When I purchased this book I was looking for a dictionary full of words that a novice would not understand reguarding computers. Instead I ended up with a book with limited definitions and silly jokes ! If I had time I would have returned it ! Half the definitions I look up arent even in the book. Save your money and buy a better dictionary.

This book is exactly what the title implies. If you find yourself having little difficulty describing a computer term, then you can turn to this reference. Everything is in alphabetical order and comes with simple illustrations. Before the alphabet that are medic characters any of these are described.

Due to the accelerating advances in technology many terms are not in this edition.

Computer language and fun would so like an oxymororn. However, in this funny, informative and usefull title, this is exatcly what one gets. For instance algorithm is explained in a easy, yet informative way and has a silly and funny joked tacked on at the end. Highly Recommended.

The book is organized alphabetically by the chinese slang words, which is not useful to me. I can imagine this being useful if you speak mandarin well and are trying to figure what somebody was saying, but for a reasonable new student, this organization killed the book for me.

Each phrase or word is given only a short paragraph of description, and there is almost no other text. It is very dry.

The computer terms at the end are useful since they are sorely missing from every other chinese reference I've seen. The book could be worth it for that.

If you're looking for an introduction to Chinese slang, get Wang's other slang book, Outrageous Chinese, which is excellent.

this is a great book full of wonderfull slang. This book is not for a complete beginer, but for a student with a year or two of expierence, this is a really fun book

This is a useful reference for those who want to jazz up their vocabularies in Chinese, and the annotations help you learn a bit more about contemporary Chinese culture (not always good!). Worth adding to your China library.

Unfortunately I can't agree with the first reviewer. The concept behind this book is sound; it attempts to address the needs of students who, due to family background or special circumstances (such as, in my case, having lived in China), can speak some Chinese but have little knowledge of reading, writing and formal grammar. The concept is good, but the book falls short on execution. Problems:

1)There are numerous errors and omissions in the text and in the example sentence patterns. My Chinese teacher, a native speaker of northern standard Mandarin, has confirmed this.

2)The grammar "notes" are little more than footnotes; no formal presentation of grammar is given. One would think that students whose background includes little grammar preparation would require more grammar than a typical textbook provides, but this book contains virtually no formal grammar presentation at all.

3)The sentence patterns are not only prone to error but also frequently contain vocabulary items that have yet to be presented in the main body of the text. Considering that the target audience is students who can speak some Chinese but cannot read and write, why do the authors assume that students using the book will be able to read the characters for these additional vocabulary items before they have been formally presented in the main body of the text?

4)The exercises also frequently contain vocabulary, grammar and/or characters that have not been introduced in the text. This makes doing the exercises incredibly frustrating.

5)Although the main text is presented in both "traditional" ("fantizi") and simplified ("jiantizi") Chinese characters, the exercises are given only in jiantizi, while the sentence patterns (containing characters not found in the main text) and index are given only in fantizi. This makes the book significantly less useful for those who wish to learn only one character set.

6)The organization of the index is a travesty.

In sum, this book needs a much better editing job and more comprehensive use of both fantizi and jiantizi character sets throughout. Perhaps these problems will be addressed in a second edition. Until then, prospective students who fall into this book's target audience group are better off combining one of the many elementary texts on reading and writing Chinese characters with a more advanced book on Chinese grammar, such as Yip and Rimmington's (jiantizi-only) "Intermediate Chinese: A Grammar and Workbook".

As a Peace Corps Volunteer living in China, I needed a book that would quickly and effectively introduce me to the complex grammatical structures and vocabulary necessary to engage in grown-up conversation. Books widely available here in the motherland were not particularly useful - most "advanced" books here tend to avoid the very issues that are most talked about by young, educated people today.

I found "Oh, China" to be a great tool in my personal language acquisition process (a sentence that I can now translate into Chinese...). Most importantly, the book introduces topics of conversation that I often encounter in a method that is all-but-entirely free of bias. I was able to use this book with my Chinese tutor...

While it's true that the grammar isn't perfect - sometimes my friends and teachers laugh @ me for sounding like a textbook - for the most part the grammar lessons were right on, especially their explanations in good, clear English.

The vocabulary problems stated above are, indeed, quite infuriating.

Despite these problems, the book was immensely helpful to me and, overall, a really good book

The title indicates that this is for advanced beginners. I don't consider myself an advanced beginner, but this book was very informative and helpful to me. I really appreciated the wide range of information presented with each lesson, and I learned a lot by just going through the lesson once. Although some of the grammar explanations are a little dry, it is a very helpful reference to have if you are learning Mandarin.

Only has 9 pages on resumes but has a section that tells you how to configure your dial up internet connection so you can search the internet for a job. Give me a break.

I sincerely thank Gene Wang for the book. The book is for every programmer regardless of experience. It covers several general topics. I am surprised however, that a second edition has'nt come out. Some of the stuff like "List of Top 100 companies" is outdated now.

