Value Investing: From Graham to Buffett and Beyond

Book Description

From the "guru to Wall Street's gurus" comes the fundamental techniques of value investing and their applications
Bruce Greenwald is one of the leading authorities on value investing. Some of the savviest people on Wall Street have taken his Columbia Business School executive education course on the subject. Now this dynamic and popular teacher, with some colleagues, reveals the fundamental principles of value investing, the one investment technique that has proven itself consistently over time. After covering general techniques of value investing, the book proceeds to illustrate their applications through profiles of Warren Buffett, Michael Price, Mario Gabellio, and other successful value investors. A number of case studies highlight the techniques in practice.
Bruce C. N. Greenwald (New York, NY) is the Robert Heilbrunn Professor of Finance and Asset Management at Columbia University. Judd Kahn, PhD (New York, NY), is a member of Morningside Value Investors. Paul D. Sonkin (New York, NY) is the investment manager of the Hummingbird Value Fund. Michael van Biema (New York, NY) is an Assistant Professor at the Graduate School of Business, Columbia University.

Customer Reviews:

Exceptional Addition for Any Investor.......2007-07-07

Fantastic summary of modern value investing. Greenwald looks at the discipline with the critical eye of a professor, making it more informative than many other books about the subject. Even seasoned value investors will learn from this book.

Must-read for value investors!.......2007-07-01

What I Liked About It
* Details several valuation methods that I haven't seen in other non-academic, mainstream investing books.
* Several real-world examples to apply valuation methods
* Great treatment of brands vs. franchises

What Needed Work
* Various investor profiles unnecessarily fill the 2nd half of the book.
* Attempts at quantifying "franchise" felt a bit forced.

Greenwald's book ranks at the very top of my investing bookshelf. I read this after having read Graham, Greenblatt, Klarman, Lynch, P. Fisher, Cramer (yes, that Cramer!), Dorsey, Buffett, and Browne among others. Amazingly, this book broached a number of topics not covered by those prominent authors. As such, this book is required reading for the discerning investor.

The most important concepts this book gave me were valuation methods based on net asset value (NAV) and earnings power value (EPV). Before this, I had trouble valuing companies that didn't generate steady cash flow or have commodity assets. Now I have more angles from which to examine a prospect and find undervalued companies besides running a DCF analysis. We've heard about past opportunities where you could have bought a company like McDonalds for the price of its real estate and gotten the business for free. Greenwald shows you how to find these opportunities using his asset valuation methods. He also gives you the tools to fairly value "tech" companies (or any enterprise with heavy intangible capital). Less convincing is his discussion of earnings power value but nonetheless, it's still helpful to be able to examine a company's earnings ability.

Greenwald also spends time discussing problems with discount cash flow analysis (DCF) as well as franchises. While his thoughts on these subjects were thought-provoking, I don't completely agree with his conclusions.

On DCF, Greenwald says that trying to project future growth rates 5-10 years forward is folly and will distort your DCF analysis. While he is right that future growth projections are problematic, that doesn't mean DCF isn't helpful for individual investors. Greenwald concedes that his preferred methodologies require, in some instances, in-depth knowledge of the business and industry of the company being examined. The non-professional (me!) may not have this expertise and any estimates of asset worth or capital costs would be just as faulty as analyst growth estimates. In fact, an adjusted future growth rate derived from a number of industry-knowledgeable analysts may be more generally accurate (if imprecise).

The main knock against the book is the whole second half consisting of eight investor profiles. There's nothing wrong with them per se except that they are in the book at all. If I had wanted a book on famous value investors, I would have picked up something by Kirk Kazanjian. The chapter on Warren Buffett is almost exclusively quotations taken from freely available public reports and Seth Klarman has written his own book on investing.

I've written a more-indepth review at my enlightened-american website but in summary, my advice is to soak in the 1st half of the book and skip the 2nd half entirely. Dig into an annual report instead and start applying what Greenwald's shown you.

A MUST READ.......2006-11-13

find weak areas with strong fundamentals is secret according to this book. this is a good combo to Investing Without Losing (ISBN: 0978834607 NOT on amazn, on other stores), one is about the concept and the latter is about execution

the most comprehensive review on value.......2006-09-20

In short, this book is grounded on economics and common sense. It summarizes "the intelligent investor", "security analysis", and the modern books on Buffett pretty well (there are other paths to heaven besides Buffett's). Its verbiage is beautifully chosen and a joy to read, especially for avid value investors. Best of all it is a scholarly work - if you're sick and tired of the commercial investing books that flood bookstores, buy this book.

Must-read for serious investors of any stripe.......2006-08-12

A must-read for investors of any stripe, growth or value. This book, written by a couple of the most popular professors at Columbia Business School, explains the innovations in the field of value investing as practiced by some of the most successful investors in the field. (fair disclosure: I will be taking courses from them in 2007) This book successfully bridges the gap between the traditional Graham & Dodd style of value investing to what works today. Although it's a paperback, it's written with the density of a textbook. The writing style is not light, and the actual meat of the book takes some time to wade through. If you don't have some experience in accounting or corporate finance, then Joel Greenblatt's The Little Book That Beats the Market is good to read first.

The substance of this book is a process for modern value investing: value investing is not investing in lousy companies just because they appear cheap. The authors also teach a structured way to value a company. Finally, the authors address how to value growth.

First, before reading this book I had the mistaken impression that value investing was all about investing in the ugliest, least interesting company you could find just because it had a low P/E ratio. I was completely wrong! (Maybe I have attended too many stock pitch sessions and heard too many poultry stocks and encyclopedia companies get pitched.) Modern value investing, according the authors: "When B. Graham went scouring financial statements looking for his net-nets, it did not concern him that he may have known little about the industry in which he found his targets. All he was concerned with were asset values and a margin of safety by that measure. A contemporary value investor had better be able to identify and understand the sources of a company's franchise and the nature of its competitive advantages. Otherwise he or she is just another punter, taking a flier rather than making an investment." What a breath of fresh air to read this passage.

