Book Description
Michael Corbett—host of Extra's Mansions and Millionaires—shares his strategies, tips, and never-before-revealed insider techniques that have helped him make a fortune in real estate.
This book is for aspiring flippers, first-time home buyers, or any homeowner who wants to create big profits and own their ultimate dream home—mortgage free! Starting with the essentials, Corbett shares how to crunch the numbers to instantly determine a house's profit potential. He then covers every step from purchase to sale:
• Get the profit-making house at the price you can afford
• Make the improvements that make you millions
• Insider secrets that save you thousands
• Take advantage of the market's ups and downs
• Sell your home tax free and pocket the profits
Filled with practical tips, illustrated with before-and-after case studies and easy to use charts and worksheets, Find It, Fix It, Flip It! offers the insider expertise needed to tap into an exciting—and potentially limitless—new source of income and financial independence.
Customer Reviews:
Excellent Book with Nothing Left to Guess.......2007-09-25
This is one of the few library books that I had to purchase for myself.
The author is very very detailed with NO fluff or guessing on "how to".
Lots of pics & info references to really get true useful information on the subject. NO get rich BS here either. Did I mention easy read too..
100 pages in a 300 page cover.......2007-09-02
This book has an absurd amount of repetition. I felt like the author was trying to pad it to reach a certain length. he also brought up his previous position with Extra's Mansions & Millionaires a ridiculous number of times. The book is written with an attitude that I find distinctly crosses the line from confident to cocky. Furthermore, the editor did a poor job. There were numerous numbers that really didn't add up. For example, early in the book he mentioned that your appraisal costs should be form $300 - $600, depending on the size of your house. Later on, the number changes form $300 - $500. There is also a section titled "How a new tax law made me $60,000," and the numbers in it are laughably incorrect, not to mention he claims to have made $120,000, not $60,000. Not a deal breaker, but if such a lack of concern was shown for these details, how can I expect that the other subjects covered were portrayed correctly? Overall would not recommend.
Good book to train investors how to visualize potential in properties.......2007-09-01
If you are new to flipping houses this is an excellent resource. Mr. Corbett's book walks you through the money making elements essential to a successful flip.
Excellent book and chock full of pure meat !!!.......2007-08-15
This is a book that i had to slow down and go back to internalized it or i will miss the best of it. I have learned a lot by reading this book than the other courses i bought from other guru out there. it's impressive and full of information, i can say buy-it you won't be disappointed.
I wish Michael will write more book or offer some courses or seminar doing actual deal in the near future.
Nat
Great tips and easy to understand.......2007-08-04
This books gives great tips for the novice and veteran ofproperty flipping. The author uses real life examples putting the concepts into practice.
Book Description
Foundations of Financial Management is a proven and successful text recognized for its excellent writing style and step-by-step explanations to make the content relevant and easy to understand. The text's approach focuses on the "nuts and bolts" of finance with clear and thorough treatment of concepts and applications. There is a strong real-world emphasis presented throughout. This text has definitely stood the test of time due to the authors' time, energy, and commitment to quality revisions. In addition to completing the textbook revisions, the authors also revised ALL end of chapter problems and complete the solutions themselves. Block and Hirt know what works and what doesn't work for students, and they have consistently maintained a high quality textbook that is responsive to the demands of the marketplace.
Average customer rating:
- Good state machine methodology
- Useful, but mostly as a historical document
- Concepts are incredibly valid and useful
- Too old
- Excellent Presentation of OO for Embedded Development
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Real-Time Object-Oriented Modeling
Bran Selic ,
Garth Gullekson , and
Paul T. Ward
Manufacturer: John Wiley & Sons
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ASIN: 0471599174 |
Book Description
Are you looking for a more effective approach to real-time systems development? Real-Time Object-Oriented Modeling The development of real-time distributed systems is one of the most difficult engineering problems ever faced, taxing the capabilities of traditional real-time software development approaches. Real-Time Object-Oriented Modeling is the first book that brings together, in a single harmonious approach, the power of object-oriented concepts tailored specifically for real-time systems, with an iterative and incremental process based on the use of executable models. Developed by practitioners, the proven methodology described here is becoming a leader in the industry. Using a learn-by-example approach, this book offers:
* A single consistent set of graphical modeling concepts, chosen to improve developer effectiveness, which apply uniformly to analysis, design, and implementation. This reduces the learning curve to master the entire method and eliminates expensive discontinuities across different stages of development.
* An approach to the object paradigm that is easy to learn and that applies to the construction of reusable architectural design components, not just low-level language elements. This unleashes the true power of the object paradigm.
* Techniques for constructing executable models to gain early confidence in specifications and design decisions.
* Approaches to project management that deliver the benefits of the object paradigm and executable models.
Customer Reviews:
Good state machine methodology.......2007-02-10
ROOM is a great methodology, but I rarely encounter it in my work. I do mostly SOA and BPM work, and I think there are aspects of ROOM (particular its state machine language) that are well suited to that domain. I wonder how popular ROOM is these days in the real-time and embedded systems development community?
If you're into state machines, you'll enjoy this book. ROOM is influenced by the work of David Harel, supporting hierachical states, group transitions and transitions to history, choice points, and the ability to associate actions with both transitions and states. In contrast with Harel, ROOM does not support orthogonal states, although its concurrency model is quite powerful. I prefer ROOM to the UML for the modeling of state.
Useful, but mostly as a historical document.......2004-03-05
First, remember that this book was published in 1994 - it was probably written in the 1992-3 era. The OO design world was still in the "warring states" period before unification under UML. The company that created ROOM tools, if I understand correctly, was absorbed by another company that was absorbed by another company - I'm not sure how much of ROOM in its pure form is still left.
