Boogymen in technology
590011
A good read, mixing privilege and girl-power with a dose of a corporation grown too large. Things are not as they seem, but the development of characters is thorough.
4698841
Exploding the Phone is a wonderful technological tale from the birth of the Bell System describing in layman's terms the challenges involved in routing calls from one city to another, and how some curious kids were able to take control of the system.  From the early days of point-to-point links to operators to switches to transistors, the book takes the reader through each technology and how people were able to discover weaknesses.  Reading the book, it is truly remarkable the complexity of the switching system required to route phone calls in the days before computing power.  Even before there were switches to fool, a simple whistle was able to emulate the "ring forward" command to force a call to an operator without having to pay for it.  As switching systems increased in complexity, people hacking the phone system (known as phreakers) discovered the now famous 2600Hz tone.

Lapsley does a great job in this book as a technological historian, explaining the evolution and development of the switching system in technical terms, but also explaining the personalities behind those who sought to find a way around the system.  Remarkably, many of these people who found ways to make free long distance calls didn't even know someone they wanted to call.  They were interested in figuring out how the phone system worked, and fascinated that something as complex as the nationwide phone system could be fooled by a person whistling the right tones at the right time.  At the same time, the book chronicles the government regulatory environment, and the challenges involved in prosecuting phone hacking crimes.

I thoroughly enjoyed Lapsley's history, and highly recommend it to anybody who wants insight into the forerunner of the modern day hacker, the phreaker, or who is just curious to know a bit more about how our phone system was developed.
4772235
Technology is exploding in our faces.  What used to be fringe science fiction is starting to become something to start thinkings about.  Google has built a car that drives better than people do.  Seems like machines are getting smarter than we are every day.
4436208
In Smart Machines, authors John Kelly III and Steve Hamm  provide the general reader with a well-written, interesting guide to the future of cognitive computing, "smart machines" humans can use  to "penetrate complexity and comprehend the world around us so that we can  make better decisions."
The authors describe how computers work  and how many experts imagine computers will have to work in the future to achieve "smartness".  They discuss tools that are being developed today, current research that looks auspicious for future developments, and areas for future research  that they believe  to hold promise. The emphasis is on work done at IBM, but efforts  by others are also mentioned. A central theme to the new technology is how to cope with the vast increase in data available, and the main approach discussed is various ways to move processing closer to the data to eliminate the time  lost in moving the data to the processor.
Kelly and Hamm envision a cognitive system as analogous to Russian nesting dolls and devote separate chapters to each. The layers are:
Chapter 2: how humans interact with computers and get them to do what we want,
Chapter 3: how we organize and interpret data,
Chapter 4: (possibly my favorite chapter) how we enhance computers to have the machine equivalent of ALL of our senses, not just the obvious sight and hearing, but also touch, taste, and smell.
Chapter 5: how we put together the physical components of a computer, the computer architecture, and
Chapter 6: how we build the core components to manipulate matter at the molecular and atomic scale, exploit nanotechnology, and invent a new physics of computing in order to increase processing speeds significantly.
The final chapter imagines how cognitive technology can help run the city of the future.
This is a survey of a rather large field (or fields); readers who become interested in some aspect will want to follow up references to  get details. To those not familiar with work on intelligent machines it is a fascinating introduction. Those who have already read in the field are not likely to learn anything new, but the material is structured in a way that brings coherence to a subject that specialists tend to see only in bits and pieces.  How good is their vision? Come back in 25 years, and our smart machines will help us decide.
3290124
Great device well worth the money and just a multitude of useful applications!  This device will keep me amused for decades!
2861460
This is pretty cool. Nice design. The ability to generate a wireless network for iphone pairing and control always impresses friends and family. I can see Saturns rings. Crisp images of the moon. You compromise the reach available to you at this price range if you happen forego the computer and motor and software available with this product for a manual variety. That has to be considered. I'm personally all for software, and electromechanical systems so this suite my taste. Delivery was prompt.
1224146
"Stealing the Network" (STN) is an entertaining and informative look at the weapons and tactics employed by those who attack and defend digital systems.  STN is similar to the "Hacker's Challenge" books published by Osborne, although the stories are not separated into evidence and resolution sections.  Rather, a collection of authors use mildly fictional tales to introduce readers to tactics and techniques used by black and white hat hackers.
My favorite chapter was written by FX of Phenoelit, where a female black hat battles white hat defenders.  The playing field includes HP printers, GRE tunnels between routers, and other novel tricks.  Reading both sides of the story was fun and educational.  I also liked Joe "Kingpin" Grand's insider theft case (ch 3), featuring Palm hacks and Blackberry sniffing.  The worm disassembly chapter by Ryan Russell and Tim Mullen is worth reading as well.

This book is worth reading, but it's $... cover price is steep.  While the stories are fictional, much of it is probably based on the author's experiences either consulting or studying similar incidents.  This book can best be used by security professionals to test how they would have responded to the threats presented by the fictional adversaries profiled in STN.  There's plenty to be learned by reading STN, and I hope to see sequels.
2202862
The device does not have a wire mesh web.  Instead it uses metal bars that are in my opinion too widely spaced to be effective.
4502158
First of all, the title of the book is an attention catcher. Nowadays, most of the people are commonly using gadgets, computers, and etc. This type of book is a hit to people who has a "techy" personality. This book is really made for Information Technology Technicians, I suppose. The book entails the exact commands that will be useful for a person to pursue hacking. As I read the book, I find it very useful if the book is used in a correct and proper manner and not by merely hacking for the negative purposes.
3441738
littleBits are a really cool idea, which aim to create "makers" out of the younger generation.  Making is all about combining great ideas with cool hardware and software to better our lives, even in the simplest of ways.  littleBits enable this through their motto of "make something that does something" and their mission is "TO PUT THE POWER OF ELECTRONICS IN THE HANDS OF EVERYONE".

