"The bible" for those people who have heard of the mind-expanding, psychedelic aspects of advanced physics, but who have no mathematical or technical background. In the clearest language possible, it covers quantum physics and relativity theory from their inceptions to the present, without equations, and without the "scientific mentality" that has put off so many people from reading about physics.
And now for something completely different. If you are into electronics to the transistor level, or want to be, this is for you. GEEK MACHO RULES! Sorry, got carried away.
"Widely accepted as THE single authoritative text and reference on electronic circuit design, both analog and digital, the original edition sold over 125,000 copies worldwide [that's a lot for a book on electronics] and was translated into eight languages. The book revolutionized the teaching of electronics by emphasizing the methods actually used by circuit designers."
Chapter 10 of this book contains the best explaination of the workings of a von Neumann machine that I have seen in 20+ years in the computer biz. It is considerably more detailed than mine, discussing things like using the stack pointer in assembly language, undoubtedly more than most people care to know, but real geeks have to handle overflow. The curious thing is that there is no mention of the term "von Neumann machine" in the entire book. There is some kind of intellectual territoriality going on between computer science and electrical engineering. Fortunately the transistors and the software don't give a damn.
And now for something somewhat different. If you are into electronics to the transistor level, or want to be, this is for you. GEEK MACHO RULES! Sorry, got redundant.
THE ART OF ELECTRONICS is a great book but it starts at too high a level for beginners. THE ART is written in somewhat of an engineering style and a calculus equation is on page 24 of the 1,000 page book. It is possible to understand a great deal about electronics without calculus. The first 400 pages of Stan's book can prepare you for THE ART without mind bending mathematics. There is some trigonometry dealing with phase shifts in AC circuits, but no calculus.
TEACH YOURSELF starts from the structure of the atom and goes to computers in 700 pages with transistors and radio in between. There are quizzes and tests throughout the book to test the reader's understanding. I would have loved this book when I was in highschool.
These books are quite similar in content and there is significant overlap. Mueller's book is more of a hands on description while Messmer's is somewhat more abstract. Going from theory to practice would yield the sequence, ART OF ELECTRONICS, PC HARDWARE BOOK then REPAIRING PCs. Some people just want to get things running and some people enjoy counting the electrons, and some people will do either depending on what mood they are in.
INDISPENSABLE is from 1995 so it has probably been dispensed with by a later edition. The info is still accurate and relevant just more recent stuff needs to be added to these 1300 pages. UPGRADING PCs is from 2000 and less in need of upgrading. The mechanics of upgrading hasn't changed just the speed you can upgrade to. Just make sure your typing course upgrades you to 1000 words per minute.
Have you noticed that the universe is not organized in alphabetical order? Computer Operating Systems don't function in that order either. Yet plenty of UNIX books list commands in alphabetical order. If you know what you want to do but don't know the command that does it, how do you find it? This book organizes commands by related functions, one of the most useful Linux/UNIX books I have encountered.
There are so many Linux/UNIX books out there it is ridiculous. Most of them have useful tidbits of information scattered around in them. No book has everything, it probably isn't possible. I can see 17 Linux/UNIX books from my futon as I type this. This is not one of those 1000+ page books with a little bit of everything and not enough of anything. It is actually worth reading quite a bit of, page after page. It is the only computer book I have seen in 20+ years to say something this blunt on page 94. "with commercial software you are dealing with "planned obsolescence," and the answer to many questions turns out to be "you need to buy an upgrade to do that."
I must admit that I do not actually LIKE the UNIX Operating System. I actually get the impression that people are deliberately making it difficult to learn and use. It has something that claims to be a text editor called VI which I assume stands for Virtual Idiocy. To be fair I'll admit that some of the UNIX idiosyncracies can be traced to the 30 year history of the OS, back when hardware was BIG IRON and programmers were REAL MEN and paper tape was PAPER TAPE!?!?!? You've got to be kidding! Anyway, I don't think there is a serious, coordinated effort to bring Linux to the masses. The REAL MEN want to stay REAL MEN with HARDware.
Strangely enough computers do not exist to run Operating Systems and annoy people trying make the Operating System get the hardware to do something interesting or useful. BLENDER is a free 3D graphics animation program that does decent photo-realistic rendering. The movie SHREK was produced with Linux though not this software. They used a bunch of Linux boxes linked together. The music book has midi software, MP3, multitrack recording, synthesizers, and music notation software. So these two books are the reasons not to smash your computer to a pulp while you learn to beat Linux into submission. I did mention they came with free software on CDs, didn't I?
OH NO! Not Another Linux book. This book may be better than the Vicki Stanfield book. I haven't seen it mention planned obsolescence of software, so the jury is still out. It does have a chapter about sound cards which Stanfield's book does not mention. It also has a concise discussion of TCP/IP which many books make quite confusing. That is about computer networking and the internet, oh ye computer illiterate. AND! It comes with Red Hat Linux on CD-ROM. This is is the only book I have suggested with the operating system. So with my booklist and a computer anyone can become a complete computer geek. In a few months or years. Just what the world needs more of.