That doesn't matter. In its time, ROOM was wild, innovative, and a topic of heated debate. It created a visual, highly abstracted language (back then, a questionable novelty) around an intensely parallelized model of computing (also a questionable novelty), at a time when "real-time" often meant lots of assembly programming in command-line environments. I was doing embedded development back about then - based on the mind-set of the time, I'm surprised that ROOM had the success and influence that it did.
Surprised but pleased. Lots of the ROOM techniques and notations survive in UML and other development tools. Modern component programming environments, JavaBeans included, show many signs of direct descent from the ROOM techniques. Still, there's a long way to go. ROOM may have been way ahead of its time, and languages still haven't caught up fully to its models of communication and parallelism.
As impressive an achievement as ROOM was (and is), I have some reservations about it. It relies pretty heavily of state machines for modelling the interacting components. State machines are a good tool, but quite unfamiliar to most software developers these days. I'm not sure whether that's a fault of the methodology or of today's programmers. I also have reservations about any methodology that requires me to buy someone's tools. The authors state that the design methodology can be used without their tools - based on ROOM's complexity, I doubt it. Also, I have a serious distrust of any programming environment that takes over so much of the process. Such tool sets tend to leave me feeling cramped, with little way to express my ideas in different terms. Finally, I'm sure it does all it says it does. Even so, the moment always comes when the tool-generated subsystems need to be opened up for debugging, or when the system has to be open to interaction with other development tools. Real-time and embedded systems tend to be so idiosyncratic and demanding that both kinds of openness in an IDE are compulsory. I just don't see the way out of the closed ROOM.
My present interest is not so much in the ROOM methodology itself, although I'm interested in methodology in general. Instead, I'm studying the visual notation it developed for expressing complex computations. Whatever ROOM's faults and whatever its later history, it's still worth attention.
Concepts are incredibly valid and useful.......2003-11-05
The eminently practical, usable, powerful, elegant and - once understood - simple concepts behind ROOM deserve the broadest audience amongst real-time and even non-real-time developers. It has been a couple of years since I cracked the cover and I recall the reading being dry. Nonetheless, if you are considering a move to Rational Rose RealTime as a development tool (into which ObjecTime evolved), then this book is truly helpful as a reference for the modeling concepts. The example used throughout is simple enough that it is easy to grasp allowing you to dedicate your time to conceptual understanding rather than getting your head around some obtuse example. At the same time, the example is a natural vehicle for the inclusion of advanced concepts as each is intoduced.
The concepts of ROOM are finding/have found their way into the UML and the "it's not UML" darts of years ago are a little tired at this juncture.
ROOM is brilliant.
(from a former ObjecTime/Rational type though with no association for a few years)
Too old.......2003-04-03
This book doesn't even mention UML. It may be good if you want to use author's modeling.
Excellent Presentation of OO for Embedded Development.......2002-12-07
I have used ROOM since 1993 - it is a very useful and flexible methodology. The authors present it in a very clear and well thought out manner. The examples also show that this is not a "toy" methodology. ROOM comes out of the author's years of experience in developing real solutions; I can only say that it has been very successful for myself and teams I've been on as well. That it has evolved into the real-time representation of UML only shows that these authors were ahead of their time.
Customer Reviews:
Outstanding reference.......2007-10-07
The first half (28 chapters) of this book address the needs of the graphics programming master, or master-to-be. This goes way past the basics of GPU programming and language, and dives directly into solutions of demanding problems. This includes techniques for adding complexity to a visual environment at modest cost, real-time modeling of grass in the wind, softened shadows, and dozens of other aids for efficient and believable rendering. Some techniques address non-photorealistic techniqes as well. Together, they add a big handful of new tools to the toolbox of even advanced GPU developers. (Beginners: I'm sorry, but this isn't for you. Some day, just not today.)
I have to admit, though, my interest lies largely in the last 20 chapters. In this section, authors from university and industry research teams describe "GPGPU" - general processing on GPUs. This puts the incredible computing power of the GPU to use on tasks from linear algebra and differential equations to finance, computer vision, fluid flow, and medical imaging, instead of rendering viewable pictures. GPGPU promises huge performance increases over standard CPUs, but imposes huge barriers to realizing that promise. GPUs achieve their high performance by tailoring their physical architecture to a specific class of computations. That class is large, granted, but still covers only a tiny portion of today's compute-intensive tasks - and if your computation doesn't match the GPU model, you're just out of luck. These chapters offer tips'n'tricks for overcoming the architectural barrier, for rethinking applications in terms that GPUs can handle effectively.
GPGPU has been around for only a few years, largely as isolated acts of individual cleverness. No organized body of knowledge and practice exists for explointing this computational resource, and none seems likely to exist for some years to come. Every body of knowledge goes through that stage, "button collecting" of scattered, unrelated facts, the necessary elements from which larger patterns will some day be drawn. This collection, even if hit-or-miss for any one reader's needs, does its part to collect today's techniques and to disseminate that knowledge. Maybe some day, GPGPU will be as common and systematic as C programming is today - until then, anthologies like this are what we have, and this is a good one.
