electronics-industry

This book, as well as the many tales of the ENIAC, are factually incorrect. This was even proven by a federal judge in the state of Minnesota.

On October 19, 1973, US Federal Judge Earl R. Larson signed his decision following a lengthy court trial which declared the ENIAC patent of Mauchly and Eckert invalid and named Atanasoff the inventor of the electronic digital computer -- the Atanasoff-Berry Computer or the ABC.

Mr. McCartney does a great job of ignoring the facts that were proven in the case,and instead believes the hearsay, and tarnished depositions that were later recanted.

Scott McCartney has written an excellent counterbalance to the current literature on the invention of the computer. It is a fine contrast to Herman Goldstine's book on the subject. Here, we see a johnny-come-lately view of the great mathematician John von Neumann, a man whose profound insight into the future value of an all-electronic calculating machine gives him the shared title of inventor of computer science (along with A. Turing), not the computer. This book leaves us no doubt, it was Eckert and Mauchly's creation, a plum that many others wanted credit for once it matured. The general purpose electronic computer is fittingly the invention of an electrical engineer (Eckert) and a visionary physicist (Mauchly). This is also a good resource on the entry by women into the world of computers. I was only disappointed that McCartney did not include a bit more of the technical, engineering details about ENIAC, and its comparison to the COLOSSUS, perhaps in an appendix.

Eniac is exciting; as riveting as the best fiction. What this book shines at is telling the story of people. I felt I really knew the players, felt the politics swirling, and the ache of frustration Mauchle and Eckert must have felt by the time I finished. The author found many rare photographs I've never seen in print before.

My mind is changed about the history of the first computer. After checking the author's facts against what I thought I knew, I discovered that, as Will Rogers said, "It's not what we don't know that gets us in trouble, it's what we do know that 'taint so." McCartney's book is an important work of scholarship, not yet another candy-coated trip down core memory lane.

Bottom line: Eniac is a book worth reading and worth owning. Read it, visit a library and use the excellent bibliography to check the author's conclusions.

There was a lot I could relate to in this book. As a twenty-something college grad with a useless liberal arts degree living in Seattle during the dot.com boom, I was in the same boat as Mike Daisey. I even applied for a customer service job at Amazon.com back when Mike did, but never heard back (after reading this book I realize I probably didn't quite meet the quirky/over-educated profile they were looking for). However, anyone who's ever done customer service will immediately relate to Daisey's tales of dogmatic training classes, unpleasant customers, metrics-obsessed micro-managers, and the wide array of characters you find inhabiting the CSR position.

Once Daisey is promoted out of customer service into the nebulous "Business Development" department, the book loses some of its steam. Not because there aren't more amusing tales of co-workers and pointless busy work, but because Daisey tries to turn his personal story into a commentary on the rise and fall of Amazon.com (if not the entire dot.com industry). When he discusses the folly of Pets.com, it's nothing we haven't already heard, nor does it bring any additional insight to the countless news stories and books on the dot.com boom and bust.

I also found his self-analysis to be a bit overdone. For the most part it didn't bother me, but by the end of the book he seems too determined to find meaning in his time at Amazon.com, when it is clear there is none.

It also struck me as ironic that he could find so much fault in Jeff Bezos and the Amazon.com organization. If anything, he got exactly what he wanted -- material to write and perform with.

Self-described Gen X slacker and dilettante (and now author and comedian) Mike Daisey responded to the following ad in the *Seattle Weekly*:
CUSTOMER SERVICE TIER 1: LAME TITLE - COOL JOB. He says "the rest of the ad mentioned good pay, flexible hours, and a 'hip and quirky work environment." Thus began his endeavours within our Host here at Amazon.com. In the beginning, he says, life in Amazon Customer Service "was half socialist boot camp and half college party dorm." He later was promoted to "Business Development." It is an often humourous glimpse within the belly of this beast - fleas and all. (I was going to say "warts and all," but then we're talking about Dog Years here - and there is some discussion in the book about employees bringing their dogs to work, and I'm going to talk about Pets.com in a minute - so I modified the metaphor.)
I don't know how true the information is - some of it would explain events that have occurred in this reader's experiences with Amazon.com. Hmmm. And his description of the Dot.com frenzy, especially the rise and fall of Pets.com, is entertaining and astute. Darn, I miss that sock puppet dog!

