At least it's short., 01 Jan 2008
This is a deeply obvious book, full of insights like "it's not alright to deliberately kill innocents" and "if you're attacked, you can defend yourself". It keeps saying that there are no definate rules and you will have to use "honest judgement" so I'd just skip the book and do that.

Inconvenient truths about war, 06 Dec 2007
This book starts from the inconvenient truth that wars are unavoidable. But, if a nation decides on war it should be for just reasons and conducted in a just way. Any war is justified in self defence or assisting a country to defend itself that has been attacked by another country. It becomes complicated when starting a pre-emptive war or an intervention because the government in a country is acting very badly towards its own citizens, or different citizen groups are attacking each other. Examples of just wars are support to South Korea in its war with North Korea and China, support to Kuwait after invasion by Iraq, intervention in the Kosovo conflict, attack of Afghanistan after 6/11. The authors are less certain, that is, not completely certain if it was right or wrong, with the Falklands War, and the second Iraq war. About conduct they are certain that dropping the atom bombs on Japan was just and almost certain that it was wrong to bomb civil targets in Germany after it was clear that Germany was losing the war.
The authors present six principles specifying conditions that all have to be fulfilled before a war is just and two principles for right conduct. These principles are excellent and everybody should know them. The fact that the authors do not express definitive opinions about several wars, even with the benefit of hindsight shows how hard it is to arrive at conclusions, even with the principles. The authors in their conclusion write "This book is no more than a broad general survey of how the Just War tradition bears upon the morality of undertaking and conducting military operations in the twenty first century". I look forward to the book that should follow after this introduction that makes more definitive judgement about past wars and may even include something about what could have been done and can be done in the future to prevent just wars from happening.


Highly recommendable, 19 Nov 2007
Very well written and highly recommendable. This book gives an analytical thought on the just war tradition, largely based on a western and Christian tradition. It covers the ethical issues that the international community - the UN Security Council, in particular - faces in tackling peace and security challenges. Such difficult issues as humanitarian intervention, the responsibility to protect and UN Security Council's authorization of military actions are eloquently discussed, in the context of major international crises in recent decades such as Iraq (both 1991 and 2003 wars), Kosovo and Rwanda. It is also a relatively short book so that you may finish reading it well before getting bored.

At least it's short., 01 Jan 2008
This is a deeply obvious book, full of insights like "it's not alright to deliberately kill innocents" and "if you're attacked, you can defend yourself". It keeps saying that there are no definate rules and you will have to use "honest judgement" so I'd just skip the book and do that.

Inconvenient truths about war, 06 Dec 2007
This book starts from the inconvenient truth that wars are unavoidable. But, if a nation decides on war it should be for just reasons and conducted in a just way. Any war is justified in self defence or assisting a country to defend itself that has been attacked by another country. It becomes complicated when starting a pre-emptive war or an intervention because the government in a country is acting very badly towards its own citizens, or different citizen groups are attacking each other. Examples of just wars are support to South Korea in its war with North Korea and China, support to Kuwait after invasion by Iraq, intervention in the Kosovo conflict, attack of Afghanistan after 6/11. The authors are less certain, that is, not completely certain if it was right or wrong, with the Falklands War, and the second Iraq war. About conduct they are certain that dropping the atom bombs on Japan was just and almost certain that it was wrong to bomb civil targets in Germany after it was clear that Germany was losing the war.
The authors present six principles specifying conditions that all have to be fulfilled before a war is just and two principles for right conduct. These principles are excellent and everybody should know them. The fact that the authors do not express definitive opinions about several wars, even with the benefit of hindsight shows how hard it is to arrive at conclusions, even with the principles. The authors in their conclusion write "This book is no more than a broad general survey of how the Just War tradition bears upon the morality of undertaking and conducting military operations in the twenty first century". I look forward to the book that should follow after this introduction that makes more definitive judgement about past wars and may even include something about what could have been done and can be done in the future to prevent just wars from happening.


Highly recommendable, 19 Nov 2007
Very well written and highly recommendable. This book gives an analytical thought on the just war tradition, largely based on a western and Christian tradition. It covers the ethical issues that the international community - the UN Security Council, in particular - faces in tackling peace and security challenges. Such difficult issues as humanitarian intervention, the responsibility to protect and UN Security Council's authorization of military actions are eloquently discussed, in the context of major international crises in recent decades such as Iraq (both 1991 and 2003 wars), Kosovo and Rwanda. It is also a relatively short book so that you may finish reading it well before getting bored.

Who Needs a Blogging Book?, 05 Jan 2007
It's surprising what little gems you pick up when you pick up a book and go throught the pages. This one is excellent. I had expected huge diagrams, little text and loads of white space. Far from it. Nicely laid out. Informative pictures and text. It even has sections on some of the blogging tools that you can use like Ecto. Again, informative if brief.

As an ex-IT Trainer I know the value of graphics. If you don't learn something from this then you never opened the cover. Try it. It's good.

Using two books to set up Wordpress, 09 Aug 2006
I am currently using two books to set up Wordpress. Reading 'Blog Design Solutions' helped me set up my computer to create a local test environment (so I don't have to upload my blog to the web to test it). 'Wordpress Visual Quickstart' is proving a good guide to all the features and personal customisation that Wordpress offers.

In this book about the darker side of technology's impact on our lives, Alan Cooper begins by explaining that unlike other devices throughout history, computers have a "meta function": an unwanted, unforeseen option that users may accidentally invoke with what they thought was a normal keystroke. Cooper details many of these meta functions to explain his central thesis: programmers need to seriously re-evaluate the many user-hostile concepts deeply embedded within the software development process.

Rather than provide users with a straightforward set of options, programmers often pile on the bells and whistles and ignore or de-prioritise lingering bugs. For the average user, increased functionality is a great burden, adding to the recurrent chorus that plays: "computers are hard, mysterious, unwieldy things." (An average user, Cooper asserts, who doesn't think that way or who has memorised all the esoteric commands and now lords it over others, has simply been desensitised by too many years of badly designed software.)

Cooper's writing style is often overblown, with a pantheon of cutesy terminology (i.e. "dancing bearware") and insider back-patting. (When presenting software to Bill Gates, he reports that Gates replied: "How did you do that?" to which he writes: "I love stumping Bill!") More seriously, he is also unable to see beyond software development's importance--a sin he accuses programmers of throughout the book.

Even with that in mind, the central questions Cooper asks are too important to ignore: Are we making users happier? Are we improving the process by which they get work done? Are we making their work hours more effective? Cooper looks to programmers, business managers and what he calls "interaction designers" to question current assumptions and mindsets. Plainly, he asserts that the goal of computer usage should be "not to make anyone feel stupid." Our distance from that goal reinforces the need to rethink entrenched priorities in software planning. -- Jennifer Buckendorff, Amazon.com

At least it's short., 01 Jan 2008
This is a deeply obvious book, full of insights like "it's not alright to deliberately kill innocents" and "if you're attacked, you can defend yourself". It keeps saying that there are no definate rules and you will have to use "honest judgement" so I'd just skip the book and do that.

Inconvenient truths about war, 06 Dec 2007
This book starts from the inconvenient truth that wars are unavoidable. But, if a nation decides on war it should be for just reasons and conducted in a just way. Any war is justified in self defence or assisting a country to defend itself that has been attacked by another country. It becomes complicated when starting a pre-emptive war or an intervention because the government in a country is acting very badly towards its own citizens, or different citizen groups are attacking each other. Examples of just wars are support to South Korea in its war with North Korea and China, support to Kuwait after invasion by Iraq, intervention in the Kosovo conflict, attack of Afghanistan after 6/11. The authors are less certain, that is, not completely certain if it was right or wrong, with the Falklands War, and the second Iraq war. About conduct they are certain that dropping the atom bombs on Japan was just and almost certain that it was wrong to bomb civil targets in Germany after it was clear that Germany was losing the war.
The authors present six principles specifying conditions that all have to be fulfilled before a war is just and two principles for right conduct. These principles are excellent and everybody should know them. The fact that the authors do not express definitive opinions about several wars, even with the benefit of hindsight shows how hard it is to arrive at conclusions, even with the principles. The authors in their conclusion write "This book is no more than a broad general survey of how the Just War tradition bears upon the morality of undertaking and conducting military operations in the twenty first century". I look forward to the book that should follow after this introduction that makes more definitive judgement about past wars and may even include something about what could have been done and can be done in the future to prevent just wars from happening.