-- wiredweird
A comprehensive resource - but not for the novice.......2006-03-15
Truly Matt Pharr and NVIDIA are at the top of their game, and his "GPU Gems" series is certainly the only one of its kind for graphics professionals that are familiar with GPU's and shading languages already, and want to exploit them for the maximum speed and effect achievable using today's technology. It is not a "how-to" book on shading or GPUs or even advanced graphics. There are equations and code interspersed throughout the book, with bits of wisdom that are very instructive for the initiated. However, if you are a home-grown graphics programmer who knows C, or C++, or Java, and even some assembly language, plus you are familiar with image processing and computer graphics techniques, that will probably not be enough to get you through this book. I would say that this is a five star book for high-level professional graphics programmers who work with GPU specifics and shaders daily, and I would say it is a two or three star book for everyone else.
The one section of the book that is pretty accessible to anyone with knowledge of computer architecture and computer graphics would be section 4 of the book, which is about general purpose computation on GPU's themselves. That section has a series of articles that comprise an excellent tutorial on GPU's, what they are, and what they can do. It is the best material in print I have seen on the subject.
If you want a good introduction into the concept of writing shaders plus practice with an actual shading language, try "OpenGL Shading Language, 2nd Edition" by Rost, assuming you already know OpenGL. For a great on-line resource for modeling and graphics that will get you going in the right direction of knowing what the authors of these articles know, type "Elias Hugo" into Google and check out the first address shown. There is a wealth of on-line articles, complete with math and pseudocode, available there. Then, maybe, you will be ready to sift some knowledge from this "GPU Gems" series.
I notice that the table of contents is not shown by Amazon, so I list the articles here:
PART 1:GEOMETRIC COMPLEXITY
Towards Photorealism in Virtual Botany
Terrain Rendering using GPU-Based Geometry Clipmaps
Inside Geometry Instancing
Segment Buffering
Optimizing Resource Management with Multi-Streaming
Hardware Occlusion Queries Made Useful
Adaptive Tessellation of Subdivision Surfaces with Displacement Mapping
Per-Pixel Displacement Mapping with Distance Functions
PART 2:SHADING, LIGHTING, AND SHADOWS
Deferred Shading in STALKER
Real-Time Computation of Dynamic Irradiance Environment Maps
Approximate Bidirectional Texture Functions
Tile-Based Texture Mapping
Implementing the Mental Images Phenomena Renderer on the GPU
Dynamic Ambient Occlusion and Indirect Lighting
Blueprint Rendering and "Sketchy Drawings"
Accurate Atmospheric Scattering
Efficient Soft-Edged Shadows Using Pixel Shader Branching
Using Vertex Texture Displacement for Realistic Water Rendering
Generic Refraction Simulation
PART 3:HIGH-QUALITY RENDERING
Fast Third-Order Texture Filtering
High Quality Antialiased Rasterization
Fast Prefiltered Lines
Hair Animation and Rendering in the Nalu Demo
Using Lookup Tables to Accelerate Color Transformations
GPU Image Processing in Apple's Motion
Implementing Improved Perlin Noise
Advanced High-Quality Filtering
Mipmap Level Measurement
PART 4:GENERAL PURPOSE COMPUTATION ON GPUS: A PRIMER
Streaming Architectures and Technology Trends
The GeForce 6 Series GPU Architecture
Mapping Computational Concepts to GPUs
GPU Computation Strategies and Tips
Implementing Efficient Parallel Data Structures on GPUs
Flow Control Idioms
GPU Program Optimization
Stream Reduction Operations for GPGPU Applications
PART 5:IMAGE-ORIENTED COMPUTING
Octree Textures on the GPU
High-Quality Global Illumination Rendering Using Rasterization
Global Illumination using Progressive Refinement Radiosity
Computer Vision on the GPU
Deferred Filtering: Rendering from Difficult Data Formats
Conservative Rasterization
PART 6:SIMULATION AND NUMERICAL ALGORITHMS
GPU Computing for Protein Structure Prediction
A GPU Framework for Solving Systems of Linear Equations
Options Pricing on the GPU
Improved GPU Sorting
Flow Simulation with Complex Boundaries
Medical Image Reconstruction with the FFT
Excellent Second Book in the GPU Gems Series.......2005-12-21
This book is the second installment of the GPU Gems book series by NVIDIA. Just like the first book, GPU Gems 2 is a collection of articles by various authors from game development companies, academia, and tool developers on advanced techniques for programming graphics processing units (or GPUs for short). It is aimed at intermediate to advanced graphics developers that are familiar with the most common graphics APIs. The reader should also be proficient in C++. As with the first GPU Gems book, GPU Gems 2 is not for beginners. For professional graphics and game developers, however, it is an excellent collection of interesting techniques, tips, and tricks.
The book is divided into six parts, each dealing with a different aspect of GPU programming. Compared to the first book, more emphasis is put on the quickly evolving area of general-purpose computation on GPUs (also called GPGPU). In particular, the last three of the six parts of the book are about GPGPU and its applications. The first three parts, however, are about real-time computer graphics.
The first part of the book contains 8 chapters on photo-realistic rendering that mostly deal with how to efficiently render a large number of objects in a scene, which is a necessity for rendering convincing natural effects, such as grass or trees. Two chapters in this part of the book discuss geometry instancing and segment buffering, and another chapter focuses on using occlusion queries to implement coherent hierarchical occlusion culling.
Other interesting topics in this part of the book include adaptive tessellation of surfaces on the GPU, displacement mapping - an extension to the popular parallax mapping used in some current games - that allows to render realistic bumps on a simple quad, and terrain rendering with geometry clipmaps.
Part two of the book consisting of 11 chapters deals with shading and lighting. This part contains highly interesting chapters on deferred shading in the game S.T.A.L.K.E.R., and computing irradiance environment maps on the GPU in real-time. Furthermore, this part of the book has chapters on rendering atmospheric scattering, implementing bidirectional texture functions on the GPU, dynamic ambient occlusion culling, water rendering, and using shadow mapping with percentage-closer filtering to achieve soft shadows.
