Media Monitoring Books

This book is an eye-opener on privacy invasion, and how it can harm you in countless ways. It is a comprehensive study of the many forms privacy invasion can take, especially as practiced on the Internet, and what you can do to protect yourself. Author Dan Tynan has studied these offensive practices for years, and gives us the benefit of his research and findings. Find out what is going on, and what you can do protect yourself, not only on the internet, but in other aspects of your life as well.

Much as we don't want to, privacy is something we all need to think about and protect these days, unless we want to give up our computers and other gadgets and go back to stone tablets. Now we have an easy, funny, understandable guide to protecting ourselves in the online age, and we'd be foolish (and just asking for trouble) to ignore it. Dan Tynan has done all the hard work for us; now we just need to make sure that everyone we know reads this book!

This book covers more than just your digital privacy. It sweeps on a wide variety of privacy topics. I find that a good thing since it's comprehensive. In reality your digital identity is interspersed with your physical identity and both a very important.

This is the most accessible of the privacy books I've read. The advice is presented in bite sized bits that are easy to understand and implement. It gives both background and practical advice. Both of which are necessary to understand the problem and the solutions.

Computer Privacy Annoyances
O'Reilly
By Dan Tynan
ISBN 0596007752

As someone who gets asked questions about Internet use and safety all the time, a book I had been itching to read was "Computer Privacy Annoyances", by Dan Tynan. According to the cover, the book covers "How to avoid the most annoying invasions of your personal and online privacy."

The quick and dirty? The book gives very practical, real-world examples of how your data can be used, yet the author manages to avoid sounding like a doomsayer... even some of the more scary scenarios don't come off sounding like sensationalism, just honest (and sometimes even apologetic) examples of what could very realistically happen. (I thank you, Mr. Tynan.)

I'll take bets on anyone that doesn't learn at least ten new things they didn't know about their privacy rights. Mr. Tynan has taken the proverbial "They" and reduced it to the very organizations that "they" really are. Did you know you can request a copy of your FBI files? Do you know who has the power view it? Do you know who is collecting data on you at this very moment and what they are doing with it?

The book's format allows for a surprisingly fast read. Well organized sections such as privacy at home, on the Internet, in public, at work, and even on a federal level allow for quick chapter absorption. In each chapter, the author states the annoyance, and then the fix. This allows for quick skipping over an 'annoyance' that might not annoy you that much.

I did notice that the author made no mention of the everyday information users give out about themselves without even realizing it, such as usernames that contain birthdates and such. But the Internet privacy chapter is only a small portion of the topics covered in this book. In fact, if I had to find one fault with this book, however, I'd say they lost a much larger audience that could have easily benefited from the book by calling it *Computer* Privacy Annoyances.

As a tech professional, if I could get all my clients, users, friends, family and complete strangers to read this book, I strongly believe identify theft could become a thing of the past. And it might even reduce global blood pressure, too. Bonus!

Privacy? Good luck! Even the slightest misstep on line (or anywhere else, for that matter) can open you up to privacy intrusions that you may not know about. Dan Tynan does a really good job in outlining these areas in Computer Privacy Annoyances. This is pretty much required reading for living in our heavily computerized society.

Contents: Privacy At Risk; Privacy At Home; Privacy On The Net; Privacy At Work; Privacy In Public; Privacy And Uncle Sam; Privacy In The Future; Index

In this Annoyances title, Tynan looks at a wide range of activities and situations that involve a potential unwanted loss of privacy. Using a question and answer format, he effectively shows how seemingly innocent activities (like booking a hotel room or ordering a kosher meal on a flight) can be logged and combined to build a profile of your activities that may not present a very flattering picture of who you are and what you do (and with whom). While there's the obligatory chapters on spam, online registration sites, and the like, there are also excellent chapters that cover privacy at work (what your employers can and can not do) as well as health record concerns. Things may not be as secure and private as you think they are...

Realistically, there's already more information out there to be gleaned than you'd probably expect and be comfortable with. But by reading and digesting the contents of this book, you can start to reduce your exposure going forward. Even just the awareness of privacy concerns will start to cause you to question *why* a merchant might want certain information. They may *want* your zip code or phone number, but that doesn't mean you *have* to give it to them. Even if this book keeps you from making just one mistake that would lead to identity theft, then it's more than paid for itself. A recommended read...

Excellent Book. Who said an old dog can't learn new tricks. Found several little tid-bits that have trimmed a number of my scripts or changed the way I've implemented services! A great desktop companion for advanced and intermediate admins.

This is a very good book. These remarks are for Linux users on the way up. If you are already an über-üser, well, you will probably like this book anyway.

If you don't have the first volume, you might want to start with it. It has some simple but very useful things that apply to just about anyone with their own Linux box and a command line.

This volume is much more advanced, and most of the tricks and techniques deal with much more specialized problem domains, ie. things you might not have run into yet. One advantage of this book over the first is that it is very up to date in its recommendations of existing software to use.