Highly recommendable, 19 Nov 2007
Very well written and highly recommendable. This book gives an analytical thought on the just war tradition, largely based on a western and Christian tradition. It covers the ethical issues that the international community - the UN Security Council, in particular - faces in tackling peace and security challenges. Such difficult issues as humanitarian intervention, the responsibility to protect and UN Security Council's authorization of military actions are eloquently discussed, in the context of major international crises in recent decades such as Iraq (both 1991 and 2003 wars), Kosovo and Rwanda. It is also a relatively short book so that you may finish reading it well before getting bored.

Who Needs a Blogging Book?, 05 Jan 2007
It's surprising what little gems you pick up when you pick up a book and go throught the pages. This one is excellent. I had expected huge diagrams, little text and loads of white space. Far from it. Nicely laid out. Informative pictures and text. It even has sections on some of the blogging tools that you can use like Ecto. Again, informative if brief.

As an ex-IT Trainer I know the value of graphics. If you don't learn something from this then you never opened the cover. Try it. It's good.

Using two books to set up Wordpress, 09 Aug 2006
I am currently using two books to set up Wordpress. Reading 'Blog Design Solutions' helped me set up my computer to create a local test environment (so I don't have to upload my blog to the web to test it). 'Wordpress Visual Quickstart' is proving a good guide to all the features and personal customisation that Wordpress offers.

Important lessons for software engineers, 21 Feb 2007
This is a highly readable and entertaining rant directed against the inadequate development practices of software engineers over the years.

I am one of the geeks that Cooper targets, but I think I'm sufficiently self aware to know that his point is entirely justified. Building workable, usable applications on time and on budget is a fiendishly difficult problem. Pretty well all of the effort in improving our working practices has focussed on getting our job done more efficiently and predictably so that customers get their applications in reasonable time and at a reasonable cost. We've always been pretty clueless about the human side, making sure that the applications can be used easily and efficiently. That, of course, has great practical and financial consequences, but the cost is often hidden from the developers who have moved on to screw up elsewhere.

Cooper sometimes overdoes his argument, and minimises the real, practical problems involved in applying his techniques. His insistence on calling all developers as "programmers" is a bit irritating, but I can accept that as a stylistic quirk rather than evidence of ignorance of software engineering.

I'd strongly recommend this to software developers who are starting to have doubts about whether they're really delivering what users need. Of course, the ones who have no doubts are the ones who really need to read this book, but I suspect they wouldn't even pick it up, and they's throw it aside after the first few pages if they did give it a go. Pity.

Excellent information aggressively presented, 22 Oct 2005
This book provides a wealth of knowledge if you can stick with it through the generalisations and attacks on the group of people who need this book the most.

Something Mr Cooper talks about is people not knowing their customers, but falls into this trap himself. While the book may have been written with managers and project leaders in mind, many developers will read it as a means of improving themselves.

With this in mind, writing a book that often hints at poor interface design being a deliberate attack on users, and in some places implies that software is hard to use because programmers are getting back at people because they were picked on in high school might be a little silly. This kind of hyperbole is not helpful in getting the message across, and will not help business people further understand their staff.

Helping business people understand that different people have different skills and getting the right person for the job will deliver better results than forcing someone to do a job they are not suited for would have been a better result. As it is, I can see how some PHBs would come away from this book believing that they produce bad software because their developers hate them, rather than because they have poor processes and do not invest enough time and money in the right places.

A must read for all people involven in software development., 28 Apr 2005
The book addresses many areas of why the culture that exists in IT and firms that deal with IT is not working and why many IT projects go wrong. He points out that this is not due to lack of design, but because design is not done in the proper way. He talks about the roles of everyone (managers, programmers, designers, users, etc.) during the design and what things are been done wrong. He goes into depth why programmers are the least suitable people to do the design and how they can not "think as users". The good thing about this book is that it also gives many advices and ways on how to do things the right way. Thus, he does not only identify the problem areas, but he goes on and suggest solutions and ways to improve.

This book is a very good reading for everyone who is involved in the ANY part in the software development phase. I strongly recommend that people take some time to read it, or just browse through some areas of it. The book is split in two major parts:

The first part (Chapters 1-8) shows why there is more of a cultural problem than a technical problem on the way that software is developed. It is a good background reading to understand the rest of the book.

The second half (Chapters 9-14) suggest ways to improve the bad culture and create software that is actually helping and not embarrassing the users. This is the part is the main core of the book and needs reading. It can be understood more deeply once the first part has been read, but this part can be read on its own as well.

Please, first READ and then review..., 07 May 2004
I've read this book and really felt that I had to respond to some of Ben Carey's and Matt Vane's comments (back in 2002 I think).

About the engineering arrives rather than invents: Just because there are/were certain (as you said) geniuses amongst us [engineers], this doesn't mean that the rest of us can be brushed by the same brush!

About the UML actors comment: If someone who read the book still believes that a use-case actor is the same as a persona then he rightfully gave the book a 1 star rating...

Also the attack on the results of the "Coopers Business Case" is rather lame...
The fact that Logitech got out of the scanners market can be attributed to any important factor (related to sales and marketing). For the other two products, the fact that their owners were replaced could mean that the vision was replaced as well.
Cooper's techniques, which were used while working with the above products were excellent and should have made their point clear.
To suggest (after reading the book) that use of those techniques didn't deliver while additionally resulted in the company's/product's downfall is rather (excuse my language) stupid!

I can save you some time here.., 02 Feb 2004
Skim parts I-III it's a diatribe on what's wrong.
Read Part IV several times and take notes as it gives solutions to the identified problems and is actually really good.
Skim the rest...

For a man promoting that less is more he could do with applying his own advice to the new edition of this book...

At least it's short., 01 Jan 2008
This is a deeply obvious book, full of insights like "it's not alright to deliberately kill innocents" and "if you're attacked, you can defend yourself". It keeps saying that there are no definate rules and you will have to use "honest judgement" so I'd just skip the book and do that.

Inconvenient truths about war, 06 Dec 2007
This book starts from the inconvenient truth that wars are unavoidable. But, if a nation decides on war it should be for just reasons and conducted in a just way. Any war is justified in self defence or assisting a country to defend itself that has been attacked by another country. It becomes complicated when starting a pre-emptive war or an intervention because the government in a country is acting very badly towards its own citizens, or different citizen groups are attacking each other. Examples of just wars are support to South Korea in its war with North Korea and China, support to Kuwait after invasion by Iraq, intervention in the Kosovo conflict, attack of Afghanistan after 6/11. The authors are less certain, that is, not completely certain if it was right or wrong, with the Falklands War, and the second Iraq war. About conduct they are certain that dropping the atom bombs on Japan was just and almost certain that it was wrong to bomb civil targets in Germany after it was clear that Germany was losing the war.
The authors present six principles specifying conditions that all have to be fulfilled before a war is just and two principles for right conduct. These principles are excellent and everybody should know them. The fact that the authors do not express definitive opinions about several wars, even with the benefit of hindsight shows how hard it is to arrive at conclusions, even with the principles. The authors in their conclusion write "This book is no more than a broad general survey of how the Just War tradition bears upon the morality of undertaking and conducting military operations in the twenty first century". I look forward to the book that should follow after this introduction that makes more definitive judgement about past wars and may even include something about what could have been done and can be done in the future to prevent just wars from happening.