Second, this book lays out a structured way to value a company by first looking at reproduction costs of assets, then earnings power, and finally the value of profitable growth. I, like the authors, find traditional DCF valuations to be plagued by false precision. The authors' more practical method starts by adjusting the balance GAAP balance sheet to calculate the cost of the assets for a potential business entrant. Next, the company is valued based on the earnings generates consistently, assuming no growth. A key insight is the value of the franchise: the difference between asset value and Earnings Power Value is the value created by a company that has significant competitive advantage. Last, the value of profitable growth is considered.

As a self-admitted recovering growth stock addict, I learned from this book that value investors are skeptical about growth for two reasons. One reason is that it is so hard to predict, but more important, many times growth is not worth much. Unless the return on capital (ROC) of the company is higher than the cost of capital, growth does not create value. (I am a slow learner; Greenblatt's example in The Little Book That Beats the Market of opening an additional gum store is even clearer to me.) The growth matrix and formulas in the book were a revelation to me. The surprising thing is how little multiple expansion a stock deserves based on growth. Unless a company truly has a franchise, expanding into other areas and "diversifying" the business often destroys value. And growth for growth's sake will not make a stock go up.

This book brings value investing into the modern stock market. Modern value investors still use traditional valuation principles in a structured way, but they also consider the value of growth and the attractiveness of the business. What a relief, I not restricted to buying typewriter and pay phone stocks! The authors quote Warren Buffett: It's far better to buy a wonderful company at a fair price than a fair company at a wonderful price.

Sawyer's Internal Auditing: The Practice of Modern Internal Auditing

Average customer rating:

Sawyer's Internal Auditing
Stay away. You'll get more from a "Hardy Boys" book.
Disappointing update to a classic book
Sawyers Internal Auditing
Test portion an abortion

Sawyer's Internal Auditing: The Practice of Modern Internal Auditing
Lawrence B. Sawyer , Mortimer A. Dittenhofer , and James H. Scheiner
Manufacturer: Institute of Internal Auditors, Inc.
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0894135090

Book Description

The book that changed the internal auditing profession is ready to do it again. Sawyer's Internal Auditing, 5th Edition provides a new global perspective that reflects the evolutionary changes in the way organizations do business including:

-How the new definition of internal auditing is reshaping the profession.
-What the new competency framework means to you and your organization.
-Why alignment with management is essential for achieving organizational goals.
-The implications of outsourcing your internal audit function.
-What strategies and specialties are now apart of today's internal auditing practice.
-Value-added approaches that are redefining your role as an internal auditor. ud -And so much more.

This textbook should be on the desk of every practitioner.

Customer Reviews:

Sawyer's Internal Auditing.......2006-08-06

This book is very useful for people working in internal audit field.

Stay away. You'll get more from a "Hardy Boys" book........2004-08-18

One of the worst text books I have ever had to suffer through. The verbage seems to come from some one who would rather be writing bad novels and doesn't want anybody to really understand what's being said. Furthermore, the review questions at the end of each chapter, in many cases, had nothing to do with the chapter they follow or even any information in the book itself on occasion. The remaining questions are written so vaguely you have to spend twice as long searching back through the text as it took to read it in the first place just to find something that resembles what the question is asking. It took me four days to read three chapters and finish the review questions at the end of two and I have no idea if I learned anything because the answer key is no where to be found. I can say this though, it may be vague and useless for a new learner, but at least it's longwinded and tiresome.

Disappointing update to a classic book.......2004-07-27

I am currently using this book to teach a college-level class in internal auditing. I initially chose it over Brink's Modern Internal Auditing (which I thought was very good but which was written at a rather high reading level) because 1) it was newer and less expensive for my students; 2) it purported to cover Sarbanes-Oxley; and 3) the previous edition was very good and I expected the same or better from the new edition.

However, what I found was that the new material was apparently thrown in without much attempt to integrate it with the original material. Many of the new sections are basically each a review of a single article. Therefore, there is language such as this in the section on Risk Disclosure Considerations in the Risk Assessment Chapter:

The writer analyzes FASB 5 and AcSEC SOP 94-6 in providing descriptive language that should be of interest to internal auditors . . . The writer suggests that inasmuch as the above disclosure taxonomy is incident to organizational management . . .

It is not a standard approach to refer to *the writer* and creates some confusion among my students.

Another problem with this approach is that some of the articles reviewed overlap with other textbook material, so there is a lot of redundancy. In some cases, it is rather shocking that a better editing job was not performed.

I agree with a previous review about the end-of-chapter questions. They are often not covered in the text. It is quite difficult to even guess how some of the questions were determined to belong with a particular chapter. As an instructor, a test bank would have been helpful also. The previous edition did have one; this does not.

Having said that, I will continue using this textbook until I'm sure I've found something better. It is definitely comprehensive! Many of my students enjoy Sawyer's trademark, colorful prose. However, I have gotten the comment from several students that the book must have been designed as a handbook for experienced auditors rather than as a textbook because it is so different from anything they have experienced.

Sawyers Internal Auditing.......2003-12-23

I used this text for a performance auditing class. It is an excellant book. It contains more information than a person could learn in one class, we only went through about half the book. It is a must for anyone interested in becoming an internal auditor. It is easy to understand, and follows a logical format.

Test portion an abortion.......2000-08-08

I have not only read the book, but taken the test portions that go along with it. It gives a good history of internal auditing for those new to the auditing field. It is also helpful to those with a moderate degree of experience. However, you will need to take the course from the USDA in order to find out what the chapter review answers are. I speculate 90% of them are just to vague! Other chapter review questions will not known until after you have read a chapter ahead. Example, some of the answers to chapter 2 review you will find from reading chapter 3. In chapter 23's test review if I recall, most of the answers come from chapter 22 etc. I did find it in my heart to give the book a 3 star because the information was helpful, but I would wait until 5th edition. As far as I know the course is not worth any college credit but should be good for CPE credit.

