FM Books

A really great book. It is worth hanging onto. Money well spent. I highly recommend it.

I live right on an earthquake fault and thought it was about time I get prepared. This book isn't glamorous but gives alot of information.

The item arrived in good condition and quickly but it was not as described as far as the information it provides it left a lot to be desired.

An... entertaining... manual, but don't read this expecting to conquer the wilderness! Some of the information is clever and useful, such as different types of shelter, navigating by the sun and stars, and a fairly extensive list of edible plants (black and white drawings only but still pretty accurate ones), but other information is very outdated, most notably some of the information on reptiles and fish. For example, treating a snakebite by cutting the skin and sucking out the poison - NOT a good idea, and will cause more tissue damage than benefit! Also, the idea that barracuda are aggressive fish that attack without warning or provocation... some of this stuff is straight out of a B-movie. Still, not a bad place to start if you're a novice and want to learn what dangers to watch for in the woods, and it's pretty cheap (free online if Google "FM 21-76"). Experienced hikers/survivalists/etc will know to look elsewhere for more up to date and accurate info.

Get this as a free download (Input on Google: "FM 21-76") and save this PDF File on a memory chip. It is what it purports to be. It could save your life and the lives of everyone in your family - even your neighbors. If it turns out that you don't have a need for it, then it cost you nothing.

Well organized and to the point. Good for basic sniping info and alot of info regarding other sniper related skills such as building a radio antena and necessary checklists for the field. Not up to date. It is still a wealth of info and a great reference and a nice volume for the library.

Readable text with practical tips for marksmanship and field crafts. Get it.

Wish I'd had the chance to serve my country and learn these things first hand, but this guide did a tremendous job showing me the techniques in long-distance marksmanship as well as many outdoor survival skills. This book explains the field techniques - not the science - used to make for a better rifleman. Everything from proper bone support to estimating windage and distance are covered. Thanks to this book, I can shoot quarter-size groups @ 600y.

An ok reading. I would reccomend the Military and Police Sniper first

It is an exellant sorce for hunters, rifleman, and people who would like to become a hunter or sniper!

Are You a Transhuman?: Monitoring and Stimulating Your Personal Rate of Growth in a Rapidly Changing World
by FM-2030

Towards the end of the eighties, I had came across a few unusual books, which retrospectively had somehow influenced what I am doing today & in fact what I love to do today i.e. to pursue future-focused, change-oriented, brain-based technologies.

This unique book was one of them. It had been brilliantly written by a 'self-described chronic optimist' & a widely-traveled futurist/philosopher of Iranian origin, whose adopted name, FM-2030, seemed to resonate with his life-long obsessive conviction to create "a world of boundless wealth, endless life & unlimited free refills." [His real name was F M Esfandiary. I understand FM-2030 died from pancreatic cancer on July 8, 2000 at the age of 69, & was placed in cryonic suspension at the Alcor Life Extension Foundation in Scottsdale, Arizona, where his body remains today.]

Although I do not subscribe to all the author's beliefs & values as embodied in his book, I certainly admired his bold initiatives & far-sightedness.

This wonderful book spelt out both personal strategies & practical pathways to help people to achieve longevity & immortality. To me, it had served as a comprehensive field guide to life extension or 'transhumanism', which was the term the author would prefer to use.

From my personal perspective, the greatest learning experience I got out of this book is learning - & understanding - how to access & apply available technolgies &/or new products or services to extend human capabilities & capacities in an ethical, safe & responsible manner.

As far as application in the personal/individual sphere is concerned, my primary interest lies in the physical & mental enhancement areas. I would term it 'intelligence amplification or enhancement.'

In this respect & ever since the eighties, this book, among a few other good ones, has happened to be my precursor to finding, accessing & learning about other good books & resources (to name a few, Brain/Mind Bulletin, MegaBrain Report, OMNI, IONS, UTNE Reader, Knowledge Systems, Whole Earth Catalog, Loompanics Catalog, Tools for Exploration, etc.) as part of my relentless personal journey to enjoy a better mind, a better body & a better life!

The book was more or less written in the form of a questionnaire format. At the time I read the book, I found the questions to be most thought-provoking.

