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As a full time QuickBooks instructor for over 10 years, there have been times when I wanted a reference to validate or guide me to the best solution on practical problems that I encountered with a client's company file. This book is the answer. Mr. Sleeter has created a roadmap for both new and experienced QuickBooks accountants, consultants, and power users that can save them from many wasted hours learning QuickBooks by trial and error, or having to go back to re-enter data because the solution they tried does not work.
It goes beyond mechanical matters and deals with utilizing QuickBooks properly from an accounting, business, and technical point of view, for example finding and correcting errors during bank reconciliation. This structured resource covers the best way to work with real issues, some of which are not covered in the instruction manual like setting up customer and vendor opening balances to track aging, warning about memo information in journal entries, adjusting income accounts, and other tricky transactions. Important topics are "Things Accountants Must Know" and "Troubleshooting Data Files".
The Consultant's Reference Guide starts by describing new features of the current edition of QuickBooks, and logically progresses through company file setup and special setup issues. Numerous examples show the reader what action to take to ensure data accuracy when working with complex problems. The easy to read graphics, step-by-step explanations and organization of the contents make it worthwhile as both reference and self-paced tutorial.
Subjects covered provide an excellent balance of information like fundamental details of setting up payroll through advanced issues of networking QuickBooks and QuickBooks Point of Sale. If you are an accountant or provide QuickBooks professional services owning this book will give you confidence that the right answer to many QuickBooks questions is at hand.

As a full time QuickBooks instructor for over 10 years, there have been times when I wanted a reference to validate or guide me to the best solution on practical problems that I encountered with a client's company file. This book is the answer. Mr. Sleeter has created a roadmap for both new and experienced QuickBooks accountants, consultants, and power users that can save them from many wasted hours learning QuickBooks by trial and error, or having to go back to re-enter data because the solution they tried does not work.
It goes beyond mechanical matters and deals with utilizing QuickBooks properly from an accounting, business, and technical point of view, for example finding and correcting errors during bank reconciliation. This structured resource covers the best way to work with real issues, some of which are not covered in the instruction manual like setting up customer and vendor opening balances to track aging, warning about memo information in journal entries, adjusting income accounts, and other tricky transactions. Important topics are "Things Accountants Must Know" and "Troubleshooting Data Files".
The Consultant's Reference Guide starts by describing new features of the current edition of QuickBooks, and logically progresses through company file setup and special setup issues. Numerous examples show the reader what action to take to ensure data accuracy when working with complex problems. The easy to read graphics, step-by-step explanations and organization of the contents make it worthwhile as both reference and self-paced tutorial.
Subjects covered provide an excellent balance of information like fundamental details of setting up payroll through advanced issues of networking QuickBooks and QuickBooks Point of Sale. If you are an accountant or provide QuickBooks professional services owning this book will give you confidence that the right answer to many QuickBooks questions is at hand.

(...) It is a true mastery guide
designed for the accounting professional that must know the correct
answer to any QuickBooks question. I strongly recommend this guide
for those looking for the one book that addresses all the tough
questions that even the TechSupport guys cannot answer and has all the
tricks and special solution to get the most out of QuickBooks. A new
version is published every year within 6 months of the release of the
software.

A fine guide to QuickBooks consulting. I taught QuickBooks for 2 years for a local organization and this book would have been a lifesaver for many of my students. It goes over many of the features in QuickBooks as well as providing a ton of information on features (and bugs) that aren't documented in the manual. If you use QuickBooks or support clients on the software then you should look into this manual. It covers a LOT of new ground and I'm certain you'll get something out of it.

I picked up Bill Nussey's "The Quiet Revolution in Email Marketing" from Amazon. Mr. Nussey's company, Silverpop, has been hired by my firm to do all the Customer Communication Management.

I realize this is dated,it was originally published in 2004. But clearly, it is still, if not more relevent than ever before. Mr. Nussey covers all the angles when it comes to email marketing, Customer Communication Management (CCM) and something I hadn't seen before Email Brand Value (EBV). For a company like mine that has a minimalist approach to email marketing... meaning we do very little, and what we do do, we do poorly... it was certainly a lesson in best practices. If I could impliment 25% of what Mr. Nussey discusses, we would be perceived as a world class marketing organization.

"The Quiet Revolution's" main thrust is that email marketing is evolving from a method of broadcast messaging, to a sophisticated media form where clients, their needs and desires, become the focus. Covering internal operational issues like enterprise management and permissioning, to execution, Mr. Nussey puts delivering appropriate email marketing content at the focus. A company should focus on the quality of the message, rather than the quantity of the message. In doing so, email marketing campaigns can be much more focused and much more effective.

For anyone looking to enhance their email marketing, and to discover best practices, this is a book for you. I highly recommend.

email marketing essential reading

Bill Nussey, clarifies and outlines the most effective methods and
strategies for deploying result oriented email marketing. This new
book provides the kind of information every marketer should have.


