It's good to see Chaosium getting back to topnotch books again. This one along with Unseen Masters, represents a "new wave" of Call of Cthulhu - as good or better than any of the stuff released in years.

You can't really go wrong with this package, it's got background resource material for the Goatswood area and a nice bundle of scenarios that look like fun to run (I can't wait to spring some of them on my group! HEH HEH HEH) I don't want to give away any spoilers but there's an S&M club, and the "GUARD" at the club is such a wicked idea not to mention the dude who runs the place. Good to see Ramsey the man himself giving the introduction, read his Silent Children book if you really want to get chills!

The artwork is decent, and lots of it. Plenty of handouts too, which are really important as far as I am concerned. One thing I could do without though is the side illustrations, they take up too much room that could maybe be used for information. But that's a small jibe compared to the value.

I'm a longtime Cthulhu keeper but new to Ramsey Campbell (other than the material in the rulebook). The first half of the book is devoted to resource material covering magic, monsters and locations in the fictitious Severn Valley (well the Severn Valley itself isn't fictitious of course). The second half is devoted to a campaign of 7 or 8 scenarios. Everything is well written, well thought out and seems very playable. I'm looking forward to running it!

I've waited a long time for this one, and the wait was worth it! It's chock full of scenarios (forming a campaign which you can ignore if you want), and lots of background material on Ramsey Campbell's Severn Valley. I wish there'd been more maps and maybe more info on some of the locations but all in all, this is a COOL package!

I initially thought that this book read very well and provided good information to pass the Network+ exam. However, after I purchased the Transcender practice exam and failed it, I thought differently. All of the questions I failed were referenced to David Groth's book, "Network+ Study Guide" which, once I purchased and read it, found additional material not covered in the Corolis book. After reading both books, I successfully passed the practice exams, and subsequently, the actual test. There were a few questions on the actual test that weren't covered in this book, confirming that the Transcender practice exam(which I highly recommend) was right on the money. I recommend if you can only purchase one book, buy the Network+ Study Guide. Best of luck!!!

A lot of the study guides are excellent, but this one is one of the best I've ever seen. As a teaching tool, it is great because it organizes the material very succintly and very clearly follows the comptia subjects on the test. also, it tries to anticipate networking trends, especially Windows 2000 (one has to guess that the book was written in very early 1999). The hardest part about this certification is that because it is not vendor specific, an author is reluctant to get too specific about how to do things on each individual platform. This book solves this problem by presenting general information and then assigning "hands-on projects" at the end of the chapter in the respective NOS. These projects go over each specific steps for getting something done in a particular NOS. That is a very good idea even if the reader doesn't have access to the NOS. Perhaps these projects could be useful after taking the test when you do encounter a new nos and are too cheap to buy other books.This book is particularly nice because it gathers a lot of networking information together in a single book and contrasts their implementation in different os. Very useful after the test. A lot of the examples are NT, but it makes sense to do this from a market-share point of view. (I'm a Unix/Linux dude, so I am actually interested in the NT-specific stuff). One quirk that may or may not be good is that the authors put the answers to the chapter test on CD. That is good because it frees more pages of the book up to discussion of material. (sometimes these exam prep books seem to spend 20% of their pages just giving answers). On the other hand, it is a pain to refer to the answers on the CD. In short, this is a very well-written and informative book, both from a technical and pedagogical point of view.

The Network+ Exam Prep guide is an excellent tool to prepare for the network+ exam. It covers pretty much everything that was on my test, which I passed on the first try with a 95% using mostly this book. The only improvement I would suggest is to add actual photographs of some of the network equipment such as routers, hubs, MAUs - good photographs can be beter than a simple drawing. I'd recommend this book to anyone going after their network+ certification.

This little book is not for strong tournament players! It is a primer for players that know how the pieces move, but know little in the way of strategies or tactics. I don't think it is as good a book for the neophyte as Sierawan and Silman's Play Winning Chess. Even the condescendingly titled, Chess for Dummies by James Eade, and Chess for Complete Idiots by Patrick Wolff offer far more the AC. Ironically, AC is a much more basic book than the equally poorly titled Simple Chess, by Michael Stean. That book would bewilder a beginner and is more suitable for 1500-1800 players!