Alright, so Mike Daisey is one of the many who experienced the frenzied storm of life at a dot com. The reason I enjoyed 21 Dog Years so much is that it's about much more than that. If I were to take a stab at it I'd say the real kernel of the story is Daisey's relationship with work in general; Amazon is a bit of a red herring. He gives a genuinely funny accounting of how a guy from northern Maine finds himself temping in Seattle, disaffected and primed for the seduction of stock options and the chance to make history. This isn't just Daisey at Amazon. This is everyone 5+ years out of their liberal arts education and wondering just what the hell 50, 60, 70 hours of their life every week is worth. What are we trying to prove? What's really important? 21 Dog Years begs these questions as we follow Daisey on a most entertaining ride through dot com culture. This book is a treat you'll be trading amongst the cubes.

Readers who found this book lucid and helpful must be part of the editorial staff or the publisher's company.

After reading other's negative comments and passing them off as cursory and badly evaluated, I bought the book anyway. To my surprise, the negative comments were understated. The book was poorly written, has enormous gaps in the telecommunications area as related to the practical buildout of an ISP at both the hardware and business level. I returned the book after 10 days of thorough and painful reading. I cannot recommend someone spend money on this book. My apologies to the author but this is an honest response. The author could also use a few more years of grammar and composition before he publishes another book. I'm sure he knows his field but he simply cannot communicate it.

El libro muestra paso a paso las diferentes necesidades y actividades necesarias para diseñar una infraestructura ISP. Comenzando desde los aspectos teóricos de arquitectura, infraestrucutra, ruteo, administración de red, seguridad, etc; hasta los aspectos legales u organizacionales del ambiente Internet-ISP.
A mi criterio, temas que faltaron fueron: Primero modelos matemáticos y/o prácticos para el dimensionamiento de las troncales telefónicas (acceso dial up) y ancho de banda WAN . Segundo diferentes posibilidades y escenarios de interconexión internacional. Este último aspecto basado en ISPs fuera de los Estados Unidos.
Como conclusión es un libro ideal para estudiantes de ingeniería con bases intermedias de internetworking.

I am non american, so that I can't evaluate the style of the author or his business capacity... Nevertheless, I think that this is one of the few books on this topic who presents a general view on ISP architecture and business. If someone knows an other book on this topic, I am interested in!!
It's not a book for specialist, you must not expect to configure cisco routers with it. But if you already know the basic of networks, it's a good introduction to ISP

When I was trained as a historian, I came to realize that it is very important that contemporaries of an important events interview as many people as often as possible while the events unfold. These perspectives provide the key touchstones for the ultimate histories of the events. Usually such interviews are done by journalists. And that is what Robert Spector has done with the book, Amazon.com. I commend him for fulfilling that important role.

Those who want to understand what Amazon.com's brief history means for the New Economy, new business models, best practices in leadership and management, and its own future will have to look elsewhere. The book has almost no analysis of the material included here. Think of this book as though it were a series of magazine articles written over the last few years about Amazon.com and Jeff Bezos.

Mr. Spector makes an attempt to build a theme around the concept of Get Big Fast, first articulated in print by Robert Reid in the 1997 book, Architects of the Web. Amazon.com obviously pays attention to this idea based on the report on page 97 that the company handed out T-shirts with Get Big Fast written on them at its first employee picnic in 1996. But he fails to develop all of the dimensions of the point. How does this concept affect the stakeholders in Amazon.com (customers, users, partners, employees, suppliers, shareholders, and the communities the company serves)? How can the concept be adjusted to reflect changes in the company's external environment? How should a new company apply the concept? There is an important debate today about whether Amazon.com's current direction will or will not pay off for customers, employees, or shareholders. That debate is largely ignored in the book. That's an important omission that greatly limits the book's value.

I do recommend reading the book. It did add details to my knowledge about Amazon.com which I am sure will be valuable to me in the future as an author, reviewer, associate, and customer of Amazon.com.

This book is a good example of one form of the communications stall: failing to communicate what people are most interested in causes missed opportunities to make progress at a rapid rate.

Keep asking your questions about Amazon.com, and someone will eventually answer them. Perhaps it will be Amazon.com itself. That would be welcome.