Bill Nussey is one of the most respected and experienced leaders
in the email marketing arena and this book provides actionable processess that
you won't see anywhere else.

If you market anything this is a must read volume.

If you've never thought of email as a complex discipline like enterprise CRM, let Bill Nussey explain how certain leg-work must be done in order to achieve real success with the medium. In this age of CAN-SPAM and regulatory hot buttons, Nussey shows how to build and execute legitimate marketing programs to actually win customer loyalty and build key long-term relationships.

He cites several examples from top companies to illustrate his philosophies on everything from content to delivery issues. Good read!

Finally, there is a resource I can show my boss which explains the importance and proper use for email marketing. Bill Nussey goes through the whole marketing process, and he stresses the importance for strict internal policies to manage the programs.

He really hits the nail on the head with his email brand value discussion - I don't think most companies even realize that they're irritating their customers with useless promotional messages. His premise that email hinges on relevancy rather than frequency is presented time and time again through several real-world case studies

I read this book more than 15 years ago and I still use the strategies today. In fact, now that my own teen is dealing with depression issues, I've taught him to use the strategies as well. I read the book after about 2 years of psychotherapy. While the therapy was VERY helpful, this book gave me very concrete skills and within a month, I no longer felt the need to continue therapy. If you faithfully complete the exercises, you can learn great techniques that make a difference.

Here's what I like:
pages 20-21 list of factors in dealing with
feelings
pages 25-26 list of mental blockage indicators
pages 30-31 kinds of resistance to change
pages 40-48 emotional strategies ==> how
to improve emotional intelligence!!!
pages 136-138 list of inappropriate communication
techniques.
The general strategies developed in pages 1-96 are
applied later to anxiety, anger, loneliness, depression.
An appendix expands this list to confusion, disappointment,
envy, facial tics, frustration, guilt, and helplessness.

Among the hundreds of serious and not-so pop psych books I've read, "Rapid Relief" actually works. Particularly useful is the "emotional scale" which can help you understand what you or others are going through as you go through your ups and downs.

However "Rapid" is NOT a substitute for deep work with an qualified, experienced and insightful therapist. Instead it's an execellent source of day to day coping stratgies. For eight bucks, that's quite a deal.

i have a copy of this book i have referred to many times since the 80's. i do not know the authors, nor do i have any vested interest in a submitting a complimentary review. i have never submitted such a review before. i attest that this book is the single most helpful self-help book that i have ever had the good fortune to read. in one's darkest hour, it can help you INSTANTLY...i am happy it is still available, and i am buying a copy for a friend in need (not wanting to part with my own!)

Nick Barclay and Adrian Downes did it again! After writing their first and great guide to learning and deploying Business Scorecard Manager, these two brilliant consultants wrote the great guides to PerformancePoint Server (one for Planning and one for Monitoring and Analytics).

These books are easy to read and make the technology very approachable. Additionally, the authors collaborated very closely with the development team so you know that the content you get is true to its original intent!

Couple this with the authors first hand's experience with the product and long time expertise in this space and you get two books, which are MUST reads for anyone who wants to get started with PerformancePoint Server and with Microsoft Business Intelligence.

I have been involved in architecting and designing Microsoft based business intelligence solutions for the past 8 years. I was very excited when PerformancePoint was launched because it filled a very real need in the Microsoft BI platform. It is always a challenge to find training material when a new product is launched so Adrian and Nick's books have been released at just the right time.
I enjoyed both books(The Rational Guide To Planning with Microsoft Office PerformancePoint Server 2007 (Rational Guides),The Rational Guide To Monitoring and Analyzing with Microsoft Office PerformancePoint Server 2007 (Rational Guides)) for the following reasons:
They are clear and simple to understand
They highlight the most important techinical and functional considerations without being too high level
They are practical and not theoretical even though the first few chapters set the scene
You don't need to be a subject matter expert to understand them
They are short so you can read them very quickly

They are great books that will allow you to get up to speed very quickly on PerformancePoint Monitoring and Analytics as well as Planning.

Excellent. Every bit as good as the co-authors' companion book, "The Rational Guide to... M&A w/ PPS. This learning guide's effectiveness is especially noteworthy in light of the completely new Performance Management (PM) sophistication that the PPS Planning Module unleashes on Microsoft Business Intelligence (BI) developers of all experience levels and, of course, the essential clarity with which this guide introduces it. Although future books will, we hope, delve deeper into specific topics (especially Integration and Business Rules), this one sets a high standard with succinct, authoritative explanations and thoughtful skill-building exercises in every major functional area. As a side-note, this book showcases to experienced performance management technologists just how much sophistication and value Microsoft has introduced into the performance management product marketplace.