Creating the Project Office: A Manager's Guide to Leading Organizational Change (Jossey Bass Business and Management Series)

Average customer rating:

Don't have metric for start the PMO
Creating the Project Office : A Manager's Guide to Leading Organizational Change
Common sense applied to change management, wrapped in a bow!
Unusually rich

Creating the Project Office: A Manager's Guide to Leading Organizational Change (Jossey Bass Business and Management Series)
Randall L. Englund , Robert Graham , and Paul C. Dinsmore
Manufacturer: Jossey-Bass
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0787963984

Book Description

Creating the Project Office is written for managers who are searching for ways to transform their organizations into more effective and efficient project-based workplaces. As this important book reveals, there is no more effective way to make that change than to create a project office tailored to the needs of the organization. While a project office model leads to better products from projects, it is also a vehicle for generating overall organizational changeâ by transforming the organization from function-based to project-based. This model incorporates projects into the very fabric of the organizational strategy and revitalizes organizations, creates competitive advantage, and increases shareholder value.

Customer Reviews:

Don't have metric for start the PMO.......2006-04-03

I belive, if the book would have metrics and templates for the process start, it is very usefull.

Creating the Project Office : A Manager's Guide to Leading Organizational Change .......2006-02-24

Excellent service

Common sense applied to change management, wrapped in a bow!.......2004-12-02

I purchased this book on recommendation from a previous reviewer and was amazed by the breadth, depth, and more importantly pace of the book. The book moves quickly and does not spend a lot of time on theory, more time on examples (drawn mainly from Englund's work at HP).

The high level process applies as a general change management agenda, but applied through the lense of a PMO or project office. The annecdotes and lessons learnt provide an excellent framework for either internal "change agents" or external consultants to structure a successful organizational change and increase in proejct delivery quality.

The examples and frameworks in the book are easily understood and presented in a way that they can be reused or applied to many different project management challenges. I highly recommend this book to program managers or IT consultants who are intereste in affecting change in any organization.

Unusually rich.......2003-03-26

This book takes the leading thinking in implementing organizational change and applies it directly to the challenge of implementing project management. The authors then advance the art through the application of their extensive experience and original thought that leaves the reader-practitioner with a step-by-step guide to implementing a project management office.

The major strength of this manuscript is its revelation of the organizational challenges in creating a project office, their causes, and straightforward advice on navigating the pitfalls. The knowledge and experience of the authors comes through with `been there, done that' credibility. The reader leaves with a deeper understanding of their organization and the means for achieving their goal of implementing a project office.

I thought Part One was one of the best discussions I have seen of the organizational change factors involved in implementing a project office. It provided thorough overall coverage on the existing body of work in organizational change and provided an application to project management. The author's contribution of speaking truth to power is valuable.

I found the manuscript replete with illustrative material. I particularly liked the anecdotes from Greek mythology and literature. This book is unusually rich in supporting the principles advocated with clear `how-to' instructions. As a practitioner reading the book, I found myself saying: "Yes, that works," "I wish I had thought of that sooner," and "I am going to use that tomorrow." - a manuscript reviewer

Average customer rating:

The Bridge Less Travelled..

An excellent book

The worst book

sample code is not complete

Samples

Building Web Services with Java: Making Sense of XML, SOAP, WSDL, and UDDI (2nd Edition) (Developer's Library)
Steve Graham , Doug Davis , Simeon Simeonov , Glen Daniels , Peter Brittenham , Yuichi Nakamura , Paul Fremantle , Dieter Koenig , and Claudia Zentner
Manufacturer: Sams
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Developing Web Services with Apache Axis

Understanding Web Services: XML, WSDL, SOAP, and UDDI (Independent Technology Guides)

Real World Web Services

J2EE Web Services: XML SOAP WSDL UDDI WS-I JAX-RPC JAXR SAAJ JAXP

Service-Oriented Architecture: A Field Guide to Integrating XML and Web Services (The Prentice Hall Service-Oriented Computing Series from Thomas Erl)

ASIN: 0672326418

Book Description

Sams has assembled a team of experts in web services to provide you with a detailed reference guide on XML, SOAP, USDL and UDDI. Building Web Services with Java is in its second edition and it includes the newest standards for managing security, transactions, reliability and interoperability in web service applications. Go beyond the explanations of standards and find out how and why these tools were designed as they are and focus on practical examples of each concept. Download your source code from the publisher's website and work with a running example of a full enterprise solution. Learn from the best in Building Web Services with Java.

Download Description

Building Web Services with SOAP, XML, and UDDI assumes proficiency with Java and with distributed computing tools. Throughout the book, examples will be presented using Java and the Apache SOAP platform, although a set of sidebars will address .NET development, which Microsoft developers will use to deploy Web services. The book uses progressive disclosure to present an increasingly complex project as it moves through its development cycle. The final section of the book presents linking the completed project with other systems built in J2EE and .NET.

Customer Reviews:

The Bridge Less Travelled.........2007-08-23

The problem with Learning Web Services is just one - there is too much happening..the technology has grappled everyone's attention and a lot of Organizations are on it..
A beginner to web services just doesn't know where to look..strong foundations give 'empire estates', this book does just that
The primer on XML was one of the best i ever read anywhere and i am a big fan of Dr.Google, the clarity of the authors on WSDL Element model is very informative. All in all - if you need a book to trace Web Service concepts and build your foundations - i would strongly refer this book.

If you are looking for a quick reference/book to get started in implementation you should look elsewhere..Sam's 'Teach Yourself Web Services in 24 Hours' is a good choice..but then i believe that this book is definitely worth a reference because it goes a distance conceptually.
Kudos to the authors

An excellent book.......2007-07-30

This book has helped me immensely in implementing some really intense production quality data interchange across systems using web services.

