The Millennium Bug: Aspects of Banking, Computer, Insurance and Company Law (Special Report S.)

Book Description

My 27 year career in the insurance industry and more specifically in the property/casualty area has provided me with an in-depth insight into the many operational changes which have impacted the way insurance claim organizations conduct their business today, as compared to 15 to 20 years ago. While the changes have been many, none have been more dramatic and significant to claim resolution overall than the continued shift and escalation from direct personal contact by outside adjusters to impersonal office based claim handling. The interrelationships that existed between insurance professionals and the plaintiff and defense bars have undergone dramatic transformations as well. This occurred as a result of the pressures brought about by a significantly changed environment that has emerged in response to those pressures

In years past, most bodily injury and the larger property damage claims were assigned to and handled by experienced and street smart outside claim adjusters. Those claims were usually assigned by established territories and handled to a conclusion by that adjuster. There was a heavy emphasis on personal contacts and face-to-face negotiations with attorneys and unrepresented claimants. Adjusters developed strong working relationships with defense attorneys. With the advent of computer technology, huge monetary investments in technical resources, and an unprecedented emphasis on curtailing "extraneous" expenses to address competitive and profitability issues, the insurance industry has been among the leaders in re-engineering and downsizing activities.

A new playing field and rules of the game, as well as the changes in the interpersonal basis upon which legal and insurance professionals interacted as a result of these expense initiatives, have created a widening chasm between the camps. These factors, coupled with the introduction of significant technological tools to serve as an adjunct to a reduced staff, as well as changing definitions of profitability in the insurance industry, have redefined the behavior patterns of the insurance professionals, much to the dismay of the legal advocates with whom they must interact.

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Health Benefits Guarantees in Latin America: Equity And Quasi-market Restructuring at the Beginning of the Millennium (Estudios Y Perspectivas)

Manufacturer: United Nations
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Health | Insurance | Industries & Professions | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books
Health Policy | Administration & Policy | Medicine | Subjects | Books
Practice Management & Reimbursement | Administration & Policy | Medicine | Subjects | Books
Public Health | Administration & Policy | Medicine | Subjects | Books
General | Medicine | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 9211215919

Book Description

This study considers the introduction of health benefits guarantees in highly underdeveloped health systems, analyzing with more detail the case of Guatemala and briefly, Bolivia. Afterwards, a thorough analysis of Chile is done, showing how the health guarantees imply a partial overcome of the fundamental duality of the health system. Finally, the recent experience of the popular health insurance in Mexico is considered.

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Public Debt and Future Generations
James M. Ferguson
Manufacturer: Greenwood Press Reprint
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Popular Economics | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books
Public Finance | Economics | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books
Debt & Deficits | Economics | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0313235376

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Discussion paper series - [Thammasat University, Faculty of Economics ; no. 16]
Wannarak Mingmanīnākhin
Manufacturer: Thammasat University, Faculty of Economics
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding
ASIN: B0007AHEAC

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How to protect future generations using tax base restrictions (NBER working paper series)
Antonio Rangel
Manufacturer: National Bureau of Economic Research
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding
ASIN: B0006S0O66

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PUBLIC DEBT AND FUTURE GENERATIONS

Manufacturer: University of North Caroline Chapel Hill
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000IA9WEM

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Public Debt and Future Generations
James Milton Ferguson
Manufacturer: Greenwood Press Reprint
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000OTQPBA

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Public Debt and Future Generations
James M. Freguson
Manufacturer: University of North Carolina Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000QURLYC

Book Description

Letters by Mozart in sparkling new translations that capture the flavor of the writing, transmit every nuance, and render every thought faithfully and accurately. What was Mozart really like--wild? sublime? responsible? fun-loving? bright? foul-mouthed? Reading these letters, we learn in his own words that he was all of these and much more. Here is the composer at his most intimate and unguarded, expressing his feelings about life, love, music, and the world around him. For this collection, Robert Spaethling has carefully chosen letters written by Mozart over a span of almost twenty-two years--from his first journey to Italy as a shy teenager to the final months of his life in Vienna. The letters, together with the accompanying introductions, chronicle the composer's life, personal development, and artistic growth. These new translations into English, the first in more than sixty years, are faithful to the original German even to the point of misspellings, which abound in the early correspondence. No effort has been spared to find language as closely equivalent to Mozart's as any translation can be and to clear up references in the letters to people, places, and events. Mozart's Letters, Mozart's Life makes wonderful reading for anyone who has ever loved a work by the composer, from the deceptively simple Eine kleine Nachtmusik to the towering, magnificent Requiem.