This book provides important material for software developers. The author shows just what it takes to be a successful programmer. His book is a true guide to a successful programming career. In addition to some theoretical discussions of component programming and software life-cycle, Mr. Wang also gives important hands-on advice such as how to write a winning resume, how to prepare for an interview, and even when to leave the current job and what companies to work for. He also gives overview of some best software tools and the hottest technologies. The book has two drawbacks, though. It seems that the author is a little biased towards Windows development. Other areas, such as UNIX or WWW development, don't get nearly as much attention as Windows development. It is not quite right -- those markets do exist and can't be ignored or dismissed as "obsolete." Second, the chapter on Internet programming seems a little weak. The author managed to write the whole chapter on Internet programming without ever mentioning Java, even though the book was written in 1996. All in all, the advice that the author gives is invaluable.

THE BOOK IS SUTPID DONT WASTE YOUR TIME AND READ IT!!

This is a wonderful book about a very talented young artist. Wang Yani is an extraordinary young woman who is an inspiration to us all. Her love of animals is something most children can identify with. I have read this book with 3rd graders and they loved every photo and detail about Wang Yani's life. The combination of reproductions and Wang Yani's own words make the book gripping for young children. A must-have for any class studying China or Chinese art.

A fanscinating novel about the life and times of an amazing young artist, who went through many stages in her life and still is. A powerful, though-provoking book, also alot of tips for artists in the making! Wang Yani has had alot of parent influences, which cannot be stressed enough, and that is really what counts. It talks about her being China's prized possesion, or The Picasso OF China. Although I don't believe she is all that popular in Canada, I belive she will eventually reach that poing, whatever the time period. I would recommend this novel to anyone who enjoys all aspects of art!

I really did not care for this book and I thought it hard to follow at times and it was not keeping my attention.

Woman Wang is a piece of work that one can read to get a sense of life for women in China during this time period. However, one should take this book with a grain of salt, since women were not always as powerless as Spence tries to argue. (In fact Woman Wang does display some of her power simply by breaking the "rules"). While factual in presenting more of the well-known facets of Confucian-ruled society and its effects on women, including the legal system, much of this book is speculative and sentimental. It often reads more as historical fiction than a work by a professor of Chinese History at a prestigious university. It does not flow smoothly, pulling the reader jerkily from third person narrative of woman wang to analysis of documents and explanations from a historical/sociological perspective and back to narrative again. For an advanced student of Chinese culture, history, etc., if this book did not get a glance in her/his early years, it will not provide much insight. He has performed better in later works. Still, it remains a neat, compact work for a neophyte, and to this day retains its use in introductory classes on Chinese history.

A little hard to follow sometimes, and the author could have artfully trimmed it in a couple of places -- after all, it was written for a lay audience, so an excess of historical details can be distracting. Still, it provides a glimpse into a little-known portion of history, and it's comprehensible to a general audience. As I say, imperfect, but worthwhile.

I read some of the hype about this book and picked it up at the library-wish I hadn't. It resulted in possibly the most annoying few hours I've ever spent reading. Make no mistake, I enjoy good surrealism (Gogol for one) and noir (Chandler, et al), and I am reasonably well steeped in Asian pop culture, but this was a total disappointment. It starts confusingly, but I figured things would gradually clear up as I read along, however by the end I was no further along in understanding the book. The aimless plot clearly is meant as a portrait and critique of modern urban Chinese society, with it's attendant cynical wheeler-dealer underworld figures, but that's about it. Stephen King bafflingly blurbed it as "the most brilliantly entertaining hardboiled novel of the 90s." It might actually work better as film, perhaps in the hands of a master of atmosphere and mood like Wong Kar Wai.

I first read this book in chinese when I was 14. Like most 14 year-old, I read it only as a book that my parents wouldn't allow me to read. (By the way, it is never really banned in China, only criticized heavily by the authorities.) At that time, I found the book to be quite humorous, but nothing special. It wasn't the funniest book from Wang Shuo by all means. Twelve years later, I came across its english translation accidentally on a dusty library shelf. I was curious, picked it up, and started reading. Goldblatt's translation is very impressive, in fact, it doesn't have any of the awkard moments or sentences most of the translated works have here and there. He may have missed a few very subtle innuendos, but overall, the translation gave the book an even dreamier environment, and curiously, more fluent language than the original. I had to get the chinese edition and read it all over again, and after that, I have to admit for the first time that a translated work is actually better than the original. As for Wang Shuo's novel itself, this is probably the most structually complex one, and he did show off his enormous writing skills. But as the plot and character development goes, it's not the top of his work. It's about a generation (if you divide each generation by 10 years) that has robbed of its older ideology, the one they've been brought up with, so they become cynical; and yet, they could not adopt to the newer money-oriented philosophy of the younger generation, so they are still sincere and innocent in their own mind. To have spent their childhood and youth in the Culture Revolution, this is a story about a generation that's alienated from the society that has become, and yet desperately wants to join in the fun that they definitely know they won't enjoy. I actually liked his later works better. His latest work (also on Fang Yan and Gao Yang and the entire gang) is interestly set in kindergarden, and is the two thirds of the book that "Playing for thrills" had implied at the very end.

