Multimedia is unfair to parents. Time was when you could explain all about radio to your curious offspring. It's a bit different when today's children demand, "Tell me how it works," after you've configured your Web browser to use the hardware MPEG-2 decoder. You can bet François Fluckiger's kids know. Fluckiger is deputy head of networking at CERN, a professor at the University of Geneva, and now author of Understanding Networked Multimedia: Applications and Technology. This is not a man, one suspects, who spends much time fiddling with config.sys.
The book progresses from defining multimedia in terms of its Latin etymology to the intricacies of broadband ATM. And it lives up to the claim that little prior knowledge is required but blink, and you've missed a discussion of latency in audio stream multicasts.
Yet Understanding Networked Multimedia is a tremendously useful reference work, especially if you deal with hairy-armed information engineers. It even works with kids: if their persistent requests aren't satisfied with "Because," give them a quiz on H.261 color difference subsampling. Domestic peace, guaranteed. Thanks, François.
Understanding Networked Multimedia: Applications and Technology, by François Fluckiger: US$45. Prentice Hall: (800) 947 7700, fax +1 (515) 284 2607.
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