Amazon.com
As it becomes increasingly associated with impressive corporate gains realized in recent years by companies ranging from FedEx and Rolex to Starbucks and Volvo, "branding" has developed into one of the marketing world's hottest concepts. And for good reason, contend well-known strategist Al Ries and his daughter Laura Ries in The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding: How to Build a Product or Service into a World-Class Brand.
"Marketing is building a brand in the mind of the prospect," they write. "If you can build a powerful brand you will have a powerful marketing program. If you can't, then all the advertising, fancy packaging, sales promotion and public relations in the world won't help you achieve your objective." A no-holds-barred look at a diverse collection of successful--and not-so-successful--branding efforts undertaken by these and other high-profile firms, their book distills the most critical principles involved into a series of clear rules with straightforward titles such as The Law of Expansion, The Law of Contraction, The Law of Consistency, and The Law of Mortality. While some of their suggestions may at first seem counterintuitive, together they compose a logical blueprint for success in today's ever-more-competitive environment. --Howard Rothman
Amazon.com Audiobook Review
When you call a book The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding, you're pretty much ruling out Oprah's Book Club as potential buyers. (Not that Oprah herself isn't a terrific brand.) This is an audiobook for a narrow demographic: entrepreneurs, top managers, and public-relations directors. Coauthor Al Ries comes off like the eccentric genius that most of these managers keep in a basement office, only listening to when necessary. When he says, "The power of a brand is inversely proportional to its scope," and hectors managers with the idea that "customers want brands that are narrow in scope," you know he's right (he backs himself up with dozens of examples), and you know it's the last thing powerful, expansion-minded businesspeople want to hear. Coauthor Laura Ries, his daughter and marketing-firm partner, also reads sections. (Running time: 1.5 hours, one cassette) --Lou Schuler
Book Description
How to build a product or service into a world–class brand.
In today's competitive world, it is no longer enough to have a superior product or even a great advertising campaign. Today's consumers are more savvy than ever, and ample competition has allowed them to become more choosy. The only way to stand out in today's, and tomorrow's 埣luttered marketplace is to build your product or service into a brand. 22 Immutable Laws of Branding is the definitive work on brands and branding. In the tradition of 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing, this book is illustrated with anecdotes from some of the best brands in the world and explains how any product or service can be built into a brand.
Customer Reviews:
Great book.......2007-10-10
Excellent book. Although the 22 laws may not be immutable they definitely are impossible to overlook. This book is packed with practical examples of where major corporations failed and succeeded, by breaking or following each of the 22 laws. Definitely must read if you're interested in creating a strong brand.
What a Book!.......2007-09-22
I never read a book more packed with incredible insights that this one. My company, Astonish Results (www.astonishresults.com) provides consulting to mortgage companies. I will recommend this book to every company we consult.
must have for business owners.......2007-09-11
As a small business owner and someone who was new to the business side of running a business I have found this book an absolute necessity in my daily business life.
Something to think about.......2007-08-11
I read this book with pleasure. It contains a lot of common sense and showed how people are influenced in their choice of branding features by what others have done and not what makes sense. I hope to use much of the information in my firm for our software branding.
Steven Calkins
Cross Media Solutions
Würzburg, Germany
Excellent work.......2007-05-26
I must say I have become somewhat of a Ries groupie. Al & Laura Ries along with Jack Trout have created some of the most thought filled pieces within the Branding, Marketing and communications world today. This one lives up the all the hype. The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding is a masterpiece to say the least. I began seeking out new books on the topic and thought why not hear from the gurus of the field. I had read The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing first and it lead me to this great piece. I am a marketing student not just in the classroom but for life. It is what I do, therefore learning more is what I must do.
Once you began your journey for more knowlege on Branding and relating fields you will side with this book. Branding lives with the perpection that is placed int he mind of the consumer. In all my many marketing classes have I not discussed the many issues that come up in this book. To be a great marketer or branding strategiest you must seek out information from all levels of the field and then rethink those thoughts in regards to your position and situation. This book places you in the right mindset to do that and much more. So begin the process...
Book Description
Based on the best-selling WEST'S BUSINESS LAW, this Alternate Edition continues to set the standard for making law accessible, interesting, and relevant to business students. With the perfect balance of tradition and innovation, this benchmark text brings to life the functions and inner-workings of business law in the real world. Rich with classic and modern cases that are summarized rather than excerpted, WEST'S BUSINESS LAW is the ideal text for students entering virtually any field of business. The text is supported by a comprehensive supplements and technology package. The text's proven approach combines with these resources to create a total teaching and learning system that is a clear choice for instructors who want to use summarized cases. This Tenth Edition refines and builds upon traditions established when the book was first introduced: authoritative content blended with cutting-edge coverage of contemporary topics and cases and an unmatched selection of innovative, high-quality support materials.
Customer Reviews:
Business Law 10 Edition .......2007-09-28
I like it a lot but it needs to put into simple word for a person like me who don't known any thing about law could understand it better. over all its a very good book. A lot of good information.