Customer Reviews:

I love it................2007-04-18

Mozart's full and final dedication to his work was exemplary; no doubt, his music spoke for the conscience of the world and his audience felt an almost religious faith in it. But the young man had frivolous and fun-loving personality, and his closeness to infantile notions was apparent with friends, relatives and pupils.
Mozart was possessor of the least inhibited tongue even in his contacts with serious foundations like Archbishopric or Freemasonry that mismatched the depth of notes he wrote.
This composer genius was filled with spontaneous strong-willed passion for music if weak-witted for romance and throughout the wide spectrum of his works involving every conceivable style of symphonies, operas, and orchestral pieces - some of the finest ever written - Mozart produced something truer than love.

Great book.......2005-08-03

If you are interested in everyday lives and struggles of geniuses, this is a book for you. Most of us know Mozart as a great composer, but he also wrote passionate letters to his friends and loved ones. His writing style and personality allow us to understand his times more and to have a closer look at the person that he was.

This lively book will deepen your appreciation of Mozart.......2004-03-19

What a fine accomplishment! According to the introduction, this book contains about 2/3 of Mozart's surviving correspondence. It has letters from and to Mozart and the translations are very lively and bring the personality of the composer to life. In older translations it seems that care was taken to make him sound like the monumental cultural force that he has become. But in this book, Mozart is a boy, a young man, a young husband, a fiery genius, and at times lost, grieving, and even confused.

The book is organized chronologically and provides biographical information that gives each letter some context. There are many useful footnotes as well as a couple of maps and list of Mozart's travels. The author has even included some notes about the various currencies in order to help the reader understand the discussions of money in the letters.

I can't emphasize enough what a lively read this book is. I found that I simply didn't get bogged down and enjoyed reading it. Yes, there are some portions of some letters I skipped, but that is one of the beauties of the book. You don't get lost simply because you skipped some mundane portions of one letter or another.

Mr. Spaethling is to be congratulated on this fine achievement. If you are interested in Mozart in any way, this book will deepen your appreciation of the living breathing person who wrote all that music. It didn't come from some alien dimension. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, this wonderful and complex human being did it all and we are much richer for it.

A whole new view of Mozart.......2002-12-26

Those of us who know a little about Mozart believe that he was perfection incarnate, part angel, fluttering down to endow the world with heavenly music. (There probably is some truth to that.) This book, however, reveals a whole new side of Mozart, a very human side. As beautiful as Mozart's music is, the more beautiful it becomes after reading this book. Understanding his big heart, hard work and, yes, even imperfections, increases one's appreciation of his music.

Bravo!.......2002-10-12

This book enabled Mozart come to life for me. The translation was very good. It showed, (in english), how Mozart worked on his grammar and spelling as he got older. Since he was "home educated", he had to work at this.

I could not put this book down, reading a few letters every day, I saw how Mozart grew from a boy into a man with a family. He was a really good guy, it's a shame he had to die so young.

I would say, to anyone who wants to know more about Mozart, buy this book. You can form your own opinion of him, then you can buy the "expert's" books.

After having read this book, I would like to know more about Constanze!

Average customer rating:
MOZART'S LETTERS, MOZART'S LIFE: SELECTED LETTERS
ROBERT SPAETHLING
Manufacturer: FABER & FABER
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000S5UU8Y

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MOZART'S LETTERS, MOZART'S LIFE: SELECTED LETTERS.
Robert (editor & translator). Spaethling
Manufacturer: W. W. Norton,
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000NW6L12

Book Description

"Formanek-Brunell's study of the United States doll industry provides a fresh perspective on the construction of gender in America... Made to Play House is a pioneering book of interest to collectors, historians of women and of consumer culture, and anyone who has a child who plays with dolls."--Molly Ladd-Taylor, Journal of American History

In MADE TO PLAY HOUSE, Miriam Formanek-Brunell traces the history of nineteenth- and twentieth-century dolls and explores the origins of the American toy industry's remarkably successful efforts to promote self fulfillment through maternity and materialism. She tells the fascinating story of how inventors, producers, entrepreneurs--many of whom were women--and little girls themselves created dolls which expressed various notions of female identity.