The most telling detail on Amazon in this book was on page 132: When publishers and authors asked Bezos why Amazon.com would publish negative reviews, he (said) Amazon.com "was taking a different approach, of trying to sell all books...the good, the bad, and the ugly...doing that, you actually have an obligation...to let truth loose.'"

Whichever publishers and authors those were, they epitomize the sort of thinking that a new business model sweeps away. When someone responds negatively to their product they seek to silence that person. Failing that, they repackage the same product. If that doesn't work, they rename the product. Then they present the product in a different size. Anything, abosolutely anything, but listen to the customer who gripes.

I don't think Spector grasps the depth of this change. When Amazon gives a forum to ordinary people to speak where previously only "professionals" could, that's as profound a shift as from monarchy to democracy. Giving equal space on the electronic bookshelf to an arcane book on geology and a convenience store bestseller is as revolutionary as Martin Luther's 95 theses getting equal billing with the pronouncements of the pope. In terms of sales, if I can buy what I want instead of just what the "professionals" want me to buy, I'm going to buy more.

Most of the other factors in Amazon's success have been done before: hiring smart people, working long hours, providing great customer service...but no other retailer ever had a selection larger than the Library of Congress. And no other retailer ever gave customers around the globe a public forum for feedback. I would have liked to have seen more on this unique aspect of Amazon in GET BIG FAST, and less of the sort of business school platitudes that make up the "Takeaways" sections at the end of each chapter.

When I first checked Sloppy Firsts out of the library, I thought that it was just going to be another old teen novel that just focuses on High School. Its not. Megan Mccafferty has expressed the real issues of teen life. The book is OTTAWA SUN'S best BET book of the year in 2001. Its Laugh out loud funny and entertaining. You can't put it down. It's basically is the diary of Jessica Darling who has lots of real issues. Her best friend moves away and this guy is totally obsessed with her.She has no clue what to do but her friends and family help her out alot. Its good to read for anyone between 15 and 99. I loved this book and I think you should check it out yourself.

I have been selling fulltime on eBay for the last several years. There is nothing in this book that is not readily available elsewhere. And publishers, listen up: I'm getting a little tired of the text being padded with copious white space to make the tome more weighty.

Some parts of the book are out of date, some parts are just plain wrong. (It is NOT forbidden to sell food on eBay. It is NOT hazardous to buy or sell used clothing on eBay. On the contrary, it is a huge market. The list goes on and on.)

To be fair, trying to explain eBay is like describing a fast-moving sports car. Now you see it, now you don't. But I was not convinced the author was a seasoned eBay seller, merely a seasoned author of "about" books.

This book is neither a good book on selling over eBay not a good book on setting up a company. Trying to be "all things" to all people, it comes out as very superficial and almost anecdotal. Don't let the pagecount fool you: the 548 pages, with better layout (almost half of each page is white space) could be cut down to 200 or so, without much information being missed. And then, there's the dubious use of the information left. Having read the more technical "eBay Hacks" at the same time, though not focused on the business side of things, I found it to be a lot more useful. If you're looking to set up an eBay shop, go to eBay and read about it, and save yourself $17.47 in the process!

Thanks for writing this great guide to eBay. I wanted to help my mother get started selling antiques on eBay and you've written the perfect book for someone like her -- she's smart, but she's just starting out and needs all the help she can get. Thanks for saving me the grief of trying to show her myself -- you're much better at it anyway!

This book is good for a general understanting of the consulting field. And I do recommend it, but if you are serious about consulting/contracting, you should supplement with two other books: "Janet Ruhl's Answers for Computer Contractors: How to Get the Highest Rates and the Fairest Deals from Consulting Firms, Agencies, and Clients" and if you are just starting in the programming field and want to learn exactly what you need to do and do it fast, then read: "The Secret Path to Contract Programming Riches..." Good luck to your career! ;)

This book certainly has its pluses and minuses. The fact that it was published in 1997 makes it somewhat obsolete in some critical areas. None the less there is some solid advice given by the author.

The first chapter defiens the many types of consultants fairly well. However, it does fail to mention much about the Networking Engineer, whcih is a critical part of today's busienss environment. The Meet The Consultants section is fairly user friendly. Earning potential is key but again you must interpret this in terms of 1997 dollars which is more inflated now.