PART I - INTRODUCTION: The authors begin by introducing the roles that planning and budgeting processes have been intended to play in the business environment, describing how traditional business processes and technologies have inherently limited their real-world effectiveness in terms of the tasks effecting employee workflow, data accuracy, security, and ease of use, and then explaining how each of those tasks is optimized as planning and budgeting roles integrate into a business intelligence information framework. Armed with this high level perspective, readers are mostly prepared to learn how to actually accomplish this, albeit in ways unexpected by most traditional MS BI developers. Specifically, we will now be building automatically recurring write-back mechanisms so that planning, forecasting and budgetting workflows will write-back data to data marts and, by extension, cubes. We will also be incorporating more types of data sources, not as an unfortunate alternative to good ETL, but on a planned, best-case basis as performance management work-flows require. Lastly, we will be highly leveraging Analysis Services' unary operators and account dimensions.

Before jumping into the "how to do it" section, I caution readers, and especially experienced MS Analysis Services 2005 OLAP developers, that, in light of the new PM requirements just described, PPS Planning will have you building both relational and OLAP objects in ways that are ...let's just say "unique". You might not have done it exactly this way for a traditional UDM MOLAP cube. Although your careful exploration of these unique SQL Server objects is encouraged, I suggest that you delay at least some of it until after you well-understand what PPS Planning is accomplishing. Fortunately, PPS Planning automates the vast majority of those nuances, such that readers, whether developers or power-user analysts, can quickly get productive.

PART II - INSTALLATION AND CONFIGURATION: In addition installation, this section introduces readers to the Planning Administration Console (PAC), wherein PPS Planning applications, model sites, role-based security and data sources are initially configured, and introduces Planning Business Modeler (PBM), wherein most of the subsequent work is completed. Notably, applications created in PPS Planning are instantiated as SQL Server 2005 relational databases, and Planning Model Sites become Analysis Services 2005 OLAP databases with completely-built cubes. As a side-bar, readers are advised, beginning at this point in the text, to take care to document usernames, roles and passwords as entered in this section and to pay extra close attention throughout the book to always login to Planning Business Modeler or the Excel Add-In with the username specified in each specific exercise.

PART III - SOLUTION DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION: Here, we dive deeper. Explanations, followed by respective exercises, covering the creation of dimensions, member sets, business models, model subsites, model security are aptly covered. Although Chapter 9, "Integrating Business Data" -- which will be the least accessible for non-SQL-heads -- provides a balanced coverage of the complex topic so that readers can progress by (carefully) following the cookbook, SQL/ETL pro's will want to decide when (not if) to dive deeper into learn this (by starting with product help files) and learn exactly how it relates to traditional ETL, which it does not replace. Analysts -- prepare for initial bewilderment. Chapter 10, "Defining Business Rules", takes the complimentary approach, without losing stride with excessive business-side detail (and thus losing the interest of ETL-oriented readers), it move readers through the simple use of business model properties, rules and rule sets. Specifically, the configuration of these business rules are close to a culmination of everything learned so far in that, in text examples, they orchestrate the relationship of data "actuals" to "budgets" and "forecasts" within models and thereby govern how budget forecasts and "what-if" analyses are smoothly integrated into a performance dashboard and/or written back into the data mart and OLAP cube without jeopardizing the sacrosanct "actuals" data. Without a doubt, it feels like a very slick way to avoid ever having to say to your DBA, "Well, we've completed our what-if analyses and thanks for the added permissions, but ehhr... we can't seem to find the actual data anymore. But you backed it up, right?" Relax, `cause it won't happen here. Of note, this chapter very briefly introduces "PerformancePoint Expression Language" (PEL), which is an MDX (multi-dimensional expression) short-hand just for PPS Planning. Although additional PEL detail would have been interesting, it would also have slowed the overall pace of learning. Again, see product help files.

The book's last written topic, in Chapter 11, is "Using the PerformancePoint Add-in for Excel". It introduces readers to PPS Planning Forms (and by extension, read-only Reports ) that performance-management users will ultimately use to assign, contribute, review, edit and approve workflow tasks associated with budgeting, forecasting and "what-if" analyses. As before, the book provides an effective, self-contained introduction which showcases some of Excel 2007's new-found sophistication, but which readers will subsequently want to build upon. As elsewhere, it's essential reading and mercifully succinct (unlike this review, I'll admit).

FOUR BONUS CHAPTERS: Although not reviewed here, they are each substantial, virtually essential, and are respectively entitled "Implementing Process Management", "Consolidating Data with Associations", "Operational and Management Reporting", and "Closing the Performance Management Loop". Conveniently, and along with all required databases and code samples, they are available online at no charge.

