Acknowledgments

Writing a book is hard. Without the help and encouragement of others, it would be nearly impossible, at least for these authors. We would like to take a few lines to tell you who helped and encouraged and made it possible.

Andy McDonald of Vaisala was generous with his time, and gave us considerable technical input. We hasten to add that the IceBreaker product in this book is only a distant relation to Vaisala's IceCast systems. The Vaisala User Group, of which E. M. Kennedy holds the chair, also provided valuable technical input.

Thanks are due to the technical reviewers who gave up their time to wade through some fairly incomprehensible stuff. Mike Russell, Susannah Finzi, Neil Maiden, Tim Lister, and Bashar Nuseibeh all deserve honorable mentions.

We would like to acknowledge our fellow principals at the Atlantic Systems GuildTom DeMarco, Peter Hruschka, Tim Lister, Steve McMenamin, and John Palmerfor their help, guidance, and incredulous looks over the years.

The staff at Pearson Education contributed. Sally Mortimore, Alison Birtwell, and Dylan Reisenberger were generous and skillful, and used such persuasive language whenever we spoke about extending the deadline.

For the second edition, Peter Gordon provided guidance and persuasion at exactly the right times. Kim Boedigheimer, John Fuller, and Lara Wysong were invaluable at steering us through the publishing process. Jill Hobbs tamed our faulty grammar and punctuation, and made this text readable. The technical input of Ian Alexander, Earl Beede, Capers Jones, Chuck Pfleeger, and Tony Wasserman goes far beyond valuable. Thank you, gentlemen, for your insights. And we hasten to add that any remaining technical errors are ours and ours alone.

And finally we thank the students at our seminars and our consulting clients. Their comments, their insistence on having things clearly explained, their insights, and their feedback have all made some difference, no matter how indirect, to this book.

Thank you, everybody.

James and Suzanne Robertson London, January 2006