Also critical discussions regarding health insurance and marketing are explored here. Some good advice is given here at the beginning. A little bit overdone in other spots as a person exploring the industry will become overwhelmed. So many of these aspects are situational. The brokering part is presented in such a dry format that its hard to read after 30-40 pages.

The glossary might be of help for those who want to explore more information. However, a new version is definitely in order to bring this book current.

This book provides a thorough overview of the computer consulting industry and a good sense of the day-to-day business tasks associated with maintaining a consulting career.

If you are an absolute rookie in the computer field and have little idea of the consulting options available to you, your perspective may widen a bit and you might find yourself having more questions than you did before you started reading this book, which is a good thing. So, you will probably want to supplement your research a bit more once you have narrowed down your consulting career choices.

But, if you are already in the computer field, this book has about all the information you will need to base a career-changing decision on. There are plenty of resources listed to help further your knowledge on the consulting field. If you have the time, you might want to take a look at the author's subsequent book, "Janet Ruhl's Answers for Computer Contractors", which can be a very good supplement to this book.

~ Michael Nigohosian, author - "The Secret Path to Contract Programming Riches"

Dot.con: The Greatest Story Ever Sold lacks the same level of insight and originality. For most readers who stay abreast of current events in technology and the Internet, there is not a lot of new information in the book. The Internet bubble crashed some years ago, so a book on the subject can't be expected to be too original.

The book details the anecdotes of such Internet personality as Jeff Bezos, Mary Meeker, James Cramer, Jeff Walker, and Henry Blodgett. Nonetheless, such stories have been detailed in numerous places numerous times.

Cassidy does provide some rather good insights of the personality and mindset of Alan Greenspan, and he does a great job of showing an economic overview of the atmosphere that helped create the Internet bubble and how it led to its ultimate demise. If anything, Cassidy's brief biography of Greenspan is a well-written defense of the Fed Chairman.

But for anyone who reads Forbes, Wired, or the New York Times on a regular basis, much of the details of Dot.con have already been told. This is proven in the book's bibliography, which references such periodicals numerous times.

The first thing you'd say about this book is that, however clever the title, it's erroneous: this isn't the story of a "con" at all, it's the story of a speculative bubble.

The whole point is that no-one was "conned" by the hot air. As Cassidy mentions from the outset, the prospectuses all contained large print health warnings in prominent places: "THIS COMPANY HAS NEVER MADE ANY MONEY, MOST LIKELY NEVER WILL" - but the punters still bought and bought. There were many psychological and sociological factors at play, but deception was not one of them.

For all that, Dot Con is well researched, well written and entertaining into the bargain (my copy was the paperback second edition in which the typos & manifest errors spotted by keen Amazonians (none of which, in my view, was earth-shattering) had been corrected). Cassidy describes briefly and competently the history of the internet and the general financial environment of the last 50 years, and then takes you into the maelstrom of the bubble from 1995 to 2001, all of which he portrays in suitably stunned-mullet fashion. The new edition features a lengthy epilogue which surveys the wreckage and covers the subsequent inquiry into the practices of investment banking firms and their uneasy relationships with their research analysts, all of which is still very current.

While he doesn't really dwell on it, I think Cassidy would come out in favour of more market regulation and intervention: He's especially critical of the Fed's approach to monetary policy and the atmosphere on the street which led to the boom in the first place.

In some ways (though it's hardly fashionable to say so) the investment banking firms and fund managers were as much victims of this as anyone: while the roof is blowing off the market and the choice is to join in and make hay, or watch your competitors annexing large portions of your market share while you sit on your hands, it is a singular Wall Street firm indeed which chooses to sit the boom out.

In any event this is a thoughtful and well put together book and serves as a pretty good overview of some of the most remarkable times in the history of modern finance.

New Yorker financial writer, John Cassidy, says it all in this brilliantly rendered, highly entertaining account of the biggest economic scandal of the last twenty-five years--Enron who?--the crash and burn of the relentlessly hyped dot.com sector. One part historic overview, two parts searing indictman of the financial-technological-media nexus, Dot.Con--as the Wall Street Journal said last week--will be read by generations of Wharton and Harvard B school grads still unborn. Not since John Kenneth Galbraith have we had a popular economist with this kind of reach--or depth. Bravo.

Altough a good read, and well investigated, I was expecting to read about the Rise and Fall of Atari, not the Rise and Fall of Noland Bushnell and the other people that worked there.

