electronics-industry

I am an experienced computer professional, who decided to change professions, which also makes me a recent graduate of a 3D animation school(i graduated at the top of my class). I purchased this book based on mary-margaret.com's(supposedly one of the best game recruiters) recomendation AND based on the other reviews listed for this book. I really thought this book would be informative. I was WRONG. This book was a huge WASTE of money. And I am not sure that the other reviews listed for this book are even from REAL buyers... I definately do not share their opinion.

This book was basically a waste of money, because it only gives you general information that most people already know. For example on page 189 the section "How to find a Job" starts. The first paragraph is a "its not what you know, its WHO you know." section. How is that supposed to help recent graduates or professionals changing professions?

In short, this book is NOT for professionals or graduates. It might be useful to high school students, who need might need to learn how to focus their career goals towards an game career... but even then i am not sure how it would help when they get to the position of actually trying to get the job.

TOTALLY DISSATISFIED, and WISH I could get my money back! This was a highway robbery at its best.

Video Game design is a highly demanding, tireless, thankless, competative, ruthless, cuthroat profession, whose sucess stories wade in the sea of design hopefuls crushed by the neverending relentless expectations of this occupation. For those still interested, keep reading.
If you think you are ready to give this a shot, then buy this book. While nothing will prepare you for video game design like your first week of work, ( so called " Hell Week" in the industry) Adams begins to lay the foundation for the tough road ahead. If only this book had been around before, for instance when I was a gopher over at EA Sports in the early 1990's, the heyday of NHL hockey and FIFA Soccer, the so called glory days when maverick designers created their own rules, coded at the seat of their pants and got paid the big bucks. I saw it all, saw the craziness, saw the mayhem, and then saw it get even worse. I would have been better off with this book, and so would anyone.

In the past decade, things have changed. Its a travesty that there has been a "brain drain" from the video game design sector in the past couple of years. We need the best and the brightest to design the future placaters of the masses. Now they are no longer interested in the field because of the crazy hacks that have taken over, rescinded the protocol and the bucked the accountability. Buy this book now.

There a lot of books on breaking into the game industry so why would you buy this one? Hell, the overall gist is the same where ever you look - online, books, here, etc. 1) Build a folio, 2) Take any entry level job you can in the industry and be prepared to work your way up 3) if you can, try to meet people in the industry already.

If you want more indepth information than that however, this book is for you.

Why?
1) Everything is clearly broken down into sections very cleanly. Nice index and appendix makes it easy to reference.
2) Covers every possible angle - whether you're young, a college graduate or already working in another industry and deals with your strengths and weaknesses
3) Well written and substantiated by interviews with industry professionals (from game designers to game industry job recruiters)

No words are wasted in this. Every word holds some meaning. I was suprised at the breakdown on minority groups, different ethnic groups and gender issues in the gaming industry. I felt this chapter alone (whilst not necessarily relevant to me) increased it's target audience substantially by tackling a lot of issues that not a lot of authors have considered.

A lot of other books out there are a collection of interviews with various game developer professionals and often their answers are disjointed and do not answer the question directly, if at all. This does not make these books any "less" valuable, only a little bit harder to find the information you might be looking for.

If you want a nice, clean, crisp and concise book on breaking into the game industry, this is the book for you. My only gripe about this book was that I felt it was rather short (largely personal perception, I understand that). That said, it did cover everything you could possibly think of (short of building your own game company, but that's a topic for another book I think) so do bear that in mind, hence my rating.

There's... all available publically on business practices in the games industry, which is quite peculiar, given how large a field it's become, and given the minute detail in which, say, the film and publishing industries have been covered. Thus, this is almost a necessary volume for anyone outside the field interested in getting into it.

That said, it is so relentlessly and laughably upbeat as to be beyond belief. The truth is that gaming may not be quite as corrupt as the music industry, or as vicious as Hollywood, but it can be a pretty darn brutal field in which to work.

I'd have given five stars if the authors had included examples, or better yet templates, for the design treatment and design documents. Given the amount of material given this is a surprisingly easy read. It is very well organized and it is very easy to find information your after without having to wade thorough extraneous information. This book should be on the bookshelf of anyone who is doing game design, computer or otherwise.

This book is proberly one of the best books that i had ever bought. For a wannabe game developer like me, this book gave me the insight toward what i should expect. It gave in detail what one should know to make themselve a complete game developer. Wheter you are an artist or a programmer, this book will help you guide yourself toward a sucessful carrer in this field.

I gave this book a less than stellar rating because it is simply hard to read. Following all the acronyms and financial terms was hard enough, but the book was written too much like a text book for brokers and financial gurus. That being said, the information in this book is of the 5 star quality and is well worth the effort of digging for if one is considering any kind of investing in the stock market, especially the high tech sectors.