PREPARATION: As with the authors' "Rational ...PPS M&A" book, the best way to deploy the entire platform to readers' PC's, for learning or light-development is to download the following from Microsoft: (A) Virtual PC 2007; and (B) BI-VPC V 5.1+, which includes tons of software, including PPS 2007, MOSS 2007, SQL Server 2005 Dev Edition. Lastly, I recommend 4 GB of RAM on the machine, and strongly discourage readers' from trying to use the BI-VPC with under 2GB RAM.

For all of the above reasons, this book is highly recommended!

I have a bad tendency of purchasing technical books and never reading them until I have a problem where I need a technical reference. However, I found myself reading this book cover to cover. I have been using PerformancePoint Server (PPS) 2007 Planning since prior to the software release, going back to May 2007. I have also attended a four day long PPS Boot Camp. Even then, I learned a great deal from this book. I found it easy to read and it covers all the technical topics necessary to implement a PPS solution. Before buying a different book, I would recommend checking to see if it covers all the major aspects of Planning, including topics like Business Rules, PEL (PerformancePoint Expression Language), and Data Integration. Data integration is often forgotten or purposely left out due to its complexity, but authors Adrian Downes and Nick Barclay include an entire chapter dedicated to this subject (43 pages). In addition, once you register the book with the publisher online, there's a great deal of bonus materials available for download. These materials include many SQL examples for data integration. You can cut down your development time by modifying the SQL they provided. Also included in the bonus materials are four additional chapters to the book.

This book is great if you're new to PerformancePoint Server Planning or if you've been using it for awhile. I'm using it to study for the PPS exam to gain certification. My employer has tasked me with coming up with a PPS curriculum for other consultants to learn PPS. I'm incorporating this book and "The Rational Guide to Monitoring and Analyzing with Microsoft Office PerformancePoint Server 2007" into self study for my peers wanting to learn the software. Both books incorporate a step by step approach that aid in learning.

In summary, this book is jammed pack full of good tips for both new and experienced PPS developers and has a good price point. I highly recommend it.

Made by top gurus came from the publishing universe this books is the more extensive and well made to real manage InDesign world. Perfectly illustrated and written this edition covers CS2. Aditional chapters related to PDF or scripts amplify its scopes. Although some points should deserve more explanations in the future (align to grid, problems with styles) this book deserves the maximum awards.

The table of contents tells you everything you need to know about the target audience. It's not divided into sections on Illustrator, Photoshop, InDesign, GoLive, and Acrobat. Instead, it deals with concepts; for instance, the chapter on "Type" discusses how each program in CS2 handles fonts and text options, which application is best at doing what, and how to use them in combination to do complicated tasks.

As such, this book is definitely not for beginners; it won't teach you how to use any of the individual programs. But if you're already familiar with Adobe's lineup, this will give you lots of ideas on how to integrate the different parts of CS2, as well as showing you a lot of really deep features that aren't obvious. The book's approach is to treat CS2 as one very large program, and by the time you get done with it, so will you.

As another reviewer noted, this is not a tutorial for beginners. It's an in-depth resource exploring the interaction of the CS2 products. On their own, the apps are powerful, but it's important to know how to take advantage of the ways they knit together. The authors are quite knowledgeable, and they impart a *ton* of priceless information in a very readable way. Even if you're just using, say, Photoshop and Illustrator, you'll discover valuable ways to make the most of the interaction between the two apps. I know all the CS2 apps very well (except GoLive), and I still learned a lot! And the content is *not* gimmicky "amaze your friends with silly tricks" stuff. It's practical and beneficial for users involved in production.

Creative Suite packs in many powerful programs: Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Acrobat and GoLive: to understand how they work both individually and as a unit, Real World Creative Suite 2: Industrial-Strength Production Techniques teaches all the basics. Learn how to maintain consistency between applications, how to use special effects to maximum efficiency, how to work with style, colors and layers, and more with a title which focuses on seamless integration of processes for professional results.

This order was completed just fine. Delivery was prompt and it arrived in good condition. No complaints.

The book is an excellent summary on the topic and more! It provides excellent coverage of state-of-the-art production techniques and the influence of particular procedures and components on device reliability. I suppose that complete newcomers might find it sometimes difficult to understand the background of some contents due to the compact style. However they are rewarded with one of the most comprehensive and up-to-date texts I have ever seen on this subject. Moreover the reader is provided with many references for further in-depth reading. Considering the wealth of information the book provides the author did an excellent job in writing a well readable text.

I would recommend it as a textbook as well as for the experienced scientist/researcher.

This book gives the basic and latest issues in the semiconductor device reliability as well as issues that nails the failure analysts. This book covers all the major issues, including oxide reliability, ESD and electromigration. This book will be and should be considered for the aspring Rel and FA engineers as well as act as a refresher to those hardcore professionals.

