Tools Books

This is the type of book that makes you feel like you wish you had started the hobby 10 years ago and as such would be churning out the quality and creativity that resides within this book. You read this book and then let you mind be the guide to your creations. You will only get better after you have read this book.

You will find in this edition work from the 1990's and older work by lots of international artists and American artists Alice James, Jim Wallace, Tom Joyce, John Medwedeff, Stephen Bondi, Jeffrey Funk, Albert Paley, Toby Hickman, and many, many others. The author, Dona Meilach, recently passed away. I hope any new edition of this book includes all of the technical chapters,updates in all categories of making, more work by up-and-coming artists, a sturdier binding (a bit fragile for a reference book) and an expanded color section.Ironwork Today: Inside & Out St. Claire's Organic Sweets, Organic Ginger Snaps (1.5 oz)

The first edition of this book was an instant classic. This, the second edition is a long awaited update and still a classic. A "must have" book for artists, sculptors and metalworkers. It is among a very short list of books I recommend to new artist metalworkers.

The word "inspiration" in the sub-title is an understatement. The contents of this lavishly illustrated book include works by the finest metalworkers past and present. Techniques of metalworking rarely seen are discussed and illustrated step by step. The updated version includes over 50 new color photos, updated suppliers list and Internet information sources.

The book starts with basic tools and techniques. Then discusses the basics of metallurgy and moves on to step by step demonstrations by some of the worlds most renowned metalworkers such as Albert Paley, Daryl Meier and Christopher Ray among others. Each section is illustrated with examples produced using the techniques discussed. There is also a "Gallery of Details" taken from the work of the late Samuel Yellin.

A truely great book that should have never gone out of print.

I saw a recommendation for this book [..] and it sounded like just what I was looking for. My background in decorative iron has been limited to a cut-off saw, wire-feed welder, torch and grinder using cast decorations like finials and rosettes. This book was well worth the money and I not only learned a lot about methods that were shrouded in mystery to me, but also I got lots of great ideas about potential products I could make.

This book starts with an introduction to metal working and the retro movement for blacksmithing. It talks about all the common equipment you'd find in a blacksmith shop and what each piece does. Then it goes into different steels and the useful temperature ranges to work metals. It proceeds with how to make common bends and twists, animal heads and all sorts of other techniques. There is even a section on Damascus metal and how to make it.

The pictures in the book are fantastic and really help drive home some of the howt-to's sections as well as illustrate some very ornate artwork. There are many photographs both in color and black & white.

The only complaint I can think of is that even though it's a revision, some parts seem a bit dated. I would have liked to seen a comparison to help me choose between a gas and coal furnace for instance. But I highly recommend this book to anyone who is interested in decorative iron from the admirer to experienced builder.

Sweetest Job in Washington

The White House has a new executive pastry chef,
William "Bill" Yosses, whose last project was helping
to open lefty Paul Newman's new restaurant in
Westport, Conn. (Dressing Room: A Homegrown
Restaurant) where the emphasis is on locally grown and
organic foods.

As the top pastry chef, Yosses will be responsible for
dessert menus for state dinners and holiday
celebrations among other events. He got a taste of the
work recently when he served as a holiday pastry chef,
and has extensive experience at New York City
restaurants.

"Chef Yosses has impressed us from the start with his
original and delicious creations. He has a light touch
with desserts, and the enthusiasm with which he
approaches his profession makes him a real asset for
all of us in the White House," First Lady Laura said
in announcing the appointment.

Not in the White House press release: Yosses is also
co-author of the cookbook "Desserts for Dummies," an
Amazon.com review of which promised: "Before you know
it, you'll start creating desserts that you've only
dreamed of." -Mary Lu Carnevale

[...]

The book made me feel confident and I took on more and more recipes. They all came out wonderful. My family is trying a lot of new dishes out of Dessert for Dummies, and they love them all.

The recipes are great, beautiful, wonderful, and most importantly-just about fool proof! Try the lemon poppy seed cake with the blueberry topping. It alone I think was worth the price of the book. The only time I messed a recipe up was when I was to impatient to wait for a pan of custard to cool. Stunning recipes for a novice cook.

I went to school(BICC in Baltimore)for baking and pastry and can only wish that I had had these guys as teachers. Very informative with easy to use directions. They explain every thing very thoroughly and I gotta tell you the pie dough recipe is excellent. I am no longer afraid to attempt pie making!!! If you are into desserts and want a good book with some great recipes go for this one to start your collection. You just can't go wrong.