To that end, this set should entice kids interested in space technology to make things that do things.  To me, this is where it falls a bit short.  The end-resulting projects are very simplistic and while they might *demonstrate* concepts used in space exploration, they are little more than a motor or speaker attached to cardboard and other household supplies formed in the shape of a Mars rover, sattellite dish, etc.  In the end, the projects just don't "do" a whole lot.

Using these will not teach your child much of anything about how electricity works.  As they snap together, circuits are automatically created.  You don't need to cover concepts of continuity, ground, etc as the littleBits do that without needing you.  That's good in a way and fits in with the objective.  The only problem I saw was that it's sometimes a bit tricky to get them to actually do what you want.

Some of the modules, like the light sensor, require you to set the sensitivity using a small screwdriver (included).  Adjustments are very sensitive and even when I adjusted it, they didn't always work all that great.  When performing the experiement where a glass of water is filled, the LED shines through it and the sensor is placed under the glass, we had very inconsistent results.  As we moved the light or added milk to disperse the light, the sensor was just as likely to read the same or the opposite direction as it should have.

The IR LED and sensor were kind of flaky.  The sensor worked great when using a regular TV remote, but was erratic when using the LED included in the kit.  The motor is pretty cool in that it has an adapter to use with Lego's.

My kids had the most fun with the microphone and speaker, just connecting them together and talking into it.  Since the botched water experiment and then using the microphone/speaker, they really haven't asked to get it back out.  I received my kit for free, but had I spent nearly $200 I wouldn't be too thrilled.  For the price it's underwhelming, though the quality and theory behind this set is solid.

If your child really wants to learn about electricity, snap circuits is the cheaper and more true way to go.  If they always want to build and "make" things, snap circuits are worth a look.  Nothing else is faster or easier to connect.  No soldering, wiring, or even making sure positive and negative match up.  That said, prepare to spend a pretty penny to get enough modules to do more than a few simple projects.
665050
In this painstakingly researched fun to read book (how often do those two go together) Gansky has outlined a trend that's been around but often overlooked. The internet has turbocharged our ability to share. It's created a platform for business models based on community use of expensive objects and services.

It'll take an hour to get her point, and then you'll see it over and over, everywhere you look.

Wow.
3011379
I find the book most useful as a survey of technologies and ideas suitably themed "ambient findability". I agree with the idea that the future of search will be more than cyberspace. The ability to search the physical world with a search engine will be extremely useful and how to make (physical world) objects findable (even at different levels of granularity) an interesting challenge (RFID tagging is one way but perhaps there are others). The combination of cyberspace and physicalspace and how to bridge between them (from augmented reality, ambient objects, to ambient sensing) is interesting. The book provides a convenient overview, in one place, of where much of computing is heading.
358355
This was an exciting book to read.  Some people get enamored with cool new technologies and terms like Web 2.0, web services, mashups, social network, etc.  Companies, however, worry about the business issues that these technologies can enable.  Andy and Nick use a fun vehicle - a fictional case study - to illustrate how companies can wrestle with these issues and even rethink their business models.  It's a fun read, and I'd like everybody in my company to get it!
3717344
I was expecting a boring history of the creation of a rather mundane piece of low-technology equipment.
Instead I've found myself page-flipping to see the various developments that lead to the invention of what turned out to be a world-changing mundane piece of low-technology equipment!
Someone else lamented the absence of pictures and graphs, but this lack does not come as a detriment to the quality of the writing.
Certainly well researched material, with a bit more information than the average reader might desire...
And I have appreciated the way Mr Levinson has avoided giving any moral or ethical judgement on the events he so precisely describes.
1282526
Readers who are considering a computer science career should find this manuscript enlightening, entertaining and a boost to vocabularity with the likes of : machine ecology, accretion, bug tracking, version control, kluge, fractal, edge cases, entanglement,  spaghetti, code sorcerie, engineering hygiene, zeroth, sibitizing, and most compelling honorificabilitudinitatibus (page 53).
"We are in a new era, one in which we are building systems... can't be grasped in their totality.  They are simply too complex".
Microsoft Office alone has been estimated to be in the tens of millions of lines of computer code.
The road system in the U.S. has 300,000 intersections, with traffic signals, and is the substrate for the constantly churning turmoil of transportation.
"We have entered the age of entanglement.  Each expert knows a piece of the puzzle but the big picture is too big to comprehend".
The United States Code is a collection of federal laws that elaborates on the U.S. Constitution (originally a few pages) that now denotes 500 pages just to the postal service section.
In the financial world no single person understands the interconnected systems and few completely understands a single one.
Remember the Wright brothers?  Including the pilot their 1903 invention weighed in at 750 pounds.  A Boeing 747 has 147,000 pounds of aluminum, six million parts, and 173 miles of wiring.
How much more progress can civilization endure?
4150923
It's so relieving to see Levy's capture of the positive side of the qualification to be able to hack. I believe the progress in the software and hardware development has been greatly advanced be the qualifications theses people have shown.
When it later comes to the aspect of what this qualification has been used for, the results are more dubious. It is sad, however, that todays meaning of the term hacker seems to cover only the negative side of the history.
4211915
I bought one of these just the other day and am having a blast setting it up in various goofy poses. These things are so much fun, it makes me wish they had some kind of purpose.