Highly recommendable, 19 Nov 2007
Very well written and highly recommendable. This book gives an analytical thought on the just war tradition, largely based on a western and Christian tradition. It covers the ethical issues that the international community - the UN Security Council, in particular - faces in tackling peace and security challenges. Such difficult issues as humanitarian intervention, the responsibility to protect and UN Security Council's authorization of military actions are eloquently discussed, in the context of major international crises in recent decades such as Iraq (both 1991 and 2003 wars), Kosovo and Rwanda. It is also a relatively short book so that you may finish reading it well before getting bored.

Who Needs a Blogging Book?, 05 Jan 2007
It's surprising what little gems you pick up when you pick up a book and go throught the pages. This one is excellent. I had expected huge diagrams, little text and loads of white space. Far from it. Nicely laid out. Informative pictures and text. It even has sections on some of the blogging tools that you can use like Ecto. Again, informative if brief.

As an ex-IT Trainer I know the value of graphics. If you don't learn something from this then you never opened the cover. Try it. It's good.

Using two books to set up Wordpress, 09 Aug 2006
I am currently using two books to set up Wordpress. Reading 'Blog Design Solutions' helped me set up my computer to create a local test environment (so I don't have to upload my blog to the web to test it). 'Wordpress Visual Quickstart' is proving a good guide to all the features and personal customisation that Wordpress offers.

Important lessons for software engineers, 21 Feb 2007
This is a highly readable and entertaining rant directed against the inadequate development practices of software engineers over the years.

I am one of the geeks that Cooper targets, but I think I'm sufficiently self aware to know that his point is entirely justified. Building workable, usable applications on time and on budget is a fiendishly difficult problem. Pretty well all of the effort in improving our working practices has focussed on getting our job done more efficiently and predictably so that customers get their applications in reasonable time and at a reasonable cost. We've always been pretty clueless about the human side, making sure that the applications can be used easily and efficiently. That, of course, has great practical and financial consequences, but the cost is often hidden from the developers who have moved on to screw up elsewhere.

Cooper sometimes overdoes his argument, and minimises the real, practical problems involved in applying his techniques. His insistence on calling all developers as "programmers" is a bit irritating, but I can accept that as a stylistic quirk rather than evidence of ignorance of software engineering.

I'd strongly recommend this to software developers who are starting to have doubts about whether they're really delivering what users need. Of course, the ones who have no doubts are the ones who really need to read this book, but I suspect they wouldn't even pick it up, and they's throw it aside after the first few pages if they did give it a go. Pity.

Excellent information aggressively presented, 22 Oct 2005
This book provides a wealth of knowledge if you can stick with it through the generalisations and attacks on the group of people who need this book the most.

Something Mr Cooper talks about is people not knowing their customers, but falls into this trap himself. While the book may have been written with managers and project leaders in mind, many developers will read it as a means of improving themselves.

With this in mind, writing a book that often hints at poor interface design being a deliberate attack on users, and in some places implies that software is hard to use because programmers are getting back at people because they were picked on in high school might be a little silly. This kind of hyperbole is not helpful in getting the message across, and will not help business people further understand their staff.

Helping business people understand that different people have different skills and getting the right person for the job will deliver better results than forcing someone to do a job they are not suited for would have been a better result. As it is, I can see how some PHBs would come away from this book believing that they produce bad software because their developers hate them, rather than because they have poor processes and do not invest enough time and money in the right places.

A must read for all people involven in software development., 28 Apr 2005
The book addresses many areas of why the culture that exists in IT and firms that deal with IT is not working and why many IT projects go wrong. He points out that this is not due to lack of design, but because design is not done in the proper way. He talks about the roles of everyone (managers, programmers, designers, users, etc.) during the design and what things are been done wrong. He goes into depth why programmers are the least suitable people to do the design and how they can not "think as users". The good thing about this book is that it also gives many advices and ways on how to do things the right way. Thus, he does not only identify the problem areas, but he goes on and suggest solutions and ways to improve.

This book is a very good reading for everyone who is involved in the ANY part in the software development phase. I strongly recommend that people take some time to read it, or just browse through some areas of it. The book is split in two major parts:

The first part (Chapters 1-8) shows why there is more of a cultural problem than a technical problem on the way that software is developed. It is a good background reading to understand the rest of the book.

The second half (Chapters 9-14) suggest ways to improve the bad culture and create software that is actually helping and not embarrassing the users. This is the part is the main core of the book and needs reading. It can be understood more deeply once the first part has been read, but this part can be read on its own as well.

Please, first READ and then review..., 07 May 2004
I've read this book and really felt that I had to respond to some of Ben Carey's and Matt Vane's comments (back in 2002 I think).

About the engineering arrives rather than invents: Just because there are/were certain (as you said) geniuses amongst us [engineers], this doesn't mean that the rest of us can be brushed by the same brush!

About the UML actors comment: If someone who read the book still believes that a use-case actor is the same as a persona then he rightfully gave the book a 1 star rating...

Also the attack on the results of the "Coopers Business Case" is rather lame...
The fact that Logitech got out of the scanners market can be attributed to any important factor (related to sales and marketing). For the other two products, the fact that their owners were replaced could mean that the vision was replaced as well.
Cooper's techniques, which were used while working with the above products were excellent and should have made their point clear.
To suggest (after reading the book) that use of those techniques didn't deliver while additionally resulted in the company's/product's downfall is rather (excuse my language) stupid!

I can save you some time here.., 02 Feb 2004
Skim parts I-III it's a diatribe on what's wrong.
Read Part IV several times and take notes as it gives solutions to the identified problems and is actually really good.
Skim the rest...

For a man promoting that less is more he could do with applying his own advice to the new edition of this book...

Must read for Judges, Doctors & Pilots, 11 Jun 2008
A really thought provoking book. Mr. Dekker peels off another layer in our understanding of why humans make mistakes, and why the "sue them"- culture in the long run will not provide better safety in safety critical business' as hospitals and aviation.
A must read for people involved in litigation, hospital staff and aviation people.

At least it's short., 01 Jan 2008
This is a deeply obvious book, full of insights like "it's not alright to deliberately kill innocents" and "if you're attacked, you can defend yourself". It keeps saying that there are no definate rules and you will have to use "honest judgement" so I'd just skip the book and do that.

Inconvenient truths about war, 06 Dec 2007
This book starts from the inconvenient truth that wars are unavoidable. But, if a nation decides on war it should be for just reasons and conducted in a just way. Any war is justified in self defence or assisting a country to defend itself that has been attacked by another country. It becomes complicated when starting a pre-emptive war or an intervention because the government in a country is acting very badly towards its own citizens, or different citizen groups are attacking each other. Examples of just wars are support to South Korea in its war with North Korea and China, support to Kuwait after invasion by Iraq, intervention in the Kosovo conflict, attack of Afghanistan after 6/11. The authors are less certain, that is, not completely certain if it was right or wrong, with the Falklands War, and the second Iraq war. About conduct they are certain that dropping the atom bombs on Japan was just and almost certain that it was wrong to bomb civil targets in Germany after it was clear that Germany was losing the war.
The authors present six principles specifying conditions that all have to be fulfilled before a war is just and two principles for right conduct. These principles are excellent and everybody should know them. The fact that the authors do not express definitive opinions about several wars, even with the benefit of hindsight shows how hard it is to arrive at conclusions, even with the principles. The authors in their conclusion write "This book is no more than a broad general survey of how the Just War tradition bears upon the morality of undertaking and conducting military operations in the twenty first century". I look forward to the book that should follow after this introduction that makes more definitive judgement about past wars and may even include something about what could have been done and can be done in the future to prevent just wars from happening.


