There's... all available publically on business practices in the games industry, which is quite peculiar, given how large a field it's become, and given the minute detail in which, say, the film and publishing industries have been covered. Thus, this is almost a necessary volume for anyone outside the field interested in getting into it.

That said, it is so relentlessly and laughably upbeat as to be beyond belief. The truth is that gaming may not be quite as corrupt as the music industry, or as vicious as Hollywood, but it can be a pretty darn brutal field in which to work.

I'd have given five stars if the authors had included examples, or better yet templates, for the design treatment and design documents. Given the amount of material given this is a surprisingly easy read. It is very well organized and it is very easy to find information your after without having to wade thorough extraneous information. This book should be on the bookshelf of anyone who is doing game design, computer or otherwise.

This book is proberly one of the best books that i had ever bought. For a wannabe game developer like me, this book gave me the insight toward what i should expect. It gave in detail what one should know to make themselve a complete game developer. Wheter you are an artist or a programmer, this book will help you guide yourself toward a sucessful carrer in this field.

The text does not remotely fill the entire page to lengthen the book and suggest a happier price. Sun Pin's addition is severely garbled because the original text was damaged and it's contadictory. The most likely reason that Sun Pin's methods were forgotten and preserved only in a tomb was because (GEE GOLLY) people believed it wasn't worth reading. The commentary uses the word obvious extremely often among various other uneeded lengthening exercises.The author describes himself as an imaginative entrepenuer.(Sun Tzu flirts with perfection)

The Art of War is the oldest and best military treatise this world has seen. It is amazing how Sun Tzu can talk about strategy and warfare in thirteen short chapters. His book is just the best about competition and strategy. And now we get to Sun Pin, the military strategist. I have awesome respect for him. He was betrayed and mutilated by his best friend, and still, he survived. He defeated his nemesis in a great strategic way that Sun Tzu would have mostly likely done. These two are the best and if they were in this world today, they would won every war that we fight, by their ability to adapt. If you want to get Ancient Strategy and Chinese Culture, get this book.

The publishing of both Sun Tzu's and Sun Pin's works together makes for a valuable purchase. I've found that this translation is also quite easy to follow, and the comments assist with interpretation. These works represent awesome insights into the nature of warfare.

not grea

Su

I started reading this book last night and was up till 3:00AM! I couldn't put it down. Every turn of the page was another adventure and another laugh.

I did not like the book because it skip around too much between characters. I could not understand the characters. It wasn't really abour roller skating. I just wanted to read about roller skating.

I don't remember the first time I read this book or, rather, had it read to me. But I'm 24 now and I probably re-read it every 18 months or so. It's just that good.

Lucinda is one of the best characters in children's literature. She's not a beautiful girl (though you can tell she'll grow into a striking and riveting woman), but she's got an entirely generous spirit and energy saved up from a lifetime of restraint. She manages to have both entirely unique and exciting experiences that few people would (or should) ever share and to make everyday things into adventures. What's more, through the book she truly grows and changes, not any more than a girl of 10 years old should, but just enough.

Her adventures bring to life 1890s New York, both familiar as the city we know now and completely different in scale. One amazing thing, if you think about it, is that this book is set just about 15 or 20 years after the first of Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House books, so perhaps Laura was a young married woman during Lucinda's orphan year. And yet think of the difference in the lives they lived! You wouldn't think it was the same country, even.

It's true that there are some difficult parts in this book. Lucinda does lose friends, one of them violently. But, speaking as someone with a clear memory of being read this book as a child, it's handled so as not to be traumatizing. Lucinda doesn't fully understand or absorb her friend's murder; neither did I, because it's so sensitively written that as a child you realize only that something awful has happened that you _shouldn't_ quite understand. If you tend to underestimate your children, if you want to "protect" them from being thinking people able to live fully in the world, you may want to protect them from this book. My parents thought more of me, and I'm glad of it. Lucinda has been a great friend to me.

This book is a charming book about a charming child and her adventures over a year. There is a serious and sad side to the book as well, as there is to any life, but overall the story is wonderful.

I hate to be negative, but I could not bring myself to finish the book. It was sooo... stupid.

An abused bear is stolen from its owner. Claire Holt is accused by the owner of said bear. She says she didn't do it....words fly....Claire was at the Hideaway (the bear's owner's business) that night in the bed of a stranger. A stranger that made her feel things she had never felt before or had she? who was that man? Why was she so loose to do that a stranger? Where did her date go? Who murdered her archrival who was in the room next to her? Enter Zach Coulter the sheriff and Claire's once upon a time boyfriend. Zach is investigating the murder of her archrival and the disappearance of the bear....Read to find out what happens next.

