1 comments about High Technology and Low-Income Communities: Prospects for the Positive Use of Advanced Information Technology.

1. High Technology and Low-Income Communities Prospects for the positive Use of Advanced Information Technology

   This book is a good compilation of articles by people from many different fields with a common goal- that is "to answer two basic questions:

   1) How will information technology (and the changes that it brings about in all spheres of life) affect the low-income communities ?

   2) How can we (including the low-income communities) influence the outcome ? "

   The book is aimed towards "proving a synthesis between the academician's theoretical and formal knowledge with practice-based, fine-grained wisdom of the activists, to generate innovative policy suggestions."

   It begins with a general "examination of the various issues in their socio-technical, economical and historical contexts", sometimes in an intuitive and futuristic way and sometimes through a complete statistical analysis of existing data. The general tone in this respect swings from major `technology enthusiasm to complete skepticism', and then on to a more balanced view. This view does not see the technology as a whole-soul saviour, but more as a medium to change; since physical world and the electronic world are not separate, but actually "inter-twined and can substitute or complement one another as per requirements, circumstances and contexts." It emphasizes one fact time and again, which is becoming clearer every passing day, and that is, that on its own poverty and technology complete a vicious cycle (not today but since ever!), where due to poverty people face low exposure to technology and its benefits; and low access to technology leads to further downward mobility. It prophecises that the way out is not in one single hand, but more in different agencies working together hand in hand (including the government and the low-income communities themselves).

   The next part of the book, which is also the core of the book, presents a style of policy-making (rather than the finished blueprint) for what can be done to improve the present situation, along with some good examples from the real-life. It addresses many interesting issues related to low-income communities such as:

   - The high cost of connection and `appliances' to connect to the world versus the real need. - The vicious cycle between low networking in low-income communities and low number of users from these areas on the net. - Need for appropriate software and interface, which is easy and attractive to use. - Need to promote new technologies in ways that enable people to become not just `passive consumers' but `active producers', as well as to aid entrepreneurship in these areas (to aid economic development which in the longer run can affect the whole community as well). - Need for using technology to create transparency between public agencies and low-income neighbourhoods. - Need for applying the computer and the IT to aid better dialogue between the community especially through the concept of 'community computer'. Also to see Internet as a big canvas which can be extended by contributions from every individual of the community. - Need to include the low-income communities as well, for structuring and designing things and policies for their own development. - Need to provide skills and motivation to the people of the community, so that they find it worth to invest their time and effort into the whole process of change. - Need to create a distinction between 'knowledge' and 'information', especially in reference to policy-making and community programs. - Need to develop a totally new approach to education aimed especially at the people who grow-up in low-income neighbourhoods.

   The main emphasis of the book is on the last issue, which receives a common consensus from all the authors. There is a general opinion that education is the main tool through which something can be done to elevate the 'digital divide'. It needs to include not only the children of the community but the parents as well, since education really starts from home and a lot of boost for learning needs to come from home as well. It must also be introduced into the prisons where a good part of the community (especially in reference to American low-income neighbourhoods) spends their time. The present state of education in all the schools which cater to these children seems to be extremely poor, not just in terms of equipment but also in terms of teachers and teaching methodology, as well as in the course content which is most often very bland and sterile. New system needs to be developed where the computer can be used for its educational capabilities since technology in itself is meaningless unless designed for an application. Since it is usually seen that people who grow up in poverty, unstable and unpredictable world are most often virtuosos at building and fixing complicated things but tend to score very low when dealing with conventional symbolic expressions like numbers, graphs, simple calculations and written language, there is a need to make them learn more through extracting principles from the successful workings of the objects that they make. At this point the computer comes into picture, since it can be a very good medium to link symbols with actions since symbolic descriptions in a computer can turn into an action or an object immediately. This way it can be used to teach and enstrengthen existing concepts. It can play a very special role as a resource for inquiry and invention at the child's 'own pace' and in his 'own space'. This also looks into the aspect of special needs of some children whose life is already moving at a very fast pace and who hence need to slow-down a bit in their own learning process.