The key chapters are as follows:

- How Updated Is Your Vocabulary;
- How Telespheral-age (postindustrial) Are You;
- How Information Rich Are You;
- How Time Rich Are You;
- How Fluid Are You;
- How High Tech Is Your Attention Span;
- What Is Your Cultural Orientation;
- How Power Oriented Are You;
- How Affluent Are You;
- How Ritualistic Are You;
- How Creative Are You;
- How Emotional Are You;
- How Intelligent Are You;
- How Family Oriented Are You;
- How Ecology Conscious Are You;
- How Telecommunitized Are You;
- How Global Are You;
- How Cosmic Are You;
- What Is Your Ideological Orientation;
- How Future Oriented Are You;
- How Optimistic or Pessimistic Are You About the Future;
- What Is Your Level of Humanity;
- How Immortality Oriented Are You; and
- How Transhuman Are You; followed by:
- Conclusion: Aligning and Accelerating Your Rate of Personal Growth;

I believe many readers would probably have heard or read about Ashby's Law, or better known to NLP practioners/followers as the 'Law of Requisite Variety.' Well, one thing I am very sure of is that this book, especially the questionnaire, will certainly help & guide readers to put the law to work in your own life!

[For the uninitiated, the Law states that, according to my personal interpretation, in order to survive - & thrive - in a constantly changing world, your personal or internal rate of change in terms of variability of options, must equal or exceed the environmental or external rate of change.]

Although the author had written several other books, including the landmark trilogy comprising 'Optimism One', 'Upwingers' & 'Telespheres', this is his only book I have access to, perused & assimilated.

FM was a trained diplomat and deep-seeded humanist whose background gave him a unique perspective of the world. Messrs. Bostrom and Hughes are totally out of their league in critiquing him. Hughes is a undemocratic socialist who misinterprets FM's writings to push his own self-righteous agenda.

Learn as much as you can about FM2030 and ignore what anyone has to say, even me!

FM-2030's books and ideas have received a fair amount of criticism over the years, even from people inclined to share his outlook. Philosopher Nick Bostrom in his "History of Transhumanist Thought" (2005) implies that FM emphasized the superficial or symbolic aspects of "transhuman" living more than the substance. And John LaValley in a review of "Are You a Transhuman?" (AYAT) in "Cryonics" magazine in 1990 compares FM to a mime who stands by a laborer digging a ditch and imitates his actions: The laborer and the mime both make the same movements, but the laborer actually moves the earth. (You can find both of these articles on the Web through Google.)

And yet, many of FM's speculations about the lifestyles and values of "Future Man" sound more plausible now than when he first publicized them in the 1970's and 1980's. James Hughes in his book "Citizen Cyborg" (2004) writes highly of FM's philosophy and compares his political world view with that of European social democrats' and the Greens'. (As Hughes says, FM's "Up" political orientation tilts 45 degrees to the Left.) FM's 1973 book "Up-Wingers" also merits a citation in the recommended reading list at the back of Joel Garreau's "Radical Evolution" (2005), though with the disclaimer that the early Transhumanists' speculations like FM's seemed pretty weird until recently, when scientific and technological progress now make many of them look nearly feasible. Despite the fact that much of what FM writes sounds like a compilation of liberal political correctness and bad science fiction cliches, beneath the noise you can find some interesting signals about thinkable ways of life in the 21st Century.

AYAT does have its problems, as other reviewers have pointed out. I identified how FM apparently didn't understand the difference between wage income and investment income when he writes about "wealth"; plenty of "well paid" people dependent on their boss's competence and good will for their paychecks don't qualify as "wealthy," as they discover when they lose their jobs and don't have enough income from trust funds, bonds, stocks, annuities and so forth to take care of their needs. (Your investments, unlike your boss, can't fire you, much less withhold payment because of your state of health, work habits, recreational drug consumption, sexual preferences, controversial beliefs or unwillingness to sleep with the boss.)

FM gave us a mixed bag, in other words. It should go without saying that you have to apply critical thinking to everything you read so that you can separate the good from the bad.

FM-2030 seems to advocate the abandonment of the moral guidelines that have lifted humanity to its current greatness. While he attempts to present arguments for this, they fall flat with any introspection. A much clearer and decidely more thought out tome of portent for the future of humanity resides in the works of Ray Kurzweil.
The book does not get 1 star only for the reason that the author does touch on a few technological points that are thought provoking.

This book is too far ahead of its time, it makes one ache with nostalgia for the future. The book might confound you with its 1980s political correctness, yet once you get past that you'll be surprised at the humanism in this book-- and the transhumanism.
Main fault: the author is more civilised than most of humanity. The time frame is way off: the year 2030 wont be as the author wanted.

I purchased this book from bookpool. I read the first 50 pages. The content though clear, is so simple that it should really be covered in 5 - 10 pages. Thus I feel it is not worth buying. I believe this book should be deeply discounted for such it contains too little knowledge.

I will continue to read. And hope that my first impression is wrong.