Many books on the subject of improving youth sports are written to create awareness of the importance of the subject, but say little of practical value on the way of doing this.

Other books treat the 'how' comprehensively but are as dry as fossilized bones.

The DGC avoids these two pitfalls admirably. It does a great job of describing and explaining the problems that youth sports programs have in the US (and in many other parts of the World), with such feeling, sensitivity and clarity that one cannot avoid being moved by the arguments.

Jim Thompson goes further, though, the DGC translates ideals into practical measures to build exemplary youth sports programs.

My organization is currently using the DGC as a blueprint to develop a soccer program in Mexico, and its lessons and arguments are as useful, relevant and potent here as they seem to be in the US, judging by the growth of The Positive Coaching Alliance.

The premise of the book is that winning is not a bad thing. It's not necessarily the only thing however. Thompson uses real life examples from youth through professional, where focusing on the positive, correcting the negative, and focus on improving have helped teams be successful.

It is our job as youth coaches to make sure we are building solid citizens, teaching them life lessons through sports, and helping them become the best athlete they can be. Winning happens to be a great side effect of this approach!

The book is great for coaches and parents alike!

Discussions of character in sports hinge on two sometimes competing beliefs. One holds that sports build character, the other that sports reveal it.

The case can be made that both ideas are valid. Character is regularly revealed in the way that players, coaches, parents and leaders of youth sports organizations (YSOs) conduct themselves on and off the field.

The "Sports Builds Character" belief is a trickier proposition. Who is to question that sports provides a wonderful setting for the development of poise, confidence, determination, resilience, self-sacrifice, courage? The list goes on, and it is not a coincidence that a strong involvement in sports was the common feature of those who tried to take back the plane on 9/11. Yet every Positive Life Skill associated with sports has a counterpart that can be learned equally well. And often more easily. If you can learn fair play and sportsmanship, you can also learn to cheat. If you can learn about commitment, you can also learn to quit on yourself and your teammates. Accountability and accepting responsibility: making excuses. Again, the list goes on.

Many of the adults involved in sports simply assume, based on their own experience, that the positive side of these character traits will emerge. In fact, without a concerted effort to use sports to teach positive Life Lessons, you might as well be flipping a coin.

Attention to these issues is a major focus of "The Double Goal Coach", the latest book by Jim Thompson. The author is founder of the Positive Coaching Alliance ..., an organization based at Stanford University which seeks "to transform the culture of youth sports so that sports can transform youth."

Like many books on the state of youth sports, Thompson chronicles the excesses. What sets the book apart are solutions to these problems based on research in the fields of education and sports psychology as well as lessons in organizational culture drawn from the business world. Theory then becomes practice through the presentation of many practical tools for establishing and maintaining a positive culture for youth sports. Coaches, parents and the leaders of YSO's will find things here that can be put to immediate use.

What is a Double Goal Coach? He or she is a coach who wants to win. Thompson makes clear that the Positive Coaching message is not anti-competitive or about "happy talk". This is not an invitation to go out and kick a ball around with Barney. Indeed, at a time when real competitions at Field Day have been reduced to (at most) a 50 yard dash, Thompson sees the competitive sports experience as an increasingly important, and rare, opportunity for the development of positive character traits - the second, and more important, goal of the Double Goal Coach. Because it's the character traits that will endure long after the ball's gone into the closet.

There are three elements to Double Goal Coaching. The first seeks to redefine winning, changing the definition from one based only on results (the "win at all costs" model, or waac - which so often becomes wacko!) to a "mastery approach" based on effort, learning, and a positive view of the value of mistakes. The essential difference in the approaches has to do with control. Results are so much in the control of others; with a mastery approach, control belongs to the athlete. What's interesting, though, is the research that shows that a mastery approach actually produces better performance than one where the focus is primarily on the scoreboard.

Next comes the concept of Honoring the Game. This is largely a proactive view of sportsmanship issues, based on what you do rather than what you don't do. Honoring the game involves developing and demonstrating respect for Rules, Opponents, Officials, Teammates, and one's Self (ROOTS).

The third element of the Double Goal model involves "Filling the Emotional Tank", motivation through encouragement and positive reinforcement. Again, the book provides a number of useful tools for coaches.