I have a filing cabinet full of papers on various aspects of materials reliabilty: solder stress calculations, mechanical behavior, diffusion, corrosion mechanisms, etc. Professor Ohring's book neatly summarizes all of that into one coherent text, covering topics such as electromigration, electrostatic discharge, solder mechanics, corrosion, semiconductor devices and more. But rather than touch on the practical aspects of these failure modes, as do several reliability books I already own, he delves into the underlying fundamental mechanisms involved, providing equations and explanations. This is why I consider Ohring's book a true textbook on the subject. The detailed explanations are valuable to me in that they provide a springboard from which to analyze more complex issues. For anyone involved with reliability of materials in electronics, I highly recommend this book. And one more thing: in some places Prof. Ohring writes with a refreshing informality. For example, he talks about defects and KILLER DEFECTS (his words and capitalization!). I just laughed when I saw that.

I love this book. The writing style is easy to understand, and carries the reader forward in a natural progression. It's a book that can be read straight through. It has great tutorials on VBScript and SQL (although I wanted more on SQL), and a lot of friendly ASP tutorials. Definitely a great book for the library. It's hard to find everything you need to develop a web application in one book, which is why I give this one 5 stars. I can get quick answers, or read through for more complete understanding. I have a lot of ASP books, but this is my favorite due to its completeness and easy, friendly writing style. I love Kris Jamsa books, and now I'm adding Rob Francis books to my Must Have list.

I was very intimidated about moving to ASP.NET. This book's seven lessons on ASP.NET got me up and running the same day! Very easy to understand and follows -- explains the differences you must know to get started.

This is by far the easiest book to understand that I have found for Active Server Pages -- my hats off to Rob Francis (I just bought his Visual Basic book -- I hope it is as good).

I have been trying to use PHP -- Francis makes ASP very easy to understand and shows how to integrate key objects to perform complex tasks. PHP even makes more sense now ... but I am going to stick with ASP.

I am not using ASP.NET yet, so I can't comment on that part of the book.

The ASP material is very good and very easy.

I had never created an active server page before. My Web site had over a dozen after my first weekend with the book. The lessons make the process very easy!

what can i say ? i am a java developer and i read lot of tutorials and books on flex but was not satisfied, but after reading this book i could say this is the best book on flex for java developers. You can stop "google" for sometime and finish the book to get most of your answers. The book will directly take you to the ActionScript's world and explains everything you need to know as a developer.
This book does not focus much on designing rather explains all about integration with Java\J2EE. I believe you will also start liking ActionScript as much as Java after reading the book.
There are some printing mistake is there in the code sample, so dont blindly copy and paste the code. Hope those will be fixed in the next version.

Thanks,
Abhisek Jana

First I have to say, that it was pretty awesome that within a couple hours of ordering the book I had a link to download the e-version to use while I waited for the print version to arrive-- excellent customer service.

I was already sold on Flex, and was pretty experienced with it and was looking for an advanced book. So I didn't find the first 200 or so pages that helpful. Chapters 1-4 (Introduction to other RIAs, Getting Familiar with Flex, Flex Builder environment, and a simple Flex app) really weren't appropriate for a book purported to be for professionals, in my opinion.

The treatment on Java integration wasn't what I expected, although most of it was still interesting and helpful.

The second half of the book really shines, and more than makes up for any of its shortcomings (and more than justifies the price as well). The treatment of creating advanced custom Flex components is excellent. The authors walk you through the creation of several advanced components that are in and of themselves very useful, as are the concepts covered.

Their coverage of several other advanced topics (debugging, charts, integrating with external applications) was not only helpful, but not really covered anywhere I've been able to find online (although that may have changed in the past 4 months since I purchased the book).

I'd definitely recommend this book to others.

Before purchasing this awesome book I evaluated more than 50 online resources, articles, blogs, technotes, and Adobe's development web sites, as well as purchased and read two other Flex and Actionscript books (Flex 2 with Actionscript and Actionscript 3.0 Cookbook). But none of the aforementioned gave me the complete understanding and confidence in being able to integrate Flex applications with enterprise databases in a J2EE or XML-based environment.

This remarkably in depth book begins by taking you on a short but important journey through recent history of Java, Ajax and Flex to consolidate your approach to Rich Internet Application development. You quickly become familiar with the Flex development environment and build reusable components grasping development techniques by example. Each chapter is well explained and easily understood as you work your way to developing your sophisticated programming skills within a matter of days.

The book unambiguously covers the most important techniques for binding Flex applications to data sources whether by XML data transfer, JAVA Beans, Enterprise (binary) Database Integration, Web Services and or to external applications. You also learn advanced techniques in extending Flex components, extending Flex Charts, and building data and destination aware controls you can quickly reuse in other applications.

It's a magnificent piece of work by smart guys who have truly grasped and then conveyed the magic of Rich Internet Application Development. Thank you for this noteworthy achievement. It's worth more than 5 stars!