'Linux Server Hacks Volume Two' by William von Hagen is an outstanding companion guide for ALL Linux users and administrators. Packed with over 450 pages and 100 new hacks not in Volume 1, these aren't just known by everybody things that you can do with Linux, these are hot tips and tricks that most any Linux freak can excel from learning about.

Chapters Covered:

01. Linux Authentication
02. Remote GUI Connectivity
03. System Services
04. Cool Sysadmin Tools and Tips
05. Storage Management and Backups
06. Standardizing, Sharing, and Synchronizing Resources
07. Security
08. Troubleshooting and Performance
09. Logfiles and Monitoring
10. System Rescue, Recovery, and Repair

Pick this book up now, you will NOT be disappointed in this delcious Linux FEAST!!

***** HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

I can't say enough about the work done in Linux Server Hacks vII by the two Bs. Bill and Brian have hit the ball out of the ballpark with this one.

Just the section on LVM (Logical Volume Management) have saved my bacon!

Every single "hack" (read tip) is extremely practical, applicable and relevant to managing and administering Linux systems whether "servers" or not!

The absolute best part of this book is that you get really useful, insightful views into the experiences of seasoned veterans of Unix systems. If you sit in a NOC or if you're the 24x7 guy/gal on a server farm, this book is an occupational requirement! Everyone else will appreciate it if they're running Linux. In my modest network of perhaps 30 Linux systems, I can tell you that I saved hours of effort with just two of the hacks included in this volume. Considering the time savings, buying this book saved my company more than 300% on the cover price.

Are you a system administrator? If you are, then this book is for you! Authors Bill Von Hagen and Brian K Jones, have done an outstanding job of writing volume two of a book that focuses on cool hacks they developed or used in their server and system administration careers.

Von Hagen and Jones, begin by exploring the authentication options that are available to you in heterogeneous networked computing environments and simplify administering user accounts and passwords. Then, the authors explore ways of connecting to remote systems. Next, the authors explain how to set up central servers that do things like synchronize the time on all the systems in your environment, deliver IP addresses to newly connected hosts, and integrate these services with existing ones. The authors then present a variety of cool sysadmin tips and techniques that they've accumulated over the years, including how to keep processes running without writing a daemon or staying logged in, how to use PXE to netboot Linux, how to share information with fellow sysadmins in a centralized fashion, how to get the most out of classic but incredibly useful terminal-oriented applications, and so on. They continue to explore some cool ways of making it easier for you to manage storage, deploy new systems, do backups of today's huge disks, and even reduce the need for some of the restore requests that occasionally clog every sysadmin's inbox. Then, the authors provide some tips and tricks for managing distributed storage and making sure the administrative environments on your servers are synchronized. They then discuss a wide range of security tools and techniques that can help you sleep at night and protect your systems at the same time. Next, they provide techniques for optimizing system performance, whether by figuring out who's hogging the entire CPU and shooting down that user's network sessions or by using cool knobs in the /proc filesystem to tweak system performance or using journaling filesystems to minimize system restart time. Then, they include hacks that enable you to centralize log information in a variety of ways, be warned when problems arise, and get the most out of system status information, whether it's log information, internal disk controller status data, or remote hardware status information that you can collect via SNMP. Finally, the authors show you how to boot crippled systems so that you can diagnose problems, repair munged filesystems, and even recover deleted files of data that was stored on disks that have gone belly up.

This most excellent book has presented hacks that are techniques that the authors have used at various times. More importantly, they view these techniques as time- and hassle-savers that are usually downright fun and cool.

This book is great. I personally knew Mr Bill cheek before he passed on. This book has more info than the average person would use. You must be hardcore to do the mods and have very good eyes. I would make it a point to get his scanner modification hand books 1 and 2 and also buy cheek 3. With theese books you are armed with alot of knowledge...

All of the topics could be easily found by a google search in much more details. The only good point after reading this book : a beginner knows how to pick from the smorgasbord of the Net.

Pretty useless for Engineers, even beginner Engineers already in the trade. And the book is not cheap !

This is a great beginners book from basic electronics up to developing for specific chips. I've been an application developer for years and I've been looking to make the switch to lower level programming. This book will definitely get you started and even walk you through the design of the beginners microprocessors (PIC & AVR).
As mentioned above, it should have "beginner" in the title.

This is a practical introduction to embedded hardware, so to write software for the hardware presented in this book, you will need to consult other books. This book is only an introduction and if you want to gain more knowledge and experience in the field of hardware design, further study is required. In the first part of the book the author gives an introduction to computer architecture and describes the components that you find in a PC. The author goes on to explain basic electronics, just enough to understand the explanations about the electronic components. There are the basic equations to calculate voltage and current. The functionality of resistors, capacitors, inductors, diodes and crystals is explained. There is advice on how you can build or have built your own integrated circuit board. Some simple microprocessors and micro controllers are described including the currently available and commonly used PIC and AVR micro controllers, the 68000-series microprocessor and a DSP based controller. The functionality of the components is described and it is shown how the component can be used with a few other basic components to exercise a minimum of functionality. The book also covers useful topics like the protocols SPI (Serial Peripheral Interface) and I2C, Inter Integrated Circuit, which show how components can communicate with each other or the outside world. Various serial port and network protocols are discussed like RS232C and USB. Chapter 13 was particularly interesting, covering analog to digital conversion and applications. For example, the book explains how to use an amplifier to connect a digital circuit to a temperature or light sensor, or a motor control. The one thing I did not like about the book was the dedication of an entire chapter to the ancient language of Forth. This space might have been better spent on expanding the book's discussion of assembly language or the more timely topic of embedded networks.
This book might be too elementary for practicing engineers, particularly if they are already familiar with the devices commonly used in embedded circuits. However, for those engineers that have been writing software since they graduated, this book is a good fast-paced introduction to the hardware commonly found in embedded systems. A good follow-on to this book is "Programming Embedded Systems with C and C++" by the same publisher.