There is also a section of the book for Sports Parents. Thompson promotes the notion of the "Second Goal Parent", whose primary task is to be unconditionally supportive of their child, whose focus is on those Life Lessons and positive character traits, who recognize that their child's participation in sports belongs to the child, and who leave coaching to the coaches.

Thompson advocates a "systems approach" to developing positive cultures for youth sports, and his organization provides an integrated set of workshops for coaches, parents and leaders of YSOs. Where that's not in place, "The Double Goal Coach" will give the individual coach many ways create a more enjoyable environment for his or her team, and one where the players are much more likely to reach their potential as athletes. That a Double Goal approach will also be much more enjoyable and rewarding for the coach is no insignificant bonus.

This book covers some of the same topics as Thompson's classic, Positive Coaching. However, it has some new ideas in it, and also has some lessons learned since Positive Coaching was written. It also has a handbook-type approach - it gives you example talks, helps you plan a practice and also shows you ways to help you acquire Positive Coaching skills. I have found all of Jim Thompson's books enjoyable and enlightening.

Dreamtech has opened a new world to me. It is great to be able to log my dreams and look back at what is really important in my life. I recommend it to my friends and family.

I have not found anything like it on the market. I would highly recommend it to anyone that wants to understand their dreams. I think you get alot more for your money. A very good value.

Dreamtech has helped me reach a new understanding of my creative self. It has helped to reach my full creative potential. I think everybody can benefit from the power of the subconscience mind that Dreamtech releases.

Easy reading, nothing like it on the market. Author has great expertise of the subject matter. Highly recommended reading. Taps in James Redfield's new book, Celestine Vision, 1997.

I have only read about half of the book so far and already I have used many of the tips and scripts. All the scripts mentioned in the book are available online so you don't have do all that typing. Many of the hacks are not really hacks, but tips and recommendations on how to do things.
The only minor complain I have is that the book references other chapters, but you have to go back to the Table of Contents to find the page number for the chapter. I think each page should have the current chapter number on it.
Each page does have the hack number on it so it makes it easy to find a hack without going back to the table of contents.

If you use eBay (as a buyer or seller), this is the "user's manual" or best practices guide that should be part of your signup... eBay Hacks by David A. Karp.

Contents: Diplomacy and Feedback; Searching; Bidding; Selling; Working with Photos; Completing Transactions; Running a Business on eBay; The eBay API; Index

Most Hacks titles consist of 100 tips and tricks related to the subject matter being discussed. In eBay Hacks, you get an extra 25 for your money. What a deal! :-) Regardless of whether you're a complete newbie to eBay or you actually run an eBay storefront, you'll find things in here that will save you time and money on a regular basis. Reading the chapter and hacks on feedback, I learned that there are ways to prevent negative feedback even after it's been given. Since so much of who you are on eBay relates directly back to your feedback rating, this can be a critical factor in getting buyers to trust you (or others to sell to you). The chapter on bidding went into the act of "sniping", or bidding at the last second, so that you can stand a much better chance of not being overbid at the last second. I didn't realize there are third-party services that will do this for you automatically. No wonder I've lost some things I really thought I had nailed. Karp even goes into how best to compose photos that will draw people to your auction rather than send them away for something that looks more appealing.

Obviously, you can use eBay without this book and information. I'm sure you'll do fine. But the first time you find an auction miscategorized (because you were looking for that condition) and you launch a bidding strategy that gets you the deal of a lifetime for next to nothing, you'll wonder why you waited so long. Good stuff here...

Author: David A. Karp

Description:
eBay Hacks by David A. Karp
Published by O'Reilly ISBN 059610068X
Reviewed by Jim Lauria-HuNTUG member

From the introduction: "Essentially, you'll find in this book the tools to help you trade smarter and safer, make more money, and have fun doing it."

This second edition-revised and updated to June 2005-provides the eBayer with tips and tools (aka hacks) for successful bidding, buying and selling on the premier online auction web site.

I found the hacks provided by the author to be extremely helpful and informative, easy to use and understand. As a long time eBay seller I had become complacent with the tools and techniques which I had been using for months or even years. This book has given me new ideas and approaches to make my eBay business better.

Karp provides clever shortcuts and powerful tools to do all sorts of neat things like create better titles, listings and descriptions to fancier photographs (Hack 74) and even how to cultivate a good reputation and protect yourself and your $ (Hacks 25 & 85). He also provides warnings about your safety, privacy and money matters.