The sarcastic wit and biting humor found in the pages are a real bonus, the authors make their points and then add interesting quotes, articles or they simply point out the patently obvious (making the point that the information wasn't all that obvious to millions that lost billions of dollars in bad investments).

Bubba Greaterfool is their name for the poor sucker that bought into the hype, didn't know what he was doing, probably never heard of the great tulip market, thought that the sky was the limit and then got stuck holding the empty bag as the hot air was expelled from the over inflated stocks that made up the tech stocks of 96-00. My main complaint with this book is that it isn't written in a way that would appeal to or be read by the general public, Bubba especially. And he is the guy that really needs this information.

I would highly recommend reading this to anyone that handles their own stock investments or plans too, the information is too valuable to ignore and the insight can be used to gauge other markets besides just tech stocks (remember the silver fiasco in the early eighties?) As for casual readers I would recommending passing on this offering as it is just too much work to read, but keep it in mind if you ever consider buying that stock that just can't possibly do anything but go up...

Clark and Neill have done it again. With a combination of clarity and foresight spiced with humor, Net Value is a guide book for looking at tomorrows investing today. For an insightful and revealing look at the value of Internet-related stocks, this book is excellent.

This book is timely, up-to-date and makes some predictions which are proving to be amazingly accurate. Its tounge-in-cheek prose makes for a great read - I have a much better understanding of the dotcom land after reading this - highy recommended

Been with the computer industry for 10 years, ever since the 386's back in the 80's. Finally decide to take the stupid exams. Bought this book because it seemed informative. Took it back for refund after 10 days. You could probably pass it with this book, but if you're an old wiz, who needs everything to be clear and precise, don't bother with it. It's too simple in both the Core and OS areas. To be truthful, I haven't taken the exam yet, but I with my experience in the computer field, this book is too simple. I would recommend something else for those new to this field. About the software that's included, I guess it's okay. Their website didn't seem to be up on March 2, 2001. Haven't tried the site on later dates yet. Well hope this was helpful to those who's looking for A+ books.

Today I took both of the exam and passed with moderate score. This book did help me pass the exam. My review of this book is as follows: First of all, this book is not a cram session book. This book contains informations that you don't need for the exam. If you need to cram, I would suggest that you stay away from this book. Book offers alot of information that will help you pass the exam and then some. However, in the DOS/Win section, book lacks content and information. If you are new to windows 3.11 and especially DOS, you will have difficult time understanding the material offered in the book. Friends told me that "A+ for Dummies" is pretty good book. In any case, I would recommend this book to all people seeking A+ certification. This book also holds its value not like other cram session books. With this book you would actually want to keep in your shelf for reference purposes. My second resource for for the A+ exam came from This site has excelent overview of the exam and practice exams. I would also recommend that you take both of the exam while it is fresh on your brain! Good Luck.

I found this book is very informative and helpful for anyone looking to get his/her A+ Certification. The 2 min drills, test at the end of the chapter, and the test on the CD that comes with are wonderful to prepare you.

I have never been more disappointed with a book purchase. I have been a Web project manager since they were just "Web pages" and have grown with the profession to becoming a Web-based "enterprise" manager. Based on the book summary in this and other venues, including its own cover, this book promised to provide an encapsulation of the process and techniques that would help streamline my own processes and enhance my professional library. This could not have been more misguided.

The author used very few specific, real-world Web project examples, and when these were invoked, they almost always referred back to the author's company's own Web site. It would be impressive or at least appropriate had the example Web site been an "enterprise" system of applications, functionality, backend integration, usability and design; however, it was a simple site with HTML pages, which, though the book purports they are dynamically rendered from a database, may as well have been static for the flatness of the content --not customized, not personalized, not data-driven. More sincere would have been to describe the site content as contextual, but certainly not dynamic.

The word "enterprise," although overused these days, has at least kept its generic meaning of some sort of intense undertaking, or a comprehensive, integrated endeavor. So placing the word in the title of the book implies that the content will reflect that same or similar thread. I am appalled that instead, I was treated to oversimplified arguments using non-industry-standard language; the endorsement of entry-level development tools like Front Page and PageMill; less attention paid to content than to hit counters (which have no place on an Enterprise Web system); and pedantic discourses on, of all things, hyperlinks. If a reader needs to be taught that hyperlinks will generally have a different color and be underlined, and that clicking on one will load the page into your browser, replacing the page you're currently viewing, then the reader is not an enterprise-level manager, but is rather your neighbor selling beanie babies on AOL.