Since this is a children's book, the title is appropriate. The concepts are advanced for most children aged 7-9 years, although they would not be advanced for a teenager or adult. All Norwood's children's books on chess are excellent. They include full color diagrams and explain important concepts in a way that is especially appropriate for young players.

Highly Recommended

This book is good for beginers as well as intermeit players. Ittells about thing like pawn structure and sacrifices. If your'e justbeingnig to know chess, this book is for you. END

In the book's introductory chapter, David Watt explains that his interest in examining evangelical authority stems from his own upbringing as a conservative Baptist. Like many young evangelicals, however, he began to question the strictures of evangelical orthodoxy and orthopraxy in college and has since joined the Episcopalian church (also like many young educated evangelicals). Lately there have been a number of books by disaffected or former evangelical Protestants that examine their old subcultures. Randall Balmer's output, for example, has almost exclusively dealt with this issue. Watt joins the chorus of evangelical dissidents and exiles who, with what they believe is an insider's perspective, want to take a fair-minded look at the kinds of churches they grew up in. Watt's unique contribution to this burgeoning sub-genre is an examination of how power is exercised in churches. Many of the studies done on evangelicalism focus on its language, mores, beliefs, or political strategies, and this book is a refreshing change from those now well-traveled subjects.

Watt looks at three churches: Oak Grove Church, Philadelphia Mennonite Fellowship, and Philadelphia (International) Church of Christ. The first is a fairly typical middle to upper-middle class evangelical megachurch, the second is a small, politically liberal and pacifist urban congregation, and the third is a branch church of a sect that many other evangelicals consider "cultish" or heretical. The most interesting things that Watt notices about Oak Grove is the unusual amount of respect given to people involved in business or some other capitalist enterprise, and the near-total power of the senior minister at church administration meetings. In this conservative church, submission to authority--to a husband, or the pastor's, or the free-market system--was routinely emphasized. Watt, now a liberal, is critical of these tendencies, which are actually tendencies found in much of the Religious Right (Pat Robertson is known for linking the Kingdom of God itself with capitalism). He talks much about "asymmetrical" power relationships that he disapproves of; he compares it to the democratic, congregational style of decision making and culture in the Baptist churches of his youth. In some ways his objection is puzzling. Certainly one of the dangers is that an all-powerful single leader, like a pastor, can become a dictator, but there are no indications in the book that this is actually so. Moreover, he is now part of a church that has a very hierarichal structure, the Episcopalian church (though it does take stances a liberal would be more amenable to). However, his critique of the church's swallowing of capitalist ideology is more astute, and is a telling aspect of a much-overlooked aspect of evangelical compromise with the larger culture that it so opposes on other points.

The Mennonite fellowship is in many ways an anomaly in the landscape of American evangelicalism, a representative of the small "Evangelical Left" that is led by Jim Wallis and Sojourners Magazine. It is pacifist, quite explicitly opposed to the consumerist/ capitalist economic structure, and fairly egalitarian in church structure. It was also located in the heart of a fairly poor urban neighborhood, and many of its members had deliberately chosen to work in the church rather than take on more lucrative careers. Watt had clear admiration for this church's countercultural nature, and for its lively Bible studies in which the members showed a surprisingly high amount of scholarly knowledge. In many ways, I too see this church as a kind of model, as it is clearly trying to encourage its members to follow Jesus in a costly way and is politically and socially active without losing its spiritual focus. One suspects, though, that Watt's assessment was more lax because the church's lefty political stances are closer to his than Oak Grove's. Nevertheless, the willingness of the members to give generously while under fairly limited financial means, their willingness to regularly serve the neighborhood they are in, and their voluntary poverty are attractive.

The most interesting portrait was that of the Church of Christ. The International Church of Christ practices an unusually authoritarian, intense form of faith that many Christians see as cultish. They believe, for example, that the intense form of evangelism they engage in is required for salvation, that only people baptized in their church are saved, and that all Church of Christ members must submit to a "discipler" that can sometimes control even the most minute aspects of the discple's life. Watt, a newcomer, has some admiration for the members of this church. He is awestruck by members' dedication and financial generosity, and he enjoys their vibrant worship services. They also maintain enough cultural independence to be critical of many of the structures of modern American life, unlike the Oak Grove congregation. Nevertheless, the near-absolute power of disciplers, the settled conviction of the members that their way of reading the Bible was the only way, and their constant efforts to proselytize him earn Watt's criticism. One can see how these kind of power structures can lead to abuse, no matter how orthodox or heterodox the theology. I myself was actually raised in the mainstream part of the Church of Christ, which theologically could be described as fundamentalist, but I never experienced anything like what Watt describes in the portrait. All in all, we might be able to learn from their zeal. But not their need for domination and control.