Lollie L. Jefferson
West's Business Law, tenth edition.......2007-09-06
The book came in a sealed cover. Although it looks brand new, it does say it is "used". You would never know it. It came in a timely manner and when I followed up w/the seller to see when it shipped, they sent me back an e-mail within a few hours. I would highly recommend using Off Campus Athens again.
Great Book To Keep.......2007-07-17
I have been through a few bad and good text books throughout my college career, but this had to be one of the best I ever picked up. It is easy to search through and actually makes the topics interesting to read.
Great reference book too.......2007-05-09
The book had great case studies but the best part were the on line review tests. I got 100 on the final!!
Excellent service and quality.......2007-03-19
Great! Product shipping status was easy to track, great communication via email regarding status of product. Product came much quicker than expected and was exactly as I expected! Thanks!
Average customer rating:
- Sucked
- Small Biz Bible
- Decent book but not for my cause
- Good, but slowly being replaced by online resources
- Great for those starting their business
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Small Business Kit for Dummies
Richard D. Harroch
Manufacturer: For Dummies
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Small Business for Dummies, Second Edition
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Business Plans For Dummies
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Small Business Marketing for Dummies, Second Edition
ASIN: 0764550934 |
Book Description
Imagine everything you'd ever need to start up and run your own small business packed into one convenient, easy-to-read book. Throw in a CD-ROM with more than 250 documents and forms, along with trial versions of great small business software programs, and you've got the new Small Business Kit For Dummies, your perfect resource for the daunting process of starting a small business venture.
Small Business Kit For Dummies is chock-full of information, resources, and helpful hints on making the transition from a great idea to a great business. This book has plenty of straightforward advice on things that an MBA degree won't get you, from the basics of mastering legal, financial, employment, and management hurdles to advanced topics on business plans and strategies, accounting, contracts, taxes, attracting investors, and putting your business onto the Web. Whether you expect your business to become the next Microsoft or you've set your sights on a more modest goal, you'll find comprehensive and authoritative counsel -- without all the confusing jargon and legalese -- in this fun and friendly guide to the world of small business success.
Customer Reviews:
Sucked.......2006-05-16
My husband came home with this book last week. I am considering buying a business of great interest to me, but I have next to no experience with retail. He has his doubts about the whole "dummies" series, but thought maybe it would help me. We both found the text to be vague, as I was looking for concrete definitions to some of the unfamiliar business terms which the book did not provide. At the same time, the suggestions for running a small business were ridiculously obvious and downright condescending. The book went back to the store, and I ordered a copy of Specialty Shop Retailing (How To Run Your Own Store) by Carol L Schroeder from my local library. I would HIGHLY recommend this book, and once I finish reading entirely I'll take the time to provide a thorough review. But really, the book has a great layout and it's enjoyable reading.
Small Biz Bible.......2004-12-22
This book has been very useful. The author gives practical tips, advice, checklists and forms - all in an easy to read format. He makes things that seem overwhelming at first suddenly seem manageable. The CD ROM saved me a bundle in legal fees. He seems to know what it is like to have been in the trenches.
Decent book but not for my cause.......2004-08-16
I was toying with the idea of creating an online based business selling educational material and decided to buy this book because I wanted to learn the specifics of running a homebased business. I was searching for facts about taxation, how to get a business liscense, and a directory to web resources. These were in here but with such little detail. Also the book does not tackle small business management like I thought. It explained how to set up a larger business with a board of directors and examples of balance sheets working with millions of dollars in transactions.
I'm just a bit disenchanted because it's not what I was looking for, however, it may be good for someone who is wanting to start a larger corporation. Should be titled something else.
Good, but slowly being replaced by online resources.......2004-01-27
This a good book, don't get me wrong. However, having been edited back in 1998, and being -as it is- largely focused on the documents that you, as a Small Business Owner, are likely to be in need of, it now seems a bit outdated and old-fashioned when you compare if with the ease with which you can get (for free) similar formats (business plans, marketing plans, invoices, etc.) online (in office.microsoft.com > Templates, for instance). It is a good reference of what to look for, though, which is why I give it 4 stars.
Great for those starting their business.......2003-09-27
It's great to see a book written by an attorney who also understands business.
Too many other books out there are written by amateur business people who's real business is in promoting and selling lousy books.
The CD-Rom will save you hundreds if not thousands of dollars and time.
Also recommend "The Small Business Kit" and "How to Incorporate in any State" by J.W. Dicks, another attorney and businessman with real world knowledge.
Good luck with your business!