Included is a chapter on eBay's Application Programming Interface, XML, Perl, PHP and RSS and development of custom software apps that can be worked in to one's own business apps and can also be passed along to others-hey maybe even for a small fee!

The book is well written with plenty of photos, screen shots and lots of code to get you up and buying/selling in quick fashion. 438 pages that read through really quickly and are packed with plenty of good stuff.

I would recommend this title for anyone-novice or pro-who is or would like to make or save some money using eBay or just to have some fun while selling your wares. The book lists for $24.95-less online.

I give this one 5 stars.

One of my favorite activities in my spare time is buying and selling on eBay. It has quickly become the world's largest virtual mall of just about everything you can possibly think of. When I received this book I was eager to learn some of the "tricks of the trade" and found a lot of useful material, albeit some of it is geared towards power sellers and not the average user.

The book itself is packed with 125 "hacks" for eBay, which can range from the basics (leaving feedback) to the more complex (setting up your own online check-out). A lot of the hacks give you tweaks and twists on the normal way of doing things, or take a task and show you a different, sometimes a little more dynamic, way of doing it.

Some of the more advanced topics will only be feasible if you are a powerseller. The author covers a lot of third-party tools as well, which can quickly run into the big dollars if you are just selling a few things each week. However, there is a fair amount of material devoted to the mom and pop sellers, like many of us are. One of the shining points of this book is that it does show you how to do a lot of tricks yourself if you are willing to roll up your sleeves and play around with Perl.

However, the book is for more than just sellers. A lot of tips are there for buyers as well. Such things as how to snipe effectively, and how to take advantage of bid increments in the auction to get the item for the lowest price. Even though the author is writing for both parties, the buyer and seller, he does a good job of not taking advantage of one over.

A few of the topics he covers can be a bit controversial, depending on how you look at it. Things such as withholding feedback and sniping can be frowned upon by some -- but it is all perfectly legal in the world of eBay and the author tells you how to take advantage of it.

Overall, a good book for those who want to get more out of eBay than just the casual buyer/seller. If you want to kick-start your eBay selling career, this is one of the books you will want to have to help guide you; Whereas if you want to learn the tricks of the buying game, you couldn't have picked a better reference manual.

A good resource for faculty. Well written with nice integrated examples. I always recommend this book to faculty looking to develop rubrics for their teaching.

While it may not seem like it to students, grading is a very complex exercise for teachers and instructors. Anyone hoping to go into that line of work will have to learn about how complex and uncertain the art of grading can be, and this book is a strong compendium of current theory on such matters. An especially valuable aspect of this book is its coverage of the different schools of thought on whether grading is really an accurate assessment tool at all, and how all parties in the education process (students, teachers, administrators, parents, employers) have different conceptions of the usefulness and value of grades. But while this book is hugely informative at the practical level, beware of a few larger theoretical weaknesses. Frequently, certain practices that are currently held in high esteem become overused examples of larger concepts. The most glaring example is the inaccurately-titled chapter "Establishing Criteria and Standards for Grading" which is entirely about just one method, Primary Trait Analysis. At a higher level, this book assumes that all instructors will have the privilege of smaller class sizes, or welcoming administrative environments, in which experimenting with grading methods is possible or practical at all. Meanwhile this book (and many others like it) fails to distinguish between future advancements in theory and the real world in which such theories and practices have yet to be implemented on any appreciable scale. [~doomsdayer520~]

Do you love to teach but hate the grading process? That's where I was when I picked up this book. Very practically written, "Effective Grading" shows you how to choose the proper grading model for a class, how to motivate students through properly communicating your grading system, and how to structure your assignments to increase student learning. All this while drastically reducing the amount of time you need to spend on grading papers. Within a week of reading this book, I've made some drastic changes in my courses which will benefit both my students and myself.

I admit I was skeptical when I started this book--so many pedagogically oriented texts seem to sacrifice content and standards for "feel-good" solutions to education. However, I have found this book to offer excellent suggestions for every aspect of structuring classes to teach and evaluate what you most want your students to learn. In my college English classes, I've used variations of Primary Trait Analyses and Gateway Criteria and they have made a big difference in the levels of thinking and writing in my own students. Giving students specific guidelines allows them to focus on what's important about the assignment, set their priorities appropriately, and makes things much easier for me when the time comes for grading. I highly recommend this book.