Highly recommendable, 19 Nov 2007
Very well written and highly recommendable. This book gives an analytical thought on the just war tradition, largely based on a western and Christian tradition. It covers the ethical issues that the international community - the UN Security Council, in particular - faces in tackling peace and security challenges. Such difficult issues as humanitarian intervention, the responsibility to protect and UN Security Council's authorization of military actions are eloquently discussed, in the context of major international crises in recent decades such as Iraq (both 1991 and 2003 wars), Kosovo and Rwanda. It is also a relatively short book so that you may finish reading it well before getting bored.

Who Needs a Blogging Book?, 05 Jan 2007
It's surprising what little gems you pick up when you pick up a book and go throught the pages. This one is excellent. I had expected huge diagrams, little text and loads of white space. Far from it. Nicely laid out. Informative pictures and text. It even has sections on some of the blogging tools that you can use like Ecto. Again, informative if brief.

As an ex-IT Trainer I know the value of graphics. If you don't learn something from this then you never opened the cover. Try it. It's good.

Using two books to set up Wordpress, 09 Aug 2006
I am currently using two books to set up Wordpress. Reading 'Blog Design Solutions' helped me set up my computer to create a local test environment (so I don't have to upload my blog to the web to test it). 'Wordpress Visual Quickstart' is proving a good guide to all the features and personal customisation that Wordpress offers.

Important lessons for software engineers, 21 Feb 2007
This is a highly readable and entertaining rant directed against the inadequate development practices of software engineers over the years.

I am one of the geeks that Cooper targets, but I think I'm sufficiently self aware to know that his point is entirely justified. Building workable, usable applications on time and on budget is a fiendishly difficult problem. Pretty well all of the effort in improving our working practices has focussed on getting our job done more efficiently and predictably so that customers get their applications in reasonable time and at a reasonable cost. We've always been pretty clueless about the human side, making sure that the applications can be used easily and efficiently. That, of course, has great practical and financial consequences, but the cost is often hidden from the developers who have moved on to screw up elsewhere.

Cooper sometimes overdoes his argument, and minimises the real, practical problems involved in applying his techniques. His insistence on calling all developers as "programmers" is a bit irritating, but I can accept that as a stylistic quirk rather than evidence of ignorance of software engineering.

I'd strongly recommend this to software developers who are starting to have doubts about whether they're really delivering what users need. Of course, the ones who have no doubts are the ones who really need to read this book, but I suspect they wouldn't even pick it up, and they's throw it aside after the first few pages if they did give it a go. Pity.

Excellent information aggressively presented, 22 Oct 2005
This book provides a wealth of knowledge if you can stick with it through the generalisations and attacks on the group of people who need this book the most.

Something Mr Cooper talks about is people not knowing their customers, but falls into this trap himself. While the book may have been written with managers and project leaders in mind, many developers will read it as a means of improving themselves.

With this in mind, writing a book that often hints at poor interface design being a deliberate attack on users, and in some places implies that software is hard to use because programmers are getting back at people because they were picked on in high school might be a little silly. This kind of hyperbole is not helpful in getting the message across, and will not help business people further understand their staff.

Helping business people understand that different people have different skills and getting the right person for the job will deliver better results than forcing someone to do a job they are not suited for would have been a better result. As it is, I can see how some PHBs would come away from this book believing that they produce bad software because their developers hate them, rather than because they have poor processes and do not invest enough time and money in the right places.

A must read for all people involven in software development., 28 Apr 2005
The book addresses many areas of why the culture that exists in IT and firms that deal with IT is not working and why many IT projects go wrong. He points out that this is not due to lack of design, but because design is not done in the proper way. He talks about the roles of everyone (managers, programmers, designers, users, etc.) during the design and what things are been done wrong. He goes into depth why programmers are the least suitable people to do the design and how they can not "think as users". The good thing about this book is that it also gives many advices and ways on how to do things the right way. Thus, he does not only identify the problem areas, but he goes on and suggest solutions and ways to improve.

This book is a very good reading for everyone who is involved in the ANY part in the software development phase. I strongly recommend that people take some time to read it, or just browse through some areas of it. The book is split in two major parts:

The first part (Chapters 1-8) shows why there is more of a cultural problem than a technical problem on the way that software is developed. It is a good background reading to understand the rest of the book.

The second half (Chapters 9-14) suggest ways to improve the bad culture and create software that is actually helping and not embarrassing the users. This is the part is the main core of the book and needs reading. It can be understood more deeply once the first part has been read, but this part can be read on its own as well.

Please, first READ and then review..., 07 May 2004
I've read this book and really felt that I had to respond to some of Ben Carey's and Matt Vane's comments (back in 2002 I think).

About the engineering arrives rather than invents: Just because there are/were certain (as you said) geniuses amongst us [engineers], this doesn't mean that the rest of us can be brushed by the same brush!

About the UML actors comment: If someone who read the book still believes that a use-case actor is the same as a persona then he rightfully gave the book a 1 star rating...

Also the attack on the results of the "Coopers Business Case" is rather lame...
The fact that Logitech got out of the scanners market can be attributed to any important factor (related to sales and marketing). For the other two products, the fact that their owners were replaced could mean that the vision was replaced as well.
Cooper's techniques, which were used while working with the above products were excellent and should have made their point clear.
To suggest (after reading the book) that use of those techniques didn't deliver while additionally resulted in the company's/product's downfall is rather (excuse my language) stupid!

I can save you some time here.., 02 Feb 2004
Skim parts I-III it's a diatribe on what's wrong.
Read Part IV several times and take notes as it gives solutions to the identified problems and is actually really good.
Skim the rest...

For a man promoting that less is more he could do with applying his own advice to the new edition of this book...

Must read for Judges, Doctors & Pilots, 11 Jun 2008
A really thought provoking book. Mr. Dekker peels off another layer in our understanding of why humans make mistakes, and why the "sue them"- culture in the long run will not provide better safety in safety critical business' as hospitals and aviation.
A must read for people involved in litigation, hospital staff and aviation people.

Freedom lost, freedom won, 02 Nov 2008
Three venerable veterans of the digital age explore the consequences the introduction of information technology has had for society. They do so in eight overlapping chapters that can be read in any order. Pinpointing (moral) dilemmas without becoming judgmental is their strongest point.

Privacy, of course, is a returning issue in this book, but far more interesting are the explorations into lesser known subjects, such as the fact that it is increasingly difficult to destroy information. Deleted passages in Word-documents are actually retained and formatting a hard drive is not enough the erase its contents, as many have found to their shame. Information has become such a powerful instrument in the hands of lawyers (for instance of the record industry) that even the innocent better yield to their demands.

This book is one of the best studies I've read on the interaction between society and ict. Lives have been saved by computers, lives have been lost, freedoms won, freedoms lost. The balance is still in the making.

Blown to Bits, 09 Oct 2008
Big brother is watching. The world that George Orwell predicted in his book 1984 is here. What's more, we love it.

The digital age has changed our lives. So much is now at our disposable, instantly. Need to contact someone who is out of their office, just phone their cell phone. Want the latest news or gossip about your favorite movie star, just surf the internet. Looking for a great deal on your next new car, do a little research on the net. Nothing could be more simply.

On a day to day basis most of us only think about the convenience factor. Yes, we all are irritated by spam and once in a while we might do a virus or spyware scan in an attempt to make sure that our information stays safe. What we don't tend to realize is that our personal information is already out there: every angry blog entry you ever wrote, information about what sites you visit, medical history, credit rating information. The list is endless.

Blown to Bits educates us about what bits of our life is available for public view. The reality is that we can't completely erase our personal digital footprint. However, there are a few things we can do to protect ourselves to some extent.

At least it's short., 01 Jan 2008
This is a deeply obvious book, full of insights like "it's not alright to deliberately kill innocents" and "if you're attacked, you can defend yourself". It keeps saying that there are no definate rules and you will have to use "honest judgement" so I'd just skip the book and do that.