In a supersaturated market, it is difficult to make an impression with a PHP book these days. The books of real value are those that focus on ways to apply the language to real world problems. These books delve into the depths of a particular application domain, showing PHP code and outlining design principles along the way. They are useful to current and prospective PHP programmers alike because they can introduce both not to PHP itself, but to an existing class of problems and how PHP can be applied to solve them. PHP Web 2.0 Mashup Projects is one of these books.

Most technology-related books on the shelves are several inches thick and an inherently daunting chore to sift through. Luckily, this book is not one of those. Do not let the size fool you, though; it is positively packed with useful information. It hits the high points of each topic it covers, giving you enough in the way of code samples and step-by-step explanations to get started, as well as resources to help you get better acquainted with topics that might be of particular interest to you.

The book is divided into six chapters, each of which covers a set of particular protocols, data formats, and APIs for acquiring and processing data in order to create a particular mashup application. These projects include:

A search engine to find products on Amazon by their Universal Product Code
A search engine to combine results from MSN and Yahoo!
A video jukebox that pulls songs from Last.fm and videos from YouTube
A traffic incident reporting application that sends SMS alerts
An illustrated tube station line map using Google Maps and Flickr for related photos

The book's structure and layout make it easy to follow, whether you prefer to read it linearly or jump around to specific sections. It is an excellent reference that I can see myself returning to time and time again.

One of the strengths of the book is that it has a very wide base of coverage. It starts by introducing basics in interacting with web services and extracting the desired data from their responses using core PHP libraries. The REST, XML-RPC, and SOAP protocols and the WSDL standard are all covered in enough depth to get you started, so you can work with a web service regardless of the protocol or protocols it offers. The author does an excellent job of selecting example web services and data standards from large and well-known to small and obscure. For real world APIs, you will find the likes of Amazon, YouTube, Google, and Flickr, as well as sources that might not be household names, such as the Internet UPC Database. Data standards include general formats like XML, RDF, and JSON and more specialized formats like RSS and XSPF.

Another strength is that the book encourages good principles from the start. It advocates object-oriented design principles for code reuse and a DRY philosophy. It suggests using third-party libraries such as those in PEAR in order to avoid unnecessary reinvention of the wheel, but still shows you how to roll your own if and when it becomes necessary. The books also covers usability, particularly in the last chapter when it discusses AJAX and race conditions, and pays special attention to application security, an area of increasing concern in web applications. Unlike some books, this one includes tips for development outside its own showcased projects to alleviate you from having to spend your own time troubleshooting common issues or digging for solutions to "gotcha" situations.

And last but certainly not least, the book demonstrates that sometimes you have to be resourceful in locating and acquiring your data, particularly in Chapter 5 where one of my own areas of interest, web scraping, is covered. The topic is explained in plain language and supplemented with examples walking you through exactly how it can be used to acquire data for your own mashups. Web scraping is not a frequently broached topic and I applaud the author for making a point to include it. I believe it is a genuinely useful methodology that can help in data acquisition when no other options are available.

I cannot give the book an entirely glowing review, though. There are some errata present, both in content and code samples. Most are small, but some are enough to throw off a reader not already familiar with the material being covered. I've submitted some of these via the publisher's web site already, though I have yet to receive any related communications or see them show up on the web site at the time that I write this review. These issues are able to be corrected, though, and the quality of the book's content outshines them.

Overall, PHP Web 2.0 Mashup Projects is an excellent example of creativity in finding new ways to aggregate data sets in useful combinations. It is a testament to the possibilities of the internet when access to data is opened up and freedom to use that data enables developers to create exciting and inspiring new solutions. Mashups show the internet's potential increasing in leaps and bounds and this book can get you on your way to contributing to their future development.

A very different book from the normal computer books I spin through. In fact its one of the better computer books. The target audience for this book is those with experience in software development, more to point, web development. It was a welcome relief. The author doesn't do what most software books do and include a beginners view of the web and web
development. He dives in and from the beginning I was trying things out. The author also gives excellent project description and breakdowns on what must be done to get it going.


One of my favorites from the book was the section on screen scraping. Something I havent had to do in a few years and it was awesome to get another perspective on how to do this. The book covers a few APIs and services, Google map, Amazon, Youtube to name a few. He brings up excellent detail on how to use and access these services. The author gives enough information without overloading the reader.

All in all a very good book. One I plan on recommending to my peers. It has made web development a bit more enjoyable and more knowledge in areas where I was weak. it never hurts to learn more!