Book Description
The "alarming and impassioned"* book on how the Internet is redefining constitutional law, now reissued as the first popular book revised online by its readers (*New York Times)
There's a common belief that cyberspace cannot be regulated-that it is, in its very essence, immune from the government's (or anyone else's) control. Code, first published in 2000, argues that this belief is wrong. It is not in the nature of cyberspace to be unregulable; cyberspace has no "nature." It only has code-the software and hardware that make cyberspace what it is. That code can create a place of freedom-as the original architecture of the Net did-or a place of oppressive control. Under the influence of commerce, cyberpsace is becoming a highly regulable space, where behavior is much more tightly controlled than in real space. But that's not inevitable either. We can-we must-choose what kind of cyberspace we want and what freedoms we will guarantee. These choices are all about architecture: about what kind of code will govern cyberspace, and who will control it. In this realm, code is the most significant form of law, and it is up to lawyers, policymakers, and especially citizens to decide what values that code embodies.
Since its original publication, this seminal book has earned the status of a minor classic. This second edition, or Version 2.0, has been prepared through the author's wiki, a web site that allows readers to edit the text, making this the first reader-edited revision of a popular book.
Customer Reviews:
Designed for Lawyers - not technicians.......2007-09-03
This is an important subject ans deserves a lot more attention.
However, it was clearly written by a lawyer for lawyers. I am a software engineer and read many books in my field - but alas was unable to finish this one - important as it is. Its just way to wordy - if it was reduced in size by at least half - and highlighted the salient points clearly and simply - its would be a much better book IMHO.
If your a lawyer you'll like this book - but anyone else - look elsewhere.
Sorry lawerence.
An Excellent Presentation for the Digitial Future.......2007-06-08
Professor Lessig describes how managing copyright for the digital age will have an impact upon every individual in the future. As we develop and share digitial content how we protect or even abuse copyright will determine if the Internet and other digital technologies will improve information for the global citizen. We stand at the door of one of the greatest era in history, however, how we use and protect digitial information will determine how history will judge our efforts for generations to come. Lessig's book gives us the foundation to build upon and will be up to each individual to determine the final outcome.
Poor book.......2007-03-15
This is a poor start for a novice to learn about PC's / the net.
This item is available free for download.......2007-01-01
You can download this book at no charge in pdf format from Lessig's site.
Book Description
This interactive and informative book provides a concise, easy-to-understand overview of the cutting edge field of online dispute resolution (ODR), using the familiar frequently asked questions format. It examines the ODR options that reflect the speed and convenience of the Web.
KEY TOPICS Chapter topics cover E-Commerce Disputes and the Global Web; Understanding Online Dispute Resolution; Online Negotiation, mediation, and arbitration; Online Jury Proceedings; Online Dispute Resolution System Design; and the future of ODR. For online technical and business professionals—such as computer science and information technology managers, dispute or conflict resolution professionals, customer relations managers, contracts managers, purchasing managers, Web masters, online service providers (OSPs), e-commerce entrepreneurs, and attorneys advising e-businesses.
Average customer rating:
- Who Controls the Internet
- Understand the complexity of the Internet
- Will the internet change China or will China change the internet?
- A great recounting of the history of the Internet and the future of its legal ramifications.
- must read
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Who Controls the Internet?: Illusions of a Borderless World
Jack Goldsmith , and
Tim Wu
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
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ASIN: 0195152662 |
Book Description
Is the Internet erasing national borders? Will the future of the Net be set by Internet engineers, rogue programmers, the United Nations, or powerful countries? Who's really in control of what's happening on the Net? In this provocative new book, Jack Goldsmith and Tim Wu tell the fascinating story of the Internet's challenge to governmental rule in the 1990s, and the ensuing battles with governments around the world. It's a book about the fate of one idea--that the Internet might liberate us forever from government, borders, and even our physical selves. We learn of Google's struggles with the French government and Yahoo's capitulation to the Chinese regime; of how the European Union sets privacy standards on the Net for the entire world; and of eBay's struggles with fraud and how it slowly learned to trust the FBI. In a decade of events the original vision is uprooted, as governments time and time again assert their power to direct the future of the Internet. The destiny of the Internet over the next decades, argue Goldsmith and Wu, will reflect the interests of powerful nations and the conflicts within and between them. While acknowledging the many attractions of the earliest visions of the Internet, the authors describe the new order, and speaking to both its surprising virtues and unavoidable vices. Far from destroying the Internet, the experience of the last decade has lead to a quiet rediscovery of some of the oldest functions and justifications for territorial government. While territorial governments have unavoidable problems, it has proven hard to replace what legitimacy governments have, and harder yet to replace the system of rule of law that controls the unchecked evils of anarchy. While the Net will change some of the ways that territorial states govern, it will not diminish the oldest and most fundamental roles of government and challenges of governance. Well written and filled with fascinating examples, including colorful portraits of many key players in Internet history, this is a work that is bound to stir heated debate in the cyberspace community.
Customer Reviews:
Who Controls the Internet.......2007-09-08
Despite what most people assume and many more wish the Internet has become regulated. The Internet is controled within a countries borders resulting in many conflicting laws. That's a problem for Internet companies who have assets across many borders. Can they get away with just following their countries laws? Time and time again the authors evince the answer being no. Companies like yahoo, google, mircrosoft, ebay, the Dow Jones, obsequiously follow foreign laws but not necessarily sacrifice their own.