   The last part of the book presents a synthesis of various topics. It discusses the prospects and problems of initiatives aimed at elevating the poor with the help of new technologies. Also it offers a few suggestions for policy making at various levels, such that they can be more effective. It acknowledges the big gap, which still exists between the academics and the activists, but also extracts "the common points of agreement under five different headings-" - The unique characteristics of the digital revolution, that is its interactive potential and its decentralizing nature, offering the poor a new set of opportunities for social and economic integration. - The universal access to IT is essential and if left to the market mechanisms will never be a reality for the low-income communities, unless given an impetus by the government. (especially in the development of the social sphere) - The inadequacy of the existing government policies regarding IT and universal access. - A proposal of policies necessary for channeling IT's benefits towards low-income areas, laying special stress on the fact that IT is no substitute for Social Policy and that planning must begin at the grass-root level. - Some ideas about what kind of research is necessary to devise policies sensitive to the particular needs of the poor.

   The book ends with a very positive note of "What's Next?", and reframes the objectives that it began with, into : " Given an intention to achieve a certain kind of benefit for low-income people, or to help them achieve a benefit for themselves, how might a variant of the multifaceted technology serve the purpose."

   On the whole the book is a good 'Food for Thought', and sets one thinking about such an important and yet 'insignificant' aspect of IT and sets one rethinking about what one does with this powerful tool.

5 comments about Oracle 9i: SQL Exam Cram 2 (Exam Cram 1Z0-007) (Exam Cram 2).

1. I am studying to become an Oracle DBA. Gavin Powell's Book is superb! I learned so much from it so far. The author is also friendly and really concerned whether you understand the difficult concepts that a newbiee faces in learning Oracle. Like a gem you unexpectantly find at the beach. Buy this book!



2. As an experienced DBA, I found this book clear and concise. I especially like the accompanying CD with a PDF version of the entire book. I prefer to use an electronic search to find a page in a book, so this really is a bonus to me. The tests in the book and on the CD provide useful, informative explanations for all test questions -- one of the best ways I know to get prepared for the Oracle exams. I have taken the Intro to SQL exam for Oracle9i certification, and this book really does cover the contents of that exam thoroughly. It is an excellent study companion.



3. The book is sorely inadequate as a means to prepare for the OCA exam. Having taken and passed 1Z0-007, I am confident that the outcome would have been different if I relied on Powell's incomprehensive and frequently incomprehensible offering. I see no reason to buy it when the excellent book by Dawes and Thomas is available.



4. Better overall then Dawes and Thomas.
   This guy writes with experience.
   Where Dawes and Thomas is mostly a reprint of Oracle Documentation.
   
   Better in these areas:
   - User setup
   - Single row functions and Group functions.
   Far more detail on topics.
   
   The Book comes with electronic exam, that DOES NOT REQUIRE the CD always be inserted in your computer!!!
   
   Negative: Software does not run on a Mac, you will need virtualization software, like virtual PC to run, but it works.



5. This book is tough to follow. The information is simply listed out, not explained, making it hard to learn. I felt that there was value however in the MeasureUp test on the included CD. For learning Oracle PL\SQL I recommend Oracle9i: SQL With an Introduction to PL\SQL by Lannes Morris-Murphy instead.

5 comments about Oracle PL/SQL Developer's Workbook.

1. This book covers a wide range of material. In this sense it is good for someone of every level but it also means you will only use a part of the book. Each chapter is structured like a quiz - answer the questions and then review the answers. It does not work you through problems but there is a lot of useful material in here that you will not find anywhere else.



2. This is a great book to test your PL/SQL knowledge no matter what level you are at. In fact each chapter is devided into 3 sections: Beginner, Intermediate and Expert. This is an excellent book to get after you have worked through a PL/SQL course and want something to give you the extra edge on all the various PL/SQL topics. There is some very good hard to find information in here.



3. I thought this book was great. If you like getting into specific, real-world programming tasks and figuring out the best solutions then this book is for you. He provides helpful explainations along with his solutions. There are a lot of top-notch, practical techniques that you learn as you get into the nitty-gritty of working on small pieces of pl/sql code. There are also questions that test your conceptual understanding of different facets of pl/sql programming --- questions that you could face on a job interview. Even though I've been a pl/sql developer for a few years, I found this book very useful.



