Five minutes after hooking it up to my Zenith System 3 (e.g. Sony XBR-quality) television, i started flipping the TV/VCR switch, and noticed that the signal reception for the sony tuner was very dim. This picture became noticeably dark with this VCR. What's more, my tv couldn't lock and hold several of the setup screens. My TV has the highest quality electronics that Zenith ever made, and it was also the best performing TV when purchased 10 years ago, with comb filter and a full jack pack. I'm going to buy RCA technology instead since that stuff works just fine with my TV and its really really easy to use.

I took the VCR/DVD back. If you have to own this unit, you might consider buying one from a local merchant because there's a good chance you'll need to take it back, and that would save you and Amazon a lot of hassle and $$$.

However, the author suffers from being a compiler-writer who doesn't really understand the design philosophy of the C language. This is the same afflication that Bjarne Stroustroup and other language designers suffer from. For example, he complains that only 3% of switch statements in his own compiler have case statement fall-throughs, therefore "We conclude that default fall-through on switches is a design defect in C." (p. 38). This is a rant of a dangerous person. Two underlying concepts of the C language are, "No hidden instructions generated where I cannot see them," and "When in doubt, provide open operators for maximum expressiveness - do not restrict expressiveness". Just because this particular compiler-writer lacks the inventiveness to do interesting things with a switch statement he proposes to force his biases upon the rest of the world. I have seen and written macro libraries that allow you to suspend & resume function calls, and these libraries perform fall-through 100% of the time. Therefore, this book is in error and the author is a victim of his own lack of creativity.

Another thing I disliked was a tendency to try to impress the reader with irrelevant facts that are not germane to the subject, such as typos in the ANSI C standard or tired-out stories on how to burn out IBM PC displays. These things are irrelevant and do not belong within the book.

I recommend you check out the book from a library (as I did) and please do not waste your money on this book.

I found myself reading a chapter of this book, and then looking at the 802.11b standard itself (now available free on the website ieee.org) for more detailed information. I found only a couple of minor errors in this book. This book serves as an outstanding introduction to the protocol standard, which is large and which contains little or no practical information for the practitioner. However, I did also use Radia Perlman's book on Routing in conjunction with this book to help me understand IEEE 802.1 issues.

Gast attempts to be a be-all and end-all book for everyone. For example, he attempts to describe all 802.11 RF modulation schemes. He attempts to give a full description of all the packet formats. He attempts to describe which cards are based on which baseband (Intersil or Orinoco). This stuff is changing very fast but he gave it his best shot, and its very important to people installing *NIX drivers. He attempts to tell you how to set up an 802.11 Ethereal packet sniffer. All of his information is invaluable to anyone setting up 802.11b on any flavor of UNIX or Linux. Anyway, he makes a really valiant effort and I've never seen a networking book try to play in all 4 spaces at once - RF Theory, Network Protocols, Hardware Selection, and Practicum - all at the same time. He should be applauded for this attempt.

I have not found a book that is nearly as comprehensive (6/2003) and I've lent this book to at least 5 other people, most of them PhD's or VP's in EE or CS and/or wireless communications.

The chapter that introduces the Internet is the best I've ever seen, over my 20 years career writing IP software. The information on how to manage disk drives is excellent. I bought the 3rd edition and gave my 2nd edition to the most promising syst admin at my previous employer. This book was recommended to me by the past president of Berkeley Software Design, Inc. as the best one available. This person is also past president and current executive chairman of SAGE - the systems administrator's guild.

If there is a tragic flaw in this book, it's probably that its weak on reference on where to go for even more information. Otherwise, this is _the_ _encyclopedia_ of systems administration.

That being said, however, nobody has addressed the moral problem raised by this book, e.g., the parent is trying to "mis-direct" a child's wants to some day in the future (that does not exist) when all their wants and needs will be satisfied all at once - On the first of Octember!

My wife grew up dirt poor in a foreign country. She did not think very much of this book.

Imagine reading the book to your child, shutting the book, and fielding a question, "Mommy (or Daddy), when is the First of Octember ???" If you can field this question adequately, then go ahead and buy the book.

The book attempts to teach the child what "Up" means. There is a terrific amount of repetition, and the cleverness in the rhyming and pictures is not "Up!" to par with other Dr. Seuss books.

My 6-month old children are too young to understand this book, but I think that Mommy and Daddy will tire of the book long before they have gotten the very simple and trivial message in this book : what is the difference between Up and Down ...

Like many books, if its the first one your parents give to you, you will probably love the book. I believe that this is why some other reviewers have raved about this book.

"Look what we found in the park -- in the dark -- we will take it home -- we will call it Clark -- it will GROW AND GROW -- Will our Mommy like it ?? -- we don't know !!!"

And we named our third dog "Clark" after this wonderful rhyme from Dr. Seuss's "One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish !!!" This is among the Top-3 Dr Seuss Books of all time, right up there with "The Cat in the Hat" and "Happy Birthday To You!".

I got burned twice. IMHO, the book is loaded with logic errors. Not only were the programming examples wrong, but the logical concepts (e.g. examples of what constitutes deadlock) were also wrong. If i found this many errors by looking at just two chapters, you know there are hundreds more buried elsewhere in the book.

Don't screw up your students' minds with this book. Hardly worth the paper its printed upon.

Dr. Fuhrman is a medical doctor, and a former olympic ice skater who overcame an injury that was almost fatal to his olympic career, via fasting. In this book, he explains some of the benefits you can gain from fasting, and he explains exactly why you should not engage in fasting for more than 3-4 days without going to a medical clinic.

This is not a book to help you plan a fast. This is a book that can help to motivate a fast and to motivate more healthy eating. This book has a few very critical pieces of information (e.g. never eat between zero and 1200 calories because above 1200 calories you have enough carbohydrates -> glocose for your brain, and at zero calories your brain converts to ketosis and has enough glucose, but between 0 and 1200 calories your brain and organs compete for cabohydrates and you can easily damage your internal organs.)

The book is so motivational that I think many people will try unsupervised fasting after reading this book. I think the doctor should admit that his book will be too successful, and he should give a few more tips about how to run a short unsupervised fast, or what entry criteria / monitoring could be used for a short and self-supervised fast. That's the only flaw in this book.

I think the book is popular because it was written by a Harvard Professor. I have read several books on the depression and this one, because of the hype, was the greatest disappointment.

I recommend that you buy "The First Ten Years" before purchasing this album.