Open

My trip was a smashing success and I used this book for the majority of my planning.

The first thing you notice about this book is the extensive contact information for every single hotel and restaurant listed, and there are lots of them in every location reported. All guidebooks on Thailand cover Bangkok according to the sections of the city. This book adds a section that other books do not have:"Near the Airport," for those jaundiced travelers who wish to "skip Bangkok" other than using the airport.

Lou is frequently engaged to review hotels and cover trade fairs in Asia, so he knows what he is looking for and expecting, both in service and cost. As a travel journalist, he often gets the VIP treatment, but he thinks you should not pay more than necessary to have a good time. Often he just tells the reader, "This is what you should do."

You can read other books on Thailand with all the glossy pictures, to decide where you want to go. Once you have an idea what you would like to do and where you would like to go, this is the book to plan your itinerary.

Consider the current situation with North Korea, Iraq, and Afghanistan... this book is prophetic. This book details why China and North Korea will talk to Israel when negotiating indirectly witht he United States. If ever there was a time to understand the web of communications between countries such as North Korea, Syria, China, Israel, Columbia and others, now is it. I read this book over a year ago, and now come back to write a review because of its renewed importance in light of recent developments (2003).

Read about Saddam Hussein's failed attempt to make peace with Israel, and more! Long before 9-11, this book WARNS its readers of the serious terrorist threat that would come out of Afghanistan! Prophetic. A book that details information with such accuracy, makes predictions that come to realization, is certainly a book worthy of information-hungry men and women the world over.

Going back and re-reading this book is like a visit with Nostradamus. I HIGHLY recommend this book as it will provide you with a strong understanding of what's behind U.S. moves on Iraq, relative silence towards North Korea and more.

Open Source Web Development with LAMP is a very long title, but an absolutely killer book. LAMP is Linux (OS), Apache (web server) MySQL (database), Perl and PHP (scripting). This book also includes many languages not covered in other titles. I was particularly glad to see WML (Website Meta Language) which is useful for generating static pages through a robust programming construct. Static pages load faster and without any security concerns that you have with dynamic scripting languages like perl, php, embperl, or mason, all of which are covered extreemly well in this book.

I've been doing web development for about 8 years, which probably makes me pretty old in the business. I've seen the dynamic web content languages from infancy, but I've never seen a good way of learning them until now. OSWD w/ LAMP is absolutely fabulous.

I was one of the technical editors of this book, and was able to watch it evolve as they wrote. The authors have made a huge effort to make the book appropriate for multiple Linux distributions, and they have achieved the highest degree of technical accuracy.

OSWB covers many different technologies, some complementary, some discreet. By showing you many of the possible tools, this book lets you decide which is best for the job at hand.

The theory behind OSWB is that knowledge of 20% of a tool's capabilities will let you accomplish 80% of the tasks you face. OSWB does a superb job of giving the user a sizable introduction to webserver technologies that will be sufficient for most rojects, and tells you where you can get information for advanced needs...This is the first book I know of that has written their website with the exact same tools they teach you in the book, and they offer the entire source of their website for download for your investigation and reference.

The gold in this book is not just the descriptions of how the languages work, but how you can use them singly or together to create interactive websites. Their are many sample projects which let you see how everything fits together, and much of the ode can be adapted immediately to your needs. The book is extremely well integrated and organized.

I have used some of the languages described in this book, while others were completely new to me. I am definitely not a web design person, preferring to write back-end server software. owever while reading OSWB, I was charged with creating a MySQL database with a customizable web interface for my alumni organization. Using only this book and a few perldoc commands, I was able to create an interactive mod_perl website in a few days.

This book offers something to everyone, even advanced web designers. If you are starting out in Web technologies, or are curious about other ways you can get the job done, this is the book for you.

This is not just another book about configuring webservers. Yes, it includes how to configure the systems, how to cluster servers and all that hot jazz, but far more importantly, this book asks you to face those hard questions that make the difference between a webserver and a business webserver. This is a book from someone who knows what he's talking about; Tom was the server master behind Deja.com and currently consults for Penguin Computing. He knows your server is not a mere capital asset; a successful web venture depends on vitality and communications as much as it depends on throughput and uptime.

This is also not just another book about Linux and Apache; Tom goes to the heart of the business case for opensource on mission critical systems. There are example applications of many alternative server, eBusiness and content management packages, but these are brandnames that will change with time: The essential lessons of opensource that emerge from the many case studies will continue to be valuable long after all these names have vanished from memory.

Here are two important things you should know about this sublimely brilliant text with accompanying CD: (1) It can be easily studied and fully understood on its own terms, without reference to Baughman's previous guitar book, so newcomers to Baughman wonderful instruction books needn't be deterred; and (2) It's such a richly insightful, universally relevant book about musical technique that each and every string instrumentalist -- not just the guitarist -- stands to gain immeasurable new depths of polish, style, and expressiveness through its use and study. (It's a shame that the title is apt to turn off fiddlers, harpists, mandolinists, and others who will benefit as much as guitarists from the teaching of this master.)

Don't waste another minute; life is too short; order this volume right now. As to Steve Baughman: Please don't make us wait so long again for your next book. Your dedicated fans and students can't stand the wait!

From "Escaping the Chechen Quagmire" www.rferl.org/reports/ucs 16 December 2003