...provided some very important information that wasn't detailed in the rulebook: info about Karoo, Averiguas, Far Nyumba and the other extrasolar colonies. All the infomation is in full color and in-character, much like the first 100 pages of the basic rulebook. Most of the info found here has been expanded in other books (particularly Stellar Frontier and the Alien Encounter adventure series), but it's still very cool as a player handout.

This was a good book.Its true that two people being different doesn't mean that they can't be friends.The perfect example is of Stacy and Jenelle.They are complete opposites of each other,yet the best of friends.Their differences become more obvious as they grow up but in this difficult process of growing up both of them learn a very important lesson about friendship - and about themselves

I expected much more content. This book was no use to me at all

The book consists of numerous sketches of decks, patios, entries, etc. It was perfect for my situation because I was simply looking for design ideas to make my patio unique and not just the traditional rectangle shape. The "how-to" books I found on patios and decks had lots of instruction but very few pictures. I was able to combine ideas from a couple of the sketches in this book and come up with a great design. Be advised that the book contains no building instructions or dimensions. It is simply a lot of ideas presented as sketches.

I am a graduate architecture student, and my education did not include much on landscaping. I use this book frequently to get ideas on how to integrate the landscape into my buildings. The book contains hundreds of watercolor illustrations of small outdoor spaces. It is useful for exploring material options, getting ideas on landscape integration, color options, learning how to render an outdoor space, etc. This book is good for showing broad ideas for inspiration and adaptation, not exact copying. The many styles presented could also be useful for a client who wants to describe a style to a designer but may not know the technical name or how to describe it.

Being a student of Bates I can vouch that his java abilities are underwhelming at most. It comes as no surprise that other reviewers have found his java code inadequate, badly commented, but mostly just wrong.

As my teacher of java (at University) all of the above points are manifested in his unworkable tutorial code. In short his inability and blatant disinterest in teaching are echoed throughout the book (and my university course).

I am sure he has made a quick $buck through the sale of this book as a staple coding reference for many of the U.K. Universities and colleges (where his friends work - standard lecturer swindling technique!!), albeit at the expense of students education.

My advice for any java/java applet code references is to look for SUNSOFT PRESS books (real-SUN), as they are fairly easy to follow

Practicality is the key with this book. Loaded with examples that really made the concepts easy to understand. The "Rule of Thumb" proved to be a very helpful feature in picking out techniques to apply.

This book really got me working right away. In covering a fair number of technologies with supporting examples, the amount of detail was enough to help you to do things straight away without being overwhelming and unwieldy. I was able to understand the things I needed to know, and not worry about the unnecessary details.

As a lover of medical history, specifically, the effect of pandemic disease on history and society, I believed the reviews and subtitle of this book thinking it was, indeed, a social history, in other words, a history of the human experience. However, after wading through all 370 some pages (not counting the voluminous notes) of this book, I determined that it is actually a history of hospitalization and medical care as provided to an extremely small segment of the population afflicted with Tuberculosis in turn of the 20th Century Pennsylvania. If you are interested in what it was like to to be one of the millions who lived and died with TB in a world before antibiotics, DO NOT waste your money on this book. If you are interested in reading about a small group of doctors and how they attempted to treat/restrict/institutionalize their TB patients, this one is for you. And, as a bonus, you will get lots on information on exactly how much their medical care cost and how many eggs they were expected to eat each day. Sound interesting? Not particularly. There are many more interesting books on PEOPLE with TB out there. Buy one of those.

Bates shares his son's basketball season through first hand insight. The team reaches the state tourney with great play by play coverage. He gives us insight into the players and community. However, Bates looses his focus in the waining seconds of the last game. Maybe he should have watched a tape to refresh his memory of what exactly happened. It's like he wrote the book during the game. I would have liked to know details...not just the result.

This has got to be one of the dumbest books I have ever read. Not only is it really short he quotes the bible almost every page. There is very little info on anything he did. Save your money

I really liked the sound of this book and felt it would be an interesting read! Unfortunatly i was surprised at how short it was and how large the writing was! In my opinion the writer has a lot of knowledge and experience to share unfortunatly i felt i was reading a brief discription of this guys autobiography rather then the actual thing! He went on too much about jesus has saved him and not enough of why he needed saving!

I had purchased Bates' book "Optical Networking and Switching" in March. Now that I saw this book, I was expecting something new. However, it just a chapter scanned from that book and so donot buy this if you already have the book.

I don't like to discourage authors, especially those in my field (New Age/reincarnation) but I think that Raymond Bates should have secured the services of a good editor before submitting this book for publication. The best I can discern from his material is that he feels that since a newborn infant has an entirely new brain, yet still might be afraid of a lion, etc., etc. this proves reincarnation. I'd hate to hear what hardcare skeptics would have to say about that.

But there may be more to the book than this. My high school English teacher would have returned the manuscript for this book full of red pencil marks. You can't wade through all the errors in grammar and usage to get to the heart of the matter.

If Raymond Bates really feels he has something valuable to offer in this field or any field, he had better take a brush-up course in basic English and writing techniques, or else hire a good editor, before publishing any more books. I would like to really be able to discern what he has to say. Good luck to him.

This electronic book is a 20 page chapter from the book "Broadband Telecommuncations Handbook". Even at US$8.95 the ebook is over priced. Also, the information is not correct or timely. For example, the "book" incorrectly specifies the acronym for Abstract Syntax Notation One as "ANS.1", instead of "ASN.1". There are many more problems. I want my money back!