4. If there is any book which will "fine-tune" one's knowledge of PL/SQL, this is it. It is written in Feuerstein's inimitable style which will keep you engaged with the book much longer than any other peer book of it's kind. There is so much to learn from this book really - and it applies to beginners as experts alike. This book explores the tiniest nuts and bolts of PL/SQL in an exercise-like format which gives the reader a chance to ponder on the problem before he/she looks up the answers. And I must add, you are in store for a lot of surprises when you look up the answers in the second half of the book ! (escpecially in the experts' section)



5. If there is any book which will "fine-tune" one's knowledge of PL/SQL, this is it. It is written in Feuerstein's inimitable style which will keep you engaged with the book much longer than any other peer book of it's kind. There is so much to learn from this book really - and it applies to beginners as experts alike. This book explores the tiniest nuts and bolts of PL/SQL in an exercise-like format which gives the reader a chance to ponder on the problem before he/she looks up the answers. And I must add, you are in store for a lot of surprises when you look up the answers in the second half of the book ! (escpecially in the experts' section)

1 comments about Oracle DBA Backup and Recovery Quick Reference (The Prentice Hall Ptr Oracle Series).

1. If you are an Oracle database administrator and you have a background as a unix or Microsoft sysadmin, then you might wonder why there is a need for an ENTIRE book on backup of Oracle's database. It is not that you doubt the need for a backup. But a whole book? In unix, you do a "man" on the backup command and you are shown a few screens of options. Likewise for restoring. Under Microsoft, a similar situation prevails. But unix and Microsoft are general purpose operating systems. An operating system is basically about file manipulation. In essence, a file is the atomic unit to the OS. So the backup and restore options are limited to the richness of this information.

   But Oracle's database is a specialised and elaborate "operating system". The data is constrained and structured far more than files in a real OS. A backup can take advantage of this by offering hugely more options to you; a far more expressive set of commands to do a fine grained backup of fairly arbitrary subsets of the data. And of course, also with the restore.

   This increased power comes at a price. Remembering all those darned options, especially the obscure, rarely invoked ones. Hence this book. Its value is strictly as a memory aid. You have to already understand what those options do, from Oracle's official documentation. The book uses a common flow chart style graph for the options, for easier use.

2 comments about Mike Ault's Oracle Internals Monitoring & Tuning Scripts: Advanced Internals & OCP Certification Insights for the Master DBA (Oracle In-Focus series).

1. I have all of Mr. Ault's books, and this one is one of his best works. It contains loads of working scripts and an Internet code download to get the working code. It also has excellent explainations of the concepts and internals from the output of the scripts.

   This is definitely not a beginner book, and it is as complex as any of the other advanced Oracle books. If you want super-deep details, this book is for you!




2. This is a great overview of Oracle internals but the best part is the code depot.

   All of the scripts worked as is and it was a real joy to see the results for my Oracle database. I highly recommend this one.

5 comments about Cuckoo's Egg.

1. As you can see from the reviews here, many people also love this book.
   
   I love the trip down memory lane that this book provides. Sure is fun to go back to a more innocent time and remember what it was like before the internet became huge. If you remember archie, gopher, kermit, then this is a book for you.
   
   Even if you're too young to remember this time, it would be quite fun to watch WAR GAMES and then read this book. I love the writing style--this is a real page-turner.



2. This is the kind of story that you have a hard time putting down. My son, husband, dad and I all read it. Two of the readers are very much into computers, the other two not so much. We all enjoyed it. It is also great to remember in detail the days before internet and gave my son a better understanding of how far we have come with this technology in such a short time.



3. This was a required book for a computing ethics class I took, and I felt it covered a lot of material and was entertaining at the same time. I would have enjoyed reading it for recreational purposes and I highly suggest it. Some level of technical understanding might help with some material, but is not needed.
   
   All in all, very well written book.



4. This book was way too long. The tale of the missing money and the subsequent tracking of a faceless hacker could have been told in 200 pages. What I found really tedious were all the phone calls - calls to try to track the hacker and to various government agencies to try to get help to catch the intruder. Phone calls can only be so interesting. Yes, it is real life and real life is never (I hope) as interesting as fiction - but by the time the hacker was caught, I was just happy to see the book end.



