Technology Books

The only thing I can say is I bought it for my 16 year old grandson and he said it is awesome.

If you read the first book this is an excellent followup to help you increase you understanding of how to build a robot of your own. If you did not a good place is start with the first book Robert Building for Begginers. These books help get you in the thought process needed to build decent robots wather small or big.

This review is by my ten year old Robot fanatic:

This book introduces the most common parts (in a beginner type robot) step by step by defining them properly. So far I have made a line following robot almost from scratch. This book sets you up with many different options. It starts with safety and where to obtain parts then moving on to introducing parts. After that you are shown how to setup a solder-less breadboard.

This book (and it's prequel, Robot Building for Beginners by the same author) is extraordinarily good. It picks up where the previous book (which is the best book in existence for the beginning roboticist, in my opinion) leaves off, getting into details of milling parts, microcontroller circuits, and such. A truly wonderful book. If you read the previous book, and then read this book, you will have an excellent grounding in robotics, and have a very entertaining time doing it. Highly recommended!

I am a novice robot builder. I appreciate the thoroughness and practical approach of this book. I have understood and implemented several circuit ideas from this excellent book.

Books like this are refreshingly down-to-earth after reading the usual college text books.

This impeccably reasearched and skillfully written analysis of the baby products industry is a "must read" for all--not only just parents and child care providers. As a collegiate professor, Department of Business and Management, University of Maryland University College, Europe, I've used it in classes to illustrate the principles of product liability, to raise business ethics issues, and to examine the machinery of federal regulation. Resulting discussions have lasted for hours, and rank among the most interesting that I've facilitated. Kudos to the author!

An intelligent and thorough analysis of an industry that has much to answer for in terms of business ethics. I highly recommend this book for parents, grandparents, and educators on all levels, particularly those teaching the intricacies of products liablility law and consumer {misinformation}. Felcher is an excellent writer and builds both compelling and heartbreaking arguments for legislative change. Don't miss this one.

American families trust that the products our babies use, from strollers to cribs to swings, will keep them safe. Unfortunately, we found out the truth in the most terrible way. Our beloved son Danny was the fifth baby to die in the Playskool Travel-Lite Portable Crib. When we discovered that it had been recalled five years earlier, our friend Marla Felcher embarked on a groundbreaking investigation of the juvenile product industry that led to this book.

Read "It's No Accident" and ask yourself, why aren't American manufacturers required to safety test most baby products before marketing them? How can they be allowed to set their own voluntary safety standards? Why don't most parents hear about the tens of millions of unsafe children's products recalled every year? What is the CPSC and why can't it effectively protect our children from disabling injuries and death?

"It's No Accident", which Marla dedicated to Danny's memory, shows that his death was a symptom of a fundamentally-flawed system. Read this book and warn your friends. Nothing will bring Danny back to life, but "It's No Accident" will prevent other, needless tragedies. It is the cornerstone of the next big consumer movement.

Linda Ginzel and Boaz Keysar Chicago, IL

Grandparents buy a large percentage of infant products. This book clearly outlines the products that could prove dangerous. I recommend this book as a must for all prospective grandparents before they take that trip to buy what they believe to be safe for their granchildren.

Do you think the government is protecting your children from unsafe products? If you believe this is so, THEN THINK AGAIN. Felcher does an admirable job pointing out the numerous flaws in the juvenile products industry and showing how your own young children could be at serious risk. For example, did you know that those popular bath seat rings actually contribute to bathtub drownings and that many, many popular juvenile products are recalled because they are dangerous without your knowing? You will be outraged after reading this book once you discover how little is being done to protect young children from dangerous products at the expense of corporate profit. This book is a must read for all parents of young children and would make a terrific baby shower gift.

This book is still the best way to identify dolls and accessories. Wonderful pictures by an enthusiastic and knowledgeable collector. If you need to learn about Mattle Liddle Kiddles, you need this book.

I have had Liddle Kiddles carefully packed away for 30 years. Whenever I asked people if they remember them, they said no . . . now I know I was just asking the wrong people!

Much to my astonishment, I found Liddle Kiddles on an auction website, which led to a high recommendation of this book.