Some of these companies have no qualms either assisting the Chinese filter pro-democracy websites, in short because they feel they have to. As I right this Yahoo is being sued by the World Organization for Human Rights for giving the Chinese government I.P. addresses of Chinese citizens who will then jailed and tortured for subversion. Yahoo asserts they were simply following the law.
And that is the problem facing these companies especially with China. They really have no other choice to or get out.
The book was well writen, fair and balanced.
Understand the complexity of the Internet.......2007-01-15
Jack and Tim made one thing dramatically clear: The Internet is no lawless enclave in our world. Their journey from the very beginning to the modern Internet is full of clear examples and anecdotes describing the "rude awakening" of idealists and patient people who participated in the development of the globe-consuming web.
When I read that the authors come from the dry plains of law science I was sceptical if the book would be worth to read. I imagined that their approach would be as dry as the 1000 ft law books in the libraries.
But, when I opened it and started reading I first put it down after page 186, the very last page of the remarkable work. Their writing is so gripping, so light to read, that even a none-English person like me could easily understand and enjoy it.
After working with the Internet since the beginnings of the 80's I thought I knew a lot about it and how it is screwed together, but I got surprised. Their view from a complete different angle, threw light on hidden aspects I honestly never thought about. In a modern world full of economical interests and its enforcement all makes absolute sense and even dramatic events like the Napster case fall into their logical place in this big puzzle.
Every part of the book is filled with cross-references and hints to further readings. All cases and examples are deep researched and very neutral presented.
Buy it, read it and give it to a dear one.
Will the internet change China or will China change the internet?.......2006-12-02
The title about China and other pointed questions in this excellent book are addressed with a perception rarely achieved. The thought processes that go into policy decisions effecting governments and individuals, a collectivism vs. individualism. The reader is easily made to understand complex technologies and issues, not only at their core but as they expand outward into the real world. From the internets architecture, bandwith, internet borders, copyright laws, crime and criminal law, domain names, eBay, economy and commerce on the internet,filesharing, globalization, and much more. Or questions such as, "How can it be harder to notice that information has become more difficult to find? It is hard, in other words, to know what you don't know." CENSORSHIP. Pick up this book. When you finally put it down, you be the one of the ones hitting their fast/curve balls out of the park.
A great recounting of the history of the Internet and the future of its legal ramifications........2006-11-04
This book was required reading for a law school course on the Internet's legal issues. Aside from being one of the least expensive books I've ever been required to read, it is a great book that accurately addresses many of the relevant legal theories. One should note that while the authors do not claim to present a de facto statement of what the law is, there are significant factions of legal scholars who disagree with many of this book's conclusions, of whom my professor is one.
All in all, this is an excellent book for anyone wishing to better understand the way the Internet affects (or does not affect) legal rights without wading through 15 years of case law. Furthermore, the authors have written this book in a manner that makes easy to read and enjoy for the technically adept and the technically challenged (i.e. lawyers) alike.
must read.......2006-10-16
This book is the best complete statement of the second wave of internet scholarship. If you ever thought that the net destroyed the significance of geography, or that cyberspace should be thought of as a real place, you owe it to yourself to see how things are really turning out.
Book Description
The rise of the "information society" offers not only considerable peril but also great promise. Beset from all sides by a never-ending barrage of media, how can we ensure that the most accurate information emerges and is heeded? In this book, Cass R. Sunstein develops a deeply optimistic understanding of the human potential to pool information, and to use that knowledge to improve our lives. In an age of information overload, it is easy to fall back on our own prejudices and insulate ourselves with comforting opinions that reaffirm our core beliefs. Crowds quickly become mobs. The justification for the Iraq war, the collapse of Enron, the explosion of the space shuttle Columbia--all of these resulted from decisions made by leaders and groups trapped in "information cocoons," shielded from information at odds with their preconceptions. How can leaders and ordinary people challenge insular decision making and gain access to the sum of human knowledge? Stunning new ways to share and aggregate information, many Internet-based, are helping companies, schools, governments, and individuals not only to acquire, but also to create, ever-growing bodies of accurate knowledge. Through a ceaseless flurry of self-correcting exchanges, wikis, covering everything from politics and business plans to sports and science fiction subcultures, amass--and refine--information. Open-source software enables large numbers of people to participate in technological development. Prediction markets aggregate information in a way that allows companies, ranging from computer manufacturers to Hollywood studios, to make better decisions about product launches and office openings. Sunstein shows how people can assimilate aggregated information without succumbing to the dangers of the herd mentality--and when and why the new aggregation techniques are so astoundingly accurate. In a world where opinion and anecdote increasingly compete on equal footing with hard evidence, the on-line effort of many minds coming together might well provide the best path to infotopia.