5. all sorts of new stuff was going on with computers in the 1980s. It offered new opportunities for spies to steal military accounting and inventory records. Fortunately most people are incapable of deciphering military accounting and inventory records anyways. Clifford Stoll interjects just enough of his personal life to make the book read like a detective or spy novel. It would still make a seriously boring movie, but it is interesting as a book.

5 comments about High Stakes, No Prisoners: A Winner's Tale of Greed and Glory in the Internet Wars.

1. Mr. Ferguson's book is the only narration I have so far encountered (including Mr. Michael Lewis' THE NEW NEW THING, Mr. Po Bronson's THE NUDIST ON THE LATE SHIFT, and Mr. Randall E. Stross' EBOYS) that may actually represent what goes on in the entrepreneur world, and it does so in a straightforward tone with a whole lot of humor- and some cynicism- thrown in, making the book an enjoyable read.

   What's amazing about this book is its age: although the book is from 1999, much of what Mr. Ferguson concludes about where the industry is headed has come true or is slowly being recognized by the mainstream line of thought (this is quite an accomplishment in case you do not understand the rarity of such occurrences). Mr. Ferguson actually understands the technology and business underlining his startup as well, and he isn't afraid to admit when his comprehension falls short. Ask any engineer- this personality attribute in leaders of the entrepreneur world is becoming increasingly uncommon, unfortunately.

   If you're looking for a book that is written by someone who has been there and has also stood the test of time in terms of holding its conclusions intact, this is it for the late 90s era. If you're looking for a book by an outsider who doesn't seem to understand what's really going on and that romanticizes Silicon Valley or Route 128, look for something else. I especially recommend this book to anyone who is frustrated with the herd mentality in the tech world and would like to read something that has a refreshing independence to its views.

   (Actually, on second thought, if you're looking for a book that humorously shoots itself in the foot with its free-wheeling conjectures and hasty exclamations prior to the stock market correction, check out those books I listed above).




2. Charles Ferguson is smart. Charles Ferguson knows he's smart. But Charles Ferguson thinks he's smarter and more important than he really is, and this makes this otherwise interesting book sometimes painful to read.

   The chapters covering the formation through eventual acquisition of Vermeer Technologies are an interesting education in the ways of VCs and hi-tech startups in the mid 90's. However, the last three chapters of the book are pretty worthless. These contain Ferguson's analysis of the industry and predictions for the future, and suffer because of Ferguson's worldview that he and Vermeer were far more important to the industry than they actually were. Ferguson lacks an understanding of large IT operations, and it's unfortunately evident in these chapters.

   Ferguson's pronounced hostility towards certain actors in his book - including former subordinates - also makes for uncomfortable reading. Some things should simply be kept private.

   Buy the book if you want to learn about VCs and hi-tech startups early in the Internet era, and don't mind wading through Ferguson's ego eruptions. Otherwise, skip it.




3. Charles Ferguson, an MIT PhD, was the founding CEO of Vermeer Technologies, a company that developed one of the first web design tools. Vermeer sold the company to Microsoft for a boatload of money and lived to tell the tale. It's a fasinating story of what its really like on the inside of a high-tech startup replete with politics, hard-ball negotiations and strange bedfellows. Ferguson may be arrogant, but he's smart and tells it like it is. Anyone thinking of building a startup should read this book.