I expected to read about all Atari Products, both the good ones and all the flops they made, and the ones that never made public light. I expected a trip down memory lane. I expected too see at least a couple of pictures and photos to complement the book and what it talked about...

Yet, the book mostly talks about Nolan Bushnell, the guy who founded Atari, and it talks about the VCS. The Atari 5200, Atari 400 and Atari 800 are mentioned briefly (1 or 2 instances), there is no talk about all the other computers that followed (XE, XL, etc), the Atari's ST, the Lynx, the Jaguar, the Atari Portfolio (remember those?)...

ZAP! The Rise and Fall of the People at Atari, or ZAP! The Rise and Fall of the Atari VCS is a more accurate title.

I know the book was written in 1984, but it could have been revised... even as today, Atari is still kicking a little making video games alone.

Being an Atari 2600 fanatic during my youth and a collector today, I was eager to purchase this book. I wanted to read only about Atari--not about Nintendo and other more modern systems that most video game books get into--so this little book seemed the way to go. I was very disappointed after reading it, however. I was hoping to read about the different games Atari put out. I know which games I liked, but which ones were the most popular and which were disappointments? I was intrigued by a question on the back cover: "Who decided the home version of Pac-Man was good enough to release?" (the main reason I bought the book). Alas, this question is never answered! In fact, the home version of Pac-Man (as well as other games) is not really discussed at all! Only E.T. and Raiders of the Lost Ark are mentioned more than in passing because they did not sell well and were part of the reason Warner's stock went down. There is also no mention of the landmark game Adventure. Instead, Cohen concentrates on the characters in the business (the engineers, financiers, and marketing people). The parts I found to be the most interesting to me were on the origins of Pong, and the effect Colecovision and Intellivision had on Atari's dominance in the home video game market.

On the plus side, the book was very well-researched with a bibliography (mainly periodicals up to 1983) that is quite valuable. The author also offered excerpts from interviews with inside people at Atari. Cohen also seemed to have a firm grasp of computer technology. What takes away from this research is the style of writing, which sometimes seems like that of a college student. The book is not very focused, often jumping around to different subjects along with separate quotes added within the text. Cohen also repeated himself (sometimes almost word for word) throughout the book. Many paragraphs were spent describing the way principal actors at Atari dressed (i.e. like a hippie or a polished businessman). I agree with the previous reviewers that this book had and, unfortunately, still has a myriad of editing problems. The last line of the book even reads "Printed in the USA 1896"! It also would have been nice to see an additional reflection chapter that would take the book beyond 1983.

Still, if you are interested in Atari (especially on a business and marketing level), this book is probably the main source out there right now.

Cohen's book does a great job documenting the founding of Atari and introducing readers to the colorful personalities who worked there. At the time of its original publication (1984), it was one of the first books to do so (if not the first). Now, however, there are several books that chronicle the same events: Leonard Herman's Phoenix, and Steven Kent's The First Quarter, for example. These latter books are also more comprehensive than Zap!, since they don't focus only on Atari but include the history of Nintendo, Sega, Sony and others.
In retrospect, it is fun to read the author's predictions when he wrote the book in the fall of 1983. The videogame market had not yet collapsed completely. Nintendo had not arrived, and Warner had not sold off Atari. Cohen discusses Atari's potential bright future with telecommunications projects, the likelihood that computers will make videogame systems obsolete, possible competition with Nolan Bushnell, and videodisk arcade games becoming the wave of the future. Now that we are actually in the future, we know that none of these things came to fruition.
Zap! is still a good reference and an interesting read for those who are curious about the beginnings of the videogame industry's once-dominant company, Atari. However, since the manuscript was written some 18 years ago, don't expect a lot of revelations or anecdotes that haven't already been written about in many subsequent books.

I have had my MSCE+I and CCNA certifications since 1999, and I am an experienced Windows network administrator. I purchased this book when I decided to round out my resume with an A+ certification. I just want to voice my agreement with those who have given a similar rating, especially with respect to the O/S Technologies Exam and networking in general. This text is full of errors and emphasizes legacy technology. Regardless of whatever potential value it might have as an aid to pass the certification examinations, this text could very well do more harm than good as a general training tool for a novice technician working in a real-world production environment due to its many errors and a novice's inability to tell a good text from a bad. In my humble opinion, one should simply not buy this book.