I am a Firmware Engineer currently but have a degree in Electrical Engineering so I felt this book would help me relate my Electrical experience to the Firmware world. I was disappointed when I realized how basic this book was. They dedicate a full chapter to basic voltage, resister, capacitor, etc concepts. Even with no on the job experience outside of school I found almost nothing that I did not already know. It is good for people who need to learn the basics but if you have any computer architecture experience or electrical engineering experience then this book is not for you.

This book aims at a very wide domain - embedded hardware/software. While most of the books out there on the market are concerned with design patterns, agile techniques and heavy methodologies for big projects, the largest software market is actually the embedded, with most processors manufactured, and most software written.

The author is an experienced embedded engineer and has knowledge both in hardware and software - it's the connecting line between these two that is the main subject of the book. Quite well written, many topics are covered - Electronics 101 (though not really on a beginner level - it runs too fast for that), some software - assembly language of various processors, microcontroller architectures, digital design and even soldering / breadboard creation.
It looks to be possible to build a small embedded computer just from the directions given in this book - which is very nice, and gives practical-headed readers something to play with. The author clearly enjoys what he's doing and it shows through his writing - this is a nice motivational boost, embedded design is indeed very interesting.

The crowd to enjoy the book the most will be people with some experience in either software or hardware (or both), who want to get into the exciting embedded field, or just bright and curious amateurs who want to build that heat-sensing remote control for their bathroom tub.

Some downsides of the book: the chapter on Forth is dubious. (Forth ??? Gimme a break...) The Electronics tutorial is just too fast. I doubt that people without any EE background will really understand it. For a beginner's book, there's too much options given in the processors chapters (about 4) - beginners like few options that are well explained. So a suggestion to the author for the next edition - drop Forth, drop a couple of processors, spend more time on electronics basics instead, and you'll have a truly great book.

Preston Gralla's PC Pest Control: Protect Your Computers From Malicious Internet Invaders covers all kinds of PC pests, from adware to viruses, Torjans, and pop-ups. This not only identifies the characteristics of common invaders - it tells how to prevent attacks. From locating and installing free anti-spyware programs to customizing cookie handling and dealing with worms, this assumes no prior knowledge and comes packed with preventative tips which are simple and inexpensive to employ.

Think you're safe online because you're running firewall and anti-spam software? Wrong! As author Preston Gralla, points out in this outstanding book: "As long as you're armed with the right knowledge and tools, you'll be able to stop pests and intruders cold!"

Gralla begins by scaring you to death with a discussion about all of the dangerous PC pests that exist. Next, the author shows you where your computer is vulnerable and how pests make their way into your system. Then, you'll learn about the software you need to keep your system secure. The author continues by showing you how to detect pests based on the symptoms you see on your PC, such as pop-up swarms, system slowdowns, and clogged Internet access. In addition, you'll also learn how to protect yourself from threats or disinfect yourself if you've already been hit. The author also focuses on how to kill all types of spyware and keep your PC free from infection. Next, you'll learn how to protect yourself against the oldest and newest PC pests, viruses, Trojans, and bots. Then, the author shows you why you don't need to stop e-mailing or sending instant messages if you want to protect yourself. He continues by showing you how to keep yourself off spam lists--and how to kill spam before it ever makes its way to your PC. In addition, the author also covers how to protect your self and your kids against online dangers, plus a whole lot more. Finally, he also covers the kinds of threats you encounter when using wireless computing at home or at a hotspot, and shows you what you can do about them.

At the end of the day, if Internet invaders are still attacking your home computers, you need to really read this most excellent book--again and again. Why you ask? Because, if you're still being attacked, you only skimmed through this book; and, did not comprehend why various pests invaded your PC and/or followed Gralla's general advice about prevention, monitoring, and recovery.