Very Long Instruction Word (VLIW) architectures are efficient because they replace costly and power-consuming consuming hardware for detecting and scheduling Instruction-Level Parallelism (ILP); with that functionality supplied by a smart compiler. Furthermore, such smart VLIW compilers and architectures can achieve levels of ILP and power efficiency many times that from hardware schedulers alone. Fisher, Faraboschi and Young's book explains -- skillfully covering software, hardware, theory, application, and business factors -- how such architectures can enable enormous increases in the capabilities of embedded systems.

It's a fabulous read, engagingly styled, with generous research and practical perspective, authoritative with Fisher being responsible for this paradigm of simultaneously engineering the compiler and processor.

Practicing engineers -- both chip architects and embedded system designers -- will find the techniques they will need to use and develop VLIW-based systems. Instructors will value the rare juxtaposition of advanced technology with practical deployment examples, and students will enjoy the unusually engaging and mind-expanding chapter exercises.

That reader has a pretty strong idea, already, of how computers and compilers work, and is ready for a different kind of view. There are a few valuable differences here, compared to most discussions. The first is its emphasis on embedded systems. Loosely speaking, that's any computer that doesn't look like a computer: anti-lock brakes, iPods, microwave ovens, or the processor[s] internal to disk drives. Ignoring the tiny fraction with keyboards and screens, that's pretty much all of computing. The second distinctive feature of this book's viewpoint is it emphasis on the computer as a whole, including cooperating SoC components, operating systems and such, power management, and the instruction set processor itself. Programmers from the Windows/Unix world may be startled by the idea that the instruction set and processor data paths are variables, adjustable to the task at hand. The book's emphasis on close system integration follows the consequences of custom instruction sets out through the simulators, linkers, and compilers that put the processor to work. The authors offer wide-ranging and hard-won insight into optimization techniques, giving glimpses at the scars these project-hardened veterans have picked up along the way.

The book's most distinctive feature, however, is its emphasis on Very Long Instruction Word (VLIW) processors. These come in many flavors. One classic structure comes from TI's DSPs with 8 ALUs controlled in every cycle; standard superscalar and Intel's EPIC are also noted, for contrast and variety. The book is thick (over 600pp) and dense, so no summary can do it justice and still fit here.

The book's personal note is part of its charm. The authors aren't afraid to take on widespread opinoins in their "Flame" sidebars. One in particular struck home for me: the polite diatribe against "smart" assemblers that hide the machine from the people who really need to see it. Amen, brother! My worst experience of that sort was in the 90s-era TI C5x family. It had delayed branches, with two words in the delay slot. You could put either two one-word instructions or one two-word instruction into that slot. After annoyance that you can imagine, I discovered that the compiler was putting a one-word instruction in the branch shadow followed by a two-word instruction. It was executing one and a half instructions in the branch delay, with un-helpful effect. That second instruction was the one the assembler was "helping" with. If the immediate operand had been smaller, it would have been a one-word instruction and would have been fine. The immediate value was too big, though, so the assembler converted that same opcode into a different two-word machine instruction with a larger immediate field - kaboom!

It's a good survey and a good introduction for people who want a wider view of what computing is about. Given the rise of reconfigurable computing, it's also helpful in putting readers in the frame of mind needed for defining their own computers as a matter of course. The breadth of coverage means that, despite the book's mass, its coverage of some topics lacks depth. I can't really fault the authors, though, since there's so much to say and since different readers have such different needs. The depth is there, but it's in the exercises and copious references so readers have to dig into it on their own. This isn't a book for every reader, but it's a helpful compendium for people with many kinds of needs a bit away from what computer science usually offers.

//wiredweird

This is the first technical book that inspired me to read it cover-to-cover in many years. It was well-written, and covered a lot of material. I really liked the breadth of material, and enjoyed reading the lessons from personal experiences. Also, the choice of material validates one of the lessons I learned from my graduate advisor, many years ago, that architecture, software, and applications should all be studied together.

There are two ways to learn more about your country: you can study it directly by travelling around in it, or you can study it indirectly by leaving it. The first method yields facts and insights directly in-context, and the second by contrast.

Our tradition in computer engineering has been to seldom leave our neighborhood. If you want to learn about operating systems, you read an OS book; for multiprocessor systems, you get a book that maps out the MP space.