Christians worship a God who, in the person of Jesus Christ, voluntarily laid aside his power, even unto death on a cross. Through this renunciation came the true power to overcome death and win salvation. This should be the paradigm for all churches, but in real life, the actual running of congregations is a more complex matter. To exercise authority with a servant attitude, as evangelicals say, is a fairly delicate matter. Watt's examination is an instructive set of portraits about how different kinds of evangelicals deal with the issue, even if his portrait is somewhat biased by his political commitments.

David Harrington Watt takes a sympathetic, personal and critical view of three different churches in the metropolitan Philadelphia area. His look at a small fundamentalist church, a grassroots urban Mennonite congregation, and a market-driven "megachurch" illustrate the very different ways that Christians see their mission in the world and their relations to social, political, and economic structures. Watt reveals parts of his personality and his emotional reactions to what goes on in each church, but he also carefully analyzes the power structures, ethnic diversity, and gender roles in each congregation in an astute yet easily readable way. A must read for anyone wanting to get personal glimpses of the vast array of people seeking to be true to the Bible in very different ways.

While I've been very impressed with the clear writing and highly practical instruction in this book, I've noted dozens of syntax, grammatical, spelling, and factual errors, on the order of one every ten pages or so. And this is a very long book. Be prepared to spend a few hours wondering why certain queries just won't work, until your programming buddies tell you that parameter passing to a web page is always done with a "?" and not a "&" as the book occasionally--and erroneously--asserts. If you can make it through the minefields, you'll learn quite a bit about relational databases, Cold Fusion Studio, and data-driven web sites, but not without a few battle scars...

On the whole, the CFWDCK book is very informative, and does take you from start to finish in terms of the creation of a web database. This book has been invaluable to me as go through the process of migrating my flat website to one that is database-driven.

It does do a good job of giving a decent overview of things, and even ventures into SQL (which turns out to be very important in Cold Fusion). And, unlike a lot of books which include CDs, I can say that the software that came with it was worth it. This is especially true if you are the type who erases large zip files after you download and install software. If you are trying to use Cold Fusion with MS Front Page, you might find the two programs don't seem to like each other. Thus, it's good to have a fresh copy of CF available if you need it.

But, like many other "Thick Books", this one does suffer from a few problems:

POOR INDEXING
Most references to CF statements only refer to definitions or sections in the book devoted to them. Not to each different use. This means that, for example, if you want to know about using a CFIF statment within a CFCOLUMN statement, you really gotta hunt.

PARTIALLY SUBSTANTIATED CLAIMS
The back cover of the book talks about how we can make shopping carts, online catalogs, conferencing systems, etc. Where are the examples? Maybe they're there. I couldn't find them

UNCREATIVE EXAMPLES
In any instruction book, most of the examples are going to be centered around basic tasks. How to do a query to a database. How to make a form. Blah, blah, blah. It's all good. But this book seems to ignore a lot of the richness of CFML. Not much talk about graphics at all. One has to hunt for information about using CFML with URLs. It's mostly basic, fairly uncreative applications. For the most part, that's appropriate. But not at this level.

NOT ENOUGH INFO ON CFML ECCENTRICITIES
Some of the tags seem to not work very well with each other. Others require different formatting of URLS. Without this information easily accessible, there is some trial and error that one shouldn't have to go through.

Overall, an excellent book. And, if you are considering Cold Fusion for your website, it's probably the only game out there. Just remember that you will probably need a second book on Cold Fusion once another comes out

I bought this book for my dissertation. After I started to read this book, I fall in love with it. I always have problem reading books in English as my mother language is not English. But this book give me a very clear idea on how to integrate your web page with database. I just finished my dissertation yesterday. But Cold Fusion is still in my mind. You will love this book.