Inconvenient truths about war, 06 Dec 2007
This book starts from the inconvenient truth that wars are unavoidable. But, if a nation decides on war it should be for just reasons and conducted in a just way. Any war is justified in self defence or assisting a country to defend itself that has been attacked by another country. It becomes complicated when starting a pre-emptive war or an intervention because the government in a country is acting very badly towards its own citizens, or different citizen groups are attacking each other. Examples of just wars are support to South Korea in its war with North Korea and China, support to Kuwait after invasion by Iraq, intervention in the Kosovo conflict, attack of Afghanistan after 6/11. The authors are less certain, that is, not completely certain if it was right or wrong, with the Falklands War, and the second Iraq war. About conduct they are certain that dropping the atom bombs on Japan was just and almost certain that it was wrong to bomb civil targets in Germany after it was clear that Germany was losing the war.
The authors present six principles specifying conditions that all have to be fulfilled before a war is just and two principles for right conduct. These principles are excellent and everybody should know them. The fact that the authors do not express definitive opinions about several wars, even with the benefit of hindsight shows how hard it is to arrive at conclusions, even with the principles. The authors in their conclusion write "This book is no more than a broad general survey of how the Just War tradition bears upon the morality of undertaking and conducting military operations in the twenty first century". I look forward to the book that should follow after this introduction that makes more definitive judgement about past wars and may even include something about what could have been done and can be done in the future to prevent just wars from happening.


Highly recommendable, 19 Nov 2007
Very well written and highly recommendable. This book gives an analytical thought on the just war tradition, largely based on a western and Christian tradition. It covers the ethical issues that the international community - the UN Security Council, in particular - faces in tackling peace and security challenges. Such difficult issues as humanitarian intervention, the responsibility to protect and UN Security Council's authorization of military actions are eloquently discussed, in the context of major international crises in recent decades such as Iraq (both 1991 and 2003 wars), Kosovo and Rwanda. It is also a relatively short book so that you may finish reading it well before getting bored.

Who Needs a Blogging Book?, 05 Jan 2007
It's surprising what little gems you pick up when you pick up a book and go throught the pages. This one is excellent. I had expected huge diagrams, little text and loads of white space. Far from it. Nicely laid out. Informative pictures and text. It even has sections on some of the blogging tools that you can use like Ecto. Again, informative if brief.

As an ex-IT Trainer I know the value of graphics. If you don't learn something from this then you never opened the cover. Try it. It's good.

Using two books to set up Wordpress, 09 Aug 2006
I am currently using two books to set up Wordpress. Reading 'Blog Design Solutions' helped me set up my computer to create a local test environment (so I don't have to upload my blog to the web to test it). 'Wordpress Visual Quickstart' is proving a good guide to all the features and personal customisation that Wordpress offers.

Important lessons for software engineers, 21 Feb 2007
This is a highly readable and entertaining rant directed against the inadequate development practices of software engineers over the years.

I am one of the geeks that Cooper targets, but I think I'm sufficiently self aware to know that his point is entirely justified. Building workable, usable applications on time and on budget is a fiendishly difficult problem. Pretty well all of the effort in improving our working practices has focussed on getting our job done more efficiently and predictably so that customers get their applications in reasonable time and at a reasonable cost. We've always been pretty clueless about the human side, making sure that the applications can be used easily and efficiently. That, of course, has great practical and financial consequences, but the cost is often hidden from the developers who have moved on to screw up elsewhere.

Cooper sometimes overdoes his argument, and minimises the real, practical problems involved in applying his techniques. His insistence on calling all developers as "programmers" is a bit irritating, but I can accept that as a stylistic quirk rather than evidence of ignorance of software engineering.

I'd strongly recommend this to software developers who are starting to have doubts about whether they're really delivering what users need. Of course, the ones who have no doubts are the ones who really need to read this book, but I suspect they wouldn't even pick it up, and they's throw it aside after the first few pages if they did give it a go. Pity.

Excellent information aggressively presented, 22 Oct 2005
This book provides a wealth of knowledge if you can stick with it through the generalisations and attacks on the group of people who need this book the most.

Something Mr Cooper talks about is people not knowing their customers, but falls into this trap himself. While the book may have been written with managers and project leaders in mind, many developers will read it as a means of improving themselves.

With this in mind, writing a book that often hints at poor interface design being a deliberate attack on users, and in some places implies that software is hard to use because programmers are getting back at people because they were picked on in high school might be a little silly. This kind of hyperbole is not helpful in getting the message across, and will not help business people further understand their staff.

Helping business people understand that different people have different skills and getting the right person for the job will deliver better results than forcing someone to do a job they are not suited for would have been a better result. As it is, I can see how some PHBs would come away from this book believing that they produce bad software because their developers hate them, rather than because they have poor processes and do not invest enough time and money in the right places.

A must read for all people involven in software development., 28 Apr 2005
The book addresses many areas of why the culture that exists in IT and firms that deal with IT is not working and why many IT projects go wrong. He points out that this is not due to lack of design, but because design is not done in the proper way. He talks about the roles of everyone (managers, programmers, designers, users, etc.) during the design and what things are been done wrong. He goes into depth why programmers are the least suitable people to do the design and how they can not "think as users". The good thing about this book is that it also gives many advices and ways on how to do things the right way. Thus, he does not only identify the problem areas, but he goes on and suggest solutions and ways to improve.

This book is a very good reading for everyone who is involved in the ANY part in the software development phase. I strongly recommend that people take some time to read it, or just browse through some areas of it. The book is split in two major parts:

The first part (Chapters 1-8) shows why there is more of a cultural problem than a technical problem on the way that software is developed. It is a good background reading to understand the rest of the book.

The second half (Chapters 9-14) suggest ways to improve the bad culture and create software that is actually helping and not embarrassing the users. This is the part is the main core of the book and needs reading. It can be understood more deeply once the first part has been read, but this part can be read on its own as well.

Please, first READ and then review..., 07 May 2004
I've read this book and really felt that I had to respond to some of Ben Carey's and Matt Vane's comments (back in 2002 I think).

About the engineering arrives rather than invents: Just because there are/were certain (as you said) geniuses amongst us [engineers], this doesn't mean that the rest of us can be brushed by the same brush!

About the UML actors comment: If someone who read the book still believes that a use-case actor is the same as a persona then he rightfully gave the book a 1 star rating...

Also the attack on the results of the "Coopers Business Case" is rather lame...
The fact that Logitech got out of the scanners market can be attributed to any important factor (related to sales and marketing). For the other two products, the fact that their owners were replaced could mean that the vision was replaced as well.
Cooper's techniques, which were used while working with the above products were excellent and should have made their point clear.
To suggest (after reading the book) that use of those techniques didn't deliver while additionally resulted in the company's/product's downfall is rather (excuse my language) stupid!

I can save you some time here.., 02 Feb 2004
Skim parts I-III it's a diatribe on what's wrong.
Read Part IV several times and take notes as it gives solutions to the identified problems and is actually really good.
Skim the rest...

For a man promoting that less is more he could do with applying his own advice to the new edition of this book...

Must read for Judges, Doctors & Pilots, 11 Jun 2008
A really thought provoking book. Mr. Dekker peels off another layer in our understanding of why humans make mistakes, and why the "sue them"- culture in the long run will not provide better safety in safety critical business' as hospitals and aviation.
A must read for people involved in litigation, hospital staff and aviation people.

Freedom lost, freedom won, 02 Nov 2008
Three venerable veterans of the digital age explore the consequences the introduction of information technology has had for society. They do so in eight overlapping chapters that can be read in any order. Pinpointing (moral) dilemmas without becoming judgmental is their strongest point.

Privacy, of course, is a returning issue in this book, but far more interesting are the explorations into lesser known subjects, such as the fact that it is increasingly difficult to destroy information. Deleted passages in Word-documents are actually retained and formatting a hard drive is not enough the erase its contents, as many have found to their shame. Information has become such a powerful instrument in the hands of lawyers (for instance of the record industry) that even the innocent better yield to their demands.