The book you are holding in your hands can serve admirably in that direct sense. If the technology you are working on is associated with VLIWs or "embedded computing", then clearly it is imperative that you read this book.

But what pleasantly surprised me was how useful this book is, even if one's work is not VLIW-related or has no obvious relationship to embedded computing. I had long felt it was time for Josh Fisher to write his magnum opus on VLIWs, so when I first heard he and his co-authors were working on a book with VLIw in the title, I naturally and enthusiastically assumed this was it. Then I heard the words "embedded computing" were also in the title, and felt considerable uncertainty, having spent most of my professional career in the general-purpose computing arena. I thought embedded computing was interesting, but mostly in the same sense that studying cosmology was interesting: intellectually challenging, but what does it have to do with me?

I should have known better. I don't think Josh Fisher can write boring text. He doesn't know how. (I still consider his "Very Long Instruction Word Architectures and the ELI-512" paper from ISCA-10 to be the finest conference publication I have ever read.) And he seems to have either found like-minded co-authors in Faraboschi and Young, or he taught them well, because Embedded Computing: A VLIW Approach is enthralling in its clarity and exhilarating in its scope. If you are involved in computer system design or programming, you must still read this book, because it will take you to places where the views are spectacular, including those looking over to where you usually live. You don't necessarily have to agree with every point the authors make, but you WILL understand what they are trying to say, and they WILL make you think.

One of the best legacies of the classic Hennessy and Patterson computer architecture textbooks is that the success of their format and style has encouraged more books like theirs. In Embedded Computing: A VLIW Approach, you will find the Pitfalls, Controversies, and occasional Opinion sidebars that made H&P such a joy to read. This kind of technical exposition is like vulcanology done while standing on an active volcano. Look over there, and see molten lava running under a new fissure in the rocks. Feel the heat; it commands your full attention. It's immersive, it's interesting, and it's immediate. If your Vibram soles start melting, it's still worth it. You probably needed new shoes anyway.

I first met Josh when I was a grad student at Carnegie-Mellon in 1982. He spent an hour earnestly describing to me how a sufficiently talented compiler could, in principle, find enough parallelism via a technique he called Trace Scheduling, to keep a really wild looking hardware engine busy. The compiler would speculatively move code all over the place, and then invent more code to fix up what it got wrong. I thought to myself "so THIS is what a lunatic looks like up close. I hope he's not dangerous." Two years later I joined him at Multiflow and learned more in the next five years than I ever have, before or since.

It was an honor to review an early draft of this book, and I was thrilled to be asked to contribute this foreword. As the book makes clear, general-purpose computing has traditionally gotten the glory, while embedded computing quietly keeps our infrastructure running. This is probably just a sign of the immaturity of the general-purpose computing environment (even though we non-embedded types don't like to admit that). With general-purpose computers, people "use the computer" to do something. But with embedded computers, people accomplish some task, blithely and happily unaware that there's a computer involved. Indeed, if they had to be conscious of the computer, their embedded computers would have already failed: antilock brakes and engine controllers, for instance. General-purpose CPUs have a few microarchitecture performance tricks to show their embedded brethren, but the embedded space has much more to teach the general computing folks about the bigger picture: total cost of ownership, who lives in the adjacent neighborhoods, and what they need for all to live harmoniously. This book is a wonderful contribution towards that evolution.

As a former student of Professor James Peckol and having read portions of this book in my spare time, I can assure any prospective students looking for a secondary reference that this is book to get!

This book provides the design processes and methodologies used in the real world (I am now in industry so I can attest to this) with some great examples. If you can take his class this is the next best thing...

I used portions of this text during several embedded systems courses with Dr Peckol and it truly is an excellent resource and tool for an embedded engineer. It is a current, detailed, yet easily understandable look into all the aspects involved with embedded systems. I highly recommend this to anyone interested in this field or actively studying or working with embedded systems as you will no doubt benefit from Dr Peckol's insight.

I have used this text as reference to design and implement numerous embedded systems - from a simple numbers game to a wireless glove guitar.

The materials presented in this book walks you through the entire hardware/software thought process that is applicable to any engineering design. The book stresses the importance of developing a modular high-level design before any implementation - and to consider things such as use cases,extreme cases, scalability, performance, and safety. The book also goes over the importance of documentation - how to properly read and write design specifications/requirements, block diagrams, timing diagrams, etc.