Plato's The Republic, is not only a classic work of the fourth century B.C., but a masterpiece of utopian literature as a whole. Mr. Lee's translation brings into light the political and poetical wisdom of Plato into English from the original Greek. In The Republic, Plato raises questions that are still at the heart of many modern conflicts and heated debates. What is justice? What is goodness? What is the right political authority? Plato examines these questions as aspects of a single theme. He offers a portrait of an ideal state in which power is entrusted to the philosopher king(s), and other men and women accept the authority of the wise and the good. If no one has read The Republic, then he or she has not read anything!

In the "Republic," Plato may or may not have accomplished what he set out to do, which is to define justice and prove that it is superior to injustice, irregardless of either's consequences. However, what he DID do is set the foundation for over two thousand years of thought. Read this work slowly; within each of the seemingly-simple discussions there is a world of though to be discovered. Anyone with the least bit of background in philosophical readings can literally read page-by-page, discovering the sources of many of the greatest philosophers of all-time. The "Republic" is not so much a work of literature as it is an explosion of thought; a ten-book brainstorm of one of the greatest minds of all-time. By the work's end, whether or not you feel Socrates to have successfully answered Glaucon's challenge is almost irrelevant, for the argument will have already left your mind reeling.

Plato's "Republic" is probably the most important work in the history of Western Philosophy, or atleast I believe it is. The reader can literally flip from page to page counting how many subsequent philosphies arose from interpretations of the words on each page. Of all Western Philosophers, Plato was one of the greatest writers. Even though some readers may find the dialogue style exhausting, I find it enjoyable because it turns the real-life participants in the arguments into literary characters who can, at times, be quite humorous. All literary merits aside, the overabundance of profound thoughts to be found in "The Republic" make it a must-read for anyone who likes to think.

Lots of Thurston, Mike Watt & Lee Renaldo, some David Yow, only one entry from Courtney and none from Stephen Malkmus, so the title is a little misleading. If you're a Beck fan, you'll love his entries. They're the best of the bunch. He describes the world as he sees it in Beck-style free-form, without bashing his fellow performers. Thurston's entries are almost entirely in strangely self-righteous defense of Kathleen Hanna and an incident in which he was not even involved, which is a waste. The last I heard, Kathleen is more than capable of speaking for herself so his defense of her/bashing of Courtney is unnecessary. I expected and would have preferred more insight into the Lollapalooza performing experience.

Here is a low priced little book with lots of journal entries from Thurston Moore and Lee Ranaldo, quite a few from Beck and a couple others (but the others don't contribute too much). It is a very interesting inside look at one of the most vividly remembered tours in independent rock history. A lineup featuring the likes of these many performers will probably never cross the U.S. again in my lifetime. The Kathleen Hanna incident doesn't actually dominate Thurston's entries, but takes up a large chunk of his journals. Beck's entries are great. David Yow doesn't say too much... One overriding theme is how big of a jerk Courtney Love really is. There are plenty of little interesting stories relayed along the way. Don't miss out you Sonic Youth and Beck fans! And for all those who still remember being at one of these shows, it might be interesting to hear what was going on behind the scenes.

In 1995, the Lollapalooza maelstron plundered thru the cities & towns of America, a [diamond] sea of noise & beats changing lives & generally having fun. That's what I'm lead to believe anyway. Thurston is more or less the star here as he was in 1991: the Year Punk Broke, & there's some other cool & crazy kids there too. He writes in his typically amusing & insightful style about the Mexican food, the backstage parking that's reserved strictly for Hole & how Kim has to pretend to be Courtney so SY's car can get in, & how Bek was outraged by this, the Kathleen vs Courtney thing, the crowds disappearing when SY are last on the bill, etc. Lee Ranaldo also writes from the sonic perspective, of course in his more contemplative style usually except when he gets pissed off he shows it. Well, to be honest, I've read these things as they were intended, as computer things so I didn't get everything, I'd very much like to hear what the great Beck had to say about it as well. Yeah the show goes on eevry year but that was the one that mattered. Very interesting reading that you can go back to many times for enlightenment/amusement.

If you're looking for in-depth detailed information on RDF, XML Schema, DAML + OIL etc., then don't buy this book.
If you're interested in DAML + OIL, and applications of it, then you don't want this book. (It covers DAML + OIL, but only touches its surface.)
If you want to read about new standars rising from the XML community, and you don't have any particular preference, then this might be a book you like.
If you can't cope with minimal cohesion, then you definitely should not buy this book. There's no single message in this book.