I simply cannot believe the thoroughness of the information, the amazing number of photographs, and the easy-to-read layout. This book would have been worth twice the price, no kidding.

I found out all of my Kiddles have names -- something I wasn't aware of. It also reminded me of ones that have long since been gone, and the nostalgia tour made me long for them, but in a happy memory sort of way.

Thank you to Ms. Langford for an outstanding effort, obviously a "labor of love." What a smile she brought to my face as I found out that I am definitely NOT the only one who remembers Liddle Kiddles!

An excellent source for the identification of Liddle Kiddle dolls and all the accessories. Paris has written THE book as far as Kiddles are concerned. I have two and am going to buy a third--this book is invaluable to me.

Ms. Langford has provided kiddle collectors with an invaluable tool for kiddle lovers and nostalgic doll lovers in general. This book provides the most complete coverage of all the kiddle dolls produced by Mattel during the 1960-1970s, and also provides information on other kiddle-related merchandise that was manufactured, such as lunchboxes, play houses, gift sets, and jewerly. It is jam crammed with excellent color photographs of each and every item, and even includes copies of those nostalgic pages out of the Sears Wishbook! This is a MUST for any kiddle lover. Now stop reading this review and BUY IT TODAY!!!

Ms. Langford has created a truly wonderful collector's book. The identification and information on each Kiddle doll is comprehensive and indispensable for valuation. Visually, it is a delight just to thumb through page after page of colour photos; a walk down memory lane at it's finest. Other 60's dolls with similar appeal are featured as well. Obviously, I can't say enough about this book.

Reading this book has given me confidence to become a shepherd myself. In addition to many necessary details, he recommends learning the personalities of the sheep, being aware when the behavior pattern is different than normal and to trying to figure out why. He has learned the normal noises of the flock, and has learned not to ignore it when they are noisier than normal. Other lessons on sheep behavior include not making direct eye contact with sheep, but speaking to them reassuringly when you approach so they know it's just you and they aren't upset by your presence. There are many other lessons on sheep which are interestingly and sometimes humorously presented for the reader.

I wish there was more on dairying, as I'm interested in that and there aren't many books on dairying sheep. I disagreed with the authors practice of getting rid of the slaughter left overs by leaving them out for carnivores to eat. (I will definitely be composting the parts of sheep the sheep 'waste'). The feeding of grain damages the digestive system of sheep, but I'm not an expert. I would like to read more about keeping grass fed sheep.

I used to work on farms and have dealt with sheep over years as an assistant. I've purchased a small farm and want to start of with a couple of dozen sheep and eventually maybe have a few hundred.
This book was a real inspiring, detailed, easy-to-read, humble, rich and fun introduction to everything about keeping sheep. It gave me confidence instead of listing problems and hazards, yet brought to surface the reality. It covers every aspect of keeping sheep, from growing grass to butchering animals. The book doesn't go into detail about possible health problems and doesn't cover in detail how to machine-shear a sheep, but truly teaches you everything you need to keep sheep, and more inspired me to get sheep and is a really good starting point. It also gets your foot inside the trade, and then you can get one of those nifty 800 page sheep-health encyclopedias and discuss advanced topics with your vet after reading this book and getting a few sheep.

I'd recommend this book to anyone with the slightest interest in sheep or farming. You don't need any experience to read this book, and I never had to go back and read a section over again, unless only to laugh about something twice. Neither is English my mother tongue, and I was new to all English sheep terminology as I approached these pages.

This is a wonderful book for beginning shepherds (more experienced too). Very entertaining and informative.

In "Living with Sheep: Everything You Need to Know to Raise your Own Flock" the author covers exactly what the title implies, EVERYTHING you will need to know to raise sheep! Mr. Wooster writes in a very relaxed, and often humorous way. It's kind of like having coffee with a friend who's giving you pratical and essential instruction from 1st hand experience with sheep. Let me also say that the photo's in this book are excellent- bravo to Geoff Hansen!