I picked up this book because I first read Tempting Fate which I might add is a must read. If I like a book then I continue to read more from same author... I was not disappointed. Zach is a little cocky but he needed to be with Claire. I enjoyed how he tried to protect her even when she wouldn't be seen with him. By the way, I didn't know that animals can be treated as badly as some mentioned in this book. That breaks my heart and only hope this is not real, I love animals. Claire's love for animals grabbed my heart and Zach's love for Claire grabbed my throat. I am glad everyone in this story got their just desserts. I definitely recommend this one.

While the plot was somewhat interesting, I found the author's grammatical mistakes to be distracting. For example, in at least one place, s/he uses the word "are" instead of "our." There are many other such errors, along with many incidences of poor usage. I was amazed to see so many five star reviews here...until I started to notice that most of them appear to be written by the same person. Hmmm, I wonder who that could be?
My advice: stick with Mark Twain and avoid this one.

Well, Tom Sawyer, Avenger isn't like The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. But I guess it wasn't supposed to be. Becky Thatcher definitely is highly opinionated. The scenes in the story where she is kidnapped are, well, vivid. She is very open about her "bowel habits". The "N" word is used throughout, but I guess it had to be used. In itself it is a very interesting story. Except there are mispelled words. Sometimes it is hard to understand with the mispelled words, you have to go back and reread it. But it isn't too bad. What Tom and Becky discover at the stantan home surprised me. I won't give it away. This is a good book, and I enjoyed it. I don't think it is for everyone. Maybe not grade school kids. Jr. High is fine. I give it three and a half stars, even though I can only give it three here.

The literary content contained within "Tom Sawyer, Avenger" is stunning. The characters, though many, each are endowed with their own mystery, which is slowly revealed over the course of the story.

Tom and Becky do hunt for a buried treasure inside an old home where its owners were murdered years before; Becky is kidnapped, and must be strong and courageous in order to survive; Tom does help her to escape; and afterwards they do resume their search for treasure; and what they find inside is a true surprise. Yet, what the reader ought to understand, is how much more is going on in "Tom Sawyer, Avenger"

Muff Potter returns as a main character. He was once an old friend of the new town doctor, Benjamin Towers. Their friendship ended bitterly when Ben married Muff's one true love. She died shortly after the marraige and Muff accused Ben of murder. Now that he is looking after the Widow Douglas, Muff's distrust returns. He fears his once best friend is after her money. What he is really doing in St. Petersburg, and what he has in store for the Widow Douglas is another true surprise.

There is a new town sheriff, Cal; a corrupt, lawless, lunatic, as it were. He is obsessed with the founding fathers, and what he believed they stood for. His grandfather had died in the revolutionary war, and his father, just a young boy at the time, became angry, and did not want to believe his father, Cal's grandfather, died in vain. When Miss Watson's Jim escapes, Cal makes it his mission to apprehend him, believing, in his sick and twisted mind, that because the founding fathers did not end slavery, therefore slavery is, and must remain, acceptable. The fact that a slave would dare to escape, Cal feels, is an insult to the founding fathers that must be remedied with his capture.

Judith Loftus, who is a character is "Huckleberry Finn" returns, along with her husband, Cy, a bounty hunter. Their relationship is anything but stable. She is living with a deep, dark secret that she had revealed to Cy years earlier. The revelation destroyed his love for her; yet he cannot find the strength to leave her. Cy is a southernor; a man who so despises the north, he refuses to step on northern soil for anything. Including to hunt for Miss Watson's Jim, who he persued vigorously, not for the reward, but rather to sell him down south, where he has vast connections.

When Jimmy Finn vows revenge against Judge Thatcher for arresting him, after nearly strangling the Widow Douglas to death, he escapes from jail with the help of two accomplices, brothers Jed and Sim. Jed and Sim are "half-breeds", a term commonly used in the era which "Tom Sawyer, Avenger" takes place. They are half indian, half white, which has caused them to lead a very hard life. Their story is delightfully revealed as well.

Even with the inclusion of all these diverse and dynamic characters, Tom and Becky's adventures are not lost. We also find out how Jimmy Finn and Miss Watson die, as we learn in "Huckleberry Finn".

"Tom Sawyer, Avenger" is filled with metaphors, subtext, forshadowing - all the elements we are familiar with in the "classics", and that are greatly lacking in modern books.

Thank goodness for "Tom Sawyer, Avenger", a story which epitomizes the trueness of what literature is, and what makes reading so enjoyable.

"Tom Sawyer, Avenger" is for young adults on up, primarily for the use of the word nigger. However, this in no way makes the book racist. I strongly recommend this book for anyone who loves to read, and who loves to read great literature.

It's not technical book. There is not any explanation about the mp3 format. Too much verbose.

This book is essentially well-written and informative, but the title is somewhat misleading - this is not an introduction to MP3s in general but rather a manual for Winamp, the popular freeware Windows player.