I received this book just shortly before Hurricane Katrina hit. I took the book with me as I evacuated to Southern Mississippi but was so busy for the three weeks that I was away from my home, that I did not have a chance to read it. When I returned home after three weeks, I was confronted with a HUGH oak tree sitting on my home. That was removed yesterday for $3500.00. Now, I am in the middle of Hurricane Rita. So, perhaps you should ask someone who is not in a Hurricane path to review this book.
Nancy

If there is one thing that is truly pandemic within the PC computer environment it is the various forms of pests. Whether it is SPAM, viruses, worms, pop-ups, page hijacking, adware, spyware, cookies, malicious scripts, phishing, or any number of other problems the one thing for certain is that it is all out there waiting to take advantage of you. This book examines these and other pests and provides both an excellent explanation of what they are and how they work as well as steps to be taken to try to avoid them. The author actually does an excellent job of explaining the various threats, common signs of infection, and how to remove them. He even includes a list of common file names used by pests. While this is all good information for the person who wants a basic understanding of what is going on and how it is accomplished it does not deal with some of the truly malicious pests that even pest removal software does not remove. For example, there are some now that cannot be removed even by entering the registry in safe mode and trying to remove the key. I've had some where I've had to boot to Linux, mount the drive, remove the key and then boot back into Windows. These particularly tenacious ones are not covered in this text and as such it cannot be recommended for the true computer geek who does this for a living or as a computer network administrator. On the other hand, it is perfectly suited for the home user who has some of the common problems and wants to both fix them and do all they can to prevent being reinfected. It contains one of the better discussions of pests for the average user that I have come across. The book is written for the average reader and contains no real technical terms. PC Pest Control is recommended for the average user who wants to become informed about PC Pests or who wants to resolve some of the more common problems.

"PC Pest Control" is an outstanding look at the common problems that computer users will face on a daily basis. Preston Gralla writes in a concise, clear manner that will benefit anyone from the most novice of user to the most experienced (while the focus is on novice to amateur, this is a nice overview that will help reinforce the old pros).

The author looks at the most common problems users will face, broken up into the following topics:

Viruses
Spyware
Trojans
Bots
Spam
Worms
IM Annoyances
Identity Theft
Wireless Signal/Data Theft

Mr. Gralla not only provides the history and background on how these threats came to be, but he goes into thorough detail about what everyday users can do to make their computer experience as "pest free" as possible through the use of:

Anti-virus programs
Anti-spyware programs
Stronger e-mail filters/applications
Recommendations for how to protect from Identity Theft
Locking down MAC/IP addresses to limit wireless theft

This is just a quick overview of what this fantastic book provides. For anyone that wants to learn more about what problems users will face on a daily basis by going online (or just sharing data), the author goes into exceptional detail and you will be hard-pressed to not find this manual instantly useful.

I highly recommend this book for anyone that wants to tighten down their own computers or their own computer behavior and I honestly think it's a steal at the price that this book goes for, considering how dense the material is inside.

You won't be disappointed!!!

***** HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

Hi, I didn't receive my order. It's my second order I have problem with it.

More, i receive mail to review my order but it don't apper in my recent order.

Thanks to correct situation,

This is a great book and a great series. Tons of great tips and quickly becomes and awesome reference guide.

A very good organization, I recommend those for whom security is important, but who don't want complications.

"Network Security Hacks" Second Edition
by: Andrew Lockhart
O'Reilly Media, Inc. 2007
ISBN: 10: 0-596-52763-2

Network Security Hacks is more advanced than some of the other "Hacks series" books.
Explains the why and how of securing your Unix, Linux, or Windows servers. Protect your data and your users form outside threats, using the detailed examples in this book. Not for beginners, this book is intended for experienced administrators, already familiar with server configurations.

This second edition of Network Security Hacks is a collection of 125 powerful security techniques. This volume demonstrates effective methods for defending your servers and networks from a variety of devious and subtle attacks. Within this book are examples of how to detect the presence and track every keystroke of network intruders, methods for protecting your network and data using strong encryption, and even techniques for laying traps for would-be hackers. Many important security tools are presented, as well as interesting ways for using them to reveal useful information about your network's activity. There is mention in the beginning of the book about "code", but I haven't run across any yet. The closest thing I found to code were forms of command lines for various network tools and expected typical responses. So if you are not a programmer, don't be scared away. The following is the table of contents:

Chapter 1, Unix Host Security, demonstrates advanced techniques for hardening your Linux, FreeBSD, or OpenBSD server.

Chapter 2, Windows Host Security, covers many important steps that Windows administrators often overlook, including tightening down permissions, auditing all system activity, and eliminating security holes that are present in the default Windows installation.

Chapter 3, Privacy and Anonymity, discusses several ways to protect oneself online by offering solutions for encrypting email, remaining anonymous, and managing passwords for web sites.

Chapter 4, Firewalling, shows how to set up firewalls under various operating systems, such as Linux, OpenBSD, FreeBSD, and Windows. Different filtering and firewall testing techniques are also covered in this chapter.

Chapter 5, Encrypting and Securing Services, shows how provide secure services for SMTP, IMAP, POP3, Apache, and MySQL.

Chapter 6, Network Security, demonstrates some tools and techniques used to attack servers using the network itself, as well as methods for preventing these attacks.

Chapter 7, Wireless Security, includes only a handful of very useful hacks. Whether you want to share your network with others and still maintain a semblance of security, or lock down your wireless network with fine-grained authentication, this chapter has something for you.

Chapter 8, Logging, shows you how to balance the need for information with the need for brevity by automatically collecting, processing, and protecting your system logs.

