Accidental Empires

Author : Robert X. Cringely
Publisher : Harper Collins
ISBN 13 : 0887308554
Total Pages : 386 pages
Book Rating : 4.50/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Accidental Empires written by Robert X. Cringely and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 1996-09-13 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Computer manufacturing is--after cars, energy production and illegal drugs--the largest industry in the world, and it's one of the last great success stories in American business. Accidental Empires is the trenchant, vastly readable history of that industry, focusing as much on the astoundingly odd personalities at its core--Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Mitch Kapor, etc. and the hacker culture they spawned as it does on the remarkable technology they created. Cringely reveals the manias and foibles of these men (they are always men) with deadpan hilarity and cogently demonstrates how their neuroses have shaped the computer business. But Cringely gives us much more than high-tech voyeurism and insider gossip. From the birth of the transistor to the mid-life crisis of the computer industry, he spins a sweeping, uniquely American saga of creativity and ego that is at once uproarious, shocking and inspiring.

Author : Robert X. Cringely
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9780140258264
Total Pages : 358 pages
Book Rating : 4.64/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Accidental Empires written by Robert X. Cringely and published by . This book was released on 1996 with total page 358 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This work looks at the business of computing in the US, as computer science, as a business, and as a collection of extraordinary and eccentric characters. After automobiles, energy production, and illegal drugs, personal computers are one of the largest manufacturing industries in the world, and one of the great success stories for American business. This book is linked to a Channel 4 television series entitled The Triumph of the Nerds.

Author : John Darwin
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN 13 : 1620400391
Total Pages : 497 pages
Book Rating : 4.95/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Unfinished Empire written by John Darwin and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2013-02-12 with total page 497 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: John Darwin's After Tamerlane, a sweeping six-hundred-year history of empires around the globe, marked him as a historian of "massive erudition" and narrative mastery. In Unfinished Empire, he marshals his gifts to deliver a monumental one-volume history of Britain's imperium-a work that is sure to stand as the most authoritative, most compelling treatment of the subject for a generation. Darwin unfurls the British Empire's beginnings and decline and its extraordinary range of forms of rule, from settler colonies to island enclaves, from the princely states of India to ramshackle trading posts. His penetrating analysis offers a corrective to those who portray the empire as either naked exploitation or a grand "civilizing mission." Far from ever having a "master plan," the British Empire was controlled by a range of interests often at loggerheads with one another and was as much driven on by others' weaknesses as by its own strength. It shows, too, that the empire was never stable: to govern was a violent process, inevitably creating wars and rebellions. Unfinished Empire is a remarkable, nuanced history of the most complex polity the world has ever known, and a serious attempt to describe the diverse, contradictory ways-from the military to the cultural-in which empires really function. This is essential reading for any lover of sweeping history, or anyone wishing to understand how the modern world came into being.

Author : Walter Jon Williams
Publisher : Zondervan
ISBN 13 : 0061804894
Total Pages : 846 pages
Book Rating : 4.92/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Conventions of War written by Walter Jon Williams and published by Zondervan. This book was released on 2009-10-13 with total page 846 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Space opera the way it ought to be [...] Bujold and Weber, bend the knee; interstellar adventure has a new king, and his name is Walter Jon Williams.” -- George R.R. Martin At last, the climactic final episode of the Dread Empire’s Fall trilogy--what started with The Praxis and The Sundering comes to the brilliant conclusion in Walter Jon William's epic space adventure. Working on opposite sides of the galaxy--one in deep space, the other undercover on an occupied planet--and haunted by personal ghosts, Captain Gareth Martinez and Lieutenant Lady Caroline Sula fight to save the Empire from the vicious, alien Naxid. In a desperate, audacious bid to stop the Naxid fleet, Martinez makes a move that could win the war...and lose his career. Meanwhile, Sula’s guerilla tactics may not be enough to stop the Naxid, until she tries one deadly, final gambit. And make sure to see what happens after, in the first new Praxis novel in ten years, The Accidental War, available Fall 2018!

Author : Michael Swaine
Publisher : Pragmatic Bookshelf
ISBN 13 : 1680503529
Total Pages : 534 pages
Book Rating : 4.24/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Fire in the Valley written by Michael Swaine and published by Pragmatic Bookshelf. This book was released on 2014-10-20 with total page 534 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the 1970s, while their contemporaries were protesting the computer as a tool of dehumanization and oppression, a motley collection of college dropouts, hippies, and electronics fanatics were engaged in something much more subversive. Obsessed with the idea of getting computer power into their own hands, they launched from their garages a hobbyist movement that grew into an industry, and ultimately a social and technological revolution. What they did was invent the personal computer: not just a new device, but a watershed in the relationship between man and machine. This is their story. Fire in the Valley is the definitive history of the personal computer, drawn from interviews with the people who made it happen, written by two veteran computer writers who were there from the start. Working at InfoWorld in the early 1980s, Swaine and Freiberger daily rubbed elbows with people like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates when they were creating the personal computer revolution. A rich story of colorful individuals, Fire in the Valley profiles these unlikely revolutionaries and entrepreneurs, such as Ed Roberts of MITS, Lee Felsenstein at Processor Technology, and Jack Tramiel of Commodore, as well as Jobs and Gates in all the innocence of their formative years. This completely revised and expanded third edition brings the story to its completion, chronicling the end of the personal computer revolution and the beginning of the post-PC era. It covers the departure from the stage of major players with the deaths of Steve Jobs and Douglas Engelbart and the retirements of Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer; the shift away from the PC to the cloud and portable devices; and what the end of the PC era means for issues such as personal freedom and power, and open source vs. proprietary software.

