Convoluted and incomprehensible
592231
The authors, while well-intentioned, seem not know how to define, describe, and explain concepts in clear, understandable ways. Their explanations for cognitive theories and concepts were so convoluted it was impossible to comprehend what they were talking about.
Not a good textbook for even advanced college students. I ended up having to google the concepts to understand them.
The principle of parsimony would have gone a long way in making the book better. It is possible to be both thorough and simple at the same time.
Ironically, amidst the impenetrable descriptions of psychological theories and concepts, the authors used the phrase "like such as" which was kind of funny.
I would highly recommend using a different textbook for your Cognitive Psychology class.
3911902
I couldn't finish this, it was just too convoluted.  Frankly the different threads of the novel didn't make any sense.  I really wanted to like the book (I was traveling and actually had time to read, so I was looking forward to a good relaxing read).

I actually read about half the book before I quit reading it.  I made a note about the author so I won't waste my time on any of his books.
3925903
Leaving aside the poor English which is more distracting than obstructive, this is confused, confusing, rambling, repetitive and difficult to follow, the author can't even quote from the web correctly (it's "C for Graphics (Cg)" and not "Computer Graphics (CG)"), but worst of all it's boring.

The step-by-step instructions are particularly egregious, it's easy to get lost in the featureless pages of meandering repetitive instructions. Page upon page of settings (with scant explanation) is neither engaging nor informative but is tedious and disheartening (after setting options and typing in seemingly endless lists of numbers for over an hour with nothing to show for it, I gave up caring). If the reader takes a break or misses a step it is very difficult to track down the correct step among the uniform paragraphs. Conversely each step is phrased slightly differently, so with no consistency each time the reader has to hunt for the pertinent information. Additionally, step numbering is incorrect, many steps are merged and comments are numbered as steps.

A hefty tome at 466 pages, it could be easily pared down by many pages if the repetition were removed and the instructions rationalised, clarified and simplified.

It tries to do too much at once, rather than building through a series of easily achievable stages, it goes for "all or nothing", the reader has to faithfully copy many dozens of steps before pressing play and hopefully seeing a working result, but if any mistakes are made along the tortuous path there is no other recourse but to repeat the whole laborious process.

Despite having an introduction to each section there is no clear explanation of goals, the focus is on the individual steps rather than the larger goal. What explanations there are would benefit greatly from diagrams.

With a book this poor it's difficult to see the value of further analysis, but that said, at the risk of repetition here are some of the many low points.
* Inconsistent / mixed terminology e.g. "depth" vs "order in layer" vs "z".
* Colliders and materials are liberally used throughout, but their purpose is never explained.
* The explanation of Orthographic vs Perspective Projection is very poor.
* On page 24 - a Physics2D Material is "used to prevent our player from getting stuck on the platform's edge", there is an explanation of sorts 11 pages later.
* On page 20 - apparently there are too many vertices for the sprite shown, but there is no explanation why, it looks fine to me.
* On page 17 - Material Ground is used but not described untils its next use.
* On page 16 - The Layer Level is not described.