Customer Reviews:
Read the 1/5 about deliberation, leave the rest........2007-06-14
In the 1960's, legal scholars discovered what the rest of us always knew: that pure legal scholarship is really, really boring. Law and economics demonstrated that a multidisciplinary approach could breath fresh life into the corpse of law. Then, suddenly, all the rock star law professors were interdisciplinarians. And along with this devaluation of pure legal thought came a general loss of intellectual rigor. By the 1990's, celebrity law professors were becoming like journalists with really good grades, each writing outside of his or her area of competence with an astonishing self-confidence. Richard Posner, who was on relatively solid ground in economics, crowned himself an expert on military intelligence. Lawrence Lessig wrote a whole series of books without any thesis or logical argument. And this new breed of scholar seemed to be in a race to publish as much as possible as quickly as possible, without regard for quality.
I have always thought that Cass Sunstein epitomizes the worst of this trend. He seems to rush a book into print every couple of years, and with each new work drifts further and further away from "law." But after hearing him on Russ Roberts' fantastic EconTalk podcast, I was genuinely dying to read this book. The topics chosen are all fascinating, and no one has really treated them all under one roof before.
The problem is that, once again, Sunstein has given short shrift to these topics. All of them, with the exception of group deliberation, has been covered better elsewhere. Where Sunstein is not stealing the limelight from people like Robin Hanson (prediction markets) he is rehashing the pop science books of people like James Surowieki (statistical group judgments).
The reason this book gets three stars instead of zero is that the material on bias in group deliberation is genuinely insightful and original. In brief: deliberative bodies make very poor decisions, due to a whole slew of biases and feedback loops. When Sunstein suggests that we reform deliberative bodies, generally, to incorporate anonymous voting and minority voices, he is offering something genuinely useful. (Interestingly, at one point in the podcast mentioned above, Sunstein all but admits that this was initiated as a book about deliberation and that the project was changed to incorporate the other topics in media res. This explains a lot.) Read it for the bits on deliberation, but be prepared to be bored and underwhelmed by large portions.
I added it to my syllabus immediately.......2007-06-07
I originally bought this book as a birthday present for my brother, a philosopher, and then immediately stole it from him. (I gave it back after I bought my own copy.) The book paints a frightening picture of how group processes can lead us very, very astray. In many ways, it reads as a sequel to his book on Punitive Damages, which documents frightening trends for experimental jury pools to assign harsher damages than the individual jurors planned to assign in pre-deliberation surveys.
I quickly added the chapters on group deliberation failures to the syllabus for my class on psychology and economics. My only trepidation was that I am also assigning sections of Punitive Damages and Laws of Fear, so there's now an entire unit on Cass Sunstein's work. But he does an excellent job of exploring in readable prose the societal consequences of psychological influences on choice. As such, his books offer a very accessible mirror into aspects of bounded rationality or heuristics & biases that we study in economics. I figure the marginal contribution of this book, in terms of class discussion and actual post-exam take-aways, exceed the contribution of a few more technical empirical papers.... At least, I hope that turns out to be the case!
A thoughtful consideration.......2007-05-25
Of when and why these techniques (polling, prediction markets, blogs, wiki, FOSS) work -- and when they don't.
Despite the title this isn't a collection of breathless prose, but a thinking through of the underlying principles e.g., prediction markets don't work for supreme court justice picks because real information about the choice is highly concentrated.
Which is exactly the type of thought process that is necessary if you want to put one of these techniques to use.
Complements Wikinomics, Solid but Incomplete.......2007-01-17
I was initially disappointed, but adjusted my expectations when I reminded myself that the author is at root a lawyer. The bottom line on this book is that it provided a very educated and well-footnoted discourse the nature and prospects for group deliberation, but there are three *huge* missing pieces:
1) Education as the necessary continuous foundation for deliberation
2) Collective Intelligence as an emerging discipline (see the Innovators spread sheet at Earth Intelligence Network); and
3) No reference to Serious Games/Games for Change or budgets as a foundation for planning the future rather than predicting it.
In the general overview the author discusses information cocoons (self-segregation and myopia) and information influences/social pressures that can repress free thinking and sharing.
The four big problems that he finds in the history of deliberation are amplifying errors; hidden profiles & favoring common or "familiar" knowledge; cascades & polarization; and negative reinforements from being within a narrow group.
Today I am missing a meeting on Predictive Markets in DC (AEI-Brookings) and while I regret that, I have thoroughly enjoyed the author's deep look at Prediction Markets, with special reference to Google and Microsoft use of these internally. This book, at a minimum, provides the very best overview of prediction markets that I have come across. At the end of the book is an appendix listing 18 specific predictions markets with their URLs.
The author goes on to provide an overview of the Wiki world, and is generally very kind to Jimbo Wales and Wikipedia, and less focused on the many altneratives and enhancements of the open Wiki. It would have been helpful here to have some insights for the general reader on Doug Englebart's Open Hypertextdocument System (OHS) and Pierre Levy's Information Economy Meta Language (IEML), both of which may well leave the mob-like open wiki's in the dust.
