed in the next chapter, with information modeling via static and dynamic models treated in detail, and the authors carefully distinguish these two approaches. The actual designing of XML documents is given a nice overview as well as the role of schemas in XML. This is followed in Chapter 6 by a discussion of the (tree-based) Document Object Model, which overviews how XML documents can be accessed by various programs. Some helpful examples are given on how the DOM can be used to create an XML document programmatically. An alternative way of processing an XML document is discussed in the next chapter on the (event-based) SAX interface. The authors outline in detail the benefits of using SAX rather than DOM. In Appendix B the reader will find the Internet Explorer 5.0 XML DOM 1.0 W3C specifications. In addition, in Appendix C, the specification for the SAX 1.0 interface is given.

The shortcomings of DTD are addressed in terms of XML Schemas and namespaces in chapter 7. Since this book was published, XML Schemas have reached W3C recommendation status as of Nov 2000. The authors give a good overview of namespaces and schemas, with helpful examples. This is followed in chapter 8 by a discussion of how to link and query into XML documents using the XML information set, XLink, XPath, XPointer, XML Fragment Interchange, with XLST covered in the next chapter. For database applications, the authors outline the differences between relational databases and XML documents. A very detailed treatment of how XLST transforms the source document is given, and the authors compare XLS and DOM transformations. An Internet Explorer XSL reference is included in one of the appendices of the book.

More details on the relationship between databases and XML is the subject of chapter 10, wherein the authors show how to store XML and how data can be communicated between different servers using XML. The issues involved when moving data from RDBMS to OODBMS or from Oracle to Sybase, are discussed by the authors. This is followed by an interesting discussion on how to use XML as a distributed component model for server-to-server communications via XML-Remote Procedure Call and Simple Object Access Protocol.

E-commerce applications are discussed in the next chapter, with EDI and its improvement via XML. The business markup language cXML , which allows business to business electronic commerce transactions across the Internet, is also treated in detail.

The authors then finally discuss how to render XML documents more readable and pleasing for the viewer in the next chapter using the style languages CSS and XSL. The discussion is really interesting, for the authors dig a little deeper into the foundations of style languages. The discussion of style languages as rule-based languages is particularly illuminating.

The next chapter is very interesting and its inclusion is actually very surprising, namely a discussion of the Wireless Application Protocol. The authors give an introduction to the Wireless Markup Language and WMLScript. The book ends with four useful chapters on case studies for data duality, distributed applications, a book catalog information service, and SOAP.

There are many applications of XML in many different areas, such as CellML (proprietary) used in cell biology, CML (Chemical Markup Language) for molecular chemistry, IML (Instrument Markup Language) for control of laboratory equipment, BSML (Bioinformatic Sequence Markup Language) for gene sequencing, and MathML for formatting of mathematical equations. I find XML an extremely powerful approach to information reporting and I am currently developing a package called NMML (Network Modeling Markup Language) for use in reporting results in simulation and mathematical modeling of networks, and FMML (Financial Modeling Markup Language) for use in reporting results in the modeling of financial instruments. This book, along with the W3C specifications, has been a tremendous help in the development of these applications.

This was my first book that I purchased for learning 3d studio max.. I also bought the fundamental book too.. I've only flip through couples of pages then I put it away to collect dust. The exercise are hard to follow, they gave complete instruction for teaching you a certain command. But you wouldn't find motivation to delve in to the 3d world by building something that's meaningless. The book is only good for advance user as it'll teaches you how to press certain short cut keys and stuff..

I found this book hard to comprehend.. even if I'm a immediate user, I wouldn't picked this book, as this is so boring.. It teaches you how to do certain things, but don't tell you much why you are doing it, or why is it necessary to take the steps..

there are few other good ones out there if you are a intermediate user...

There's a thing common to all classic books: even if you've read one from cover to cover you discover something new every time you open it. Things that you glossed over earlier suddenly start to make sense. This book is no exception. Since 'Inside 3D Studio Rel. 3' the authors have provided an unique insight into the world's most popular 3D programs. This book raises the standard even further, providing enough grip for the novice and a treasure trove of knowledge of the professional. The best thing about this book is the explanation of the PRINCIPLES behind 3D Studio MAX. Instead of the 'do this-screen shot-do that' methodology, the authors have concentrated in the core ideas behind every tool and procedure. If you want MAX to be an extension to your right brain, get this book. Read it all the time. Do the tutorials. Keep referring to it for ideas. You'll discover what you were missing with other books -- the real goods on making MAX dance to your tune.

Inside 3DStudio MAX At last!The book we all waited for.Inside 3DStudio MAX,writtten by Steven Elliot & Phillip Miller;authors of Inside 3DStudio Release 3 & 4.Some said that Inside series is better than the manuals.Well,to tell you the truth,they are quite right. The book is very well structured.It has 29 chapters,starting from explaining the core concepts of MAX,and ending in Network Rendering.Every chapter has its introduction and summary,that's very good 'cause you know what's the chapter about and the summary reminds you the most importants parts. It is not a book that throws you some tutorials only.On the contrary,the writers pay attention to general knowledge an animator must have.Mixing colors and light,story boarding,etc.. Every button is explained thouroughly in the book.It teaches you the best way to model and animate efficiently every model you can think of. Of course,it has some drawbacks.Material editor,Video Post,Space Warps & Particles are not explained in depth.Although there is a solution to that(in February 2 more Volumes will be published:Inside3DStudio MAX Volume II:Advanced Modelling & Material Editor,Volume III:Animation & Character Studio),who wants to buy 2 more books that costs 110$ additionally?(Answear:Me..:P).Another drawback is that the book has color photos only in the chapters that refer to Material Editor(although some will say that's no big deal).And the CD that is included with the book has 200mb of textures.O.k ,where's the drawback?:) Only a few of them are useful.90% of them are very artistic and extend beyond the needs of traditional animators.I think that whoever makes the textures(by the way Tim Forcade,who included textures in 3DStudio 4 Hollywood & Gaming Effects & Indide 3DStudio 4),should have in mind that animators need practical textures like wood,metals and stuff and not abstract paintings.... Inside is for the novice and for the experienced animator,and it is by far the No.1 if you want to master MAX. "Inside 3D Studio MAX should be a part of every serious animator's library"(Larry Crume,Vice President,Autodesk and General MAnager,Kinetix)