The third part of the book consists of 9 chapters on high-quality rendering. Most chapters in this part deal with implementing high-quality filtering in fragment shaders. For example, there is an interesting chapter on filtered line rendering and another chapter on cubic texture filtering. Finally, a GPU-only implementation of improved Perlin Noise is also presented in this part of the book.
The chapters in the fourth part of the book represent an introduction to the fantastic field of GPGPU. The 8 chapters of this part first describe the general streaming architecture of GPUs, and then move on to show how to map conventional CPU data structures and algorithms to the GPU. For example, textures can be regarded as the GPU equivalent to CPU data arrays. There is also a chapter on how to implement flow-control idioms on the GPU and a chapter on optimizing GPU programs.
The 6 chapters of part five of the book are on image-oriented computing and describe a number of GPGPU algorithms for performing global illumination computations, for example by using radiosity, on the GPU. There is also a chapter on doing computer vision on the GPU
The final chapter in this part of the book explains how to perform conservative rasterization, which is important for some GPGPU algorithms to achieve accurate results.
The final part of the book has 6 chapters that present GPGPU techniques to perform a variety of simulation and numerical algorithms on the GPU. One chapter shows how to map linear algebra operations onto the GPU and develops a GPU framework to solve systems of linear equations. In other chapters the GPU is used for protein structure prediction, options pricing, flow simulation, and medical image reconstruction. These chapters show good examples of how the GPU can be used for non-graphics-related tasks.
The book contains many illustrations and diagrams that visualize the results of certain techniques or explain the presented algorithms in more detail. All images in the book are in color, which is definitely advantageous for a graphics book. In my opinion, the excellent quality and also the quantity of images and illustrations is one of the strongest points of this book compared to other graphics books.
The book also comes with a CD-ROM with supplemental material, videos, and demo applications to some chapters. Most of the applications include the full source code, which makes it easy to experiment with the techniques presented in the book. Note that most of the applications run on Windows only and many of them require a shader model 3.0 graphics card.
I highly recommend this book to any professional working as graphics or game developer. It is a valuable addition to my library of graphics books and I will come back to a number of articles in the near future. The focus on GPGPU in the second half of the book is a welcome addition and we can expect to see more and more non-graphics-related applications make use of the processing power in today's GPUs.
Pretty pictures.......2005-06-15
This book is targeted at people who have a good solid grasp of either OpenGL or D3D as well as a grounding in programming languages such as C/C++ or Java. While this much is obvious, the book is still painfully difficult to get anything useful out of.
The problem amounts to the fact that there is no cohesion between chapters - each one is written by a different author (and clearly they have not read each other's material) - there is no reference or introduction but worst of all, no common terms.
Example; What D3D calls a "pixel shader", OpenGL call "fragment shader", but there are also "vertex shader", "vertex program", "pixel program" and "fragment program"... some of these are the same thing while others are wildly different, but I found at least 4 references in this book to what I could only make sense of by substituting another term (the correct one). Each author has written their part from their own view point using their own terms.
The code snippets contained rarely have any comments or even descriptions of how they work.
Overall I generally felt like I was either reading someone's thesis or a marketing spiel about a particular aspect of some game.
There are many pretty pictures though.
A Focus on Hardware Optimization.......2005-06-01
"GPU Gems 2" edited by Matt Pharr (Addison-Wesley, 2005, ISBN 0-321-33559-7) is a collection of forty-eight white papers that detail cutting edge techniques based on today's latest graphical processing units (GPU). The full color hardcover text is 784 pages and includes a CD-ROM with working demos and source for some of the articles presented in the book. The text retails for $59.99.
The book is divided into six parts: geometric complexity, shading, high-quality rendering, general purpose computation on the GPU, image oriented computing, and numerical algorithms. A part has anywhere from five to twelve chapters. Each chapter is written by a different author but the format and style is consistent. The chapters have an introduction, discussion of the problem or technique, conclusion, and references. The material is presented with color illustrations and occasionally some pseudo-code or code fragments. Generally, the material is extremely current and very approachable to read.
As a sequel to its well received predecessor, the text focuses on taking advantage of the computational power and features of today's high-powered GPU boards. The first part of the book, geometric complexity, emphasizes this with chapters dedicated to batch rendering, using multi-streaming, hardware occlusion, and displacement pixel-shaders. Each chapter illustrates how operations traditionally performed on the CPU can be moved into the GPU for efficiency and greater effect.
The subsequent two parts on shading and rendering continue along the same theme: improved performance by using hardware functionality found on the GPU. Each topic considers the performance ramifications and GPU capabilities when discussing the problem domain of a rendering technique and factors it into the final solution. For example, chapter 10 considers irradiance environment maps for fast lighting - but with a twist - using the GPU to do the calculations in real-time. In doing so, the book's real value becomes apparent.
The fourth part on general purpose GPU computation is an interesting addition to the text. The chapters illustrate methods of offloading traditional CPU tasks by exploiting the inherent parallel nature of modern GPU hardware. Since the book features Nvidia hardware, the architecture and performance capabilities largely focused on their products.
In the fifth part of the book, hardware assisted image creation and analysis is considered. By using context clues from the spatial, texture, or lighting data - additional refinements can be made to a scene prior to rasterization. The topics presented in this part are further refinements of the text's main theme (using the GPU fully) and are specific solutions to uncommon problems - or approaches to rasterization. None the less as GPUs continue to evolve, the topics presented in this section will undoubtedly become more common.