4. Yes, Charles is brilliant, arrogant and is lightening-fast in seeing the failings of others and himself and is willing to take ownership of them (rectifying the situation and doing something about it is another story completely...). However, he also has a massive inferiority-complex when up against anyone with more brains, more money, more privilege or more power than himself hence his complete disdain for anything Microsoft-related (never mind that it was the hand that fed him and he continues to bite it). He also fails to see that you can attract a lot more bees with honey instead of vinegar. It's not a coincidence that everyone from Vermeer, except Charles eventually landed a job at Microsoft, I suspect Gates was smart enough to see just how insanely jealous Charles must be of him. As for his acidic portrayal of many of the players in the book, I'm fairly sure Charles really reserves his most toxic rage and disdain for those persons who display A)either negative qualities he has and sees a lot of himself in and wished he did not have (i.e career opportunism, uppity-ness) or B)positive qualities he wished he had but is too nasty to ever take time out to acquire and attract (i.e Gates with his greater reserves of intelligence, power and wealth). Gates also has a quality and understanding that Charles doesn't: that life isn't just about accumulating stuff, but about the quality and integrity of the relationships around you. Gates is no innocent either but at least I've never heard any stories about him running around on his wife and kids and the people he surrounds himself with have been with him for years. Charles, on the other hand goes through people like toilet paper, he even admits that he's so impossible that people either dislike him right away or shortly thereafter - as exemplified in this book.
   I've actually dated him and yes, his character does come out in his writing very strongly. So yes, he is a real jerk, and can be an even larger jerk especially when you've outsmarted him in any slight way. That being said, he also has a very warm, human, giving and honest side which for some unknown reason he hoards jealously (and glimpses of it come out here and there in the book), which is why in the book he skewers just about everyone and their dog. It's really too bad - with a talent and intelligence like that, he could have gotten a lot more for Vermeer, a lot more for himself and he'd be a happier human being instead of a 50-ish, balding, lonely, bitter software millionaire in a Mazda Miata.
   A+ = for writing, use of wit and humour as well as quality
   A = for relevancy of content
   B = for character portrayal
   C = for overall importance in the grand scheme of things



5. OK, If I could I'd give it 4.5 stars or so -- there are flaws. But basically, the book has a lot of great info, especially for geeks who work in the software business. There are very few books on the business side of things.
   
   The author is incredibly blunt. Perhaps a bit nasty. But it is clear that he had to do it so that he didn't get fleeced. Also, it is great to see someone with a backbone.
   
   The step-by-step evolution of stuff is great. You really get a feel for what happened, when it happened.
   
   I'd say it is required reading for geeks.

No comments about Oracle Designer Handbook.

1 comments about Before the Computer.

1. As a graduate instructor for technology courseware I was please to find such a good resource for the history of the computer industry. This is a great resource for those in the industry who wish to learn more about the early evolution of computers. It also captures the length that our society has used computers and puts a framework around what people "think" is a 10 - 20 year old industry. It definately should be a part of anyone's library who has a role in the computer industry and wishes to understand the past and how it relates to the future.

5 comments about Oracle Designer Generation.

1. I've been using Designer for four years and still found good information on poorly documented properties, such as the meaning of the layout styles for reports item groups. GOOD tips, EASY TO READ. The best Designer book for generation BY FAR, and I've read all the others.



2. I'm 3/4 through the book and still impress with the quality of the contents. The authors did an outstanding job in explaining the many intricacies of Designer as well as down-to-earth examples. I wish there was a book like this 2 years ago when I started doing Des2k works. This is a definite Bible for anyone doing Des2k work. Kudos to the Authors.



3. Aithough i haven't read through the full content so far it seems informative especially generation of forms.Key concepts have been well explained.As a Oracle consultant and having worked in many Oracle based companies like BellAtlantic,USXchange etc and having used designer 2000 for database generation for the past 8 months , i would recommend this book to all oracle designers /developer/Consulatnts and other IT professionals

   Regards




4. This is one of the best organized and most clearly written technical books that I have ever read. The authors clearly put a lot of effort into making a quality book. This is refreshing to find with so many IT books that are obviously written in a rush to "scoop" other authors.

   Be sure that you know what you are buying. This book spends the first few chapters laying the groundwork and describing the application generation process in general. Then they get into the details of generating Oracle applications using designer with the goal being 100% generation. If CASE methods for application generation using Oracle Designer is not what you are looking for then keep looking, that is exactly and and only what you will find in this book.




5. Clear, focused, full of tips and techniques this book guides you generating forms and reports (even complex ones). It has adequate examples and enough discussion to assist you in choosing which technique fits best.

   Relevant for versions 2 and 6. Specifically covers generation. So you may wish to check Oracle Designer Handbook if need help using the tool in other aspects rather than generation.