Worthy of note: Soar Technology is quoted as saying that Wikis cut project development time in half.
The book draws to a close with further discussion of the challenges of self-segregation, the options for aggregating views and knowledge and for encouraging feedback, and the urgency of finding incentives to induce full disclosure and full participation from all who have something to contribute.
This book excels in its own narrowly-chosen domain, but it is isolated from the larger scheme of things including needed educational changes, the importance of belief systems as the objective of Intelligence and Information Operations (I2O), the role of Serious Games/Games for Change, and the considerable work that has been done by Collective Intelligence pioneers, who just held their first convergence conference call on 15 January 2007.
Final note: the author uses NASA and the Columbia disaster, and CIA and the Iraq disaster, as examples, but does not adequately discuss the pathologies of bureaucracy and the politicization of intelligence and space. As a former CIA employee who also reads a great deal, I can assert with confidence that CIA has no trouble aggregating all that it knew, including the reports of the 30 line crossers who went in and then came back to report there were no Weapons of Mass Destruction. CIA has two problems: 1) Dick Cheney refused to listen; and 2) George Tenet lacked the integrity to go public and go to Congress to challenge Dick Cheney's malicious and impeachable offenses against America (see my reviews of "VICE" and of "One Percent Doctrine" on Cheney, and my many reviews on the mistakes leading up to and within the Iraq war). See also my reviews of "Fog Facts" and "Lost History" and Gaddis' "The Landscape of History."
To end on an upbeat note, what I see in this book, and "Wikinomics" and "Collective Intelligence" and "Tao of Democracy" and my own "The New Craft of Intelligence: Personal, Public, & Political," is a desperate need for Amazon to take on the task of aggregating books and building out from books to create social communities where all these books can be "seen" and "read" and "understood" as a whole. We remain fragmented in the production and dissemination of information, and consequently, in our own mind-sets and world-views. Time to change that, perhaps with Wiki-books that lock-down the original and then give free license to apply OHS linkages at the paragraph level, and unlimited wike build-outs. That's what I am in Seattle to discuss this week.
Infotopia - .......2007-01-10
I have an interest in development of creative ideas and themes by small groups. I read this book to expand my knowledge.
On the high side, I was fascinated with the Jury Theorem and outcomes of statistical groups. I derived the formula on page 234 and played with different probabilties and group sizes to understand sensitivities. Lots of fun. I can see why political strategists would want to identify and slant a campaign to a (probably) small percentage of people to sway an election.
I was a little disappointed in the chapters about deliberations and problems in groups which seemed to apply to larger group sizes. Much seemed to be common sense not worthy of a lot of theoretical research - my personal interest is different. In my own career, I found that understanding personalities and agendas was extremely important because my arguments could then be tailored so others could best hear.
I played a prediction market game (MIT Technology Futures) for a while, but drifted away because I had no vested interest. Winning a TV set didn't turn me on. It seems to me that the prediction market must have real significance to succeed and be useful. If the emotions aren't there or are negative (eg. DOD predicting wars), it may not draw a large and informed crowd.
I am a casual user of Wikis and find Wikipedia useful especially in math and science. The soft stuff takes me a lot of time to understand writers' viewpoints, true also for blogs that I occasionally run across. That certainly stretches my critical thinking, but sometimes I don't want to think - I just want the answer or an answer from someone I trust.
Regarding the author's bottom line, I certainly agree that markets and democracy rest on the belief that many minds can be trusted. I would like to see the author make the jump from his theoretical world to that of real people working in small groups.
Average customer rating:
|
Internet Law: A Field Guide 2006
Jonathan D. Hart
Manufacturer: BNA Books
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Binding: Perfect Paperback
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ASIN: 1570185867 |
Book Description
Discover the answers you need for the growing list of legal questions surrounding Internet businesses and technological advances.
In today's world, intellectual property rights and privacy issues are everyday concerns. Businesses rely heavily on key technologies to build powerful commerce, intranets and extranets, e-publishing, and RSS systems--which are all intricately woven into successful business models.
While technological advances like these have provided vast new ways of communicating and sharing information, they also continue to complicate Internet law. How can a company take advantage of the latest technologies while ensuring legal compliance?
With a comprehensive index and a detailed table of contents, Internet Law: A Field Guide, 2006 Edition is designed to help you easily locate the legal information you need. Included with the Field Guide is a searchable CD-ROM with the complete contents of the book and full text of key statutes, regulations, and judicial opinions referenced in the Field Guide. Each topic is covered in detail and placed in context within more general areas of the law from which they arise. With this in hand, you'll have the need-to-know information on current law, as well as details to help you spot likely trends for the future and potential areas of liability for yourself and your clients.
Internet Law: A Field Guide encompasses a wide range of legal issues--from First Amendment application to electronic signatures and contracts, from domain name disputes to advertising regulations... .You'll find all the information you need on compliance and liability in this one-stop source.