Furthermore, the writer is a frames apologist, which raised instant and vivid red flags on my amateur detector. The author acknowledges that there are reasons not to use them, but he pushes for them anyway; he does not say that the reasons are, namely, proven unreliability in search engines, difficulty in printing, and poor usability in terms of bookmarking, nor that frames have been considered "cheats" to creating good, simple, clean, professional code. He mistakenly asserts that download speeds are faster with frames than using single pages, though an expert knows that navigation buttons and other images are cached and reload quickly. He does not pass along for the reader's benefit the idea that though they remain supported by browsers, frames have been widely dismissed in the professional Web development world.

This review may beg the question of why I bought a book like this if I considered myself such an "expert." I maintain an office library for my clients, who often require solid documentation to support decisions that I as a manager, my designers, or my developers may make. It goes without question that when I can point to not my own but a published "expert's" educated recommendations, along with a high-profile, professional Web site to corroborate, the confidence factor for the whole project increases. (In that light, may I recommend Collaborative Web Development by Jessica Burdman, and Creating Killer Interactive Web Sites -- not the similarly titled David Siegel one, but the one by Andrew Sather, Ardith Ibanez, and Stefan Grunspan, who excelled at producing real enterprise sites before they were called that.) These types of books are absolutely valuable to beginners and experts alike.

I don't question that this book could be helpful to a newbie: there are practical guidelines to steer the poor marketing guy thrown into creating a Web page through the morass of questions and confusion and political messes in corporate settings. I think that the inexperienced person who seems to be the target for this book would be a lamb led to slaughter if the project truly were an "enterprise" system. And for the person even barely experienced enough to run an enterprise Web project, this book is not only underwhelming, but it's also misleading, elementary, and poorly supported by professional examples, all of which make it inappropriate to its cover copy, target audience, and cost.

Despite all the gloomy news about e-business, our company is jumping in and this book made it so much easier. We tried to get help from a consultant who cost us many times the cost of this book and was of practically no use at all - talked over our heads most of the time and was not able to say anything clearly even when it was perfectly simple. Skip the "experts" and try this book.

Jesse Feiler has done it again. I have read two of his prior books and was again impressed by his clarity and his special knack for formatting and presenting information - he makes it easy to understand and to apply. Having played a role in a major site launch, I wanted to fill in the holes in my knowledge in preparation for the next go round. Jesse covers all the bases. Although the book is superb for executives approaching this responsibility for the first time, it's also a valuable reference for the already initiated. Best suggestion: give copies to all of the key people in your organization - it will make them more comfortable and enhance their contribution.

PCB Basics is just as it says--basic. It gives you a very brief overview of what PCBs are and how they are manufactured. It goes into some amount of detail in how a "typical" PCB is constructed, but that is about all. For someone with almost no knowledge about PCBs specifically, it gives a nice overview of some basic vocabulary.

My biggest complaint about this book is that it seemed outdated, despite the most recent edition of it being published at the very end of 1997. The technology it discusses is typically mid-1980s or very early 1990s. I don't know if the PCB manufactures are that behind the times, but I find it hard to believe that the current drilling machines are still communicated to via punch tapes and that customers are still sending their CAD files via data tapes.

Fortunately, the technology being a little outdated doesn't affect the primary discussion much--how a PCB is manufactured. While the tools may be a little more sophisticated the basic process is still the same.

This is a decent book if you want a basic introduction to PCBs, but don't count on it for a large amount of detail or any design help.

This book was a good introduction for someone completely unfamiliar with PCB's. The other reviewers are very correct that it is out of date by at least 10 years, but it is a good book.

There are plenty of PCB books out there, but Flatt's Printed Circuit Board Basics seems to be the only one that brings it all together in a basic, short, orderly format. If you don't mind searching through four or five hundred pages for basic info on PCBs then the other books are fine. But why do that, when Flatt's book does it for you.

He gives you a good idea of the steps of how a standard PCB is manufactured. Although a few steps maybe outdated (ex. punch cards). There are even some IPC and Mil-Spec standards given, but here again some standards maybe outdated (but you can find the latest versions on the web).

The title of the book says it all. Get the book if you want a basic foundation on PCBs.

This was one of the volumes in the History of the American Cinema series that I was most looking forward to, and while a good book it fails to measure up to the best in the series. Prince never seems to be able to offer the insight of Cook (in vol. 9) or the mastery of Koszarski (in vol. 3). I had hoped for more about an era that looms as large in the public imagination as that decade does, yet Prince is unable to meet the challenge.

All 10 volumes of this magnificent Series, founded and edited by Charles Harpole, are now (Oct. 2003) published by Scribner/Thomson/Gale and the University of California Press. The latter does the paperback versions at vastly lower prices. Movie scholars and buffs should own the whole series in hardback and will the books to their children, because this is very likely the only multi-volume series on American movies ever to be done... given publishing business these days. And, no library of any size should be without the whole Series.