I've found a flaw in the book which may or may not be excusable, depending on the user. There is nothing here about scanners. There is an unfortunate tendency to find what is missing just when you want to use it. Of course no author knows everything, the computer field is just too broad and too deep. It must be time to start searching the internet. Oh joy!
Of course the purpose of an Operating System is to manage a "von Neumann machine" so you must know how that works to comprehend the OS. Von Neumann comprehension is a necessary step to Geekdom. THE ART OF ELECTRONICS has about the best explanation of the workings of a von Neumann machine that I have seen in print, but that terminology is never mentioned in the book. There is an artificial division between Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and each pretends the other doesn't exist. I will agree to ignore the Citadels of Pseudointellectualism if you will.
Sorry! You also have to be able to program to really be a complete GEEK. C makes you waste too much time on idiosyncratic details. Ever heard of Perl?
OH NO! Not Another Linux book. Is there an echo on this website? Well, it's not another Linux book, not really. It's a book about a computer language called "perl". It will run on many UNIX systems and Linux is just another version of UNIX. Naturally perl comes free with Linux.
Someone who can program can do things with a 400 Mhz computer that a nonprogrammer cannot do with a 2,000 Mhz machine. Speed isn't everything. A non-programmer is limited to what the canned software can do. Small programs that eliminate dozens to repetative manual steps can save considerable time. Why sit at a computer typing the same boring sequence of keys when you can start a program and do something else for 30 minutes? The author says perl is "Practically Everything Really Likeable about the Shell s, awk, sed, grep and C combined." Those are tools and languages that come standard with UNIX. C can be annoyingly tedious and time consuming, and is not for beginners.
Is black some kind of fashion statement in computer books?
In case you have just flown in from Andromeda, something called the internet has taken over planet Earth. Some people think this is a 'good thing' but the jury is still out. When the jury comes online we will get the verdict. In the mean time YOU can get on THE NET for less than $20 per month. Just call your friendly neighborhood ISP and you too can fill 20 megabytes with pictures of your vacation to Kalamazoo or whatever else you think the whole world needs to ignore, I mean, see.
But if you invade cyperspace you must do it with class, style, chutzpah and panache. This book shows you how with a website designed to sell guitars with the whole thing on CD-ROM. You can build a website more exciting than this one, right?
This book says almost nothing about CGI scripts and communicating with Perl. It tells you such things exist and implies they could add some really nifty features, but maybe they are saving that for the next book.
The field of electronics is undergoing, or suffering from, what is being called convergence. Twentysome years ago only REAL GEEKS had home computers and most stereos had record players. Compact Disks began showing up and now some people don't know what LPs are. Audio used to be analog, it has gone digital. CD ripping is the order of the day. You can download MP3s, YUCK!, from the internet and play them on what the computer industry dares to call "speakers."
Or you can use STEREOPHILE magazine to learn what REAL SPEAKERS are. AUDIO and STEREO REVIEW have gone the way of long lost HIGH FIDELITY. I suspect the quasi-geeks who used to love stereo equipment have switched to computers. Try finding the frequency response of a computer sound card though. Good Luck! People think digital is synonymous with "CD quality sound", whatever that is. Frequency response is listed in the index of Mueller's REPAIRING PCs but the word decibel doesn't appear in the THREE PARAGRAPHS devoted to the subject. If decibels are not mentioned it IS NOT a frequency response. I'll be generous and say to qualify as "CD quality" you must have 20-20,000 Hz plus or minus ONE DECIBEL. Decent CD players have been beating that for more than 10 years.
Now these 'M Puke 3s' use what is called psychoacoustic compression which looses data. The idea is have a computer figure out what the listener cannot hear and remove it. This saves space on the medium and download time. This started with the Phillips' PASC system and the Sony Mini Disc which had 4 to 1 and 5 to 1 compression respectively. The STEREOPHILE review said the Phillips system was nearly indistinguishable from the CD but it used TAPE to be compatible with cassettes. Tape!? I swear billion dollar corporations can do some really dumb stuff. The Sony MD sounded good but had noticable flaws. The Mini Disc gave random access which tape could not. The Sony ATRAC compression system has been upgraded and gets better reviews now. I e-mailed Sony 4 time asking about a MD changer/recorder deck for the home. I only got one response saying they don't talk about possible future products. They had changers for cars and single disc recorders for home, what I was suggesting was no technological challenge. Now that I can burn CDs I wouldn't buy the MD deck if they made it. I swear billion dollar corporations can do some really dumb stuff. UH OH! Web echo warning!
The problem with this psychoacoustic compression business is human hearing and listening varies. Listening is focusing your attention on what you're hearing and the educated listener hears more. The people designing psychoacoustic algorithms make decisions about what to exclude. The more aggressive the compression, the higher compression ratio, the more likely more people will hear the difference. MP3s use 10 to 1 compression and Sony began having sound quality loss at 5 to 1. The June 1999 issue of the defunct AUDIO magazine had an article by Corey Greenberg criticising MP3. He said, "No matter which track I used for the comparison, MP3 didn't even come close to "CD quality." More specifically, "(1) a noticable roll-off in the highest octaves; (2) an edgy emphasis in the low treble ...(3) less low-level detail..." So convergence can't be adopted without judgement, the digital highway may have some dead end exits. Of course in order to detect the flaws in MP3 you need speakers up to the task of producing realistic music.