"Much of the value of Made to Play House is its deft weaving of business history, cultural history, and material culture studies into a coherent, largely convincing, narrative... The vivid portraits of the female entrepreneurs with an agenda for childhood are the book's most significant contribution to the literature of history and business."--Mary Lynn Stevens Heininger, Business History Review

"This superb interdisciplinary history deploys mechanical patents and material culture to chart the development of a gendered American doll industry."--Eileen Boris, Nation

"The book makes a solid contribution to the literature on childhood as well as business history and... illustrates the use that can be made of material culture in historical research."--Sylvia Hoffert, American Historical Review

Made to Play House Dolls and the Commercialization of American Girlhood, 1830-1930

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Made to Play House Dolls and the Commercialization of American Girlhood, 1830-1930
Miriam Formanek-Brunell
Manufacturer: Yale University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000ORMJW6

Customer Reviews:

Disappointing..........2005-12-06

First and foremost, this is not a book with new insights into the series. Nor does it shed new light on the series and its meaning. Rather, this book is more of a snapshot of the era in which the series was made, from the perspective of a writer and filmmaker whose greatest involvement in the series was being the writer for an early draft of the episode, "Living In Harmony."

Instead, the author, Ian Rakoff, writes extensively of his own filmmaking experience, from his anti-aparthied experiences in South Africa (of which he refers to frequently), his brushes with notable radical filmmakers, to his involvement in 'leftist' films and other projects, such as The Prisoner.

For fans of The Prisoner, his few interactions with Patrick McGoohan are the most interesting. In these few passages, the reader is treated to Rakoff's perception of the actor/producer, both from production rumors to actual interactions, and how McGoohan appeared to be affected by the troubled production of the series. But before more can be digested of the possible impact on the development of the show, Rakoff wanders off on his own personal and professional development as a filmmaker in 60's Europe.

While the author often returns to the development of his episode script, he is more interested in revealing the radical filmmaking culture that The Prisoner eventually became a flagship for. And this is where the book finds its value; not for his association with the show.

It is fascinating to read about the variety of people that were involved in the show, the different kind media culture that bred the type of filmmaking at that time, and what impact, if any, these same people may have had in the show's development, or demise.

For students of the development of radical filmmaking, this is a fine companion book. For fans of The Prisoner who must have it all, look for it used and refer instead to the more interesting Appendices and the Episode Summaries. All other fans might want to look elsewhere.

NB: The episode summaries are adverstised as being produced "in collaboration with Six of One, the official Prisoner Fan Club."

Outside the Prisoner, mostly.......2001-10-09

What the others have said. The Prisoner content is minimal, but what there is slightly furthered my understanding of the series and its origins.

If you're interested what it was like to be a peripheral character in the film industry in London in the Swinging Sixties, this is worth a look.

Economising with the truth.......2001-02-20

The disparity between the contents of this book and its title may be judged by comparing a comment on the back cover with a section of the main text:

Back cover:
"Rakoff - who was intended by McGoohan to play a key role in the scripting of future episodes - now reveals how the series could have developed, then and now."

Main text (p.176, col. 1)
"McGoohan's promise that I'd have four episodes in the next tranche of the series was perhaps not seriously meant. It was probably only a well-meaning apology for having abandoned me in order to be free to go to Hollywood."

In order to get this book in perspective you need to take full note of the subtitle - "radical television and film in the 1960s".
An even more accurate subtitle would have been "Ian Rakoff, an autobiographical account of how I came to England and worked on a few films, and served as assistant editor on a couple of episodes of 'The Prisoner', during the 1960s".

As Rakoff himself admits, he came "in at the tail end of things" (p23) as far as the making and editing of The Prisoner was concerned, and apart from a few brief and highly uncommunicative meetings with McGoohan, whatever he (Rakoff) knew about the series was gossip and hearsay.
His version of the nature of the original 'Rover', for example, is clearly not from personal experience, and conflicts with evidence that there really was a blue VW 'beetle' with flashing light.
He also suggests, for no good reason, that production manager Bernard Williams came up with the idea of using weather balloons; which doesn't tally with the more widespread report that McGoohan fortuitously spotted a weather balloon in flight and gave Williams the task turning this into a practical replacement for the VW bug.

Not surprisingly, then, even that section of the main text that deals with the TV series (pages 23-100) consists almost entirely of vague anecdotes that are more likely to be of interest to film and TV technicians than to fans of the TV series. Nor is this section of the book entirely given over to items related to the making of The Prisoner, but regularly wanders off into pure autobiography, as in Chapters 5 and 7, for example.

Having said all that, it might seem that Rakoff is still a key witness as regards the concepts and philosophy behind the TV series. After all, he did work as a writer on the series, didn't he?