Amongst topics covered by this book are: Sheep history, picking your sheep, things you should think about BEFORE you even get sheep, how to handle sheep, the various type of sheep breeds (meat, wool, dual-purpose and heirloom), land support, sheep shelter, fences, hay, how to properly feed your sheep, pasture rotation, raising lambs, organic lamb meat, butchering, wool production, rams and sheep health. This book also has a wonderful Appendix section in the back. Among the Appendix list is: Ewe gestation charts, tools & equipment you will need, summary month-by-month of a shepard's year, and a listing of state sheep sources and breed associations.

That being said Mr. Wooster really knows his sheep! I would invest in a hardback copy as here on Amazon it is cheaper than most retail paperback editions. The paper stock is thick, semi-glossy, flexible and will survive through repeated reading.

A solid 5 stars!

If you are a newcomer to living on a small farm and are looking for information on livestock to keep on your small acreage, this is a great book.

The author is very detailed yet understandable about every aspect of sheep raising and care.

It is also written for people from every angle. If you want to raise your own lambs and slaughter them or, like me, you don't want to use them for any other purpose other than as pets who keep the lawn down, this is just the book for you. The author covers everything you will need and makes you look forward to getting your first flock.

Really enjoyed it.

This book gives a brief and highly technical summary of what was known about nuclear fission in 1942 and how to go about turning this knowledge into a "practical weapon". Great fun to read if you have an engineering or physics degree or similar background knowledge. The author has extensively annotated and updated the terse original lecture notes that were given to new arrivals at Los Alamos. Interestingly, the annotations now take up more space that the original notes. These annotations may help to make the subject accessible to a non-technical audience as they provide invaluable historical and technical background. Invaluable for anyone interested in science history and/or the Manhattan Project.

IANAP (I Am Not A Physicist), but the son of one who worked in Los Alamos some time after WWII ... definitely recommend this for those not intimidated by some equations. There's lots here without the match, and the more of it you can appreciate the more the insights. Serber's comments add a lot of perspective.

Excellent book, it takes a bit to stick with it, but the modern day excerpts/perspectives threaded into the book give it a good historical perspective. This is a good combo to go together with Richard Rhodes "The Making of the Atomic Bomb" and "Dark Sun".

- for anyone seriously interested in our nuclear heritage, weaponeering, or the NWEPS program. Gives INCREDIBLE insight as to the minds and directions these young physicists were going.

This book is a must-read. Simple, concise, straightforward technically. You gotta read it, 'nuff said.

This is a truly exciting book for people with the desire to understand bomb physics. This book consists out of the original lecture notes from a series of seminars given in 1943 to the bomb scientists at the start of the Manhattan Project. These lecture notes are clearly annotated so that a layman can understand the bomb. Although the book discusses mainly the knowledge of 1943, the clear annotations of the author comments also on the advances since 1943.

In this book you will learn to calculate the energy of an atomic bomb after already 5 pages using only one simple physical law (no, not Einstein!). When you are halfway in the book, you will understand the calculations of the critical mass.

However to fully appreciate the book, you need to have a basic understanding of mathematics and physics. (it would be nice if you know what a differential equation is.)

The book also contains several funny anekdotes which make it a truly astonishing reading.

"Managing the design factory" provides an excellent set of practices which can improve your product development and optimize your product development on the dimension you want it to. It provided me with key insights and fresh ideas on how to think about product development.

The book consists of four parts. The first part is a general introduction to product development and clarifies some assumptions made in the rest of the book. The second part is a set of thinking tools for product development. The third part provides concrete practices, called action tools. The last part summerizes the rest of the book and suggests actions to take.

The thinking tools in the second part are key-insights in product development. The first thinking tool is to try to think of product development economically. This also provides four ways to optimize your product development: lowest expense, lowest unit cost, highest performance and shortest time. In the rest of the book Reinertsen uses these four optimizations to show how each action tool will need to be used differently. The second thinking tool is queueing theory. It provides a view of product development as a series of queues. Managing the product development queues becomes essential. The third thinking tool is information theory. What is the value of information and how to optimize for the value. The last thinking tool is systems theory. Think of whole product development as systems, look for feedback loops and look for assumptions behind your current thinking. The thinking tools were the most interesting part of the book (in my opinion) and I thoroughly enjoyed any of these chapters.

