Feeling like your life is dull? Experiencing a spell of the humdrums? Pick up the beat of "Signal to Noise" for an instant dose of adrenalin.
This cyber-mystery-satire introduces readers to two amazing and amusing characters: Jim Knight, an editor for a hip magazine, and Kat Astuna, a would-be "serious writer" and intern for the zine, "Going Gaga". Kat and Knight are two names and personalities meant for each other, albeit with more than a few quirks. The duo plays a deadly game with some arch-villains whose bizarre behavior rivals that of the campiest Batman shows in memory. There are numerous references to the high-tech world, with office memos and threats arriving via e-mail, laptops everywhere, and mouse clicks spicing up the action.
By the way, if the author's name sounds familiar, you're probably a reader of Wired and/or The Net: Sinclair contributes to both magazines. As a result, her prose describing the brave new world of zines and high tech society rings true - click click.
Enormous, stupendous, and a whole lot of info. That's the "Web Authoring Desk Reference", a nifty, almost 1,000-page manual thats a one-stop reference guide to Web page code. Need to look for an HTML 3.2 or 4.0 tag or attribute? Having a problem with cascading style sheets? Stuck on JavaScript error message? This puppy will probably have your answer.
In addition to serving as a reference point, this volume contains design tips and tricks. Even if you're a novice, you can find what you need. The authors have crafted this book carefully, with chapters focusing on the basic how-tos of HTML, WebTV, Dynamic HTML, Cascading Style Sheets, VBScript, JavaScript, and JavaScript Style Sheets. And that's just in the first 100 pages. The (literally) A-to-Z reference section follows. There are also sections on special characters and entities, colors by name and HEX value (extremely helpful if you're one of us why-is-the-background-chartreuse types!), font faces, style sheet units, MIME types, and online resources.
Every man (and woman), to the portholes! Guard the hatches! Trespassers may be rummaging around your files, even as you peacefully read this review. "Intranet Security" gives new meaning to the term "hacker". The author reveals how companies ranging from large to small have been invaded in the past - and the steps you can and should take to prevent such situations from happening to your network.
Are you sneering, secure in the knowledge that your company has a firewall? Think again. In one case study cited by McCarthy, a company (JFC) did have a firewall policy that was quite clearly defined. "Unfortunately, that policy was not enforced. Developing policies is pointless unless those policies are consistently and ruthlessly enforced," points out the author.
Perhaps you think that it won't happen to your company, or that if an infiltration did occur, it wouldn't amount to much. Try this statistic on for size: the 1997 CSI/FBI Computer Crime and Security Survey showed that 246 organizations reported more than $100,000,000 in financial losses "due to a wide variety of security breaches from laptop theft to trade secret theft."
And that's the main message of this book: take the precautions described now - because it can happen, and the consequences are far from insignificant. "Don't wait for your company's name to be mentioned on CNN" as the target of a major and costly security violation.
If youre using (maybe "trying to use" is the proper phrase) or considering purchasing Microsoft Office 97, we've got a tip for you. Check out Office 97 Annoyances before you go ballistic over the changes Bill Gates and Co. have wrought in your favorite programs.
As a reasonably proficient Microsoft Word 7.0 user, I didn't anticipate having any trouble when I upgraded to Microsoft Word 97. Wrong. I had to search through the menus, trying to find options that had been arbitrarily moved from one menu to the other (without any noticeable improvement). The toolbar frustrated me, and the hyperlinks feature was infuriating. Then Office 97 Annoyances arrived in the mail.
This handy volume takes the marketing varnish off Microsoft's application suite and gives you the cold, hard facts on what the problems are and how to solve or at least minimize them. You'll discover how to customize the toolbars to suit your personal working style, and how to avoid some of the bugs. For example, Word creates a "hyperlink field" when you enter a Web or e-mail address. That means that you can't edit it Word just deletes the entire link or tries to connect you to the Web. Not too nifty. Thanks to this book, I've learned how to turn off and customize that and other Microsoftesque features.
So before you suffer from "Office 97 version vertigo", take the time to review this book. Just maybe, it'll let you agree with the authors that "Office is amazing when it's not being so blasted annoying."