This book will quickly help you understand the entire XML stack of technologies that you will need for Web Services.

The authors have uniquely enabled the readers to develop an understanding of the underlying technologies that make up the web services. Certainly expect to put in some effort in understanding the content.

The worst book.......2005-09-07

The writers either do not understand the topics, or they want to confuse the readers intentionally. You will find their writing style extremly annoying. They use the Skatestown(??) example to mislead the readers whenever they need to explain something. I dont know how such a bad written book can make it out to the book stores. If you buy this book, it will be the biggest waste of money.

sample code is not complete.......2005-03-05

I am still wondering why the authors don't provide all the code, since the book describes an application and that should have been tested and the code is there. Just a few wsdl files don't help very much.

Samples.......2005-01-23

There is an important thing missing in this book: complete samples. It is hard sometimes to understand what they are explaning since you just see a fragment of a WSDD, but not the classes or vice-versa. Since the book is already too long, the authors should have samples in the Internet. They even don't need to explain too much about these complete samples. Leave the developers to comment and validate them in Internet forums. In my view, samples will transform what now is just a so-so book in an excellent one.

The Canvas Cathedral: A Complete History of Evangelism from the Apostle Paul to Billy Graham

Average customer rating:

Not Impressed.
A Carefully Researched Presentation of Billy Graham

The Canvas Cathedral: A Complete History of Evangelism from the Apostle Paul to Billy Graham
Lewis Drummond
Manufacturer: Thomas Nelson
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0849943108

Book Description

The Canvas Cathedral is a book that would serve as both a history of evangelism as well as a personal history of the evangelical ministry of Billy Graham.

Dr. Lewis Drummond carefully examines the history of evangelism and the methods used throughout history. He starts with the Apostle Paul and ends with a special emphasis on the ministry of Billy Graham.

This book is a "must buy" for pastors, teachers, professors, students, and lay persons who are interested in the various ways that ministry and evangelism has taken place over the centuries, from Roman coliseums to canvas cathedrals.

For this reason, The Canvas Cathedral can be used in the classroom, the church, or for personal study to learn more about the scope of evangelism through the centuries.

Customer Reviews:

Not Impressed........2003-09-08

Canvas Cathedral read like a doctoral thesis that got way out of hand. Granted it is a historical look at evangelism, but every ten paragraphs mentions how Graham "fits the mold and makes it better." It almost reads like, "I like Billy, you should too!" One must doubt the professionality of the book, simply because he frequently refers to Graham as "Billy." Something that should be avoided in an "objective" analysis.

On the Brighter side, this is an excellent analysis of an anglo-protestant world-view of history.

A Carefully Researched Presentation of Billy Graham.......2003-04-10

To cover the work of Billy Graham's 60 year ministry is a formidable task. The author in his presentation examines Billy Graham's work from the historical perspective, going back to the first chapter of Genesis and giving a survey of evangelism from that time on. He is a serious student of the Bible and stresses memorizing scripture. Prayer is a vital part of Billy Graham's life. No other man has preached to as many people as Graham has but the author is quick to point out that Grahm works in a context of support provided by the Billy Graham Evangelistic Assoc (BGEA). Graham has been the intimate confident of presidents ane other leaders. Interesting little known facts are also to be found.

Book Description

"The computer world is like an intellectual Wild West, in which you can shoot anyone you wish with your ideas, if you're willing to risk the consequences. " --from Hackers & Painters: Big Ideas from the Computer Age, by Paul Graham

We are living in the computer age, in a world increasingly designed and engineered by computer programmers and software designers, by people who call themselves hackers. Who are these people, what motivates them, and why should you care?

Consider these facts: Everything around us is turning into computers. Your typewriter is gone, replaced by a computer. Your phone has turned into a computer. So has your camera. Soon your TV will. Your car was not only designed on computers, but has more processing power in it than a room-sized mainframe did in 1970. Letters, encyclopedias, newspapers, and even your local store are being replaced by the Internet.

Hackers & Painters: Big Ideas from the Computer Age, by Paul Graham, explains this world and the motivations of the people who occupy it. In clear, thoughtful prose that draws on illuminating historical examples, Graham takes readers on an unflinching exploration into what he calls "an intellectual Wild West."

The ideas discussed in this book will have a powerful and lasting impact on how we think, how we work, how we develop technology, and how we live. Topics include the importance of beauty in software design, how to make wealth, heresy and free speech, the programming language renaissance, the open-source movement, digital design, internet startups, and more.

And here's a taste of what you'll find in Hackers & Painters:

"In most fields the great work is done early on. The paintings made between 1430 and 1500 are still unsurpassed. Shakespeare appeared just as professional theater was being born, and pushed the medium so far that every playwright since has had to live in his shadow. Albrecht Durer did the same thing with engraving, and Jane Austen with the novel.

Over and over we see the same pattern. A new medium appears, and people are so excited about it that they explore most of its possibilities in the first couple generations. Hacking seems to be in this phase now.

Painting was not, in Leonardo's time, as cool as his work helped make it. How cool hacking turns out to be will depend on what we can do with this new medium."

Andy Hertzfeld, co-creator of the Macintosh computer, says about Hackers & Painters: "Paul Graham is a hacker, painter and a terrific writer. His lucid, humorous prose is brimming with contrarian insight and practical wisdom on writing great code at the intersection of art, science and commerce."

Paul Graham, designer of the new Arc language, was the creator of Yahoo Store, the first web-based application. In addition to his PhD in Computer Science from Harvard, Graham also studied painting at the Rhode Island School of Design and the Accademia di Belle Arti in Florence.

Customer Reviews:

Unconventional book, unconventional author, surprising points made.......2007-10-19

The book particularly deals with the nexus between programming, creativity, social commentary, wealth-generation, business-personal-entrepreneurial psychology (his specialty!) and LISP-related stuff. I skipped the programming sections because Im not a programmer. The philosophical commentary was better than 90% of other philosophy books I've read, more cutting and more true-to-life.