There's nothing wrong with that - Winamp is really cool and should take pride of place on your desktop. Because Winamp is freeware it doesn't come with a manual, and while there's nothing in here you can't glean from the winamp.com website, it's handy to have a real-world reference book - more practical, let's face it, than its virtual counterpart.

Apart from the how-to stuff, there's a short history of the MP3 format, and the basics of MP3 technology are glossed over. There are a few references to competing players, but only really to affirm Winamp's superiority over the rest of the pack.

Ultimately, the best reason to purchase this book is if you use Winamp already - Winamp is free, so think of it as your contribution to the continued development of this rather fine product - a sort of round-about shareware fee!

The best mp3 book I've ever red. Very complete

The narrator of this book is the artificially intelligent computer running a huge starship, and the first thing it says (prior to killing a character who has uncovered some uncomfortable facts regarding the mission,) is "I love that they trusted me blindly." I felt like telling it "Well of course they trust you blindly! What else can they do but trust you blindly? To not trust you completely they would have to exist all the time in a state of great and paranoid fear! Would that be preferable to you?" Despite the fact that I thought the A.I. (which the author calls a "Quant-Con,") manipulative and not a very good psychologist, (plus it says of the researcher it kills with intense radiation, "Her face was a mask of horror...(Her's) would have an interesting death to watch." Very off-putting...) I found this story worth buying and reading. I was confused by the author's seeming to acknowledge that FTL travel was impossible and then later revealing that it is after all possible. I kept expecting Jason (the A.I.,) to say something like, "Ah, But we Quant-Cons have found a loophole in Einstein's law...", but he never did. This and a problem with Bussard ramjets were never addressed, but physics problems in sci-fi books I don't find iinherently disqualifying, (as long as they're handled right,) because it seems to me that to be too nit-pickey about this would be to instantly discard about 99.5% of the genre, and also because we might not know everything yet.

This is one of Sawyer's earlier novels. While it is not quite up to the standards of later works, (like THE TERMINAL EXPERIMENT), it has a great premise and is superior to most science fiction on the shelves today.

Golden Fleece is a murder mystery - but the mystery is not who, we know that right away, it's the "why?" and "will they be caught?" The untangling of these two questions - aboard a generational ship, making it a locked room mystery for the passengers - has the backdrop of the psychology of a generational ship and how man deals with Artificial Intelligence.

Science fiction is supposed to be a genre that uses real science to tell a good story with morals, lessons and ideas. Sawyer does exactly that in The Golden Fleece (no Greek mythology fans, the title is not coincidental). It explores AI, ET and human psychology, the only three forms of consciousness in a very interesting and profound but scientific way. One of those good books that gets you asking yourself certain moral questions for days after having finished it. A great read, my personal favorite of Sawyers after reading almost all his other great books.

The book provides clear and solid information about the basics of digital photography. A large portion of the book goes into detail about different graphics software ("Lite" versions were usually included on the CD-ROM) and how the software can be used to manipulate the pictures. As I read, I realized that if I had wanted a book on graphics software, I'd have bought one. Much of the photography information is available on the Web.

I was very pleased with this text. I found it easy to understand and to follow. Having just purchased my digital camera two weeks ago, this was a fabulous tool to assist me in trying new techniques. It goes beyond the instruction manual and makes the camera fun to use.

This book has it all, from buying a camera to editing your pictures, to putting your photos on the net. If you are starting digital photography, this book is for you.

I did a book report and presentation for my secondary education class at Oakland University on this book. The first few chapters are excellant. Barth has an excellant conception on schools and has brilliant ideas on what, we as teachers can do to improve our schools and make our communities a "community of learners". I love his ideas on how there is always room for learning on all levels of the education spectrum. He has exellent advice for principals who are having trouble with their jobs. This is an excellent book, but for every excellent book there are a few downfalls. While doing my presentation and discussing Barth's views, I received negative comments because my audience felt that his ideas could only work in a utopia community. But you will just have to read this book to find out. My other complaint is in the latter part of the book, where Barth discussed Principal Centers. In these last chapters he becomes an advertiser for these "principal centers" that he runs instead of conveying his own ideas on how to improve schools. I highly recommend this book for principals, but if you are a future teacher, then I would not recommend reading this book, because it is not directed to you.

I approached the book with anticipation of finding answers for me now as a teacher and in my future as an administrator. I was inspired to be a better visionary, but left in the dark when it came to practical applications.

Several of our Site Based Council members read this book a few years ago in planning for a staff-wide summer retreat. This book changed the way we looked at staff development and helped us bring everyone (well almost everyone) on board with whole school change. We continue to use quotes from this book during current staff development opportunities. We've shared this at numerous national conventions and at workshops that we put on in our own school. We now see many of the same excerpts (the bee story!)that we've shared at other conferences that we go to.