Author : Martin Thomas
Publisher : Univ of California Press
ISBN 13 : 0520251172
Total Pages : 447 pages
Book Rating : 4.75/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Empires of Intelligence written by Martin Thomas and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2008 with total page 447 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'Empires of Intelligence' argues that colonial control in British and French empires depended on an elabroate security apparatus. Thomas shows the crucial role of intelligence gathering in maintaining imperial control in the years before decolonization.

Author : Dan Bricklin
Publisher : John Wiley & Sons
ISBN 13 : 0470500581
Total Pages : 515 pages
Book Rating : 4.83/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Bricklin on Technology written by Dan Bricklin and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2009-04-15 with total page 515 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a world that divides us, technology creates connection. Cell phones, e-mail, digital cameras, personal Web sites—they all join us, however tenuously, to what we value. Is connectivity what we’re willing to pay for? Should technology be our servant or a tool that helps us do other things? What can we really learn from Napster? What would intelligent standards for touch-screen user interface look like? How does technology evolve, and what drives that evolution? For Dan Bricklin, technology cannot exist independently of the lives and needs of those who use it. For more than a decade he has shared his thoughts on this essential interdependence in blogs, podcasts, and essays. This volume compiles those observations, putting together case histories and new reflections for a fascinating study of how people and technology affect one another. Whether you’re a software developer or a student of human nature, you’ll find yourself drawn into this most intriguing discourse—because you are its subject.

Author : Merrill R. Chapman
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 296 pages
Book Rating : 4.84/5 ( download)

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Download or read book In Search of Stupidity written by Merrill R. Chapman and published by . This book was released on 2003-07-08 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Describes influential business philosophies and marketing ideas from the past twenty years and examines why they did not work.

Author : Robert Cringely
Publisher : Nerdtv, LLC
ISBN 13 : 9780990444428
Total Pages : 202 pages
Book Rating : 4.22/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Decline and Fall of IBM written by Robert Cringely and published by Nerdtv, LLC. This book was released on 2014-06-10 with total page 202 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: IBM is in trouble in 2014. The iconic computer company has mismanaged itself into a rut it may be unable to get out of. Technology journalist Robert X. Cringely explains how Big Blue got to where it is today and what can still be done to save the company before it is too late.

Author : Melissa A Schilling
Publisher : PublicAffairs
ISBN 13 : 1610397932
Total Pages : 344 pages
Book Rating : 4.33/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Quirky written by Melissa A Schilling and published by PublicAffairs. This book was released on 2018-02-13 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The science behind the traits and quirks that drive creative geniuses to make spectacular breakthroughs What really distinguishes the people who literally change the world -- those creative geniuses who give us one breakthrough after another? What differentiates Marie Curie or Elon Musk from the merely creative, the many one-hit wonders among us? Melissa Schilling, one of the world's leading experts on innovation, invites us into the lives of eight people -- Albert Einstein, Benjamin Franklin, Elon Musk, Dean Kamen, Nikola Tesla, Marie Curie, Thomas Edison, and Steve Jobs -- to identify the traits and experiences that drove them to make spectacular breakthroughs, over and over again. While all innovators possess incredible intellect, intellect alone, she shows, does not create a breakthrough innovator. It was their personal, social, and emotional quirkiness that enabled true genius to break through--not just once but again and again. Nearly all of the innovators, for example, exhibited high levels of social detachment that enabled them to break with norms, an almost maniacal faith in their ability to overcome obstacles, and a passionate idealism that pushed them to work with intensity even in the face of criticism or failure. While these individual traits would be unlikely to work in isolation -- being unconventional without having high levels of confidence, effort, and goal directedness might, for example, result in rebellious behavior that does not lead to meaningful outcomes -- together they can fuel both the ability and drive to pursue what others deem impossible. Schilling shares the science behind the convergence of traits that increases the likelihood of success. And, as Schilling also reveals, there is much to learn about nurturing breakthrough innovation in our own lives -- in, for example, the way we run organizations, manage people, and even how we raise our children.