Interesting.......2007-09-07

Paul Graham is very clever (and rich - is that relevant?), however light also bends around his ego. Whether the sum of these qualities is positive is not absolutely clear to me.

If you want to read the best thing that he has written, you might be better served by his book on advanced Lisp programming, which is a monument anybody can be proud of - it comes close behind SICP on my personal list.

And, if you do read this book, I suggest you also look at 'The Science of Art' by Martin Kemp, which gives another perspective on the maybe slightly overweighted metaphor of the title, and the relation between theory and practice it implies.

Airport mall book.......2007-08-11

In spite of the strong desire to punch the author in the face after finishing the book, there are many great truths inside. Basically why is it that most people think salaries on the same position should be the same if work results differ in orders of magnitude.

Also it's funny to see an ultra-capitalist criticize the western decadent corporate structure. It's The Market for Lemons all over the place.

Don't expect to find anything useful to make a dot com startup on this book. It's all anecdotes from his experience and his quasi-religious views. It's more rhetoric on Lisp than business.

As another reviewer said, read first his online essays before diving into this.

Interesting but don't believe too much.......2007-07-29

I was entertained and greatly appreciated the view of the author but the many times I completely disagreed (due to very substantiated reasons) made me skeptical of several ideas of the author. But, the reasons for him holding those views is, in and of itself, interesting. He does have several good and controversial ideas and his experiences are quite valuable to read. Most of the time, I found myself flying high with him as he stated things that really need to be said which ran against conventional thought. Other times, I found myself raising my eyebrows in bewilderment. After all, it really is a book about his thoughts so take it as such. His book, his soapbox.

The book reads well but really trails off towards the end. I found myself finishing the book just so I could say I was through with it. The opening chapters are quite entertaining. Read a few chapters that you find interesting and leave it at that.

Nice, but dont expect to learn much.......2007-07-20

This is a nice little, light book that you can read after a hard day's coding and yet keep smiling. The language and style of writing is really good and makes reading quiet effortless. The topics being probed are of course bound to make you think. I would say, read this collection of essays to help you ponder further, but dont take the opinions too seriously.

The Unofficial Tourists' Guide to Second Life

Average customer rating:

It ain't that bad, Jerry
Very helpful
Doesn't really get me excited about trying Second Life

The Unofficial Tourists' Guide to Second Life
Paul Carr , and Graham Pond
Manufacturer: St. Martin's Griffin
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0312376480
Release Date: 2007-04-17

Book Description

Imagine an enormous, breathtaking virtual world to explore, where land can be bought for less than a dollar and new construction is limited only by your imagination. An online tourist destination where you can shop for virtual designer clothes in a shopping mall atop a live volcano, teleport to an underwater gig by U2, before taking a new friend back to your personal spaceship for virtual coffee or...well, you get the idea.

The Unofficial Tourists' Guide to Second Life is a fast, fun guidebook that introduces first-time visitors to the endless wonders offered by this exciting and rapidly developing online world. All of Second Life is here, including:

The Essentials. What to wear and how to behave. The People. Finding likeminded souls—or soulmates. The Major Destinations. Must-see tourist hotspots, shops, and shows. Shopping and Nightlife. A guide to the lively virtual shopping scene, and all manner of debauchery. For Entrepreneurs. How to buy land or start a Second Life business.

Customer Reviews:

It ain't that bad, Jerry.......2007-08-03

The review here by Jerry Saperstein is a lot of hooey. Jerry is either ticked off about something and using subtle cues in his text to bash the book and its author, or else is an overstuffed blowhard who didn't take the time to explore SL. If he had looked thoroughly at Second Life, he would have found what most find sooner or later: it's not a game. It has no game rules, no scoring, no winners and losers. Rather, it is a large-scale social network where people build their environments and connect with people they wish to know. And it's completely safe. You can't be killed there. He makes it seem bad that people are looking to escape reality. Duh! That's what role-playing is all about. He overlooks the vast array of human knowledge on display in SL. This is fast becoming a center for online education in social sciences, physical sciences, arts and letters. The opportunities for learning through exploration are amazing. This book is a great way to start searching for that excitement in a world beyond reality.

Very helpful.......2007-06-30

As a 35-year veteran of online worlds, everything from irc to chat to the Palace to the Sims, I was skeptical about Second Life. Whatever fancy technology is involved, people are still people, and I figured it was in essence a chat room with new bells and whistles. And it is that--the core behaviors of online chat have not changed much in 35 years--but I was pleasantly surprised to discover that there is much more to Second Life than chat. I was helped in this discovery by the authors of this book. The official book from Linden Labs mostly tells you how to do things. This book goes another step, and suggests things to do. The news media seem mostly focused on commerce and sex in Second Life. And there is that. The people in Second Life are similar to the cyber-denizens you will find anywhere online. The real difference here is the places: the worlds that people have built. Even if you never talk to anyone else, you can have amazing experiences simply exploring: a mystical forest, a sinister cathedral in the sky, an amusement park where you can ride a roller coaster, a Victorian village, an urban wasteland, and romantic sunset beaches are among thousands of places imagined and created, not by the owners of Second Life, but by its "residents." This guide helped me find all of them, giving hours of enjoyment even to this ancient cyber-skeptic.

I also appreciate that the authors have taken some time to bring readers up to speed on the culture of Second Life's residents. In any online community--well, any community really, online or off--there is always a subtext that new people struggle to understand, consisting of previous events and interpersonal struggles. The authors have shed light on this history for us in a most amusing way. In short, I'm grateful to have read this book at the beginning of my Second Life experience; it was very, very helpful and has increased my enjoyment of Second Life considerably.