This book is one of the best studies I've read on the interaction between society and ict. Lives have been saved by computers, lives have been lost, freedoms won, freedoms lost. The balance is still in the making.

Blown to Bits, 09 Oct 2008
Big brother is watching. The world that George Orwell predicted in his book 1984 is here. What's more, we love it.

The digital age has changed our lives. So much is now at our disposable, instantly. Need to contact someone who is out of their office, just phone their cell phone. Want the latest news or gossip about your favorite movie star, just surf the internet. Looking for a great deal on your next new car, do a little research on the net. Nothing could be more simply.

On a day to day basis most of us only think about the convenience factor. Yes, we all are irritated by spam and once in a while we might do a virus or spyware scan in an attempt to make sure that our information stays safe. What we don't tend to realize is that our personal information is already out there: every angry blog entry you ever wrote, information about what sites you visit, medical history, credit rating information. The list is endless.

Blown to Bits educates us about what bits of our life is available for public view. The reality is that we can't completely erase our personal digital footprint. However, there are a few things we can do to protect ourselves to some extent.

This book does not live up to my expectations., 02 Sep 1999
Although his heart is in the right place, Victor Papanek's latest book does not read convincingly and does not live up to the high standards of his seminal work Design for the Real World. The Green Imperative unfortunately includes significant errors ­ for example the diagram on p94 (Thames and Hudson paperback edition) purporting to show how to determine the golden rectangle, is incorrect. However, the book does cover a wide range of topics and concepts which are highly relevant to ecology and ethics in design and architecture.

At least it's short., 01 Jan 2008
This is a deeply obvious book, full of insights like "it's not alright to deliberately kill innocents" and "if you're attacked, you can defend yourself". It keeps saying that there are no definate rules and you will have to use "honest judgement" so I'd just skip the book and do that.

Inconvenient truths about war, 06 Dec 2007
This book starts from the inconvenient truth that wars are unavoidable. But, if a nation decides on war it should be for just reasons and conducted in a just way. Any war is justified in self defence or assisting a country to defend itself that has been attacked by another country. It becomes complicated when starting a pre-emptive war or an intervention because the government in a country is acting very badly towards its own citizens, or different citizen groups are attacking each other. Examples of just wars are support to South Korea in its war with North Korea and China, support to Kuwait after invasion by Iraq, intervention in the Kosovo conflict, attack of Afghanistan after 6/11. The authors are less certain, that is, not completely certain if it was right or wrong, with the Falklands War, and the second Iraq war. About conduct they are certain that dropping the atom bombs on Japan was just and almost certain that it was wrong to bomb civil targets in Germany after it was clear that Germany was losing the war.
The authors present six principles specifying conditions that all have to be fulfilled before a war is just and two principles for right conduct. These principles are excellent and everybody should know them. The fact that the authors do not express definitive opinions about several wars, even with the benefit of hindsight shows how hard it is to arrive at conclusions, even with the principles. The authors in their conclusion write "This book is no more than a broad general survey of how the Just War tradition bears upon the morality of undertaking and conducting military operations in the twenty first century". I look forward to the book that should follow after this introduction that makes more definitive judgement about past wars and may even include something about what could have been done and can be done in the future to prevent just wars from happening.


Highly recommendable, 19 Nov 2007
Very well written and highly recommendable. This book gives an analytical thought on the just war tradition, largely based on a western and Christian tradition. It covers the ethical issues that the international community - the UN Security Council, in particular - faces in tackling peace and security challenges. Such difficult issues as humanitarian intervention, the responsibility to protect and UN Security Council's authorization of military actions are eloquently discussed, in the context of major international crises in recent decades such as Iraq (both 1991 and 2003 wars), Kosovo and Rwanda. It is also a relatively short book so that you may finish reading it well before getting bored.

Who Needs a Blogging Book?, 05 Jan 2007
It's surprising what little gems you pick up when you pick up a book and go throught the pages. This one is excellent. I had expected huge diagrams, little text and loads of white space. Far from it. Nicely laid out. Informative pictures and text. It even has sections on some of the blogging tools that you can use like Ecto. Again, informative if brief.

As an ex-IT Trainer I know the value of graphics. If you don't learn something from this then you never opened the cover. Try it. It's good.

Using two books to set up Wordpress, 09 Aug 2006
I am currently using two books to set up Wordpress. Reading 'Blog Design Solutions' helped me set up my computer to create a local test environment (so I don't have to upload my blog to the web to test it). 'Wordpress Visual Quickstart' is proving a good guide to all the features and personal customisation that Wordpress offers.

Important lessons for software engineers, 21 Feb 2007
This is a highly readable and entertaining rant directed against the inadequate development practices of software engineers over the years.

I am one of the geeks that Cooper targets, but I think I'm sufficiently self aware to know that his point is entirely justified. Building workable, usable applications on time and on budget is a fiendishly difficult problem. Pretty well all of the effort in improving our working practices has focussed on getting our job done more efficiently and predictably so that customers get their applications in reasonable time and at a reasonable cost. We've always been pretty clueless about the human side, making sure that the applications can be used easily and efficiently. That, of course, has great practical and financial consequences, but the cost is often hidden from the developers who have moved on to screw up elsewhere.

Cooper sometimes overdoes his argument, and minimises the real, practical problems involved in applying his techniques. His insistence on calling all developers as "programmers" is a bit irritating, but I can accept that as a stylistic quirk rather than evidence of ignorance of software engineering.

I'd strongly recommend this to software developers who are starting to have doubts about whether they're really delivering what users need. Of course, the ones who have no doubts are the ones who really need to read this book, but I suspect they wouldn't even pick it up, and they's throw it aside after the first few pages if they did give it a go. Pity.

Excellent information aggressively presented, 22 Oct 2005
This book provides a wealth of knowledge if you can stick with it through the generalisations and attacks on the group of people who need this book the most.

Something Mr Cooper talks about is people not knowing their customers, but falls into this trap himself. While the book may have been written with managers and project leaders in mind, many developers will read it as a means of improving themselves.

With this in mind, writing a book that often hints at poor interface design being a deliberate attack on users, and in some places implies that software is hard to use because programmers are getting back at people because they were picked on in high school might be a little silly. This kind of hyperbole is not helpful in getting the message across, and will not help business people further understand their staff.

Helping business people understand that different people have different skills and getting the right person for the job will deliver better results than forcing someone to do a job they are not suited for would have been a better result. As it is, I can see how some PHBs would come away from this book believing that they produce bad software because their developers hate them, rather than because they have poor processes and do not invest enough time and money in the right places.

A must read for all people involven in software development., 28 Apr 2005
The book addresses many areas of why the culture that exists in IT and firms that deal with IT is not working and why many IT projects go wrong. He points out that this is not due to lack of design, but because design is not done in the proper way. He talks about the roles of everyone (managers, programmers, designers, users, etc.) during the design and what things are been done wrong. He goes into depth why programmers are the least suitable people to do the design and how they can not "think as users". The good thing about this book is that it also gives many advices and ways on how to do things the right way. Thus, he does not only identify the problem areas, but he goes on and suggest solutions and ways to improve.

This book is a very good reading for everyone who is involved in the ANY part in the software development phase. I strongly recommend that people take some time to read it, or just browse through some areas of it. The book is split in two major parts:

The first part (Chapters 1-8) shows why there is more of a cultural problem than a technical problem on the way that software is developed. It is a good background reading to understand the rest of the book.

The second half (Chapters 9-14) suggest ways to improve the bad culture and create software that is actually helping and not embarrassing the users. This is the part is the main core of the book and needs reading. It can be understood more deeply once the first part has been read, but this part can be read on its own as well.

Please, first READ and then review..., 07 May 2004
I've read this book and really felt that I had to respond to some of Ben Carey's and Matt Vane's comments (back in 2002 I think).