While I get the impression that the author knows Unity, sadly it is abundantly clear he doesn't know how to write nor teach. Frankly, a terrible book that PUT ME OFF Unity.
843070
I was forced to use this book for a course during my first year in Graduate School for Computer Engineering. I must say that this book is among the worst, if not the worst, I've encounterd. Concepts are never explained with any great degree of clarity: the authors' writing style is convoluted almost to the point of being indecipherable, new concepts are introduced with only minimal effort given to explaining their foundation and usefulness, and, conversely, concepts are proved using formulas/theorems that haven't yet been presented. If I hadn't previously taken a course using the excellent book "Probability and Statistics for Engineering and the Sciences" by Jay Devore, I wouldv'e been at a complete loss trying to understand the topics in this book.
If there is no way that you can avoid using this book, and if acquiring a well-written, logically-organized companion textbook like the one I mentioned above isn't feasible, then at a minimum I recommend buying "Schaum's Outline of Probability, Random Variables, and Random Processes" -- it at least clearly presents the concepts. By the way, the price of this book is completely unjustifiable -- it's blatant robbery.
151439
The author takes a reasonably understandable subject and makes it unbelievably complex, vague and abstract. This book is poorly organized and rife with errors. I was not able to complete the first few chapter of this book. You should read the reviews carefully before possibly wasting you time on this one, but if you want to talk philosophy and examine odd insights, buy this book.
663883
I found this book to be extremely disorganized.  It skipped around way too much and I had the strong notion that the author is not as tech-savvy as she would like us to believe.  For example, the part that discusses checking a power supply does not explicitly state, "Do not disconnect the power supply before checking.  You have to use back-probing instead.  If you disconnect the power supply and turn it on, you may damage or destroy it."  Frankly, I thought this book was a waste of money.  Try "All-in-One A+ Certification Exam Guide" by Michael Meyers and Scott Jernigan instead.  And if you're REALLY serious, throw in "Upgrading and Repairing PCs" by Scott Mueller.
2944401
too convoluted and wordy.  Why use four words when two will do.  He should take some tips from his dad.  Keep it more fluid and he will keep the reader engaged. None of the characters very likeable.
2961265
I have read several Konkoly books and enjoyed them.  This one missed the mark, perhaps because of the inexperienced coauthor.  It seemed more like a disjointed collection of poorly edited essays, with a plotline that was tempting but disappointingly incoherent.  It alternated between lessons on Bostonian history, the problems with fiat currency finance ( though I can learn more about those by reading Peter Schiff blogs and books), unnecessarily detailed Ukrainian rebel action sequences, critiques of Black Lives Matter antics, discussions of the importance and nobility of old New England families ( I guess other Americans would not care about the fate of their country as much), sexual flirtations emphasizing the exceptional beauty of the female characters, weird election conspiracies, and what are supposed to be prepping basics. The  latter had some major flaws -- are we really supposed to believe that a band of a dozen plus people would plan to survive an apocalyptic event in a luxury high rise for over two years with just storage supplies, including 100,000 gallons of  storage water in " a room" as their only source? Do the math, wouldn't  the highrise floor collapse?
POSSIBLE SPOILER:  After all the buildup of how the protaganists are supposed to be against big government and worried about excess spending, In Chapter 56 of the audiobook, we hear the Brahman 9 ( the leader of whom is connected to the prepper families ) decide they want Hillary Clinton to be president in 2016 to preserve the "status quo", ruling out Rand Paul and Jeb Bush because they have their electability problems.  Really?  Hillary is the only option? No one  else these "patriots" could have considered, even if you buy into the idea that a small group of insiders controls elections?
Having said this, I enjoyed much of the humor and sense of absurdity conveyed in the book, such as in the description of what different news channels choose to broadcast, the hypocrisy of "protest" groups, and the description of how quickly civility could deteriorate, as in the Las Vegas blackout. I hope the sequels are better edited and have more coherent plotlines.
2070963
This book is a disjointed mess of word salad.

1. It is poorly organized and laid out - for example, chapter 7 has an introduction, conclusion, and ONE body section.
2. It is riddled with spelling errors and there is at least one time where the NAME OF THE FIRM being discussed changes in the middle of the section.
3. It includes nonsense sentences such as, "Diversity is to be cherished, for it enriches life and advances the actualization of human potential."
2127413
There appeared to be lots of good information in the book.  However, the authors are guilty of trying to cover too much.

I read a number of chapters of this compilation, but did not finish it.  While each chapter has a theme, I found the content was jammed together in a somewhat incoherent fashion.  There are a number of sub-stories jammed into each chapter, none of which is really treated in full detail.

In particular, I found the transitions between these sub-stories often confusing.  I'd be reading along and suddenly without any sort of indication that there was going to be a complete switch of gears, the chapter text would be talking about something else.  In a few cases not only the transitions between the sub-stories was so sudden and jarring that it wasn't just switching gears (without using the clutch), but more like jumping from one moving vehicle to another.

It's too bad that the material was made inaccessible by the presentation.
2185149
I found this book utterly incomprehensible.

There are 218 pages on the Standard Model and after frustrating hours
rereading and rereading, trying to extract some kind of meaning from them, I
learned about 10 pages' worth of things.  Another 15 pages cover things I
already knew, but I doubt the vague explanations would have made sense to me
if I didn't.

And then it gets worse.  The next 79 pages cover all the rest of physics
beyond the Standard Model (string theory, etc.) and it was like reading a
different language.  I got nothing out of it (but by this time I was smart
enough not to spend any time trying - I just read through it once).