Fain and company cover the essentials using Flex 2 and Java together to create each of the possible mechanisms under Flex Data Services. This is NOT a book for beginners so don't expect all of the examples to guide you step by step. They move fast so read carefully! There is a lot of information to cover and they seem to have hit all of the important points in a small amount of space and the book is still hefty!

I'm a fan of Yakov Fain's blogs, so I may be a little biased, but the guy knows his stuff forwards and backwards.

If you're an old Java pro but new to Flex 2 then this book may be a perfect fit for you.

This book is a whirlwind of all things in our life that gets affected by Internet. I have read both "Being Digital" and "Silicon Snake Oil" and I agreed with both those views. I read this title and it blew me away.I am not sure why this book is out of print and why they are selling it for $0.01

The key reason is this: This book was published in 1995 and I can cite companies that were formed in 1999 book by taking a line from the book. Entire magazine articles are written simply elaborating the content of a single paragraph in this book. Its not the labels or company names that are cited here which are important but the fact that the key ideas mentioned are ensconced in todays' labryinthine evolution of the Net.

Another way of being impressed with this book can be the sheer prophetic nature of it. We can never evaluate anything against the future because of lack of materialization. Whereas, we can take this kind of a book and lay down its theses and look at reality to see how it panned. Try it for yourself and recollect how many other works of literature had a similar impact.For example Page 139 Bullet #3 contains the idea of youtube.com

If you are anywhere connected to the Internet Industry then you gotta read this book. If you are in any other industry and wanted to chalk out the perimeter of the net then this is a mighty good investment of your time.

I had to chuckle when I saw that this book is available at .01 in the used books on Amazon.com -- it is such a terrific book--- worth it's weight (which is about 1 lb) in gold and more :)). Fabulous insight into what it's like to deal with Silicon Valley and the future-- all relevant today-- Covers the Internet, Games, Smart TV or "PC In Drag" and much more as we venture in into the Brave New World of today. Written in 1995 it is a prescient approach to today and tomorrow's business world involving technology, changing culture and telephony and more. Kline was a contributing writer at WIRED and Burstein is/was Senior Advisor to the famous Blackstone Group...still ahead of the cure. It says its the book about the Information Highway-- it's really about doing business in the information age --called NOW.