In addition, the book covers the nitty-gritty details of digital implementation - from basic boolean algebra to complex kernel programming. The book also covers debugging/testing processes and common mistakes to avoid in embedded system development - backed with real-life examples. Finally, sample projects included in the book allow the reader to see and implement projects on their own.

The writing style makes the text an easy-read and the numerous diagrams and examples solidifies the concepts presented.

I highly recommend this book to any embedded systems engineer.

This text book is insightful and extremely useful for faculty, graduate students and undergraduates alike in computer sciences. Up to date with much relevant information, presented in a detailed and articulate manner.

This practical guide deals mostly with software and is directed primarily at professionals but contains much that is accessible and useful to accountants and others who are responsible for Year 2000 software reviews. The book is well organized, most chapters are self contained, and the many check lists are useful guides. The comprehensive coverage of date keeping in PCs and how it affects everyday software is invaluable. This book has earned its place on our Y2K reference shelf.

This is the only book on the Y2K problem that is a "start to finish" guide to help any business identify its year 2000 vulnerabilities and do something about them. Looks at the year 2000 problem from a business perspective, not just a computer perspective. Every business needs this book.

A clear and concise handbook for assessing Year 2000 issues. This book walks the small business owner through the process of analysis, implentation and testing in a straightforward manner. I highly recommend it.

I found this book to be quite helpful in developing Year 2000 strategies for my small business clients, from assessment through remediation and testing. Clearly written, concise, and informational.

That science and technology are accepted as forces that improve life is a central precept of American culture but in Forces of Production, Noble argues against the notion of technological determinism as a bell weather of progress. Noble's is a Marxist critique: if workers see progress as inevitable and automatic, it "absolves...[them] of responsibility to change it and weds them instead to the technological projections of those in command."(xiii) Unless control is redirect away from "technical enthusiasts" and "neo-progressive politicians,"(353), he is skeptical of what the second industrial revolution portends for society and what advantage technology holds for the future. In making his point Noble analyzes the development of numerically controlled (N/C) machine tools in the post WWII era.

Wartime necessity and the subsequent Cold War centralized research and development into what became known as the military-industrial complex. In Part I of his volume, titled "Command and Control," Noble argues that scientists lost their sense of independence and came to "resemble closely their military and corporate brethren."(20) Labor, as a component of the production matrix, was changed as well by a defense establishment which emphasized performance over cost to counter the (Noble would say perceived) Soviet threat. Increased union membership during the war augmented labor's power and heightened labor/management conflict on the machine shop floor.

Who controlled the shop; who controlled the pace of production? Automation, on the one hand, seemed to offer management a means of maintaining control, but labor saw this as a threat to their jobs. Scientist and engineers, more closely allied with those having social power, were predisposed to adhere to the wishes of their patrons, rather than shop stewards, to help make the automatic factory possible.

Noble presents various methods of N/C and explains how the "Darwinian" potential of N/C was stymied when John T. Parson's N/C project was co-opted by MIT in close alliance with the Air Force. The record-playback (R/P) option may have been easier to program and more accurate in that it captured a machinists skill, but it would have "lent itself to programming on the shop floor, and worker and/or union control of the process."(151) This was unacceptable to managers who wanted to maintain control and keep decision making off the floor. The prevailing cultural thus had more influence in developing N/C than did technical or economic needs. The Automatically Programmed Tools (APT) system that was developed, while sophisticated was expensive. None-the-less it became the industry standard.

Noble challenges the ideology of technology as the key to social and human progress. Instead he sees a system of political, moral, and cultural "domination which masks as progress."(351). Indeed, it is Noble's social interpretation of technology that is the major contribution of the book. Unfortunately what also is apparent is his omission of any comparison to the Soviet system and thus his argument is degraded as more of an attack on capitalism than a sincere effort to clarify the role of society in technology. Regardless of this shortcoming, by questioning the relationship of society to technology, Forces of Production challenges the idea of technological determinism in defining the meaning of progress.

I read this book as part for a course in "Philosophy and Technology" when I was an undergraduate. It is a detailed exposition of how the technologies we adopt are not inevitable, but are instead the consequence of specific choices made by specific people in power (or seeking to be in power). One of the books that fundamentally changed my worldview. Together with his "America By Design," a dull but exacting analysis of engineering education in the U.S., this book should be read as a cautionary tale for the course higher education is taking in its current romance with corporate sponsorship and collaboration. . .