My background is a year of college physics and a year of college chemistry,
and lots of math.  I got A's in those classes, enjoyed them, and had no
trouble reading the text books.

The main problem appears to be that the book is just far too short to cover
the vast array of topics it attempts to cover.  In fact, it reads a lot like
an editing disaster - like it used to be twice as long and readable and
someone went through and indiscriminately removed half the sentences.

The text is paragraph after paragraph of undefined terms, ordinary words used
in apparently special physics ways ("force," "symmetry," ...), non sequiturs,
and aimless wandering.  The book tells me a positron is an electron moving
backward in time.  It makes no attempt to explain what it means for an object
to move backward in time, and the phrase is gibberish to my ears.

There are lots of diagrams, but they are sparsely labelled and scarcely
referred to in the text.  Most of the diagrams are Feynman diagrams, which
apparently depict the behavior of all subatomic particles, but the book never
tells how to read one.  One of these diagrams supposedly depicts an electron
moving backward in time.

In areas where I had enough background to possibly learn something, I found
fatuous statements like that the electric field is an object and that
potential energy is real, while the quantum field is just a mathematical
construct.

I learned there is something called a virtual photon.  I did not learn what
one is, except that it moves faster than the speed of light.  The book tells
me not to worry about this contradiction of a fundamental law of nature,
though, because virtual photons don't actually exist.  Not existing does not,
however, stop them from being essential to the book's explanations of several
physical phenomena.  I might have got lost in the book's frequent attempts to
draw a distinction between the "real world" and mere models of the world.  I
can't imagine the point of such a distinction.

A second problem is organization: The book is in storytelling format.  It
drags you through a hundred years of physics research, including the wrong
turns and bickering.  Chapter 10 is entitled, "The Standard Model, At Last"
and is where you supposedly find out what the Standard Model is: an equation
with 18 parameters.  If you think you can follow the thought processes of the
greatest physicists in history, you might enjoy this book, but for me a
readable book would start with the equation and then proceed to explain the 18
parameters, and then, if there is space and interest, explain how we know the
equation is correct and tell the story of its discovery.  I'm not sure what
all the subatomic particles the book identifies, a few at a time, have to do
with that equation, but again, a readable book would lead with a list of them.
It looks like there are about 70 kinds, but as they never show up all in one
place, and some exist only in historical science, I don't know.

The Standard Model does not appear to be difficult to understand; this book
just doesn't explain it in lay terms.  One thing I did get from the book is a
long list of things I don't understand.  Now I can shop for a book that
explains some of them; I doubt that book will be written by a physicist, like
this one.
3800607
Convoluted directions. All things considered - not worth it.
2909138
Great theory but this book is almost impenetrable and convoluted.  Do yourself a favor and get one of the other excellent books on teh PCM approach.
770239
Usually highly critical revues take longer and are more difficult to write than favorable ones.  Those generally just roll off the fingertips and onto the keyboard while I tend to struggle to find the right words to denounce a poorly written book.  Not this time.  This book is just so in comprehensible that it has taken little time and not too much thought to be able to organize what little there is to say about it.  It is one of those books that is such an utter and complete mess, from both the standpoint of plot - there was none that I could discern - characters - not developed in any meaningful way - and writing - incomprehensible - that it just wrote itself.  The art did not aid the book as it was hardly more coherent than the writing.  Just stay away from this book and save your hard earned $20.  Thank me later.

I received a copy of this book from Edelweiss and the publisher in exchange for an honest review.
1384129
Too many things going on, not very cohesive.  The book takes on too many directions, but the none of them are fleshed out adequately.  [Spoiler alert]  The disappearance of the teenage girl makes no sense, nor does the sudden homicidal urge from the pretty-boy.  Kind of a mess...
2198149
Extremely disorganized. This information might be ok, but it's so badly presented it doesn't matter because it's almost incomprehensible. Where is the editor?
837904
I totally agree with the other 1 star reviewers. This story was a convoluted mess. I continued through the end because someone lent me the book and told me it was good. Plot is a huge mess...going back and forth aimlessly. The author charges ahead with one idea...comes up with another, it seems at random, then charges on in that direction. At the end, it seems like she is making it up as she goes page by page. Yuck, sorry I wasted my time.