Road Warriors: Dreams and Nightmares Along the Information Highway by Daniel Burstein and David Kline, Plume/Penguin Book, $13.95. 1996 ISBN 0-452-27105-3 by Marcus Goncalves - goncalves@process.com "Road Warriors: Dreams and Nightmares Along the Information Highway" by Daniel Burstein and David Kline is one of those books so embracing in its effort to describe a vivid, human-natured narrative of the road warrior personalities and strategies driving the digital technology revolution of our times that it almost challenges you to "pray" before you continue reading it. The book, has a bitter-sweet taste, funny but also sad, exciting but depressing, it gives us a leap of faith in the twenty-first century society but also portraits the leviathan of cultural clashes. It's almost magic, in the sense that it drags you onto an envision of the dominating forces shaping our future, the battle between net profit and net human identity, the gripping reality of where the information technology is taking us by condition... not opinion. Burstein and Kline's book elaborates on nothing new, but provides an entire new insight of facts, as the arguments presented are results of social-technocrats tragedies and casualties, elicited by incisive and informative headlines on Wired magazine, Hotwired and other Web-zines, not mentioning major news media. It debates on the "usability" of computer technology, which included video games and the human imagination as well as the PC versus the TV trend. It wonders over the dreams and nightmares of every road warrior, active or passive. It even discusses about Bill Gates and Microsoft's strategy, and the works of the government's proper role in light of the free market forces. Road Warriors is talking about a current reality, where most of the battles are still taking place, some not even started yet. The formed and severed alliances it describes are still in the process. The warriors of the information highway and the rest of us are optimistically heralding a new world order in the wake of the Information Age. For some, it may be another opportunity to grab the American dream, but it could also very well be a paradigm predicting a new, dangerous global conflict were disconcerting inefficient government policy, professional careers and family values will crash and burn, in Web time, through the effect of wires and chips. The rivalry of the Information Age warriors is replaced by the clash of civilizations. Just like Phoenix, the re-emerging information technologies on the Internet, the Web, Cybercash and I-phones, to name few, are reshaping new trends, new opportunities, new business, and consequently, a new cast of citizens, a new civilization: a Cyber one, that is. This does not mean that these events are always convincing. Here and there, as Burstein and Kline examine recent events, in light of the coming of the so called Digital Age, one suspects that they are interpreting the facts to suit the theory. Their book has plenty detailed examples of the advent of the Digital Age, including the social dimensions often excluded by technocrats. That's why so many love magazines like Wired, and so many hate it. For instance, will computers replace televisions in the living room, where the family will be gathered, as discussed in chapter eight, Smart TV, or a PC in Drag? The burgeoning increase of personal computers, usage of online networks and multimedia applications suggests that. Indeed Americans are spending more and more time in front of a computer. That much is true, but the theory has trouble with other features of the "infowar," like the deep transformation it will indicate in American social life, which realistically, as Burstein and Kline indicates, it will not happen in the foreseeable future. The idea hardly seems to matter to technocrats and road warriors, whatever their own faults (is it technology's fault?), which really were victims "of profound changes in the structure and internal life of Americans," as brilliantly discussed on the book, not merely a great ideal of Yankee ingenuity, entrepreneurial capitalism, and economic progress, as described by Burstein and Kline. For instance, the Silicon Graphics' former chairman, Jim Clark, statement that "computers and consumer electronics are going to be shared technologies," would have been very different if he had not found a new "Zion for his mass-market dream: the Internet." What exactly Jim Clark might have done differently so he wouldn't be so wrong on his assessment? Thus the Internet may be housing some 30 million users, the cable TV viewers amount to about 150 million in 63 million homes. Still, Burstein and Kline's grand concept of a PC in drag versus smart TV explains a good deal about the battle of giants like Tele-Communications, Inc., Microsoft, NTT (the giant Japanese telecommunication company) and their impact in the world these days, which would be difficult to explain without it. Stripped to its essence, paraphrasing Professor Donna L. Hoffman's words, of Vanderbilt University, the book's argument is this: The Information Age will tremendously affect society, in particular the American society. The book is dazzling in its scope of placing this global revolution in the historic context and grasp of the intricacies of contemporary global politics and consequent transformations following the Industrial Revolution. Readers not already familiar with issues driving the unprecedented promises of the Information Age might feel a bit overwhelmed with the conclusions the authors come to: America's society is growing more and more dysfunctional, in a process that is alienating families and individuals by canning the American people dreams onto digital fetishes serving the interests of few. As the authors write on Chapter 11, The Global Challenge, "the prosaic reality is that policy makers in every country, including United States, are continuing to make national decisions about the flow of global information based on their own interests." Past the after shock of a crude reality taking place at the myriad of the present Information Age, riding on the so called Information Super Highway, Road Warriors is a "must read" for everyone involved in this process, business and academic communities alike. It is also a call for society's conscience and active participation on this digital revolution. It is an alert of the danger and somewhat unavoidable fragmentation and decentralization of society in face of the clashes resulted of the "future shock" so well diagnosed by Alvin and Heidi Toffler back in the 70's. If we don't take Bustein & Kline very seriously, the clash of our civilization may start at our home.

Ok the book is now 'old' in that it was published in 1995, but you are not going to find anything better on the business of the 'information highway' (I know that term irritates people, but the point is that this book is about more than the just Internet, it is about the world the net is embedded within).

The book is about the business war over communication and transmission, that will effect everybody who uses the Internet or other 'new media', the massive mergers and collaborations which effect us all. It discusses High Definition TV, the video on demand problem, the fight over the phone business, stock market frenzy over 'information stock', the problems when so much money can be made by so few people, what happens to the 'middle class' etc. It is a call for us to think about the future based upon a fairly detailed consideration of what is happening now

some quotes:

"design and use of new technology necessarily entails contests over political power"

"companies.. are continuing to invest feverishly against the evidence of most market research and historical experience"

"one of the Digital Revolution's central laws is that the more uncertain one is about exactly how to profit from digital technology, the more lyrical one becomes in describing it"

"As the rate of new wealth creation fueled by digital technology rises, the number of people required to produce it is decreasing"

There are few books on the so called 'information revolution', which anyone interested in the subject will get something out of. This is a book for business, investors, academic analysts, politicians, and nearly everyone else.

If you have ever been on line, and had your computer taken over by a bogus spyware program, that throws a red screen of death, with a radioactive waster warning symbols, tells you they have done a systems scan and found loads of illegal porn that could ruin your family and social life and offers to save you for a mere $49.50, you should appreciate this book. So save some money, get this book and add some more bricks into the firewall and other programs that you currently use to protect and if necessary regain control of your system.

Larry Stevenson and Nancy Altholz have written a great reference book and provided readers with load of valuable information for preventing Malware from infecting your system, more important how to identify an infection and finally how to remove those nasty little Trojans and other gremlins from your system. All this information will hopefully prevent you from having to erase your hard drive, reload WindowsXP and all of your software. Even if you have to do this dreaded last resort, they offer some great information of how to get it done. The book includes a CD-ROM with Security first aid tools that include Anti-malware utilities and scanners, Backup and imaging applications, System analysis programs, Rootkit-detection-and-removal applications; it also includes password protectors and generators.