Chapter 9, Monitoring and Trending, presents a number of tools and methods for watching your network and services over time, allowing you to recognize trends that will aid in future planning and enable you to tell at a glance when something just isn't right.

Chapter 10, Secure Tunnels, shows you how to implement powerful VPN technologies, including IPSec, PPTP, and OpenVPN. You will also find techniques for protecting services using SSL, SSH, and other strong encryption tools.

Chapter 11, Network Intrusion Detection, centers on the tremendously popular NIDS tool Snort and presents many techniques and add-ons that unleash this powerful tool's full potential. Also presented are methods for setting up your own "honeypot" network to attract and confuse would-be system crackers.

Chapter 12, Recovery and Response, contains suggestions on how to verify your system's integrity, preserve evidence for later analysis, and track down the human being at the other end of undesirable network traffic.

I would recommend this book to any network security professional. However, I think it is too advanced for someone who is just interested in the profession or someone who is tinkering with a home network on an amateur basis. There is no "beginner's material" to be found in this book, and it will likely be over your head if you are not already working in the field.

I first learned of Sally Edwards when I bought my Timex Ironman T5F001 Unisex 100-Lap Target Trainer Heart Rate Monitor Watch and Timex Bodylink Ultimate Package 3rd Generation - GPS Speed and Distance, Heart Rate and PC Link (inc.Software). There was a short pamphlet in there on Heart Zone Training. I thought that it was an interesting concept, assigning "training points" to exercise so that you can achieve certain goals. I was curious so I decided to buy this book.

Here were the goals that I was hoping the book would help me achieve:

1) weight loss and maintenance
2) increased fitness

While I thought the concept of training points was helpful, I found that in the book Edwards over-complicated things with her Training Tree. Also, since my primary goal is weight loss, Edwards doesn't provided any type of training point system for that. Granted, everyone's body is different, but even providing a rough range, like 400 - 800 points would have been ideal, but there's nothing like that to be found in this book.

The Training Point System stands on its own, but with the addition of the Training Tree, I thought the book got even more confusing. I think she could have spent more time discussing the Point System and addressing other goals besides just training for a race.

If you're brand new to heart zone training, I would consider this book to be more of a "starter pamphlet", because it describes what heart zone training is, but beyond that, it doesn't really give more detailed information. In fact, you can find the same amount of detail on the internet. For anyone who needs more than a basic overview of heart zone training, I'd highly recommend John Parker's Heart Monitor Training for the Compleat Idiot over this book. Parker's book is the best I've ever read.

I have exercised regularly for years, and am well-acquainted with the benefits of aerobic conditioning. Although I have been aware of the importance of proper heart rate, I've always just guessed at it. On my last visit to my physician, he suggested that I exercise using a heart rate monitor. Sally Edwards' book was the one I chose to inform me on heart rate training.

This book presents the basics of heart zone training, which are exactly what I need as a beginner. A more experienced heart rate trainer might find the volume too simplistic, but for a novice it is ideal. Edwards' work is easy-to-read, and the training stories of friends and acquaintances personalize the presentation.

I'd recommend this book to anyone who is considering a heart rate training program. It's basic, it's believable, and it's built upon solid medical and athletic experience. Once you've read this title, you'll want to buy a heart rate monitor immediately. Take your time, learn about features and prices, and then purchase accordingly. The appendix at the back of the book gives some good advice on how to select a monitor that is right for you.

This book is ideal for beginners. If only she had put the word beginner in the title I would have known and chosen another book. The book is very basic, and more than half of it consists of experiences of her friends. She goes into too many details about them, and the quotes sound made-up.

I'm a beginner to heart rate training but not a beginner to exercise. I ended up with lots of questions that her book doesn't answer. She says many things that I'm questioning. Maybe they're true for beginners who are out of shape but for me? According to her book, I'm running anaerobically (86% of HR max) yet I'm not even out of breath. Later she says that the threshold is different for everyone. so these percentages she gives (60%, 70%, 80%, etc.) are not accurate.

Overall I got some good ideas from this book, like the importance of cross-training and keeping a log of what I do. But at the same time I think at least half of it wasn't helpful. If you haven't exercises in a while and are out of shape, and are willing to buy a heart rate monitor (I suggest Polar) then this book is for you. If you already exercise I would search for a more advanced book or website.

I found this book very informative, especially since I hadn't approached fitness from heart rate point of view before. However, I think this could have been presented in a much more succinct manner. The website ... seems to say the same thing much more precisely (and cheaply).
I think Sally gave too much attention to her friends' fitness experiences, experiences which were very far removed from this reader's situation.

Sally Edwards book is ideally suited for the novice non-runner. I found the information in this book to be very basic and with the primary emphasis to be targeted at individuals beginning a fitness program. The book is writen in a very friendly manner and definately not "textbookish". I recommend this book for those people interested in beginning a fitness program.