In Playing for Thrills, Wang Shuo weaves a complex, compelling, and utterly confusing web in which the reader is quickly trapped. The book is neither noir nor surreal, as it is often labelled, but filtered through the hazy lens of alientation and indifference, the reader quickly becomes as defracted as the characters.

I hated this book, but found it totally addictive. Wang Shuo is a master storyteller, and like a good film director, cleverly manipulates his audience, and we are always exactly where he wants us to be.

The plot is pretty petty and pointless, but the rambling narrative presents the best literary portrait there is of Beijing in the 1980s. It is especially amusing in its scathing portrait of the new semi-rich wheeler-dealer class, in all their tastelessness and self-importance.

Wang Shuo is arguably the most critically and commercially successful writer in modern China, and is also an acclaimed screen writer. This book may not provide a sense of his importance, but it will introduce readers to his expertly maneuvered prose.

The book is written as if addressing a group of nursery school children. The level of discussion is below any practicle programming guide and would highly reccomend looking elsewhere for help.

This book is awesome! Read this book and then read "Visual Basic 6 From The Ground Up." These two books will teach you everything you need to know about VB programming. This book is easy to read, understand and lets you easily apply your knowledge. VB6 from the ground up is the best book on VB6 but the reason you wouldn't just read it is because sometimes the author has a hard time explaining things but if you combine these two books then you will know exacly what he is talking about. My criticism is that this is only a intro book. It doesn't go deep into VB, it is slightly outdated and it doesn't show the advanced features of the Professional and Enterprise versions of VB like VB from the ground up does. Most beginners don't realize that a lot of books they buy only let you write programs like the authors do. They don't show you how to create your own. That's why these two books are so good. The clown from New York is crazy. I wish this was the worst book that I've ever read on computers, if that was true then I would have some pretty awesome books! He may THINK he is smart but for the average Joe, this book is great if you've never opened a VB book before. The only thing is that you can't be a complete moron. If you are then get a Windoz book quick before you even try to learn to program. Trust me, I have over a dozen books that I have read on VB. They all tell me the same thing that's in this book except they are twice as thick, and a million times harder to understand. These two books are the only books I have that don't make you "mimic" the author. They let you use what they teach you to decide for yourself which features to add. Email bomb me, or give my email to all kinds of places if I am wrong. You can write me specific questions if you want. I don't care, just be sure not to waste your money on any other books on VB.

I have many "Dummies" books in my technical collection, and am proud to add Visual Basic 5 Programming to it. I read through the reviews for all of the intro to programming books, and felt that this one would be a good place to start. I have just started to teach myself Visual Basic 5.0, and can definitely see the need to keep a book like this in one's collection. The book was laid out in an orderly fashion, the exercises were a breeze to to, and the cartoons will definitely keep me in stitches on days where I will need a laugh or two to get by. Congrats to the authors for writing such a good book!

I was looking into this book from the perspective of understanding TMN standards from a partical implementation point of view. The biggest problem with TMN standards has been the difficulty in following them. The book does very little towards solving that.

It has very few illustrations. It lacks a practical touch. It would have helped to explain TMN standards with respect to some common telecom technolgies such as ATM, SONET/SDH.

It tries to go into details of SNMP and then CMIP which are probably best handled by separate books.

New areas such as CORBA as well other upcoming important telecommunications standards are barely touched. That makes the book some what outdated.

Effectively it becomes a theoretical book with little practical implications.

This is a good textbook that is meant as a theoretical introduction to Network Management. It is unique in that it covers quite a bit of the scope of a broad and diverse subject.

This is not easy reading, it has to be studied instead. Chances are that one would have to print RFCs or other Standards documents to get an indepth look at a particular set of standards.

Given how unique this book is, and despite the dryness of subject matter, I do consider it as a good book. As a university course, it does not have many questions and exercises, but that shouldn't take away from the value it brings to the subject.

To make this more like easy reading, it can be probably divided into more than one part and add lots more graphics and illustration to better help the reader.

This is a good practical guide to Network Management standards and technologies. The author explains the Network Management standards and technologies in detail and then applies them to the various solutions. He covers different protocols, standards, architectures, functional areas of Network Management. New areas like CORBA, ODP, Service Management are also introduced. This book can be used for obtaining a conceptual understanding of Network management areas with ability to understand practical systems. For a beginner this book can serve as a good introduction to various areas of Network Management. For an experienced person, this can serve as a reinforcing text. Exercises help to verify our knowledge and extend our thoughts in different areas. This book is not suitable for a beginner in computer science. But a valuable reference for a beginner in network management. Diagrams in this book are simple and do the purpose although better diagramming tool could have been used.

I bought this to learn Visual Basic 3. Even though there are some good points to the book, overall it is total useless for the money. There are not any explanations as to what the wording of the code means. The book brings you to a certain point in programing and drops you flat and starts another subject. I will not buy another book in of this series of books.

I read this book in 1995 when VB3 was first released. It got me started programming within a few days. It has quick, concise, nontechnical, and humorous. I would suggest this book to anyone with very knowledge of Visual Basic 3. I am working with VB5 today and I find this book to still be a wonderful reference.

This book is great(if you have no experence) it teaches VB3 like no other! It has references, some great code, & teaches key code.