Doesn't really get me excited about trying Second Life.......2007-06-10

I bought this book because I was curious about Second Life. I had visited the Second Life web site and didn't find a lot there to get me excited or really curious, so I thought this promised overview might provide a more convincing argument.

It doesn't.

The book isn't bad. It is quite informative, in fact. But it leaves me with the impression that Second Life is just another roleplaying game of the kind that interested me a couple of decades ago but long ago lost their appeal.

The authors make it clear that Second Life is the same old thing in new dress. People looking for cybersex; people looking to control; people looking to escape reality, but dragging their real-life problems with them. In short, Second Life is just another online game with great hype.

Granted, there are many people who enjoy frittering away hours in roleplaying environments. I am not one of them. To that end, this book has served me well: it convinced me that Second Life was not worth trying.

The authors do provide a thorough overview of Second Life and its "attractions" and venues. For people who enjoy this kind of thing, it would be a good introductory guide. To the authors' credit, they don't try to make Second Life appear to be a musn't miss experience; in fact, they take pains to acknowledge that it is just a game and that some people appear to take it far too seriously.

Jerry

The Cultivated Wilderness: Or, What is Landscape? (Graham Foundation / MIT Press Series in Contemporary Architectural Discourse)

Average customer rating:

among the most exciting books on the subject I have read

The Cultivated Wilderness: Or, What is Landscape? (Graham Foundation / MIT Press Series in Contemporary Architectural Discourse)
Paul Shepheard
Manufacturer: The MIT Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Architecture | Professional & Technical | Subjects | Books

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ASIN: 0262691949

Book Description

Paul Shepheard's previous book, What is Architecture?, was about making real, material things in the world -- landscapes, buildings, and machines. The Cultivated Wilderness is about those landscapes, and about the strategies that govern what we've done in shaping them.

In the author's words, this book is about "seeing things that are too big to see." His emphasis on strategy makes landscape fundamental -- he says that every architectural move is set in a landscape. Norman England, for example, was constructed as a network of strong points, in a strategy of occupation. The eighteenth-century grid cities of the New World reflect a strategy of reason. Our current strategy is the economic exploitation of the Earth, an intricately woven blanket of commerce that covers up a multitude of other possibilities, many other ways to treat the surface of the globe -- some of which are the landscapes revealed in this book.

In a series of first-person narratives, reminiscent of his last book, the author pairs six landscapes, in order of descending scale from global to local, from the seven wonders of the ancient world to the condensed destruction of World War I's Western Front. In an engaging style, Shepheard takes the reader on an odyssey through these landscapes, meeting people and seeing places. He states that now, at the end of a century in which the appropriate landscape was sought but never found, the strategy of turning the land to profit is under review -- and offers this book as his contribution to that review.

Customer Reviews:

among the most exciting books on the subject I have read.......1998-01-22

Shepheard's book is among the most exciting I have read in a very long time--even though I still don't quite know what it is. Is it what, as a university press publication, one might suppose it to be, a work of "scholarship"? is it instead, as, having read it, I now almost think, a very nearly poetic meditation on the interactions between human beings and their environment? I can say neither with certainty. What it is, "certainly," is a set of essays that consider, among other things, what "wilderness" might mean to the human beings who interact with, live in, or stamp their presence over it; the seven wonders of the ancient world; the human presence in Antactica; Scotland; Flevoland and the Dutch polders; the relationship between London and its surroundings; and--in its last chapter--the western front. Each essay is characterized first and foremost by the author's idiosyncratic and playful voice. He writes like a cranky and opinionated human being speaking to other human beings, not like an academic ghost-in-the-book-as-machine addressing some equally dessicated conception of an academic reader. The essays are shot through with conversations (invented? recorded?), little dramas, vignettes, and a basketful of other irrelevancies--although they never turn out to be as irrelevant as you suppose. Each is also characterized by flashes of insight that strike you like lightbulbs going off at unpredictable intervals, page after page. Many years ago, an English professor named Robert Stevick wrote an essay attempting to define the "form" of a genre called "the anatomy." It had, back then, recently been made "famous" all over again by a Canadian name of Frye. Stevick's examples, as I recall, included not only melancholick Burton, more or less obviously, but also Swift's Tale of a Tub, Tristram Shandy, Sartor Resartus, Moby Dick, A la recherche du temps perdus, and Ulysses. At an MLA meeting in the late 1970s, I proposed that Anthony Powell's Dance to the Music of Time would be better understood in reference to this genre than if it were read (as it usually is) against the standards of realistic fiction; I still believe this argument is worth making in a more formal way than I did then, as an aside in a different argument, or here, as an assertion. Whatever else it may be, Shepheard's Cultivated Wilderness is the most recent major contribution to the anatomy genre I have come across. I also think it is simply brilliant. My pleasure in the book sent me looking, the day I finished it, for Shepheard's first book, What is Architecture? An Essay on Landscapes, Buildings, and Machines (MIT Press, 1994; paperback $9.95). I took me twenty-four hours to find a copy, which proved a bit frustrating. When I finally got my mitts on it, this earlier book also won me over. Art is everywhere [Shepheard writes]. As life has become detached from the wilderness, the human world is everywhere. I see music as a throbbing accompaniment to every moment of contemporary life, a sort of continuous current of emotion, that incorporates what poetry used to be. I see drama as a hugely expanded art that includes films and novels, which even has a new name, literature, and sucks in clothes and manners to itself as well. Architecture? Would we not all agree that architecture is much more than tombs and palaces and temples now? (p. 36) Do "we" all agree? Well, maybe yes . . . and maybe no. Page after page is filled with stuff that gets the ol' mental juices going, exciting agreement, provoking argument and disagreement, and inciting the reader to thought. If there is more to ask of a book, I am not sure what it is.