The 2006 Edition is the ideal tool to get the information you need quickly, to jump start your research, and to keep up to date on the latest
Book Description
This book is the sequel to ON INTELLIGENCE: Spies and Secrecy in an Open World (AFCEA International Press, 2000). That book, written largely for government and corporate intelligence professionals, remains the basic reference volume for the future of global intelligence enterprises. This book, by contrast, is a completely new effort that is written for every citizen of every country—the "intelligence minutemen" of the 21st Century. In the aftermath of the 11 September 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, attacks carried out by a non-state actor skilled at asymmetric warfare and using our own capabilities against us—attacks followed quickly by a nation-wide anthrax assault that closed Congress and terrified the U.S. Postal Service—it is imperative that every citizen have a clear-headed understanding of what is at stake and what needs to be done to keep not only America, but all civilized communities safe. It is especially imperative that citizens understand that the world is already at war, with millions of refugees in 67 countries, plagues sweeping across 59 countries, mass starvation in 27 countries, and deliberate genocide campaigns in 18 countries. These are "facts of life" that our schools, our media and even our intelligence communities have been unwilling and unable to represent intelligently to the public. It is against this backdrop of global chaos that terrorism rises.
Customer Reviews:
Ironic.......2006-12-13
I find it difficult to believe that someone who endorses 9-11 conspiracy theories (see the authors review of "9-11 Mysteries" on December 7th) could be viewed as an authority on intelligence issues. If he ever had any credibility in the field, he's long since gone over the deep end.
Ironically, its people like him and his ilk, who believe a neconservative/Israeli conspiracy was behind the destruction of the twin towers, that best undermine the central premise of his book: that ordinary citizens need to take a greater role in intelligence. If 9-11 conspiracy theories are the sort of mind-numbingly stupid, paranoid output that can be expected from the sort of amatuer intelligence agents Steele wishes for, I'd prefer to leave it to professionals.
The Peoples' Intelligence Agency.......2006-08-09
This was in many ways a difficult book to read and is even more difficult to review. It contains a number of original ideas on intelligence reform, national security, and the general state of the world. Yet they are presented in a rather choppy style that relies rather heavily on numerous diagrams, charts, and tables as well as lists of thoughts. Still this book is worth reading because Robert D. Steele takes on the business of intelligence reform in a comprehensive and refreshingly different approach.
The guiding, but unstated premise of this book appears to be that in the chaotic world of the 21st Century, intelligence is too important to be left only to the intelligence bureaucracy of the U.S. Intelligence Community (IC). According to Steele, it is time that the business of producing national intelligence was shared with the academic and business communities, with state and local authorities, and even with private citizens. Steele also makes the perfectly valid point that open sources can supply up to 80 per cent of the unprocessed data required to produce intelligence. Incidentally, Steele recognizes the quagmire the Internet poses to researchers and wisely offers suggestions for avoiding the large amount of misinformation that can be found on the net. The book offers some structural reforms to the IC, but its most valuable contributions are its proposals for cultural changes in the way that intelligence is produced and used.
Beyond its choppy style, however, the book is flawed. Steele seems curiously ignorant of the actual processes of intelligence production where by unprocessed information (data) acquired by source(s) is transformed into useful knowledge (intelligence) organized by subject(s). This transformation is accomplished by various combinations of processing, research, and analysis. His suggestion to concentrate processing of data from all sources into one agency is incredibly ill informed. In the same manner, he treats Geographic Information Systems (GIS) rather lightly, although they have been proven to be invaluable not only for visualization, but also for organizing and interpreting collected data and would be an ideal medium for integrating and presenting all source data. Finally he clearly does not know as much about the arcane world of technical intelligence as he thinks he does which leads him to some erroneous conclusions.
Review of The New Craft of Inteligence.......2004-08-06
My deepest hope for the United States, and indeed, Earth is that decision makers would read this book, stew over it, let it keep them up at nights, and to finally get down to business. This book serves as a tocsin for the nation to wake up to the challenges we are presently facing and those that are just around the bend.
As a nurse with an interest in public health issues, this book states a great case for the claim that "The idea that the health of every nation depends on the health of all others is not an empty piety but an epidemiological fact." That's no joke brothers and sisters; 59 countries with modern plagues can be ignored only to our peril.
Work at home as an intelligece analyst.......2003-08-03
Robert Steele, the maven of open source intel, explains why every citizen needs to start their own collection and analysis program. The first reason is so that she can understand the risk to herself of international crime and terrorism. The second reason is to protect her own liberty from domestic threats,private and public.
Buy this book. Think about what Steele has to say. The truth will set you free.
Needs a filter.......2002-09-25
Steele argues that with the Cold War over, asymmetric threats should be the top priority for our military, for our intelligence agencies, and for any citizen concerned with security.
Fair enough. How would you reconstitute our security structure? He gets down to specifics in chapter 15, where he gives 26 rules for "the new craft of intelligence." These include an emphasis on translation of foreign sources, an emphasis on cultural intelligence (knowing your enemy), and gearing intelligence toward needs and customers vs. just following old habits and using the most ready capabilities.