The vast majority of speakers can't reproduce 20 Hz and plenty of people can't hear 20,000 so what is the point? High quality sound from 35-18,000 is usually good enough but the so called subwoofers with computer systems aren't going to give you 35 Hz. Unfortunately decent bass requires speakers of significant size, it's one of those physics things. My Vandersteen 2Ci's are 3 1/2 feet tall and weigh 70 lbs each. Convergence makes it possible for me to rip tracks I like from 40 minute factory CDs and burn them all onto 80 minute CD-Rs with a Yamaha CD burner. So instead of getting 200 minutes of music I mostly don't like from a NAD 515 CD changer, I get 400 minutes of my favorites from CD-Rs. A much better use of the Vandersteens. Some digital highway exits lead to worthwhile places.
One of the cool things about STEREOPHILE is the recommended conponents list that appears every six months, usually slightly updated. The components are ranked class A, B, C and D with a tendency for more expensive components to get higher ranks. I said TENDENCY. There are $10,000 speakers in the same class B with the $1,500 Vandersteen 2Ce (later model than mine). There is a $3,000 speaker in class C. Vandersteen speakers have been getting high ratings and delivering great value for years and years. I've found a website where someone said that the 2Ce is the best sounding speaker for less than $4000. So checking out components in the recommended list that are priced low compared to others in the same category can save hundreds of dollars and lots of legwork, making STEREOPHILE more than worth the subscription. STEROPHILE has reviews of amplifiers, turntables and cartridges, tuners and ridiculously expensive cables.
The Industry Update section can be interesting, educational or entertaining depending on the subject. New products, company buy outs, new technology and obituaries of audio heroes. The letters to STEROPHILE can be fun too. Some subscribers complain about the quantity of ExPeNsIvE equipment reviewed in the zine. The CD transport on the pictured cover is $25,000. What is a CD TRANSPORT? It spins and reads the digital data off the CD but it doesn't convert it to analog for playback. You have to buy a seperate component to do that called a DAC, Digital to Analog Converter. It would be unseemly to spend less than $5,000 on one for this transport. OH! And you need an $1,800 power supply for this transport too. They couldn't fit it in for a mere 25 GRAND. This snob appeal turns off some subscribers and they vociferously cancel their subscriptions. This transport is an excellent example of idiotic snobbish design. As shown in the picture, the CD is loaded upside down. The laser is built into the cigar box contraption over the CD which rolls forward and backward on rails along the side. It has only 3 wheels for perfect stability. LOL! This is 25 pounds of machined aluminum to spin a disk that is fraction of an ounce. To add insult to injury the CD must be screwed down with a detachable cap. I wonder what a replacement costs if it is lost. $500? That sounds right.
I love reading reviews of $5,000 monaural tube amplifiers. You must buy two for stereo and you get 30 watts. Reading the distortion specifications is better than the Sunday comics. The amount of money you can spend on speaker cables is absolutely astounding. I bought some 20 amp power cable from a hardware store for my Vandersteens. Was it 50 cents per foot?
The webmaster must be getting too cheap to buy books.
I confess I have never subscribed to this magazine. For some reason I do not get a buzz from the genetics of fruit flies. I am more of an astronomy, physics and computers kind of guy. I'll buy the magazine to read an article about computer simulations of colliding galaxies or a new type of computer chip. Although I don't subscribe I regularly check the magazine rack to see if there is anything interesting. There must be at least two or three good articles for me to cough up the cash.
This strategy presents certain economic issues however. How many magazines do I buy per year? What is the cost per magazine of a subscription? If the discount is 50% and I buy seven magazines per year then it would have been cheaper to get a subscription. I have not done an analysis so I must be neither scientific nor economical. I must be unscientifically unAmerican.
Funny thing about those computers and colliding galaxies though. There was an article about that around ten years ago. It had two or three pictures of colliding galaxies. When galaxies collide they actually interpenetrate because of the vast spacing between the stars. The closest star, besides the sun of course, is four lightyears away. 4 * 186,000 * 3600 * 24 * 365.25, a mere 5.9 trillion miles. The Enterprise could do that in a couple of days. Due to their combined gravitational fields the trajectories of the stars are changed as the galaxies rotate into each other. These collisions produce fascinating swirls of stars which differ depending on the angles of collision and perspective. Astronomers could produce similar patterns with computer simulations having pretend galaxies smashing bits and bytes of stardust around. This has puzzled me for years in how it relates to the BIG BANG. If all of the matter of the universe was in one location and exploded outward, how do you get galaxies colliding at steep angles? 90 degrees or more? Can't the astronomers project backwards and figure out where the galaxies came from?
Just another scientific anomaly like underwater cities in the Pacific!