Ending Spam: Bayesian Content Filtering and the Art of Statistical Language Classification

Average customer rating:

ivan's review
Great book!
excellent book
Great
Nice overview ... but leaves you wanting more

Ending Spam: Bayesian Content Filtering and the Art of Statistical Language Classification
Jonathan Zdziarski
Manufacturer: No Starch Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Privacy | Business & Culture | Computers & Internet | Subjects | Books

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ASIN: 1593270526
Release Date: 2005-07-01

Book Description

Join author John Zdziarski for a look inside the brilliant minds that have conceived clever new ways to fight spam in all its nefarious forms. This landmark title describes, in-depth, how statistical filtering is being used by next-generation spam filters to identify and filter unwanted messages, how spam filtering works and how language classification and machine learning combine to produce remarkably accurate spam filters.

After reading Ending Spam, you'll have a complete understanding of the mathematical approaches used by today's spam filters as well as decoding, tokenization, various algorithms (including Bayesian analysis and Markovian discrimination) and the benefits of using open-source solutions to end spam. Zdziarski interviewed creators of many of the best spam filters and has included their insights in this revealing examination of the anti-spam crusade.

If you're a programmer designing a new spam filter, a network admin implementing a spam-filtering solution, or just someone who's curious about how spam filters work and the tactics spammers use to evade them, Ending Spam will serve as an informative analysis of the war against spammers.

TOC Introduction

PART I: An Introduction to Spam Filtering Chapter 1: The History of Spam Chapter 2: Historical Approaches to Fighting Spam Chapter 3: Language Classification Concepts Chapter 4: Statistical Filtering Fundamentals

PART II: Fundamentals of Statistical Filtering Chapter 5: Decoding: Uncombobulating Messages Chapter 6: Tokenization: The Building Blocks of Spam Chapter 7: The Low-Down Dirty Tricks of Spammers Chapter 8: Data Storage for a Zillion Records Chapter 9: Scaling in Large Environments

PART III: Advanced Concepts of Statistical Filtering Chapter 10: Testing Theory Chapter 11: Concept Identification: Advanced Tokenization Chapter 12: Fifth-Order Markovian Discrimination Chapter 13: Intelligent Feature Set Reduction Chapter 14: Collaborative Algorithms

Appendix: Shining Examples of Filtering

Index

Customer Reviews:

ivan's review.......2007-08-08

There is too much (for me) about marginal matters such as the history of spam and minute details of various methods. I was looking for a clear exposition of the principles of filtering and the corresponding mathematics but this I can't find. The term "decision matrix" is used a lot without being defined.The stuff concerning Bayesian filters on page 76 is quite meaningless. It's all very disappointing.

Great book!.......2007-01-19

This book provides the history of spam, so we know how it all started, as well as the reasoning and theories behind the current spam technologies, whithout getting bogged down in minutia. I found this book quick and enjoyable to read. Very informative. Highly suggested if you are a sysAdmin (like me) who has or will build a spam filter, or wants to know how they work and why. Good for programmers as well looking for the theories.

excellent book.......2007-01-03

Reading this book was fun. I was doing some research on spam and found this book was exactly what I was looking for. This book covers (almost) all aspects of spam, including the history, the current status, the principles of anti-spam systems, statistical algorithms, case studies, etc. This book is a good start point for understanding spams and means to stop them, although it does not contain a lot of in-depth technical details. I was amazed by the author's style, which was quite energetic and entertaining. This book made my research a pleasant experience. I strongly recommend this book for those who are interested to know how spams came and how we fight them.

Great.......2006-02-20

Awesome read. For those who are in the SpamAssassin mindset and are considering DSPAM, this is a definite must!

Nice overview ... but leaves you wanting more.......2005-09-19

Ending Spam from Mr. Zdziarski is a well written BASIC and easy to understand INTRODUCTION to get a technical overview of todays spam fighting solutions on the market.

Also it is written on the cover that it is f.e focused towards developers, network admins etc. I would consider the target customer to be IT Managers, or other curious people who want to get an overview.

Thats what it does and it does it very well in my eyes.
The book provides simplified, abstract overviews of some available spam filters solutions.

The book is provided into 3 parts

- An Introduction part to spam filtering (Chapter 1-4)
- A part describing "Fundamentals of Statistical Filtering" (Chapter 5-9)
- an the third part describing "Advanced Concepts of Statistical Filtering" (Chapter 10-14)

Its a bit confusing that Chapter 4 has the same title than Part II. So perhaps Chapter 4 should have been part of "Part II" ?

The Chapters which I found most interesting were:

Chapter 4 "Fundamentals of Statistical Filtering"
Chapter 7 "The Low down dirty Tricks of spammers"
Chapter 9 "Scaling in Large Environments"

I am sure the author could have easily filled the book with Chapter 7 alone. The book is very entertaining and has a nice motivating writing style. You might at times find some rant about the spammers which I have chosen to ignore as it doesnt contain any valuable information or anything which I didnt know already. While I might agree to some of the authors views, I believe that the rant does unfortunately do exactly the opposite in my eyes and does give spammers credit to how they do their work.

I personally was actually looking for a companion book to "The Book of Postfix" to help me further explore new anti spam technology.
I was hoping to find overview charts, being able to compare different solutions,features, (dis)advantages. So in this sense, I was actually looking for workshop style instructions, tuning advice, troubleshooting advice etc.

The authors does explain f.e (Chapter 14) Collaborative Algorithms but he does not go into detail which products support the feature and how to perform the setup. He does provide some weblinks in his book from which the interested reader might further investigate the topic.

From reading the Chapter10 on "Testing Theory" its easier to conclude why the author doesnt go into more detail. If he would have done so, the book could have been easily 2-3 times the size.

I assume, this is partly due to the fact that the anti spam technology /products/market is still fairly young .

Summary:

"Ending Spam" gives a very BASIC INTRODUCTION to the current available Anti spam technology and some chosen products. After you have read the book you have a first vague idea what type of solutions exist. You will actually need other books to intensify the "knowledge" you have gained here.