About the engineering arrives rather than invents: Just because there are/were certain (as you said) geniuses amongst us [engineers], this doesn't mean that the rest of us can be brushed by the same brush!

About the UML actors comment: If someone who read the book still believes that a use-case actor is the same as a persona then he rightfully gave the book a 1 star rating...

Also the attack on the results of the "Coopers Business Case" is rather lame...
The fact that Logitech got out of the scanners market can be attributed to any important factor (related to sales and marketing). For the other two products, the fact that their owners were replaced could mean that the vision was replaced as well.
Cooper's techniques, which were used while working with the above products were excellent and should have made their point clear.
To suggest (after reading the book) that use of those techniques didn't deliver while additionally resulted in the company's/product's downfall is rather (excuse my language) stupid!

I can save you some time here.., 02 Feb 2004
Skim parts I-III it's a diatribe on what's wrong.
Read Part IV several times and take notes as it gives solutions to the identified problems and is actually really good.
Skim the rest...

For a man promoting that less is more he could do with applying his own advice to the new edition of this book...

Must read for Judges, Doctors & Pilots, 11 Jun 2008
A really thought provoking book. Mr. Dekker peels off another layer in our understanding of why humans make mistakes, and why the "sue them"- culture in the long run will not provide better safety in safety critical business' as hospitals and aviation.
A must read for people involved in litigation, hospital staff and aviation people.

Freedom lost, freedom won, 02 Nov 2008
Three venerable veterans of the digital age explore the consequences the introduction of information technology has had for society. They do so in eight overlapping chapters that can be read in any order. Pinpointing (moral) dilemmas without becoming judgmental is their strongest point.

Privacy, of course, is a returning issue in this book, but far more interesting are the explorations into lesser known subjects, such as the fact that it is increasingly difficult to destroy information. Deleted passages in Word-documents are actually retained and formatting a hard drive is not enough the erase its contents, as many have found to their shame. Information has become such a powerful instrument in the hands of lawyers (for instance of the record industry) that even the innocent better yield to their demands.

This book is one of the best studies I've read on the interaction between society and ict. Lives have been saved by computers, lives have been lost, freedoms won, freedoms lost. The balance is still in the making.

Blown to Bits, 09 Oct 2008
Big brother is watching. The world that George Orwell predicted in his book 1984 is here. What's more, we love it.

The digital age has changed our lives. So much is now at our disposable, instantly. Need to contact someone who is out of their office, just phone their cell phone. Want the latest news or gossip about your favorite movie star, just surf the internet. Looking for a great deal on your next new car, do a little research on the net. Nothing could be more simply.

On a day to day basis most of us only think about the convenience factor. Yes, we all are irritated by spam and once in a while we might do a virus or spyware scan in an attempt to make sure that our information stays safe. What we don't tend to realize is that our personal information is already out there: every angry blog entry you ever wrote, information about what sites you visit, medical history, credit rating information. The list is endless.

Blown to Bits educates us about what bits of our life is available for public view. The reality is that we can't completely erase our personal digital footprint. However, there are a few things we can do to protect ourselves to some extent.

This book does not live up to my expectations., 02 Sep 1999
Although his heart is in the right place, Victor Papanek's latest book does not read convincingly and does not live up to the high standards of his seminal work Design for the Real World. The Green Imperative unfortunately includes significant errors ­ for example the diagram on p94 (Thames and Hudson paperback edition) purporting to show how to determine the golden rectangle, is incorrect. However, the book does cover a wide range of topics and concepts which are highly relevant to ecology and ethics in design and architecture.

Valuable, but a bit too dry, 11 May 2008
This book is based on a series of three lectures given by the author in Oxford in March 2006 at the James Martin Institute for Science and Civilisation. I had the privilege to attend these lectures and I was spellbound by them at the time. So I was looking forward to reading this book.

However, somewhere in the process between the lectures and the book, the material has become, well, too dry. It sparkles on occasion, but the author allows himself to become bogged down too often in academic analysis, intellectual tennis, and other hair-splitting.

He's a great proponent of the merit, the morality, and even the necessity, of human enhancement. So far, so good. Some of his arguments strike home well. But in my view he gives too much time to listing various nooks and crannies of the views of various opponents of his writing. That's where the book becomes tedious. The author needs to become pithier.

The views of opponents of human enhancement (eg the people who say "Enough is enough" and that "Enhancement would destroy our core essential humanity, and must be opposed, despite all its manifest good results") do deserve attention. But I believe that a better book is waiting to be written, that will make a better job of highlighting the perversity and self-delusional destructive nature of these views.

At least it's short., 01 Jan 2008
This is a deeply obvious book, full of insights like "it's not alright to deliberately kill innocents" and "if you're attacked, you can defend yourself". It keeps saying that there are no definate rules and you will have to use "honest judgement" so I'd just skip the book and do that.

Inconvenient truths about war, 06 Dec 2007
This book starts from the inconvenient truth that wars are unavoidable. But, if a nation decides on war it should be for just reasons and conducted in a just way. Any war is justified in self defence or assisting a country to defend itself that has been attacked by another country. It becomes complicated when starting a pre-emptive war or an intervention because the government in a country is acting very badly towards its own citizens, or different citizen groups are attacking each other. Examples of just wars are support to South Korea in its war with North Korea and China, support to Kuwait after invasion by Iraq, intervention in the Kosovo conflict, attack of Afghanistan after 6/11. The authors are less certain, that is, not completely certain if it was right or wrong, with the Falklands War, and the second Iraq war. About conduct they are certain that dropping the atom bombs on Japan was just and almost certain that it was wrong to bomb civil targets in Germany after it was clear that Germany was losing the war.
The authors present six principles specifying conditions that all have to be fulfilled before a war is just and two principles for right conduct. These principles are excellent and everybody should know them. The fact that the authors do not express definitive opinions about several wars, even with the benefit of hindsight shows how hard it is to arrive at conclusions, even with the principles. The authors in their conclusion write "This book is no more than a broad general survey of how the Just War tradition bears upon the morality of undertaking and conducting military operations in the twenty first century". I look forward to the book that should follow after this introduction that makes more definitive judgement about past wars and may even include something about what could have been done and can be done in the future to prevent just wars from happening.


Highly recommendable, 19 Nov 2007
Very well written and highly recommendable. This book gives an analytical thought on the just war tradition, largely based on a western and Christian tradition. It covers the ethical issues that the international community - the UN Security Council, in particular - faces in tackling peace and security challenges. Such difficult issues as humanitarian intervention, the responsibility to protect and UN Security Council's authorization of military actions are eloquently discussed, in the context of major international crises in recent decades such as Iraq (both 1991 and 2003 wars), Kosovo and Rwanda. It is also a relatively short book so that you may finish reading it well before getting bored.

Who Needs a Blogging Book?, 05 Jan 2007
It's surprising what little gems you pick up when you pick up a book and go throught the pages. This one is excellent. I had expected huge diagrams, little text and loads of white space. Far from it. Nicely laid out. Informative pictures and text. It even has sections on some of the blogging tools that you can use like Ecto. Again, informative if brief.

As an ex-IT Trainer I know the value of graphics. If you don't learn something from this then you never opened the cover. Try it. It's good.

Using two books to set up Wordpress, 09 Aug 2006
I am currently using two books to set up Wordpress. Reading 'Blog Design Solutions' helped me set up my computer to create a local test environment (so I don't have to upload my blog to the web to test it). 'Wordpress Visual Quickstart' is proving a good guide to all the features and personal customisation that Wordpress offers.

Important lessons for software engineers, 21 Feb 2007
This is a highly readable and entertaining rant directed against the inadequate development practices of software engineers over the years.

