Use Mastering Communication Through Technologys as a guide to help control information flow, maintain privacy, and use business systems more effectively: while its appearance is slim the information is not: chapters offer valuable quick tips on how to make the most of the latest technology to gain time and effectiveness.
Rating: 5 / 5
I can’t tell if this book is a prank or just accidental soft-headedness.
First off, its supposed publication date is 2001, and yet it is obviously from before 1995 — or is an exercise in Mr Burns-style anachronisms.
For example, the book goes on at length about the etiquette involving pagers. Yes, pagers. And it notes that the prices on those are coming down these days! And when the book even mentions cellphones, it calls them “wireless phones”.
The authors discuss sending a FAX [sic], and routinely stop to explain that this means “facsimile”. Similarly: “electronic or ‘e’-mails”.
Where I suspect that this book’s entire existence is a prank is in its advice:
In its section on how to organize your travel data, they say that once the trip is over, print out the data for the trip and: “Then delete the trip file when you submit your expense report for that trip, so your folders remain as clean as possible”.
An extra hint toward this being a prank: this tip about printing out and then deleting your expense-report data is in a paragraph under the heading “The Paperless Society”.
And to note one last example before my head explodes:
The section on password security has a few tips: Don’t keep slips of paper like “For example.gov / username: jackie / password: cneci632″ in your wallet or purse. Don’t go around just TELLING other people your password or Social Security Number. (We are told that this is sometimes abbreviated “SSN”.) So far so good, for a very un-ambitious idea of “good”.
But here’s where this shades into danger and/or hilarity: The authors say that you should not use the *same* password for all your accounts. I agree! But instead, they advise using *almost* the same password, except with a number on the end, like: “potato1″ on one account, and “potato2″ on another– or that you can just use your phone number as the password.
These suggestions are wonderfully obvious– so obvious, in fact, that password-cracking systems try this first thing, and have been breaking into people’s accounts using this approach for decades.
And just for laughs: some elementary googling makes it uncertain whether the book’s authors actually even exist, much less have the jobs and credentials on the About The Authors page.
I got this book for fifty cents from the discards rack at my local public library. The thick plastic coating that the library had applied to this copy makes it useful as a sort of coaster for cold drinks. For hot drinks, I am not sure whether it would be safe.
Rating: 1 / 5
#1 by Midwest Book Review on March 18, 2010 - 8:39 pm
Use Mastering Communication Through Technologys as a guide to help control information flow, maintain privacy, and use business systems more effectively: while its appearance is slim the information is not: chapters offer valuable quick tips on how to make the most of the latest technology to gain time and effectiveness.
Rating: 5 / 5
#2 by Sean Burke on March 18, 2010 - 9:39 pm
I can’t tell if this book is a prank or just accidental soft-headedness.
First off, its supposed publication date is 2001, and yet it is obviously from before 1995 — or is an exercise in Mr Burns-style anachronisms.
For example, the book goes on at length about the etiquette involving pagers. Yes, pagers. And it notes that the prices on those are coming down these days! And when the book even mentions cellphones, it calls them “wireless phones”.
The authors discuss sending a FAX [sic], and routinely stop to explain that this means “facsimile”. Similarly: “electronic or ‘e’-mails”.
Where I suspect that this book’s entire existence is a prank is in its advice:
In its section on how to organize your travel data, they say that once the trip is over, print out the data for the trip and: “Then delete the trip file when you submit your expense report for that trip, so your folders remain as clean as possible”.
An extra hint toward this being a prank: this tip about printing out and then deleting your expense-report data is in a paragraph under the heading “The Paperless Society”.
And to note one last example before my head explodes:
The section on password security has a few tips: Don’t keep slips of paper like “For example.gov / username: jackie / password: cneci632″ in your wallet or purse. Don’t go around just TELLING other people your password or Social Security Number. (We are told that this is sometimes abbreviated “SSN”.) So far so good, for a very un-ambitious idea of “good”.
But here’s where this shades into danger and/or hilarity: The authors say that you should not use the *same* password for all your accounts. I agree! But instead, they advise using *almost* the same password, except with a number on the end, like: “potato1″ on one account, and “potato2″ on another– or that you can just use your phone number as the password.
These suggestions are wonderfully obvious– so obvious, in fact, that password-cracking systems try this first thing, and have been breaking into people’s accounts using this approach for decades.
And just for laughs: some elementary googling makes it uncertain whether the book’s authors actually even exist, much less have the jobs and credentials on the About The Authors page.
I got this book for fifty cents from the discards rack at my local public library. The thick plastic coating that the library had applied to this copy makes it useful as a sort of coaster for cold drinks. For hot drinks, I am not sure whether it would be safe.
Rating: 1 / 5