The actions tools in part three provide concrete things to do in your product development. This part will use the thinking tools provided in part two to explain the action and also explain how they are different in the different optimizations. The tools were clear and useful. The only criticism could be that there is some duplication between "Developing products in half the time", but that was expected. Also, the tools are just introduced in one chapter and most of them could have filled a book on its own.

Conclusion. "Managing the design factory" is an excellent book on product development and provides key-insights and tools for looking at product development. I would recommend it for anyone who is involved in product development.

If you're looking for a book to arm you with the latest buzzwords and easy answers, this is not for you. If you're looking for a useful framework for thinking about product design and tools for applying principles, this is an excellent buy. This book is clearly written, well-organized, and full of useful information.

Unlike many management books, it's not 20 pages of information stretched out to 200 pages in order to make a book. Also, unlike most product development books, this book is of great value not just to product managers and designers, but would be a great read for financial managers and marketing managers. A manufacturing manager reading this book will smile with satisfaction at seeing common modern manufacturing principles well applied to the design realm.

The only weak points I can think of are: 1) That it may be useful for the author to break out case studies rather than keeping them in the same typeface intermingled with the rest of the text. 2) No real advice is given on how to overcome real-world resistance to these ideas. Some sage advice on how to introduce these concepts and tools into organizations with existing biases and cultures could be a real benefit to practitioners. These are minor objections though.

Whether you're in a software start-up or part of a Fortune 500 company design team doing existing product improvement, this book contains useful information that will enhance your understanding of what you're doing right and what you could do better - and WHY!

I don't think they use the word agility once, but this book clearly enunciates all of the reasons that agile processes often show success, without prescribing a specific set of items to do. This book will enable managers of development teams to look at the product they're building, its impact on the business's bottom line, and make both long-term and daily decisions about how to run their team. Individual developers will also gain an understanding of how to better streamline processes -- for instance, people often think that introducing large processes to "prevent an error from happening again" is a good idea. However, this book will help you to learn why that can be bad; that it can introduce queues and actually result in a process slowdown, especially if it happens early in the development process and on the critical path.

I just can't say enough about this book; some other specific books on Agile software development are helpful to give you ideas of specific things to do, but this book is absolutely crucial to learn and use in your daily decision-making process.

I have never seen so much good advice about product development in one place. Applying concepts from manufacturing, finance, queuing theory and communications theory, Reinertsen proposes many ways in which we can design better processes for development.

For example, if we were to view the investment in design work as a depreciating asset, like work-in-process inventory in the factory, we would be able to make better decisions about time, manpower, and project delay tradeoffs.

Key concepts include: valuing design work based on its financial impact on the organization; learning as much as possible as early as possible in the development cycle; managing queues in the development process; creating specifications which are flexible for as long as possible, so that evolving customer requirements can be accommodated.

He clearly shows that we can optimize development work on only one of the following parameters: Product cost, product performance, speed of development, development expense. The approach for each one is different, and it is important to be clear which one is primary.

There is a wealth of useful and practical advice in this book. For example, here are some comments on testing:

"Too often testing is viewed as a necessary evil in the development process. It only exists because we make mistakes. If we made fewer mistakes, we would not need to do all this testing. We should spend our money on `designing in quality' instead of finding defects by testing. The result of such an attitude may be a test department that is under-resourced and under-managed. Unfortunately, by viewing testing as a problem, rather than an asset, we miss the opportunity to capitalize on the extraordinary improvements that can take place in product testing.
"Let us start by putting testing in perspective. The elapsed schedule time for product testing is typically 30 to 60 percent of overall development cycle length. This is not another minor activity, it is a major design activity. ... text results have inherently high information content. In fact, testing is usually the stage of design process that generates the greatest amount of information.... ...Most companies misunderstand the role of testing ... because they fail to distinguish between design testing and manufacturing testing. ... Manufacturing testing is done to identify defects in the manufacturing process. ... Design testing is done to generate information about the design. A good outcome is high information generation early in the design process. ... We want a failure rate close to 50 percent...." [pp 230-232]

I highly recommend this book to senior managers in product development, and their Marketing and Finance counterparts.