The fact that the book is written in simple terms makes it easily acessable for a wide market, however if you are a technichian you will perhaps find that the book just doesnt contain enough "meat" for you.

I would still recommend the book for Managers which need to know only the rough details, beginners, or a first time read for newcomers.

Average customer rating:

In the heart of darkness, a ray of light
Excellent transaction
Found what he went looking for and more
Greene's geographical foray
Real Life "Adventure"

Journey Without Maps (Penguin Classics)
Graham Greene
Manufacturer: Penguin Classics
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Coastal West Africa | Africa | Travel | Subjects | Books

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ASIN: 0143039725

Book Description

His mind crowded with vivid images of Africa, Graham Greene set off in 1935 to discover Liberia, a remote and unfamiliar republic founded for released slaves. Now with a new introduction by Paul Theroux, Journey Without Maps is the spellbinding record of Greene's journey. Crossing the red-clay terrain from Sierra Leone to the coast of Grand Bassa with a chain of porters, he came to know one of the few areas of Africa untouched by colonization. Western civilization had not yet impinged on either the human psyche or the social structure, and neither poverty, disease, nor hunger seemed able to quell the native spirit. BACKCOVER: “One of the best travel books [of the twentieth] century.”
—Norman Sherry

“Journey Without Maps and The Lawless Roads reveal Greene's ravening spiritual hunger, a desperate need to touch rock bottom within the self and in the humanly created world.”
—The Times Higher Education Supplement

Customer Reviews:

In the heart of darkness, a ray of light.......2007-03-01

Graham Greene is a famous 20th C novelist ("The Orient Express") who also wrote a few travel accounts. This is his first, when he was 31 years old and left Europe for the first time in his life to experience the uncivilized "dark heart of Africa" by traveling through the back country of Liberia in 1935. It was a 4-week, 350-mile walk, mostly through an unchanging tunnel forest path, ending each day in a primitive village. He had about a dozen black porters who would carry him in a sling, although he walked much of the way.

It's written with a very "old school" perspective, with one foot in the 19th (or 18th) century of romantic colonial imperialism, and one foot in the pre-war 1930s perspective of deterioration, rot and things falling apart. Heavy whiskey drinking, descriptions of the festering diseases of the natives, and plethora of bothersome insects, the run down European outposts and a motley cast of white rejects fill many descriptive pages.

It reminds me a lot of Samuel Johnson's "Journals of the Western Isles" (1770s) when Johnson, who had never left England in his life, decided to go to Scotland to see what uncivilized people were like. Just as Johnson brought Boswell who would go on to write his own version of the trip, Greene brought his female cousin Barbara Greene (who remains unnamed in the book and largely unmentioned), who went on to write her own version of the trip in the 1970s called "Too Late to Turn Back", which mostly contradicts Grahams version.

I can't say I totally enjoyed this book, I found Greene's attitude irritating - but therein lies its value, as a snapshot of prewar European zeitgeist. It is reminiscent of "Kabloona" (1940), another prewar travel account to an uncivilized place (Arctic Eskimos) by a young European aristocrat, who also is deeply inward looking and finds a new perspective and appreciation for the "cave man" people he meets. It's very much a transition period between prewar and post-war attitudes and the fluctuation's back and forth, the sense of things falling apart, but also new-found perspective, make it a challenging but interesting work.

Excellent transaction.......2007-02-06

This book provides and excellent background about traveling in the country of Liberia during the mid-19th century. A well written and interesting travelogue.

Found what he went looking for and more.......2006-09-21

Graham Greene was weary and appalled by the world atrocities of the early 20th century. He decided to go looking for life as basic and unspoiled as it was in the beginning. He chose to do so in Liberia, the African nation that had always been under black rule and not colonized or fleeced by Europe in modern times, though even it was a western construct, carved out of the continent by Americans as a homeland to repatriate freed slaves (or, as Greene says, a place to hide mulatto offspring). His trek on foot lasted the month of February 1935, and JOURNEY WITHOUT MAPS is his account of what became a transformative experience.

The title is derived from the fact that there were no true maps available of Liberia at the time. He relied on a caravan of native porters and a lot of guestimations as to what direction and how far it would be from village to village. Once leaving the ragged European communities near the coast, he and his party plunged into that virgin world he sought. What he describes in exquisite detail is now familiar to us via decades of National Geographics but was then, to someone who had never left Europe at that point, a culture shock. He learned to leave behind his English insistence on time table and surprise at naked, ritually scarred bodies, the persistent sound of drums and the utter poverty of villages. He did not let go his own clothes or whiskey or discomfort over rats and insects. He is eventually waylaid by sickness, and in the healing process comes out with a new, more life affirming personal vision. Though it seems as if the details of the daily marches, the insects and discomforts are so much of the same, by the end you see the impact of the experience. He found what he went looking for and more, and he was not afraid to leave some mysteries unsolved.

Greene's prose is clear as a bell and graceful. His observations of contemporary politics and missionaries, as well as the elasticity of truth in such a setting are valuable today, even seasoned with his candid biases.

Greene's geographical foray.......2006-08-15

I've read a number of Greene's novels, but this little travel book was equal to his other publications. As usual, his attention to detail, people, and culture creates wonderful images that bring us right to the Liberia of the 1930s. I shared the book with my sister who lived in Liberia for 27 yrs. and she was astonished at the accurate reporting. His prose is the best I've read for a book devoted to travel experiences.

Real Life "Adventure".......2001-09-24

Not an adventure when compared to fictional safari tales in which the intrepid travellers fight off fierce lions and savage "natives" in every chapter. Instead, an enjoyable and realistic account of Greene's arduous and near-disasterous trek through Liberia. Greene travelled with his cousin, Barbara Greene, who also wrote an account of their journey--Too Late to Turn Back. Interesting contrasts between the two books if you can find copies of both. I had to order a copy of Barbara's book from a used book store in England.

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