I'm somewhat new to computers so I recently took a course at a local school to get help passing the A+ test. The school used this book for the class.

Per advice, I bought the Transcender A+ Certification Test software, which I'm told is the one study test that most closely resembles the actual test given by Comptia.

After taking a few of the practice exams, I found the book to fall far short of the information and knowledge base required to pass the exam. Not thrilled with the idea that the actual test does not test one's ability to perform well in the real world, I am looking for a comprehensive book that will offer the information I need. As it's title states it to be a prep for the A+ test, by definition, it will disappoint most readers.

The test is much more focused on troubleshooting scenarios and trickery, and alot of it on very outdated hardware. The book does deal with the types of hardware and software issues discussed on the test, but does not take the information to the level one needs to do well on the A+ Test. I found the software troubleshooting section to be very weak and very general, and the index is so poorly written that it makes the desired information (if available at all) extremely difficult to find.

Perhaps a good book for someone who just wants to learn the basics about PC hardware and software, but it is a poor prep for the actual test if you're someone just getting into the field. The questions in the book are much different than what one will actually find in the new adaptive test for 2001. (Go to Transcenders.com and download free test samples)

Hopefully, a book will come out that properly prepares one for taking the adaptive test, but I haven't found it yet.

A+ is updating exams and the new exams are being released shortly. You want to find a book that will give you fighting chance witht he new objectives. You want to find a book wriiten by a trusted and respected name in the industry. You can all this and much more with the release of the A+ Deluxe edition.

David Groth has given us what would appear to be an excellent breakdown for the exam. Being first in this case is a good thing and the material included is more then the objectives and the exam require. As if the expectation would be anything less with Groth.

Just short of 1000 pages, this book covers both the exams and has the explaantion in a easy to comprehend manner without over working the information. The author has gone to great lengths to ensure that everyone and anyone reading this book can understand the material, no matter what the technical level.

One of the most impressive parts of the book is amount of troubleshooting infomration included. Also the practice questions, of which there has to be more than a 1000 in the book and hundreds more on the cd, are excllent and in most case harder then the actual exam.

If that was all you got,then you would have a great start, but the deluxe edition has a second cd with 20 videos that have more hands on exercises. The cds also have bonus exams and flashcards making this one of the best values on the market today.

Overall this one great book and if you add the lab manual, then you just might have the best combination around so far.

First, this book is not to be taken too seriously. It is a tongue and cheek look at some of the more infamous dot.com flameouts in the last few years. If you love the website, then you will enjoy this book, as I did. However, if you are looking for an in depth examination of the tragic woes that hit the dot.com world, this is not your book. It is the often funny musings and rantings of man who saw the coming demise of the Internet Bubble while the New York brokerages were still puffing away about a never-ending new economy in their attempt to peddled extremely over priced stocks. A harbinger of doom, perhaps?

Second, this book is a quick and easy read, perfect for commuters or those who enjoy reading during television commercials. Segments of the book, concerning a particular company, tend to be no longer than a few paragraphs each.

Finally, this book does contain vast amounts of toilet humor, but again, any regular visitor to the website would expect nothing less from Pud, the author. Taken with a grain of salt, F'd Companies makes a nice afternoon appetizer.

Alright, those of you who aren't fans of f'dcompany.com I can understand your feelings about the book.. it is after all a "little" bit crass.

But seriously I read the website often and after hearing all the bad press about the book, I had to read it for myself. Surprisingly, I like it! For starters Pud does not change his tone for the book, he's crass on the site and he's crass on the book which to me, is honest. But mostly, I don't think he just regurgitates whats on the site.. he groups them into different segments and offers his views on why he thinks they went out of business PLUS he includes the amount of money blown for each f'd company.

So alright, its a rehash, but hey, you can get all of this in a nice, fun to read (in a Pud's way) digest without having to read through all the Joe Wang, ESC**W.com, racist, derogatory spam messages posted by some of the readers :)

My buddy likes to think "big ideas".. all the time, and I'm going to buy him this book as a gift and tell him, next time before he goes and claims discovery of the next "killer app", to see if its already in this book.. and if not, I'll listen to him ;)

Seriously, if you enjoy the site, you'll enjoy the book. I did.

I wish I could find another book as funny and informative as this one. It is definitely one of my favorites!