Stephen Prince's A New Pot Of Gold details the crisis of the 1980s in American film when Hollywood faced challenges from rising costs and stagnant ticket sales. Both are excellent histories of different eras in American filmmaking.

I sent off for this book cause I was interested in the history of Video games found in the arcade from the mid 70's. I live in the UK, and you cannot get this book from (...), so I sent off to the US of A, and it turned up right on time. Now this is a very good book, packed full of details, and covering the complete history of the industry, BUT NOT THE ARCADE HISTORY, BUT THE HOME CONSOLE HISTORY. Saying that, I would have bought this book anyway.

This book is one of the best sources for the history of video games. Anyone that grew up playing video games in the late 70's and early 80's will appreciate the good memories that this book will bring back. I especially enjoyed the book because it took me back to my childhood and to a time when video games were new and exciting and it may do the same for you.

This book covers everything from the begining of video games through the Playstation one. It is a great book for learning the history of video games. Plenty of pictures will remind you of past systems and systems you have never seen before. An exelent book for any video game collector or anyone in the industry.

The problem with the several texts available on digital copyright or Digital Rights Management is that the topic demands a treatment from at least three different perspectives: namely legal, technical and business. There are several books that try to tackle the topic of digital copyright from a legal viewpoint, and this one is clearly coming from a technical perspective. Legal issues are covered, but rather superficially. More surprisingly the crucial business issues and models that are driving interest in DRM are barely mentioned and there is no dicussion of the business models that are working and those that are not. Disappointingly many of the technical issues are also fudged in a way that will leave non-technical audiences confused, and those who are following technical developments frustrated. The fact is that, technically at least, DRM is an area where approaches, technologies and standards are all in rapid development and the industry has failed to converge on any single direction. This book's effort to offer a comprehensive review of available products means that it risked redundancy before it was published, as many of the companies and technologies have ceased to be relevant. What the world still needs is a book on DRM that reviews the law, discusses the business models (and consumer needs) that are driving developments, and describes fundamental approaches in a way that will remain relevant whatever product Microsoft may impose on us all next year. Unfortunately this book intrigues enough to encourage one to want to know more about DRM, but never really provides the answers.

As noted below, DRM consists of legal, technical and business issues and anyone trying to provide an overview of all three has their work cut out for them. Particularly in the early chapters of the book, these authors give it a good try.

Unfortunately, the biggest problem with the book is that they try to treat the technology standards and products available on the market, and the market is just changing too quickly for that to be for more than just a superficial look. Too much of what they discuss is already outdated, out-of-business, merged with other offerings or otherwise defunct. Not the fault of the authors, just the nature of the DRM market.

This book is:

Not a good read if you already understand the basic issues and hope to get more insight into the technology-- go to the web for that.

Absolutely a good read if you want to become familiar in a basic way in the underlying issues. Part 1 of the book is really useful reading even to help people who are pretty familiar with the topic structure their thinking.

This book combines a business strategist's view of the DRM space with a sound explanation of the underlying technology, and also explains how both have evolved over the past decade. It's rare to find both views in any book, particularly one about an emerging software market. Usually, insights into markets like this book provides require purchasing research reports and speaking one-on-one to industry insiders. So, save yourself $10,000 and three weeks of work ... buy the book.

I thought this book is on investing on stocks in the internet. It is not. It is mostly a theoritical book talking about "internet stocks". It was not even clear to me what he meant by the internet stocks. I am sorry to rate it as single star. I am returning this book because it does not serve my purpose.

There is a new type of stock on the market, the Internet stock, which are unlike any other type of stock. You need new evaluation methods and analytical techniques to evaluate their potential and risk. In his book, the author gives you ideas on how to analyze Internet stocks.

After a few spectacular boom-and-bust cycles it has become clear to most sensible observers that Internet stocks are real, and will be an essential part of the economy in the future, but also that many highly-touted stocks are terrible investments. The old accounting rules and valuation theories don't apply, but the new rules don't work any better. Companies founded and backed by people who were yesterday's success stories end up tomorrow's disasters. Other companies that break all the rules hit it big. Finally there is a book that offers every investor practical guidance on how to separate winners from losers. This isn't one of those play-it-safe books that tells you to look for companies so perfect you'll never find one; Professor Newton understands that you are buying Internet stocks to win big, and therefore have to take the chance of losing big. But this is also a book that takes risk seriously, and steers the reader away from the insubstantial stocks without sound business models. The book assumes nothing but some common sense, yet teaches an investment discipline that is every bit as professional as you will find anywhere on Wall Street or in Silicon Valley.