By now, I guess most of IT professionals have atleast heard about XML and know what problems XML can help solve, however it's challenging to keep up with fast evolving technologies around XML, like RDF, Topic Maps, Schemas, etc. I myself had heard about these technologies, but didn't quite understand them fully till I read Professional XML Meta Data from Wrox. As far as I know, this is the only book available in the market today that covers technologies useful for data description, discovery and exchange, in so much detail. The book covers XML Schemas, XML Linking and Querying, both the RDF specifications, Topic Maps and more. All the topics are explained in detail, the book is very well connected and the chapters flow nicely in sequence. I personally liked the final chapter "Advanced Meta Data Use Cases" that covers couple of areas where meta data can enhance the applications.

If you need to know about the latest XML metadata technologies or concepts like the Semantic Web and machine readable metadata, you need this book. I found it very useful in explaining RDF (there are three excellent chapters on RDF) and Topic Maps, which are potentially difficult subjects to understand. The book also suggests some interesting uses for metadata in the future, and has a useful chapter on extracting metadata from databases.

If you're using IBM Netfinity or xSeries Servers, this is the only wisest choice. And if you're using Microsoft NT or 2000, it'll be the excellent one as your reference.

There are 10-50 IBM Netfinity Servers in my company and my job is to ensure them work normally, includes tuning and getting the most performance. If your job is to ensure your NT/2000 to work more smooth, you must try it and you'll get the most from it.

This is one of the good books for Test engineers and QA people or anybody who is trying to learn more about Performance Testing. It is a must buy for an IT professional who works on this kind of stuff.

What makes this book truly special, besides the fact that it is so easy to read and understand that people with little knowledge will find it accessible, is that this book goes in depth into the ins and outs of the hardware in Intel based systems without limiting itself to being marketing hype. Yes, the examples used are laced around the Netfinity, now rebranded xSeries, servers from IBM. However, people who work with Compaq or Dell or whitebox servers will also find this work useful, because SCSI is SCSI no matter whose box it is in, and the same is true of PCI, Intel Pentium CPUs, and all other industry standard hardware.

For the most part, all Intel servers will interact with software in the same basic ways. Since this is true, the performance tuning techniques listed in this book range beyond the Netfinity servers of the book's title. The same is also true of the application tuning information listed in the appendices.
There's a new version of this book expected out 4/02, and it will cover Linux and Netware, as well as Windows, and go into newer hardware that was unavailable, or not in use for IBM xSeries servers, at the time this first book was written. Buy it, you won't be disappointed, and you are bound to learn quite a bit, even if you are a seasoned pro!

I used this book as my only resource for exam 70-217. Read the whole thing in about a week and passed. This is not as well written as Exam Cram for 70-210, and there are plenty of test questions that were more advanced than what's covered by the book. But I'm still grateful for this title as it got me passed the exam with less than a week's effort, so I can get back to work on real life instead of wasting my time on dreamed up MS scenarios that are completely twisted and seldom practiced by any IT organization. If you read all the materials and do every question, you will pass. As with other cram books, this title contains the bare minimum you need to pass, so if you skipped any sections or spaced out while reading some sections, you'll likely fail. If your goal is to learn Windows Directory Services or you're not already an MCSE for NT 4, you may be better off looking elsewhere.

I found this book to be well written. It was clear and presented in a logical order. The material was a very good complement to the material in the Microsoft Training kit. I learned additional test relevant material. Exam Crams are consistently one of my top three study resources, this was one of the best so far.

I don't normally write a review for a book but one of the reviews from a guy named Larry Dunn really hit a sore spot. He wrote the same review for all the books in the core pack and just posted it for all books. That indicates to me that he probably didn't read them, nor do I think he has the ability to read.

If you're looking for a book that covers all the subject matter for this exam and want to have key points highlighted and a strong practice test, then this is the book for you. That doesn't mean you shouldn't work with Windows 2000 Server and Active Directory. It doesn't mean you shouldn't go out and get additional testing materials. It doesn't mean you shouldn't surf the web for more help. It simply means that for a 400 page cram this is a great way to review those topics on the exam that you will encounter.