This is basically a "everything you need to know about APIs and mashups" kind of book. It is very example-focused, so besides giving the foundation for understanding alphabet soup like REST, SOAP, XML and JSON, you also get to follow some complete projects that use these acronyms for some healthy learning-by-doing. Here's a basic rundown of the things you will learn: XML, RSS, RDF, XSPF, XML-RPC, REST, SOAP, JSON, SPARQL, some basic Ajax, screen scraping with DOM functions, installing and using PEAR classes, and creating a simple proxy for cross-site XMLHttpRequests. The mashup examples use all of these, and they are very practical projects.

I learned about XML/RDF/REST in college with Java as the language of choice, and I've been able to use some APIs in the past with the help of PHP client classes. This book, however, covers a lot of different technologies in less than 300 pages, and it gives you what you need to know to not be dependent on client classes provided by the myriad of services out there, which is extremely helpful since you can't always expect a drop-in client class to be available.

And even if you think that as a web developer you have no plans of ever building a web application or mashup service, there's still the chance that your employer or some client will someday need one of these services on a project. In that sense, the things taught in this book are pretty much required knowledge for any web developer these days, because as much as web 2.0 might be a fad, all the alphabet soup technologies involved are not. We'll be using them for many, many years to come.

In short, I recommend this book. Even if you know this stuff pretty well, this book still offers a lot to learn.

he market for books about mashups has become fairly crowded over the past few years but none have really enticed me as from a casual look most seem more interested in following the trend than offering solid information. Thankfully PHP Web 2.0 Mashup Projects manages to slide in a good number of practical programming tips as it works its way through a variety of services.

The book dedicates the majority of each chapter to more general concerns than just interfacing with the system in the chapter's title. So Chapter 2--"Buy It On Amazon"--spends most of its time exploring XML-RPC and REST approaches and building tools to work with those different styles of interface. Similarly the next chapter spends most of its time introducing WSDL, XML Schema and SOAP before showing how they can be used with Microsoft Live Search.

In fact, that chapter may be one of the best introductions I've seen for developers who need to quickly grasp the basics of WSDL and SOAP, a topic that can far too easily get bogged down in complexity that isn't needed for basic usage. With the WS-* stack quickly and for good reason going out of fashion hopefully most developers won't have to spend much time with it, but a simple overview is still very handy.

I was intrigued to see the final chapter diving into use of RDF with the RAP toolkit. Like the SOAP section, this managed to boil the basics of RDF down very well and should help most moderately experienced PHP developers to get up to speed quickly.

Aside from a closing section on race conditions, not much time is given to handling interruptions in service from third-party services and in a book focussed on mashups that's disappointing, particularly as the number of services, and so the range of fallback options, is increasing. Some of the examples are likely to fail if services time out and it would be good to spend some time on helping developers avoid that.

Reading the book as someone who has mostly left the PHP fold for pastures new was a reminder of how easy tools like hpricot make life for screen scrapers, but also that good structure can emerge in PHP code and that the SOAP tools are actually quite good for simple uses. The book is unlikely to appeal to those who don't do much work with PHP, but if you're a PHP developer and want to dive into mashups and web services for the first time, it's worth a look.

Disclaimer: I was sent a copy of this book for review by the publisher, and offered another in return for a timely review.

I am considering getting my teaching certification in math because I've always liked math but have not had a math class since high school. This book has helped me relearn and understand the basic facts necessary for algebra and geometry. Now I'm ready for my first college course.

The book is very well organized with clear explanations and nice examples

I am considering getting my teaching certification in math because I've always liked math but have not had a math class since high school. This book has helped me relearn and understand the basic facts necessary for algebra and geometry. Now I'm ready for my first college course.

The book is very well organized with clear explanations and nice examples

I am considering getting my teaching certification in math because I've always liked math but have not had a math class since high school. This book has helped me relearn and understand the basic facts necessary for algebra and geometry. Now I'm ready for my first college course.

The book is very well organized with clear explanations and nice examples

I am considering getting my teaching certification in math because I've always liked math but have not had a math class since high school. This book has helped me relearn and understand the basic facts necessary for algebra and geometry. Now I'm ready for my first college course.

The book is very well organized with clear explanations and nice examples

This book really helped me in my venture to start a Jazz radio station in Omaha, Ne. I don't know what I would have done without this book.

This is a review of the book edition. This selection from an FM station in London has a distinct British flavor. Arranged alphabetically by author, we stroll from "Dover Beach" (Matthew Arnold), to "When you are old" (Yeats). Along the way are various fun animals: Macavity the mystery cat, Blake's Tiger, Chesterton's Donkey, and Lawrence's Snake. Perhaps some of the longer poems are not to my taste (e.g. Tennyson "The Lady of Shalott"). Each poet is introduced with a short, useful biography. The most popular poem of these listeners is Wordsworth "The Daffodils".