As our computer systems have developed, and we are using high speed DSL Connections to get online, the Blackhat Hackers have also developed their capabilities. I got hit with a Trojan while doing some Google research on Social Security information, so these idiots are out there, just about everywhere. I use a Norton Firewall, Norton Internet Security, Spybot S&D, Lavasoft's Ad_Aware and can still get zapped by a Rootkit. I was doing E-Mails and on line back in 1984, long before Al Gore even thought he invented it, so I have had a few decades of experience. I still learned more than a couple of things about dealing with Rootkits from this great reference. Check out CastleCops forum and website for some further information.

I really enjoyed this book; it is accessible reading for the general audience of computer users. I think Rootkits for Dummies is a necessary read and up-to-date for most anyone who is securing one's own computer for work or home use to go online. The book is not for a very light user who goes online occasionally, but it is definitely a worth while read to those who setup PCs, and laptops for others who go to online. There are so many things people must do to "harden" their PC in order for it to stay safe relatively speaking online. Malicious activity online has grown expotentionally over the last few years. Viruses, malware, and rootkits have become much more sophisticated and harder to detect for those infected. There are so many new users who go online with their PC not adequately protected and without solid knowledge of defending themselves, thus making them part of the malware problem.

Eventhough I consider myself a computer user at the intermediate-to-advanced level: meaning I believe know a lot about web related applications and internet technology but my knowledge is very limited in areas such as hardware. My own personal knowledge of malware is spotty at best. In the area of cyber crime, my niche knowledge is that of phishing scams (emails and websites set up to steal identities, credit card and/or banking information from unususpecting end-users)

Consider this, as recently as 1999, I had little or no protection on my home PC when I went online. That year was the first time I tried anti-virus software, F-PROT. I was still using dialup at the time, but by that time, there were plenty of viruses out there. Nowadays, if one hooks up a PC loaded with Windows XP unprotected, it takes less than an hour for it to get infected. This book fills in the gaps for me of my own spotty knowledge. There are anti-rootkit programs recommended in the book that I already use, but there are still many I have not used yet and look forward to.

This book, like most of the Dummies series, is set up in a reference format. I have used the accompanying CD,and enjoyed GMER particularly. Additionally, I know there are some other very good useful freeware products one can use to defend oneself online. I will come back and update this information after I have used some more of the recommended programs.

My favorite chapter is 2 which mentions the three Rs of Survivable Systems: resistance (being difficult for malware attack), recogination (detecting and identifying infection) and recovery (bouncing back after a malware attack). This chapter helps me visualize what I should to protect my PC. The other chapters tell you how to secure your network, hard drive, your applications, your OS and everything else that could possibly get one infected when going online. The book has an occasional funny cartoon about the very topic of rootkits. It also contains a very useful index helping one to find the page for the topic they are interested in. One of the best finds of the book for me currently is making an backup of my entire hard drive using ISO image files. This is a great find for me personally as I recently had a hard drive failure and I only backed up files I created and some programs, but not the essential files related to the brand of PC I have. I also lost the key to my Windows XP home OS.

One thing many infected end-users do not know about is that they can post their problems to helpful free anti-malware websites. There is a chapter in this book outlining the ones the authors recommend. There are some great folks deeply dedicated in helping people who have various computer problems for free. This type of effort is probably still not well known to many people who are online, even for some who have been surfing for years.

THE most comprehensive of any of the Rootkit/Spyware/Malware/etc. books out there on the market. This book has so much info that a review of all of it would probably be as long (and hopefully) informative as the book itself. If you want to get an idea of how large the scope is of this book, click on the Table of Contents section under the picture of the book (and even that just skims the surface), because it doesn't show you all the individual topics covered in each chapter (which is extensive).

You don't have to be a 'techie' to get this (although parts of the book are aimed at 'techies'). All you need is a very basic knowledge of PCs (i.e. How to boot up!). This book (and very helpful CD) will walk you, step-by-step through EVERYTHING you need to know to protect your PC.
It contains URL's to technical sites if you happen to get stuck and explanations of how to back out of certain operations if you don't feel comfortable doing something before asking a 'tech' online.

Space constraints in Amazon don't allow me to continue very much further, but if your budget only allows for one book of this type, I urge you to get this one. I guarantee you won't be sorry and you will have learned an amazing amount of things which can harm your PC's (and by extension, YOUR) privacy and security (and exactly how to defend against them) in this online world...

If the information contained in the book is for dummies alone, then there are a lot of us. This book starts with the basics, and walks you all the way to what experts should know. I think even experts would find this book useful for reference. If you don't know what a rootkit is when you buy this book, you will know it, and be able to skin and cook the rootkit by the time you are done. You can learn as little or as much as you want, but your computer will be safer no matter how much you learn.

Practical applications are referenced, along with URL's where you can find out more information, get more help, or just plain learn because you want to.

A definite keeper.