References and Standards Books

This book is out of print for good reason. It is very out-dated. It is hardly the "definitive guide" it was advertised to be, even at the time it was written. By 1997, much of the "information" Mr. Hammett tries to disseminate was already pretty widely known He criticizes researchers for not using a type of control protocol in early research, that he says is necessary to validate the results, and then calls the use of these protocols in later studies a "sham".

He tries to downplay the term "radiation" as it is found in "radio frequency radiation" to state that it simply means to emanate outward from - not that it is akin to radioactivity. Mr. Hammett supports the theories supplied by the NCRP and ANSI that non-ionizing radiation is not harmful.

In short, the book is outdated, misleading, and not applicable to today's concerns regarding radio frequency radiation. If you are involved in the industry, this book will give you all the pat answers and propaganda espoused by the rest of the industry (if you haven't gleaned it already) which are old and weak, but popular nonetheless.

This book is out of print because all the copies were purchased! In fact, used copies are now for sale, at a premium, on Amazon.com. Published in 1997, the material remains very current: the underlying science is unchanged, the prevailing standards still apply, and the analysis techniques and mitigation measures remain the standard for industry and local jurisdictions alike. Yes, the controversy covered in the text continues, with new rulings in the courts and more strident opposition to, in particular, PCS deployment. However, the considered opinions of the standard-setting bodies, as well as organizations like The American Cancer Society, continue to support the findings summarized in the book.

The Scott stamp catalogs are the bible of postage stamp apraising. No other publication brings together such a wealth of virtually universal stamp knowledge and pricing. While the prices that Scott uses may not especially match current market they are fairly consistant and most dealers base their prices on a flat percentage of Scott therefore making it a good reference point.

Why spend money on a book that gives values for stamps that are 3 to 5 times higher than the stamps sell for every day of the week on E-bay? This book is a complete waste of money and has lost touch with all reality!

This book is not a canned Six Sigma handbook. It brings specific insights to the medical device industry that is mostly unknown to the typical Six Sigma practitioner. The book highlights that the medical device field is an inexact science as opposed to light bulbs and automobiles in which the available technologies and processes are well understood and highly characterized.

The text is a reasonable summary of Six Sigma, DFSS and related tools as used in the medical device industry, but it is mostly a summary (only 100 pages). For $200+ I expected a lot more meat.

This book must have been a major inspirational source for developers of toolkits not based on Xt. Because after reading the book, you will know why Xt was a giant mistake that only served to introduce additional problems into GUI programming.

For some reason, the book does not focus on Motif, but on Xaw, a completely useless set of widgets hacked onto Xt as a proof of concept. True, there are some free software programs using Xaw, but that was because they were written before other alternatives existed, and they generally all suck...

The simple fact that no other usable set of widgets for Xt than Motif exists, should be enough to convince you that Xt failed to reduce the complexity any more than it managed to introduce simply by sitting in the way of Xlib. A geometry manager or event-handling mechanism is not hard to write, and modern toolkits have avoided Xt completely.

There exists little reason to read this book today, as the only reason to use Xt is to use Motif, and this book won't help you with that. Still, if you work extensively with Motif, this book may carry some value...

Even though this book is a bit musty as GUI programming goes, this should probably be on the shelf of most X programmers even today, particularly Motif programmers. Too much of the book is focused on Xaw (that stupid-looking widget set used in things like 'xterm' and 'xdvi') to make it a five-star pick. However, this is useful to more modern GUI programmers since it demonstrates technique in an environment which is simpler than Motif. Also, the book's most redeeming feature is that it sheds at least a little light on the black art of widget writing (gasp!). That way, if you want to write your own Motif widgets, you won't totally drown when reading the source code of some already existing ones.

Good basic catalogue for any stamp collector. However, valuations of many stamps currently on the low side.

I also feel that Scott's traditional method of listing countries in their catalogues in alphabetical order is somewhat outdated. I wonder if there is any philatelist in existence who collects world countries in alphabetical order.

That said, catalogue is easy to read and contains a wealth of philatelic information. As printed in color, pleases the eye too.

Seemed to be very comprehensive yet easy to use.

The book is interesting but it is written fron the point of view of a building inspector and not a contractor. If you are looking for a plain text book on what the code says - this is not for you. The author makes a habit of refering the reader to the IBC itself to get an answer and does not generally interpret the code for you.

Many articles in this 2. edition are just reprints of articles from the 1 edition. It is a real problem that the articles are not dated or have otherwise been indicated whether they are new in this edition (from 2003) or have just been reprinted without updating from the first edition which was published in 73 volumes from 1968 until 2003. (Vol 1-33 A-Z; Vol. 34+35 = Index; Vol 36-73 = supplements)

For example, the article "Philosophy of Science" was pubished in 1977. It is reprinted in the 2nd edition without any changes in content (only typographical changes such as two columns). In the 2nd edition we are misinformed that this entry is "Print Published: 05/20/2003 | Online Published: 06/23/2003". The readers are thus misled concerning what they are reading. This is tru for many articles, I guess much more than 50%.

The only way you can tell whether the article is revised or updated is by looking at the references and see if new references are included - in most cases they are not (alternatively, of course compare the articles in the two editions page by page).

Both the first edition and the second edition have a heavy emphazis on specific libraries in specific countries and is weak in theoretical and conceptual issues.

When this is said, it should be said that there are many important articles in this work and it is an obvious advantage that it is available online and the papers available as pdf-files. I have now read usefull articles that I would not have read if I had to make paper copies from the old edition.

Just a note to fellow "Amazoners". The excerpt that you see on the Amazon site is 118 words in length. (Yes, I verified this number with the Unix "wc" utility :-) The whole article, if the number can be trusted in the item description is only 600-some-odd words long.

I can't imagine what would appear in the remaining 500-or-so words that could be worth $10.

I'd let somebody else pony up the money and report back to us!

merchandise arrived after a week and a half of waiting; cover is a little worn; pages in fair condition.shipping and handling could a be a little prompter.

king watcher