Finally, the sixth part of the book provides several non-traditional graphics examples to illustrate calculating data on the GPU: solving linear equations, options pricing, and numerical simulation - just to name a few. As using the raw floating point power of modern GPU is a growing trend - these sections were quite interesting and well done.
The included CD-ROM contains examples to 28 of the 48 articles in the book. In most cases, the example material includes source code as well as pre-compiled binaries to help illustrate the topic presented in the text. In order to run the majority of the samples, Cg must be installed on the host computer. In addition, the CD-ROM provides access to Nvidia's software development kit, Cg toolkit, performance tools, and several helpful reference links to on-line sites.
GPU Gems 2 provides a cutting edge view of the capabilities found in today's video cards. The selected articles illustrate that every part of the rendering process can be enhanced in some fashion by fully using the underlying hardware. As such, this book is essential to anyone working with modern GPUs.
Amazon.com
One would think that the title of Tomas Moller's and Eric Haines's book, Real-Time Rendering, would be a contradiction in terms. How can such a computationally intensive process as rendering computer graphics ever hope to be done on the fly, in the blink of an eye, without delay--in short, in real time?
The term rendering, as it applies to computer graphics, refers to the mathematically intensive process of creating a picture or sequence of frames based on geometry. The duration of this process is dependent on the complexity of the scene (a forest with many trees and thousands of leaves will take much longer to render than a scene consisting of a white box over a gray background) and the speed of the hardware doing the calculations.
When Pixar's Toy Story was first released, the computer animation community was all abuzz with how it was done, and someone at Pixar mentioned that over 100 SGI workstations were used for rendering the frames over the course of almost two years. Someone else extrapolated this data and figured out that the same movie could have been rendered on one contemporary PC over the course of about 80 years.
The authors deftly answer the question, not only asserting that it can be done, but since this book is a programmer's guide, they list snippets of programming algorithms that help outline how it can be done.
Because the software and hardware is constantly and rapidly evolving due to the insatiable need for more realistic and complex graphics, the book avoids getting too specific. To quote the authors, "The field is rapidly evolving, and so it is a moving target." This lack of specificity doesn't detract from the usefulness of the book, though. Instead, it works at a higher, more abstract level, describing approaches to rendering techniques using generic algorithms. It is up to the programmer to apply these methods to the specific program or system on which it is to be implemented.
Real-Time Rendering describes some very complex methods, and this book is not for the average computer graphics creator. However, if you are working in an industry that depends on real-time rendered animation--like the gaming, medical, or military fields--or you are building the next-generation real-time render engine, this book will offer insight and concepts you can use to build some impressive software. --Mike Caputo
Book Description
Building on the success of Real-Time Rendering, this completely revised and updated second edition addresses new developments in rendering realistic three-dimensional images in a fraction of a second. It discusses the latest graphics hardware capabilities, while also presenting theoretical underpinnings and algorithms of lasting value.
The book contains chapters as diverse as:
Transforms
Visual appearance
Acceleration algorithms
Advanced shading techniques (new chapter)
Curved surfaces (new chapter)
With topics including:
Pixel shaders
Subdivision surfaces
Intersection algorithms
Pipeline tuning
Customer Reviews:
Updated Graphics Bible.......2007-02-17
This book not only teaches the fundamental concepts of 3D graphics and lighting, but is also a great reference manual to have around. It is completely API independent and focuses on the theory in order to build an understanding of how things actually work. I would definately recommend this book to anyone interested in graphics programming as it will give you a solid base to work from.
how to live without it.......2007-01-24
Real-time rendering is a perfect resource to bring always :) with you and read something about this world.
I find it really useful and elegant and complete
Everything I was looking for.......2006-03-25
I acually read this book cover to cover theres alot of information in the book and its a great book to refer back to. Its really good as a companion with OpenGL. theres some directx stuff in it too but there seems to be more with OpenGL references.
High level presentation of rendering techniques.......2006-01-01
This is not a book of algorithms on computer graphics methods. Instead, it is a comprehensive high-level survey of rendering techniques for making the graphics appear to occur in real time. This book has a very academic tone to it, and with the exception of chapter 3 which is on matrix transforms, it has precious few implementation details. Some reviewers have called it a successor to Foley and Van Dam's classic text, but I find this misleading. That book is primarily about computer graphics techniques, and is not that concerned with real-time issues. The bibliography of this book is extensive and impressive, and if you are doing research on the subject it is probably essential, especially if you are interested in the subject of virtual reality where real-time presentation is a must. However, if you are just looking for pseudocode or more "cool effects" to insert into a game or graphics program you are writing/programming you would do best to look elsewhere.
Decent survey/reference book.......2005-12-13
I was greatly disappointed with the first edition of this book. There is nothing new herein that cannot be culled from the latest presentations/whitepapers posted on NVIDIA/ATI websites, from the standpoint of real time graphics.
That being said, the book in conjunction with the book's online resources site is pretty much a stand alone reference on the state of the art in rendering techniques today.
Book Description
An investment alternative that gives fixed returns of 10 to 25 percent.