Reviewed by John Levy,
...

Managing the Design Factory; A Product Developer's Toolbox, by Donald G. Reinertsen, is an important book on how successful companies should develop new products. Many popular management books share some common themes such as; JIT, kanban, lean manufacturing, reducing WIP, quick turn times, low inventory. Unfortunately, the development process in most companies has been slow to apply these insights to their engineering and design practice. Reinertsen does a superb job of showing how this is done. The Design Factory exists for one purpose - the same as the manufacturing factory - to make a profit. The focus of the book is on tools, not rules and rituals. These are practical tools that account for varied situations. The information is presented in a form that an engineer can understand and appreciate, but without unnecessary difficulty. There are excellent sections on queue and information theory, and capacity utilization and batch size, and on eliminating useless controls. I agree completely with the `do it, try it, fix it' approach to development, and not being burdened with trying to make it right the first time. Every practicing design engineer should read this book.

very efficient delivery.
product in very good state.

This is the standard by which most other Cardiology board review texts are measured. This new version is not as readable in my opinion as its previous version. The whole reason I bought it was to avoid the Brunwauld-esque style, but alas I think this text book is becoming like the Braunwald text which certainly is not a review book. On the other hand, the ECG section in outline format was too bare bones. All in all, not the greatest review book in the world but not too many viable alternatives when trying to review for Cardiology Boards. I guess it's the only game in town.

I bought this book as a resident transitioning into a cardiology fellowship. The content is between a board review book and a more comprehensive text, i.e. Braunwald. It is an excellent resource for a focused, yet thorough, review of most cardiology topics.

Strenghts are that it is very readable, has key points emphasized in outline format throughout text, is sufficiently detailed to learn a topic relatively well, has pertinent cardiology trials integrated into the text, and a nice very focused key point review at the end for last minute board prep.

One con is that there are no references to journal articles for more detailed reading.

I would recommend this book to any resident wanting a good cardiogy text or for fellows in training. Also a nice review for practicing cardiologists.

Excellent resource book that is written clearly enough for people who are not necessarily medically trained. Reading the chapter on my own heart condition allowed me to have a great conversation with my cardiologist that went beyond the usual "this is what you have, take these pills, see me again in 6 months....". This book is great!

Very good review for Cardiology Boards. Not necessarily an easy read but the review books which are as such tend to be too simple. This is probably a good happy medium between the quickie review books and a Braunwald's

I bought this book for my then boyfriend-now husband 5 years ago for his birthday. He is a die-hard Mercedes fan and used to go into the bookstore every lunch hour to page through this book. Just after I bought it and before I gave it to him, he went into a total sulk because he'd thought someone else had bought the book as he couldn't find it in the bookstore!! Little did he know:-) He treasures this book with everything that he has ...

It is everything and more than I expected to find in a Mercedes tome. Having read several books on the subject I find this one to be the most informative. The early years are covered well.

The amount of factual material lavished in this tome about the origins of the motor car and the search for excellence via the Mercedes Benz brand should keep the afficianado glued for hours. The pictures are also excellent. Written in about three or four languages within the same book, the descriptions are backed by photographs - good ones charting the evolution of the Merc from the 19th century right to the modern sleek saloon. I think this is very much for the Mercedes buff or collector and I bought it as a gift. I think this book would be good if it showed how the Merc could grow some wings and start being more in harmony with the Earth's environment based on what sort of fuel it burns and fuel efficiency rather than just talk about technical specifications in self congratulatory terms. Still this book is about "man's" achievement with the motor car and there are things in this which you could admire.

This book is a joy to have. Well written and beautifully illustrated, I found this book a pleasure to own. As a dedicated Benz owner, I can appreciate the attention to detail that exists in this book.

This is one of those grand coffee table books that you love to leave out for your guests to enjoy.

Beautiful photographs and tons of information on early and largely unknown models of the past. However, if you expect to find a particular model, you may be disappointed. Selected models are highlighted for each chronological era. Amazingly, the flagship model of present day Mercedes-Benz, the S600 , is conspicuously absent, as are all of the S Class models. I had expected coverage of the V-12 engine, in particular. However, the presentation in three languages, with magnificent pictorials, is quite impressive, and well worth the cost.