The infantilism of American culture that started with Reagan appears in many guises. For example, Ron Grossman in the Chicago Tribune pointed out last Sunday that the United States Postal Service has a stamp for Bugs Bunny but none for John Brown, the rebel of Harper's Ferry.

The Smithsonian Institution recently thought fit to exhibit Daisy's shortened Levi's from the 1970s television series The Dukes of Hazzard.

The infantilism is that the author of Forces of Production, David Noble, was a serious and pro-labor voice who worked at the Smithsonian in the 1970s and was forced out under Reagan...in favor of Daisy's shorts, it appears.

The subject of Forces of Production may seem to be specialized for overtly it is on numerically-controlled machine tools, nowadays a very small application of computers. Nonetheless this book can be read in the context, not only of machine tools but also of computerization in general.

Noble's book is an account of management folly. Machine tool automation was implemented to eliminate not the unskilled but men like my great-grandfather: machinists who had the nerve to set their own pace, and to design as they saw fit tools to accomplish their job.

The machinist occupies in the world of physical tools somewhat the same space as is occupied by the advanced programmer since the machinist has the choice, in a well-run shop, of deciding not to fashion the part that management wants, but instead to fashion a tool that will in turn make the part that management wants...faster, more accurately and in the long and short run cheaper.

Like Harry Braverman's Labor and Monopoly Capital, Noble shows how this economic rationality was subverted by the high priests of economic rationality: the CEOs.

Ultimately preferring control over profits, the managers of machine shops imported programmatic numerical control NOT to make the skilled machinist's life easier but instead to eliminate the skilled union men.

Noble shows how a rough compromise was hammered out because the unskilled machinists, and the alienated skilled machinists, stood by (under management's direction) as the improperly programmed machine tools produced "scrap at high speeds."

Union negotiation then restored the skilled men to their positions to get the technology under control.

There is a striking parallel here with the situation in white-collar computer programming, for it has been the consistent discovery of skilled programmers that the computer itself can be used, NOT to "focus on the bottom line goals of management" (as goes the management songbook) but instead to fashion tools...that accomplish, in a laughing and almost scornful way, the goals of the management.

For example, in 1974 I was confronted in a computer center with 50 different programs to scan and to print mailing lists. Being a lazy hippie I suggested to my boss that I write ONE program that would read and parse the format and the logic rules. My manager approved and as a result I implemented a form of "data base."

Of course, management does see the wisdom of this move, but typically (as related in the case of machine tools by David Noble) management prefers to alienate the programmers from the tools, which are bought from third parties. While this makes sense in many environments it has also produced unrecognized disasters...especially where the programmers know or believe they could do a better job.

For example, the state of Virginia recently wasted five years and millions of dollars in trying to use a generalized solution from Peoplesoft to automate human resources. A new manager walked in and had one or two good programmers code, in-house, the most needed routines on the Web.

Reading Noble's important work teaches us how to avoid Luddism (and Luddism itself may have a bad name for certain historians have shown that the Luddite textile weavers of the early 19th century were critics, not of technology itself, but of its use to downsize and to degrade.) It gives the ordinary person who wants at one and the same time to be successful at his profession and to have time for his family an informed way of criticising "scrap at high speeds."

I certainly wouldn't have heard of this book if it weren't for Noam Chomsky citing it. David Noble dared to break ranks and suggest that maybe all was not right with machine tool automation. My favorite chapter,entitled "Who's running the shop" describes GE's aircraft division's "Pilot Project" in the 60's. It is first of all a damn good tale--rivaling the arabian nights as a never ending fascinating tale. Secondly, it is a sobering tale of labor-management relations. One suspects that GE management would rather the incident was forgotten. Here is a rough summary: The Air Force gave GE super-expensive numerically controlled (i.e. computerized) machining tools and local GE managers used these as a weapon to deskill workers and lower their pay, but it backfired because without the good will and understanding of the workers it produced only scrap metal at a fantastic rate. The "Pilot Project" was a compromise that enabled the incompetant management to save face, and the workers and union essentially ran the shop during this time. Understandably the union and workers wanted the pilot project to go on forever, and equally understandably the higher corporate management wanted this example of worker control to end as soon as possible even though it worked extremely well.