Profit by Investing in Real Estate Tax Liens introduces an investment alternative that is safe, secured by real estate, administered by the government, involves no brokers, is enforced by state law, and gives fixed returns. Selling tax liens or tax deeds (depending on the state) are the two ways that counties across the country bring delinquent property taxes up-to-date. This investment is one of the least publicized and safest ways of investing in real estate, designed to give the investor either a fixed return, as in the case of investing in tax liens, or a property for 10 to 50 cents on the dollar, as in the case of a tax deed sale. In most situations, the property is ultimately transferred free of any liens, such as mortgages. Profit by Investing in Real Estate Tax Liens also debunks the common myth that tax delinquent properties are run-down and shows that liens exist on every type of property. Author Larry Loftis, an attorney and active investor, has purchased liens on properties owned by Julius "Dr. J" Erving, Hector "Macho" Camacho (world champion boxer), Chase Manhattan Bank, LaSalle National Bank, and even a building whose major tenant was the local sheriff's department! In this authoritative guide, Loftis helps investors avoid the pitfalls while answering all the key questions they need to consider:
* What's the difference between investing in tax liens and tax deeds?
* How does an investor go about bidding at tax sales? And what is the process?
* What are the different requirements in each state?
* Where are the greatest risks in this kind of real estate investing? For investors eager to get started, Loftis's action plan provides details on the next steps to take, while real-life examples in every chapter bring the concepts down to earth.
Customer Reviews:
Easy to understand.......2007-07-12
It is so easy to understand and mostly what I liked in this book is I dont want to miss a page and I just read the book on and on..
Classic.......2007-05-13
I started investing in tax auctions a couple of years ago and I bought this book as my first guide and it was certainly a good one. There are weaknesses on this book in terms of online tax lien sales though, seeing as a lot of counties are moving towards that way (Loftis prefers classic auctions versus online auctions). But I find them a lot easier, I don't have to be there in a hot room filled with 30 other people. And I can be 300 miles away doing it, not having to pay a plane ticket or gas.
Overall, it has the information you need to win in tax liens sales and also a bit of information on tax deeds. I also bought a more updated book below that has information on online auctions:
Complete Guide to Real Estate Tax Liens and Foreclosure Deeds: Learn in 7 Days-Investing Without Losing Series by Don Sausa
Oh and I forgot to mention, Loftis and Sausa are real tax lien investors. There are some books out there that I had to put down because they weren't even written by an investor!
Real Estate Tax Liens.......2007-05-09
I thoroughly enjoyed this interesting book on tax liens. I learned a lot on the subject from the book and attended a tax lien sale shortly after reading the book. The book was well organized and easy to understand the process of buying tax liens. I have just bought another book on tax liens in order to compare the advice given by Loftis in this book to the advice given in the newly acquired book.
READ BEFORE BUYING -- Excellent info.......2006-11-13
This has excellent info on tax liens. I bought this book and Complete Guide to Real Estate Tax Liens and Foreclosure Deeds: Learn in 7 Days, both combined the perfect tax auction reference.
WHY I gave it 4 STARS instead of 5 stars.......2006-11-07
I bought 3 tax lien books at a real estate bookshop/workshop and I would rate this tax lien book as #2 out of the three (see my other reviews on what else I bought). I think this book was a good introduction to tax liens but there's a few things that were in it that I didn't give it 5 full stars.
Good -
** The back reference materials is probably the most helpful out of this book, specifically the directory of states and their laws.
Bad -
** I don't really like the tell-all stories of the author's auction escapades...I want to read a how-to book, I really don't want to know the person you corrected because what he said was wrong when you overheard him. I don't really want to see pictures of you and your friends at the auction.
Conclusion
** Overall a 4 out of 5 stars, but please remove some of the autobiography stuff next time.
Other recommendations
The Beginner's Guide to Real Estate Tax Lien and Tax Deed Auctions ISBN 0978834607 - not on amazon, avail at other bookstores
Average customer rating:
- Delicious and easy to make recipes
- The Dr. is in
- Good cooking
- A titan of pork
- Big Time Barbecue Cookbook Review
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Dr. BBQ's Big-Time Barbecue Cookbook: A Real Barbecue Champion Brings the Tasty Recipes and Juicy Stories of the Barbecue Circuit to Your Backyard
Ray Lampe
Manufacturer: St. Martin's Griffin
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
General
| Cooking, Food & Wine
| Subjects
| Books
Barbecuing & Grilling
| Outdoor Cooking
| Cooking, Food & Wine
| Subjects
| Books
General
| Outdoor Cooking
| Cooking, Food & Wine
| Subjects
| Books
Special Appliances
| Cooking, Food & Wine
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ASIN: 0312339798
Release Date: 2005-04-14 |
Book Description
A champion from the barbecue circuit shares his secrets for perfect barbecue in a book that will win a blue ribbon from backyard chefs Authentic slow-cooked barbecue is the great star-spangled specialty and home barbecuing is the new craze taking America's backyard cookouts by storm. In Dr. BBQ's Big-Time Barbecue Cookbook, Ray Lampe, a former Chicago truck driver turned barbecue chef champion, and teacher, serves over 200 of the best recipes he's developed for barbecued and grilled classics including smoky rubs and marinades, championship ribs, smoked chicken and turkey, pulled pork, brisket, barbecued lamb, home-smoked salmon, and much more, including all you need to know to slow smoke an entire pig for a feast that family and friends will never forget. There's also a long list of specialty recipes like jalapeno bris-ket, and green chile enchiladas with smoked chicken, and answers to questions any backyard chef might have: -What is the difference between grilling and barbecuing? -What's the best barbecue smoker to buy and how do I use it ? -What are the best cuts of meat and fish to cook on a smoker? -What are the secrets to becoming a barbecue champion?