There have been a couple of other books on message passing, but most of them have been anchored to a particular operating system or language. This book is the first to offer a general treatment of messaging, as a way to merge disparate middleware installations.

At the end of the day, messaging technology is just another way to allow distributed code to interact. Blunden takes the time to compare and contrast messaging against other distributing computing techniques. The result is that the reader can understands the relative advantages and limitations of messaging, so that they can use the right tool for the right job.

At every turn, Blunden grounds his explanations using concrete examples, so that the reader has a solid frame of reference (I can appreciate the author's humorous 10-page implementation of a DCOM server, basically to demonstrate how awkward a distributed technology can be... it's no wonder DCOM faded away).

The author of this book has obviously seen combat in the trenches. The fact that he would discuss deployment requirements like auto-update and secure network communication is proof enough.

I particularly enjoyed the bits of storytelling that Blunden hides in between technical discussions. In one part, he talks about working at a company in the throes of Y2K conniptions: "Like a 15-year-old kid studying for an algebra test, the company that hired me had waited until the last minute to do its homework. In September of 1999, the CIO put down his copy of Fortune Magazine long enough to realize that something needed to be done. Angry customers might file lawsuits, which would ruin the CIO's plans for a weekend cottage in Bermuda."

This book does an impressive job of looking at a "niche" of computer science and analyzing it in the backdrop of contemporary production requirements. The book provides an extensive presentation of background theory, a 10,000+ line working system, lucid documentation, and a discussion of alternative improvements and approaches.

To demonstrate the cross-platform/cross-language feasibility of his distribution, the author offers three different client pieces (C, Java, and Perl). This is a round-trip explanation of messaging passing that does a conscientious job of covering all the bases.

This is a very instructive learning-by-implementing book, in the tradition of Tanenbaum's MINIX. Blunden walks one through an in-depth analysis and implementation of a real message passing server.

I'm a little put off, though, by the fact that I find 10 5-Star ratings for this book, all posted on the same date by the same reviewer. C'mon.

I bought this book with the expectation that the Bluebox message server would be a token implementation.

Whoa! Was I wrong; this book shows the full monty! It includes a message server engine, a log server, a database interface, a license server, and auto update engine, recovery facilities, and a heartbeat monitor. Fortunately, the 100 or so classes that make up the distribution are well documented and a user manual is included in the book. The last few sections of the book also have some interesting anecdotes that are worth reading.

The book presents a lot of novel methods, in particular those related to biophysical nanotechnology and microwave technologies, that cannot be found in other textbooks.

This is an outstanding overview of the entire field of biophysics methods. The textbook presents the most important biophysics topics including fascinating biophysical nanotechnology and proteomics methods. The author uses lots of figures and does a marvelous job describing complex issues in fairly easy to comprehend terms. It is fun to read this book.

This is a fantastic textbook on biophysics methods and techniques. I found it particularly useful for those who are theoreticians and computer modelers. As a theoretical biophysicist, I work on protein folding, protein structure prediction and ligand-receptor binding studies, and I was constantly looking for a book which contains all important and up-to-date experimental methods and techniques to better understand our experimental colleagues' work. Now I found it! If you are also looking for a book for introductory as well as advanced topics in biophysics methods, this book might be the one you are looking for. It essentially covers all the new and important subjects of this field. I found the chapters about proteomics, ion mobility spectrometry, and mass spectrometry, particularly interesting. I will try to include some of the material in the course "Biophysical Chemistry"(a graduate level course) that I am co-teaching, and I will strongly recommend this book to those who are interested in biophysics.

This book presents a review of various biophysical methods, most of them developed or significantly revised in recent years, for the use of studying biomolecules. The author illustrates each technique with lots of figures (makes me to remember the old phrase "one figure is worth more than thousand words") and also provides a good bibliography for each technique. The book also assembles the information that is hard to find from a single source. I enjoyed reading the book and recommend it for beginners as well as advanced users.

I highly evaluate this book as an important contribution to biophysics. There are many students interested in this book.