There are so many bad things to say about this book, it is almost impossible to know when to stop. Consider first the source: published by Prima Forum, a conservative publishing house and now the right-wing arm of Random House. Consider the funding: a grant from the Phillips Foundation, a non-profit organization whose journalism fellows' publishing record reads like a right-wing horror show and whose 2006 Lifetime Achievement Winner was Rupert Murdoch. Consider the author's acknowledgments: Al Regnery (of the ultra-right wing Regnery Publishing and the American Spectator), Robert Novak (he of Valerie Plame fame), and Don Hodel (a Director of Focus on the Family). Consider the author: Matthew Robinson, managing editor at the Conservative high-trash magazine Human Events (they actually advertise a book claiming to tell you what you didn't know about Terry Schiavo and why it matters) whose articles have been featured on Fox News, the Rush Limbaugh Show, and the Christian Broadcasting Network. Talk about credentials!

Furthermore, consider Mr. Robinson's statement in MOBOCRACY about "the overwhelming popularity and approval of President-elect Bush" in January, 2000 (how, without the help of drugs, do they come up with this stuff?). Or his description of the Bush tax plan that "favored lower income groups...[and] shift[ed] a greater tax burden onto those who earn more." Or his remark on "the perilous state of the nation's GOVERNMENT-RUN schools (emphasis mine)." Or his "confession" on page 323 that "this book was written for the citizen who cherishes America's tradition of limited government." Or his astonishing closing argument that, "Eventually it won't matter what polls ask because the regulatory state will be so unlimited and unrestrained that a voter's opinion won't really matter. Voters will [be] unable to lower the level of government that restricts their lives and takes more and more of their earnings to pay for ill-conceived and corrupt spending." Of course, this is also the same Matthew Robinson who can define tyranny on page 237 as "the ability to wield the authority of all three branches with impunity" and not see the slightest irony between that statement and his obsequiously unequivocal support for George Bush.

By now you should have the picture, but is this book worth reading anyway for its dissertation concerning political polling? Probably not, and only if you have a high tolerance for the political backwash that Mr. Robinson keeps throwing in your way. His arguments border too often on hysterical flights of Orwellian fantasy, and his writing is annoyingly repetitive, so much so that he apparently doesn't realize he's used the exact same Peter Jennings quote just 13 pages apart! While some of Mr. Robinson's criticisms of polls are valid (sample sizes too small, the influencing effects of word choice, bias resulting from non-responses, the inherent instability of overnight and Internet polls), they are nearly lost among his anti-liberal media (especially anti-New York Times) and anti-Bill Clinton diatribes and his selective choice of case histories and data (comparing the highest voter turnout percentage, from a Presidential election year, to the lowest voter turnout in 1998, an off year - certainly apples and oranges).

Worst of all, his mathematics (a critical part of polling science) is highly misleading when not completely incorrect. He cites eight Presidential preference polls between Dole and Clinton, suggesting they are wildly inconsistent by focusing on the spread between the two candidates when, in fact, four of them were essentially correct within their statistical margin of error. Any good student of statistics knows that with a 3.5% margin of error, a further spread of seven percentage points must automatically be inferred beyond what the point estimates themselves suggest. Robinson's analysis is actually even worse than that: all eight polls were correct on Ross Perot's final numbers within their margin of error, six were likewise correct with regard to Clinton's, and four of the eight were correct in their estimates of Dole's final numbers. That's still not all: Robinson states that these were polls taken "in the runup" to the election. He doesn't tell us what days they were taken or how far apart during "the runup" (not even in a footnote), nor does he tell us who was polled in each case (registered voters, likely voters, or just adult Americans). A perfect opportunity to cherry pick his numbers, and doubtless Robinson did just that -- and still ended up with an absurdly weak argument.

Four pages later, the author refers to a "margin of error of 99 percent" when he clearly means a 99% confidence interval. On page 132, Robinson makes the outlandish claim that private polls (from foundations or advocacy groups, as opposed to media polls) are more accurate "because they have an incentive to be as precise as possible." Later, on page 216, he comes up with the equally outrageous claim that 900 randomly selected adults ARE NOT more representative than elected officials, interest groups, and activists! What planet does this guy and his gullible believing readers inhabit? Finally, on page 301, he cites two polls concerning public opinion of Kenneth Starr, noting that by softening the question wording, Starr's unfavorable rating falls from 61% to 48%, a decline in percentage terms (not percentage points) of 21%. He fails to note, however, that Starr's favorables dropped as well, from 30% to 22%, a 27% decline in percentage terms that directly contradicts the author's own argument about question wording.

Mr. Robinson compounds these problems with an extraordinarily condescending attitude toward his fellow citizens. He harps constantly on American ignorance, apathy, and laziness and variously refers to Americans as commoners, monkeys, shallow, semiconscious, and half-baked, members of a mobocracy that reduces "a constitutional republic to destructive and unreflective mobs stoked by selective polling and reportage." His clear preference is that only those who vote should ever be polled regarding any serious issue, a patrician sentiment that helps exclude the voice of groups with lower turnout, no doubt "those people," meaning those of color, limited means, or limited education. Mr. Robinson clearly desires a government of, by, and for the college educated white middle and upper classes (as opposed to those "destructive and unreflective mobs"), and he wants polls to be managed so that their opinions are the ones reported.