Customer Reviews:
Delicious and easy to make recipes.......2007-08-27
This is an excellent cook book on American barbequeing and the recipes I have made have been easy to make and delicious.I have been a bit dubious about some of the recipes after I have read the ingredients list but every time the recipes have turned out better than expected but exactly how the author Ray Lampe described.For instance I made the creamy coleslaw and it didn't sound like it would be that good but it was easy to make and the best coleslaw I have tasted.By contrast I have made a coleslaw from 'The Best Recipe cook book American Classics'and this has had a long description and went into great detail about every stage of making the coleslaw but the end result has been very disappointing.The book also contains little anecdotes about each recipe and the world of competition barbequeing and this all adds to the book.Overall this is an excellent book and I will be buying the rest of Ray Lampe's cook books.
The Dr. is in.......2007-06-27
I had the pleasure of meeting Dr. BBQ at the Arkansas Literary Festival a couple of years ago. I bought his book then, and recently purchased another for my son.
Unlike most cookbooks, this one isn't just recipes and clinical information about the ingredients and preparation methods. Dr. BBQ includes stories about the people behind the recipes, as well as his own philosophy about weighty questions such as: Gas, charcoal, wood or pellets? Charcoal? Well then, chunk or briquette?
And to the people who insist that using gas isn't the way to prepare REAL bbq or charcoal isn't and so on, the Dr. suggests that unless they are going out naked and killing an animal with a stick before cooking it then THEY aren't really preparing bbq the traditional way either.
Good fun, good food, good guy. The recipes are easy to follow and produce great Q, but I must admit, I use this book for inspiration much more than for the recipes.
Good cooking.......2007-04-10
Ray knows his stuff and can clearly express it. This ought to be your first reference when you're setting the menu.
A titan of pork.......2007-02-10
I've cooked with and written about the man, and I love this book. Count me as a fan. An excellent source of BBQ tips and a great read.
Big Time Barbecue Cookbook Review.......2007-01-21
Recommend this to anyone wanting to improve the quality of their barbeque. Outstanding compliment to any cookbook collection.
Customer Reviews:
cool book!.......2000-09-28
lots of information, good for starter!! cool book!
Reveals the basic formula for creating wealth in real estate.......1999-07-29
I ran across this book in the early sixties, when one million was in the title, not five million. I used this book to make several million dollars for myself, and taught two friends to use the book, and they also made substantial money. It isn't magic: it simply shows you how real estate wealth is made, and shows you step by step how to do it for yourself. A young friend has just asked me to show him how to do it , and I went to Amazon to see if the book was still available, so that I could steer him to it. That's why I'm here. I am now, at age 62, a real estate developer, and the same rules still apply. The book is simple, basic, and absolutely true. By a strange cooincidence, I knew the appraiser hired by Simon & Shuster to verify that Nickerson had made five million. The appraiser told me that he believed Nickerson had understated his wealth!
Timeless Masterpiece.......1999-02-24
If you are starting out in residential real estate investment, this book is a must read. Nickerson presents a conservative, realistic scenario for starting small and steadliy building wealth. This is not a get-rich-quick book or one that relies on gimmicks or nothing-down strategies. It shows you stepwise how to build a solid financial foundation in real estate, and how to leverage current assets into more valuable ones. Nickerson's strategy relies on hard work and persistence, not luck, deceit, or the greater-fool theory. There's no need for an updated version of this book; it's principals and approaches to developing wealth are as timeless as compounded interest.
THE BEST REAL ESTATE BOOK EVER WRITTEN.......1999-01-01
I am a licensed realtor in a major city with 20 years of experience. In that time I have made a small hobby of reading old as well as new books on the subject of Real Estate. I don't know how this one eluded me for so long, but our paths finally crossed. This is easily the most concise and informative tome on the subject of acquiring wealth through investing in Real Eastate that I have ever read. Unlike the myriad TV hucksters who would have you believe that having No Money Down and shoddy credit is almost an advantage, Mr. Nickerson takes a reality-based approach to his subject. Starting with the want ads in his newspaper, he guides you through the entire process of purchasing an investment property. The chapters on financing are absolutely perfect. The edition I have was published in 1969, yet the information is as valid as it was when written. Certainly prices have changed, ($10,000 homes!)but that aside, this book will make you a fortune. This is one of those books that you start again as soon as you finish it. Give it a shot.
THE BEST.......1998-10-11
Have read over 100 Real Estate books and find this to be the best to get started and to understand the basics. It helped me many years ago when I started my book: REQE.
Book Description
In The No-Nonsense Real Estate Investor’s Kit, noted author and real estate expert, Thomas J. Lucier provides detailed information, step-by-step instructions and practical advice for both beginning and experienced investors, who want to join the ranks of America's real estate millionaires!
You get Tom Lucier’s lifetime of real estate investing expertise and experience in twenty-three meaty chapters. You also get all of the nitty-gritty details on five proven strategies for making money in real estate today. You’ll learn all of the fundamentals of successful investing and get the guidance that you need on these and many more vital topics:
- Choosing the right investment strategies
- Financing your deals
- Limiting your risk and liability
- Earning tax-free income from the sale of real estate
- Setting up and operating your own real estate business
- Investing in undervalued properties
- Following state and federal real estate related statutes
- Negotiating the best possible deal for yourself
- Buying properties at below-market prices
- Performing due diligence, inspections, and estimating property values
- Preparing purchase and sale agreements
The No-Nonsense Real Estate Investor’s Kit is as close as you can get to a graduate degree in real estate investing without ever going to college. It arms you with the specialized knowledge that you need to compete successfully against the seasoned real estate professionals in your local real estate market. And this book comes complete with FREE downloadable and customizable forms to help you get started on the fast track.