This book rewards the reader with many interesting ideas to consider. But Steele badly needs a filter--I feel that there are way too many bad ideas in this book relative to the few nuggets. For example, his view of the causes of terrorism owes much to Noam Chomsky--a poor source for cultural intelligence. Furthermore, some (most?) of his proposals, such as instituting a draconian military draft, are not well thought out.
I think that there is reason to be concerned that we have not adjusted out thinking on military and intelligence matters to line up with current threats. But if this book is the best alternative, then we should be even more concerned.
Amazon.com's Best of 2001
If The Future of Ideas is bleak, we have nobody to blame but ourselves. Author Lawrence Lessig, a Stanford law professor and keen observer of emerging technologies, makes a strong case that large corporations are staging an innovation-stifling power grab while we watch idly. The changes in copyright and other forms of intellectual property protection demanded by the media and software industries have the potential to choke off publicly held material, which Lessig sees as a kind of intellectual commons. He eloquently and persuasively decries this lopsided control of ideas and suggests practical solutions that consider the rights of both creators and consumers, while acknowledging the serious impact of new technologies on old ways of doing business. His proposals would let existing companies make money without using the tremendous advantages of incumbency to eliminate new killer apps before they can threaten the status quo. Readers who want a fair intellectual marketplace would do well to absorb the lessons in The Future of Ideas. --Rob Lightner
Book Description
The Internet revolution has come. Some say it has gone. What was responsible for its birth? Who is responsible for its demise?
In
The Future of Ideas, Lawrence Lessig explains how the Internet revolution has produced a counterrevolution of devastating power and effect. The explosion of innovation we have seen in the environment of the Internet was not conjured from some new, previously unimagined technological magic; instead, it came from an ideal as old as the nation. Creativity flourished there because the Internet protected an innovation commons. The Internet’s very design built a neutral platform upon which the widest range of creators could experiment. The legal architecture surrounding it protected this free space so that culture and information–the ideas of our era–could flow freely and inspire an unprecedented breadth of expression. But this structural design is changing–both legally and technically.
This shift will destroy the opportunities for creativity and innovation that the Internet originally engendered. The cultural dinosaurs of our recent past are moving to quickly remake cyberspace so that they can better protect their interests against the future. Powerful conglomerates are swiftly using both law and technology to "tame" the Internet, transforming it from an open forum for ideas into nothing more than cable television on speed. Innovation, once again, will be directed from the top down, increasingly controlled by owners of the networks, holders of the largest patent portfolios, and, most invidiously, hoarders of copyrights.
The choice Lawrence Lessig presents is not between progress and the status quo. It is between progress and a new Dark Ages, in which our capacity to create is confined by an architecture of control and a society more perfectly monitored and filtered than any before in history. Important avenues of thought and free expression will increasingly be closed off. The door to a future of ideas is being shut just as technology makes an extraordinary future possible.
With an uncanny blend of knowledge, insight, and eloquence, Lawrence Lessig has written a profoundly important guide to the care and feeding of innovation in a connected world. Whether it proves to be a road map or an elegy is up to us.
Customer Reviews:
Good review.......2007-09-10
Deep understanding on what is going on with intelectual property that we don't see on the newspapers
Best on the subject.......2006-11-04
The author has great insight in the area of intellectual property and how it has an impact in future innovation.
Complex But Wonderful Nonetheless.......2005-06-16
The book is written in a very complex style -- especially the sections where Lessig goes into the nitty gritty of the architecture behind the Internet -- but the book is a wonderful read, especially for those who come from the mindset that copyright laws should serve to give full control to the creator. While Lessig's style is unnecessarily complex, the book is ultimately worth the effort -- especially for Internet enthusiasts and entrepreneurs who need to understand the implications of copyright laws and how they affect culture and future ideas.
Important book for IP lawyers and internet architects.......2004-06-19
This is the best of Lessig's books that I've read so far. Lessig is one of the more articulate spokespersons for the movement to protect the public domain, which includes such groups as the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Creative Commons, etc., although he may be more moderate in his views than some.
In this book, Lessig does a great job explaining why the Internet became what it is (or at least what it was in 1999 or 2000). Ultimately the success of the Internet resulted from the fact that no one was in control... But his most important message is that corporate interests don't necessary like what it is, and are using their considerable powers to change it into something more useful to them. This isn't because these companies are evil - their approach is completely rational and legitimate. However, their interests and the interests of the public probably don't coincide here.
The only way to ensure that future control and/or regulation properly balances public and corporate interests is to have an informed public. Professor Lessig's book is a great start.
From whence comes invention?.......2004-03-30
Ultimately, the flaw in Lessig's books is his belief that the revolution of personal computing and the internet are the products of intellectuals like himself. Undermining the freedom and property rights of the programmers and companies who really invented these marvels is a profound threat to one of America's most vital and creative industries.
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