MOBOCRACY's closing recommendations reflect typically conservative biases, so much so that they manage to conflate using only "likely voters" in polls as a way to make "polls the servants of our Constitution - not make our Constitution the handmaiden of the apathetic and disconnected." I only wish Mr. Robinson had bothered to show us where in the Constitution it says that the right to an opinion applies only to those who have chosen to vote. Given the peculiar manipulations of the election system since Karl Rove appeared on the scene (massive black voter disenfranchisement, intimidation, placing unreliable and inadequate voting machine resources in urban areas, and the like), Mr. Robinson would no doubt be doubly heartened by the consequences of removing those voices from both the ballot-counting as well as the opinion polls.

Rarely does a writer manage to invalidate his entire book, but Matthew Robinson also accomplishes that extraordinary feat on just page 27. He informs us of the results of a poll from the Shorenstein Center that 71% of Americans claimed to be unaware of any news stories about the candidates' polling popularity in the 2000 Presidential race, with only a remarkably low nine percent able to identify the correct poll numbers. If such is indeed the case, and the author never refutes it, then most of his argument is rendered moot. By his own admission, polls are irrelevant, influencing virtually no one and being of interest only to the elite like himself.

I grant Mr. Robinson one star above the minimum for his valid criticism of modern polling, but no more. His right-wing premises sre largely untenable, his linkage of polling to "big government," too much regulation, and wasteful spending programs is both unsubstantiated and beyond ridiculous, and his condescending, elitist attitude is insulting. Unless you are already a true believer, MOBOCRACY is really not worth the paper on which it is printed.

In "Mobocracy," author Matthew Robinson establishes some key points that continue as undercurrents throughout his book: 1) America has become poll-happy, and the media have become obsessed with polling data; 2) the majority of Americans are disconnected, apathetic, and rather uninformed about the subject matter of most public opinion polls, and thus; 3) respondents are easily influenced by the wording and tone of poll questions, which means; 4) the media conduct polls in such a way as to frame the results with left-leaning bias. What may appear at first to be another conservative rant turns out to be an enlightening in-depth survey (pardon the term) about the workings of the polling business and how Mr. Robinson feels democracy is being undermined. This book exceeded my expectations in terms of its readability and level of enjoyment.

In addition to how "wording effects" alter the outcome of media polls, Mr. Robinson demonstrates how the following play into the outcome of a poll: terminology used in the lead-in statement, order of the questions, sample size, category of respondents ("likely" versus "registered" voters), number and type of possible response choices, timing of the poll (how soon after breaking news), and even whether there is a "don't know" or "no opinion" option in the survey. Many fascinating examples of these nuances are revealed. Still, the media overlook these twists because they are so concerned about the horse race-who's winning, and by how much-that they lose sight of accuracy when reporting voter preferences and priorities. But that's not the only problem with polling.

Aside from the specific issues revolving around the wording that causes bias in polling, a more general problem has to do with the widespread ignorance of political issues that is found in questioning random voters. Much to my dismay, too many examples show that those responding to poll questions typically know very little about the issues at hand, and when asked in more detail (i.e., ascertaining voter knowledge) respondents oftentimes wind up contradicting what they said in response to earlier questions. Robinson expends lots of effort in analyzing polls related to the 2000 presidential election, where it's shown that polling results were in no way indicative of what respondents actually felt about candidates, let alone how the votes were to be cast on election day.

Also discussed at length is the gun control debate, the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal (one of the most polled controversies in American history) and the "Politics of Impeachment," where the author elaborates on the ways in which the Democrats' attention to detail sought at every stage of the process to minimize the damage and reframe the issues heard by the public.

From the book: "The current use of polls is almost invariably a device for advocacy, one that fits into the prerogatives of a media that sees federal government activism as the solution to the problems highlighted by left-leaning reporters and editors. . . . The same people who set the news agenda and then report on the results of the polls are the ones who write the questions. The result is often a measure of how much the public has absorbed the media message, not an objective measure of the deliberation of elected officials interacting with the public."

That Mr. Robinson is a conservative is no surprise, but what is to be learned about the machinations of the polling process overrides any bias one way or the other, in my mind. [Note: the book was copyrighted in 2002, when very little polling data were available pertaining to the Bush administration]. I believe anyone having an interest that emanates from curiosity about how statistics, word use, and psychology/knowledge influence people's bias toward political issues would enjoy reading this.

This book is a regurgitation of an intro political communication class. I read page after page hoping there would be some new thoughts here, something that hasn't been beaten to death in other political journals or books, but sadly, no such thoughts exist. Robinson's political bias shines through, and while it didn't bother me as I am of a similar persuasion, when I read, I don't want my own beliefs reaffirmed on every page -- I want something interesting and worthy of the $25.