Customer Reviews:
The No-Nonsense Real Estate Investor's Kit is a Thorough Reference Book.......2007-08-04
One of the most thorough real estate investment books one can get. Lucifer covers a lot of topics with a very readable style. There was actually too much information for me to take in on the first reading of the book. I find myself going back to the book to browse sections I missed the first time through. You can read it on a need-to-know basis, like I do. If I come across something that I need more information on, I can often find the answer to what I am looking for in this book.
Of particular value is his online Resource List at the end of the book. The author has listed email addresses for many useful websites. I liked the online Property Sales Information, where I first learned about Craigslist as a great online source for finding properties for sale. I like to search specifically for homes with guest houses, and Craigslist makes it easy to do that type of "specialty" search.
I also like the fact that he recommends useful products to make our investment businesses run more smoothly. It shows that he's a down-to-earth guy who has been down the same path that we travel. For example, on page 65 he recommends the Desk Apprentice (designed by 2 participants in Donald Trump's The Apprentice TV show) to keep your office desk organized, and on page 66 the Cab Commander for your car seat office. Lucifer knows that we have to spend a lot of time behind the wheel searching for properties, conducting drive-by property inspections, and driving to appointments.
This book is packed with useful information. Many books are called real estate investment reference books, but this book truly is one.
Terry Sprouse - author of the forthcoming book, "Fix 'em Up, Rent 'em Out: How to Start Your Own House Fix-up and Rental Business in Your Spare Time."
Not Enough.......2007-07-30
When I started reading this book, I thought I was going to learn everything about how to be a profitable real estate investor. There is just no way you can cover everything this book tries to cover in 300 pages. Each chapter leaves you with too many unanswered questions. Though, I could see how this book might be a good starting point for anyone interested in investing in real estate.
If you haven't heard of Tonja Demoff, you should give her book Bubble Proof: Real Estate Strategies that Work in any Market a look. Her book is a very easy read and it's packed with information that will help you get started with the right mindset and the right information to begin investing in today's market.
Realistic Advice for Newbie Real Estate Investors.......2007-06-21
Thomas J. Lucier is one of the best real estate writers in the business today and he comes through with another winning book here. His advice is far from the "get-rich-quick" nonsense so many authors and pseudo-investors peddle in books on this site and elsewhere. As a real estate lawyer and investor for almost 25 years, I admire this man's work greatly. Lucier is a genuine real estate investor and his clear, straight-forward, easy-to-follow, and honest investment suggestions always put his books a cut above so many others out there. The best part of his writing is how he breaks complex subjects into simple-to-digest pieces best designed for newbie investors wanting to get started in the real estate business. This book in particular debunks many of the get-rich-quick so-called "creative" real estate techniques like subject-to GET THE DEED buying and offers real world reasons why you should not do it, as opposed to so many authors that base their whole careers around such dangerous nonsense. I can't praise this book enough for its clarity and practical information. There is not a single wasted page in the entire text. This is by far one the best real estate books being sold today in print.
Enlightening.......2007-06-17
Fabulous, Real Eye Opener. Everyone with a brain should read this book
One of the best!.......2007-05-12
This is the second book I've purchased from Thomas Lucier, and I wasn't disappointed by either one. He has a no-nonsense, matter of fact style that is full of usefull information without the "fluff" or other bragging other authors of real estate books seem to use to fill the pages of their books. I would recommend any of his books to the beginning or even experienced investor that wants to have a reference book handy and learn the details of how the business works. And no bull-spit!
Book Description
MicroC/OS II Second Edition describes the design and implementation of the MicroC/OS-II real-time operating system (RTOS). In addition to its value as a reference to the kernel, it is an extremely detailed and highly readable design study particularly useful to the embedded systems student. While documenting the design and implementation of the kernel, the book also walks the reader through the many related development issues: how to adapt the kernel for a new microprocessor, how to install the kernel, and how to structure the applications that run on the kernel. This edition features documentation for several important new features of the software, including new real-time services, floating points, and coding conventions. The accompanying CDROM includes complete code for the MicroC/OS-II kernel.
Customer Reviews:
Best so far in learning practical RTOS.......2007-05-11
I've learn more about embedded operating systems and kernels from this book and playing with MicroC/OS II than I ever had by working with uCos, vxworks, embedded Linux, and BSD.
uC/OS-II documentation + RTOS book.......2007-01-18
This book is not only the documentation of the uC/OS-II RTOS. It also presents many of the general real-time programming concepts in a very pedagogical manner.
I found the book very helpful.
Quality of the book is very good.......2006-11-04
The book has brand new look and feel. Its very well maintained and delivered on time. Extremely pleased with the service.
Good Book.......2006-07-03
A good book for who wanna learn about Real Time Operative Systems. Easy to read and full of interesting information
It's a good book, but ..........2006-02-21
Actually I think that it's a great book only if you have a strong background about how a kernel or RTOS works. I've spent a lot of time reading a theoretical books that teach you what a kernel is about, so for me the reading was easy. The fact that the book includes the source code makes it awesome, 'cause you can see inside a truly real kernel, and eventually write your own (what is I want to do). But if you are an unexperienced user of kernels, or just want to learn something about it, you should start somewhere else. The one a recomend you is that of Andy Tanenbaum, the creator of MINIX (minix is a tiny unix running in an intel 8086 cpu), and this other one that I bought here: Real-Time Concepts for Embedded Systems by Qing Li, Caroline Yao. After you deeply understand what a pipe o scheduler is, among other things, then you should start thinking about coding, because the book has some lack of theory. Anyway I strongly recomend it for experienced users. Have a nice coding =)
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