Well yes, sort of. It turns out that Rakoff wrote the basic story for the episode 'Living in Harmony' - but had very little to do with the final script. Indeed, on viewing the initial screening he comments:

"For a moment I couldn't believe I'd written any of what I was seeing. It seemed familiar but from somewhere far away and long ago. Dialogues struck chords." (p.98)

The fact is that Rakoff based his own story on material in Gene Autrey (cowboy) comics of the 1950s. It's relevance to the central themes of The Prisoner was, (given his very limited time on the project), almost entirely co-incidental. And the episode as it was filmed and screened, owed nearly everything to series producer David Tomblin - who is credited as producer, scriptwriter and director on this particular episode.

In short, if you're keen to lay your hands on 'anything' that relates to The Prisoner then you'll pobaby want to own this book as well.
If, however, you're looking for material that provides genuine insights into this most enigmatic of all TV series then there are far better ways of spending your money.

Not worth your time.......2000-12-13

A very deceptive title. Ian Rakoff worked on only a few episodes and his accounts are limited to a few encounters with McGoohan and trivial gossip around the show. The book should've been titled "Ian Rakoff: A bunch of stuff I did that had nothing to do with the Prisoner." Maybe 25% of the book is about working on the show, the rest is about his career before and after which makes for poor reading. I didn't even finish it because after the sections about the Prisoner it completely lost my interest. Anything worthwhile about the Prisoner has been written about in other books. Avoid dissapointment.

A must for fans, but not a great book.......2000-07-11

Rakoff, an assistant editor on the show, does his best to describe what it was like to work with McGoohan, Markstein, Tomblin, et al., but he only worked on a few episodes, and really saw only a sliver of the total picture. Too much of the book focuses on the rest of Rakoff's career as a writer and filmmaker, which is marginally interesting, but not Prisoner-related.

Book Description

Do you have what it takes to keep the bad guys out of your network? Find out with the latest edition of this best-selling book featuring 20+ all new hacking challenges for you to solve. Plus, you'll get in-depth solutions for each, all written by experienced security consultants.

Customer Reviews:

No challenge.......2006-10-28

As a security specialist and Ethical hacker I've been extremely disapointed by this book. It is too simple and obsolete. History around each challenge are way to detailed compare to the actual incident and technical detail. I just dont quite understand other reviewer rating this book with 5 stars.

Test Your Skills With These Hacker Puzzles.......2005-02-10

Hacker's Challenge 2 is a sort of practical exam for the Hacking Exposed series. Hacker's Challenge was a terrific book for putting some incident response and forensic skills to use and practicing for the real thing. Hacker's Challenge 2 continues the tradition and should be a must read for anyone who works with network security and incident response. The style of the challenges is fairly entertaining and the plots are so engaging you may not want to put the book down. Its like a best-selling mystery novel for network security techies. It may not affect the quality of the book overall, but I preferred having the authors of the individual challenges identified as they were in Hacker's Challenge. However, you should definitely buy this book!

(...)

Excellent Book!.......2004-09-13

Besides being very entertaining this book offers a great deal of knowledge. If you are able to recognize all the concepts inside, it will serve as a perfect reference and starting point book.

Very, very nice book.

Better than the 1st..........2003-11-25

Mike Schiffman has always been a really funny guy (see what he's written in phrack loopback for examples) so I was really dissappointed with the lack of humour in the first volume of the Hackers Challenge series. That has gotten better in the second volume. There is a lot more humor in this one.

Aside from that it reads just like the first volume and is just as good in almost every way. But for the fact that in this volume the editors decided not to tell you which author wrote which chapter which I would have like to have known.

PURE FUN - IT'S A GEM.......2003-11-02

Amazon auto-recommended this book to me when I was buying another book. I bought it allthough I was shure that this will be anotherone of the books you buy, leaf through for 30 minutes and then burry in your bookshelf forever ...
The book arrived on friday - helloween. I decided to "leaf it quickly through" before diving into the helloween chaos in my city ... Now it is sunday ... I have skipped helloween completely and sucked up the book completely, played a bit with the new knowledge in my LAN and definitely had a lot of fun.
I'm nor a hacker nor a sysadmin, just a programmer. But the challenges are easy enough for me (As a programmer I'm not so experienced in networking ...). Not too easy to be boring, not to hard to be "work". You can compare it better to a funny short-story-book than to a laborious brain-teaser-book. I learned a lot and had much fun. It is the first IT-book I ever read completely from the beginning to the end. Have you ever been laughing loudly when reading an IT-book ? I did often during this wheekend :) And additionaly I _did_ learn a lot. It's magic ...

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