As one who used to work in the polling industry and is continuously frustrated by the poor methodology used in most widely-reported polls, I was intrigued by this book at the outset. Indeed, the premise is interesting, and there are many valid points to be made in its pages. However, the book is muddled in its presentation and drags on for far too many pages. Each chapter, and often each page, reads just like the previous one. The author gets an A+ for drawing attention to a serious problem in the media that hinders political debate, but he gets a D for presentation and style.

Robinson's Premise is that the use of polls is killing the deliberative debate envisioned by the founders. I have to agree, not only because Robinson makes a good argument, but I've experienced it in various business and community initiatives.

Robinson starts by examining errors common in polling methods and how these errors make it impossible to read actual public intentions. The book moves on to deal with specific issues of selecting an appropriate sample and wording problems.

It is the second half of the book that I find most interesting. It is here that Robinson discusses the unitended consequences of polling. Mainly that polling cuts off debates, sometimes before it starts. Additionally that wording variations and issue framing changes demonstrate that in most cases the "opinion" measured is very soft. It is unfortunate, but necessary, that Robinson uses the Clinton impeachment and compares and contrasts with the Nixon impeachment polls. In both cases, the people gave the president the benefit of the doubt. Slowly as more information became available opinion turned, but in both cases the public prefered that the president resign than have congress remove him. Finally, Robinson looks at how journalistic and idealogical biases are evident in what is polled, how, when and what numbers actually get reported.

One significant omission by Robinson is the misleading use of "margin of error". When sampling, one normally tests a number of items in a sample. Then to ensure that the sample is representative of the whole polulation, another sample of items would be tested. This leads to information about the two samples. One then could infer how representative the samples are to the whole popluation. The short of it is that with only one sample taken (a poll of x number of people) there is no valid way to make any inferences between the sample and the whole population. They found a formula in a statistics textbook and plug in the wrong numbers!

All in all, an excellent effort and very interesting. Definitely worth reading.

This book covers many of the most of the basics you need to know in the MCSE exam (DHCP, DNS, WINS).

However, topics on static routing, OSPF, RIP, multicast routing, certificate of authority are definetely not covered enough. You are not given the picture on how OSPF, RIP, multicast and unicast routing, actually works.

If you think you can pass the exam with this book alone, don't bet on it unless you have plenty of experience. My advise on anyone who wishes to take this exam should also purchase the 3 Win2k resource kits (TCP/IP, Internetwork, Distributed System) for a very complete coverage on all the topics covered in this book. With these 4 books, I passed the exam on first try and completed CCNA with ease.

I believe an excellent job was done of often troubling areas of infrastructure and DNS, and while solid studying is required in addition to simply using this book in order to pass 70-216, this book will get you started

Lots of words, but little useful information. I want a book that gets to the meat, and this is not it. I have been working with Windows for a long time. I think this book was written for a beginner, but I think it would be too confusing. I found the material very wordy and hard to follow. I got this book because of the reviews, I just don't understand how other give it 4 stars.

Its the best book available now for this test. Easy to read and it covers all the oficial topics. If you're looking a good Study Guide for the 216 test, this is the best choice!

Unfortunatly, CD and Simulation Software that comes whitin is not so good. You can not review your mistakes after taken a test;CD sound's quality or audio is not the best either.

Studying well all this book's topics and also buying and reading Windows 2000 TCP/IP Troubleshooting too, of same authors, you can take the test without any problem or fear.

Depending on who you ask, this book will help you pass the 70-216 exam. The author is very good at explaining most of the topics. The print is nice and big so you won't go blind reading it. For those who wish to pass the exam, this book will help.

However, the book does little more than give someone a very basic understanding of the major topics for the exam. Perhaps the biggest fault with this book is that it is very disorganized. Many topics which are related are spread out over several chapters which makes learning the material very confusing. Some of the major topics like RRAS (Routing and Remote Access Server) are very poorly written as well. Do you hate it when you read a book and the author makes reference to a later chapter without fully explaining the point that he/she is trying to teach? There are many such instances of this throughout the entire book.

The diagrams do very little to help show the reader what the author is trying to teach. Unfortunately, the CD is just as bad. The exam questions are good practice though and I like the fact that they are not similar to the real exam. However, many people will not like this fact since the exam is the main reason they would consider purchasing the book. If you're serious about buying a book that will help you learn and pass the 70-216 exam than look elsewhere. If you are a professional with experience who wishes to prepare for the exam, you will find this book lacks detail. If you don't care about long term learning and just wish to pass the exam this book may help you.

NAIS is a wonderful marketing plan if you happen to be corporate agriculture wanting to sell your meat products globally. But NAIS will put a heavy burden on those who own even one horse, cow, pig, or other livestock animal. While factory farms get one lot number per groups of animals and less reporting of movements the average joe will have to register their premises (clouding title to property), microchip and file movement reports on every critter they own. Then if disease is suspected in an area, the USDA can depopulate that 6 mile radius, giving the factory farms reasons to tell the global market, "see what a safe food supply we have!" This does not address the concerns that NAIS traceability ends as slaughter which is when many food safety issues happen. NAIS can be compared to a rich man having a disease but passing legislation that the poor must take the medicine and pay for it, then that rich man gets to brag to everyone how healthy he is!