I am one of the geeks that Cooper targets, but I think I'm sufficiently self aware to know that his point is entirely justified. Building workable, usable applications on time and on budget is a fiendishly difficult problem. Pretty well all of the effort in improving our working practices has focussed on getting our job done more efficiently and predictably so that customers get their applications in reasonable time and at a reasonable cost. We've always been pretty clueless about the human side, making sure that the applications can be used easily and efficiently. That, of course, has great practical and financial consequences, but the cost is often hidden from the developers who have moved on to screw up elsewhere.

Cooper sometimes overdoes his argument, and minimises the real, practical problems involved in applying his techniques. His insistence on calling all developers as "programmers" is a bit irritating, but I can accept that as a stylistic quirk rather than evidence of ignorance of software engineering.

I'd strongly recommend this to software developers who are starting to have doubts about whether they're really delivering what users need. Of course, the ones who have no doubts are the ones who really need to read this book, but I suspect they wouldn't even pick it up, and they's throw it aside after the first few pages if they did give it a go. Pity.

Excellent information aggressively presented, 22 Oct 2005
This book provides a wealth of knowledge if you can stick with it through the generalisations and attacks on the group of people who need this book the most.

Something Mr Cooper talks about is people not knowing their customers, but falls into this trap himself. While the book may have been written with managers and project leaders in mind, many developers will read it as a means of improving themselves.

With this in mind, writing a book that often hints at poor interface design being a deliberate attack on users, and in some places implies that software is hard to use because programmers are getting back at people because they were picked on in high school might be a little silly. This kind of hyperbole is not helpful in getting the message across, and will not help business people further understand their staff.

Helping business people understand that different people have different skills and getting the right person for the job will deliver better results than forcing someone to do a job they are not suited for would have been a better result. As it is, I can see how some PHBs would come away from this book believing that they produce bad software because their developers hate them, rather than because they have poor processes and do not invest enough time and money in the right places.

A must read for all people involven in software development., 28 Apr 2005
The book addresses many areas of why the culture that exists in IT and firms that deal with IT is not working and why many IT projects go wrong. He points out that this is not due to lack of design, but because design is not done in the proper way. He talks about the roles of everyone (managers, programmers, designers, users, etc.) during the design and what things are been done wrong. He goes into depth why programmers are the least suitable people to do the design and how they can not "think as users". The good thing about this book is that it also gives many advices and ways on how to do things the right way. Thus, he does not only identify the problem areas, but he goes on and suggest solutions and ways to improve.

This book is a very good reading for everyone who is involved in the ANY part in the software development phase. I strongly recommend that people take some time to read it, or just browse through some areas of it. The book is split in two major parts:

The first part (Chapters 1-8) shows why there is more of a cultural problem than a technical problem on the way that software is developed. It is a good background reading to understand the rest of the book.

The second half (Chapters 9-14) suggest ways to improve the bad culture and create software that is actually helping and not embarrassing the users. This is the part is the main core of the book and needs reading. It can be understood more deeply once the first part has been read, but this part can be read on its own as well.

Please, first READ and then review..., 07 May 2004
I've read this book and really felt that I had to respond to some of Ben Carey's and Matt Vane's comments (back in 2002 I think).

About the engineering arrives rather than invents: Just because there are/were certain (as you said) geniuses amongst us [engineers], this doesn't mean that the rest of us can be brushed by the same brush!

About the UML actors comment: If someone who read the book still believes that a use-case actor is the same as a persona then he rightfully gave the book a 1 star rating...

Also the attack on the results of the "Coopers Business Case" is rather lame...
The fact that Logitech got out of the scanners market can be attributed to any important factor (related to sales and marketing). For the other two products, the fact that their owners were replaced could mean that the vision was replaced as well.
Cooper's techniques, which were used while working with the above products were excellent and should have made their point clear.
To suggest (after reading the book) that use of those techniques didn't deliver while additionally resulted in the company's/product's downfall is rather (excuse my language) stupid!

I can save you some time here.., 02 Feb 2004
Skim parts I-III it's a diatribe on what's wrong.
Read Part IV several times and take notes as it gives solutions to the identified problems and is actually really good.
Skim the rest...

For a man promoting that less is more he could do with applying his own advice to the new edition of this book...

Must read for Judges, Doctors & Pilots, 11 Jun 2008
A really thought provoking book. Mr. Dekker peels off another layer in our understanding of why humans make mistakes, and why the "sue them"- culture in the long run will not provide better safety in safety critical business' as hospitals and aviation.
A must read for people involved in litigation, hospital staff and aviation people.

Freedom lost, freedom won, 02 Nov 2008
Three venerable veterans of the digital age explore the consequences the introduction of information technology has had for society. They do so in eight overlapping chapters that can be read in any order. Pinpointing (moral) dilemmas without becoming judgmental is their strongest point.

Privacy, of course, is a returning issue in this book, but far more interesting are the explorations into lesser known subjects, such as the fact that it is increasingly difficult to destroy information. Deleted passages in Word-documents are actually retained and formatting a hard drive is not enough the erase its contents, as many have found to their shame. Information has become such a powerful instrument in the hands of lawyers (for instance of the record industry) that even the innocent better yield to their demands.

This book is one of the best studies I've read on the interaction between society and ict. Lives have been saved by computers, lives have been lost, freedoms won, freedoms lost. The balance is still in the making.

Blown to Bits, 09 Oct 2008
Big brother is watching. The world that George Orwell predicted in his book 1984 is here. What's more, we love it.

The digital age has changed our lives. So much is now at our disposable, instantly. Need to contact someone who is out of their office, just phone their cell phone. Want the latest news or gossip about your favorite movie star, just surf the internet. Looking for a great deal on your next new car, do a little research on the net. Nothing could be more simply.

On a day to day basis most of us only think about the convenience factor. Yes, we all are irritated by spam and once in a while we might do a virus or spyware scan in an attempt to make sure that our information stays safe. What we don't tend to realize is that our personal information is already out there: every angry blog entry you ever wrote, information about what sites you visit, medical history, credit rating information. The list is endless.

Blown to Bits educates us about what bits of our life is available for public view. The reality is that we can't completely erase our personal digital footprint. However, there are a few things we can do to protect ourselves to some extent.

This book does not live up to my expectations., 02 Sep 1999
Although his heart is in the right place, Victor Papanek's latest book does not read convincingly and does not live up to the high standards of his seminal work Design for the Real World. The Green Imperative unfortunately includes significant errors ­ for example the diagram on p94 (Thames and Hudson paperback edition) purporting to show how to determine the golden rectangle, is incorrect. However, the book does cover a wide range of topics and concepts which are highly relevant to ecology and ethics in design and architecture.

Valuable, but a bit too dry, 11 May 2008
This book is based on a series of three lectures given by the author in Oxford in March 2006 at the James Martin Institute for Science and Civilisation. I had the privilege to attend these lectures and I was spellbound by them at the time. So I was looking forward to reading this book.

However, somewhere in the process between the lectures and the book, the material has become, well, too dry. It sparkles on occasion, but the author allows himself to become bogged down too often in academic analysis, intellectual tennis, and other hair-splitting.

He's a great proponent of the merit, the morality, and even the necessity, of human enhancement. So far, so good. Some of his arguments strike home well. But in my view he gives too much time to listing various nooks and crannies of the views of various opponents of his writing. That's where the book becomes tedious. The author needs to become pithier.

The views of opponents of human enhancement (eg the people who say "Enough is enough" and that "Enhancement would destroy our core essential humanity, and must be opposed, despite all its manifest good results") do deserve attention. But I believe that a better book is waiting to be written, that will make a better job of highlighting the perversity and self-delusional destructive nature of these views.

An essential book for economics students!, 20 May 2004
I first heard about this book in Dr. Stangelove's Game; A History of Economic History. And after reading a copy I borrowed from the library I have decided to buy my own copy. This book essential describes, although somewhat poetically the nature of equalibrium in the market. All individuals perue there own self-interest and this leads to a stable and socially desirable level of output. Geneous!!! And you thought Adam Smith was the dog's bits. Been proven wrong and buy this book!