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Persistent problems with poverty, rapid population growth and malnutrition in many developing countries are among the most serious issues facing the world today. This book examines the causes, severity and effects of these problems, as well as potential solutions.

The authors consider the implications of globalization of goods, services and capital for agriculture, poverty and the environment; and identify linkages in the world food system, stressing how agricultural and economic situations in poor countries affect industrialized nations and vice versa.

Focusing on the role that agriculture can play in improving economic and nutritional wellbeing and how that role might be enhanced, this book is essential reading.

Customer Reviews (1)

Great
Bought the book at a cheap, competitive price and it's practically brand new. Very happy ... Read more

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This intermediate method presents a number of increasingly challenging tasks for the guitarist who wants to move beyond the beginner experience. Advanced concepts of fingerboard harmony and applied music theory are imparted through the practical application in songs from four decades of popular music. More is offered in terms of rhythmic complexity along with advanced strumming, picking and fingerstyle techniques. Students will be playing more single-note lines as well as learning how to improvise over common chord progressions. Finally, the advancing guitarist will be introduced to reading musical notation through pieces that mix contemporary composition with classic works. This course guides the advancing guitarist in exactly what to play and how to approach the material as it continues to build confidence and increase the desire to further their playing skills. ... Read more

Product Description

Written primarily for undergraduates Systems Analysis & Design courses in CIS and MIS programs.  It is designed for courses seeking a streamlined approach to the course due to course duration, lab assignments, or special projects. The text reflects current changes in systems analysis and design. The move to structured analysis and design in the late 1970s was considered to be a revolution in how systems development was conducted. We are undergoing another revolution in systems development now, as we move away from complex, plan-driven development to new approaches called "Agile Methodologies." Although the best known Agile Methodology is eXtreme Programming, there are many other approaches. More and more systems development involves the use of packages in combination with legacy applications and new modules. Coverage of the make versus buy decision and of the multiple sources of software and software components has been moved forward in the book to highlight the salience of these topics.

Customer Reviews (5)

Cheats..Stay Away from these people
IT has been more than 4 weeks and they have not sent me my book.
They are cheats Please stay from them

Excellent!!
This was the exact thing I ordered and was in excellent condition. Shipping was fast also. Thanks so much!

Quite possibly the worst book in the history of the written word
The concise review, for those who don't want to read all the way to the end:

Worst book ever. Don't take classes based on it if you want to learn system design or project management, and/or maintain your grade point average. If the course is required in your degree program, PLEAD with your instructor to choose another text. ANY other text. A For Dummies book. Printouts of the Project Management and Software Development pages from Wikipedia. Anything. I'm serious.

If you HAVE to use this book, buy the Eastern Economy Edition, which is the exact same book without color graphics. You won't miss the color as much as you'll miss the extra $120 you'll pay for the US edition. Get it used if possible.


Now for the long and wordy review...

This text (Essentials of System Analysis and Design, Fourth Edition) was the required text for a course entitled Information Systems Design at my college.

If there was an option on Amazon's rating system to give negative stars, I would - because this text, and the accompanying PowerPoint slides based on it, took an otherwise excellent course and turned it into a nightmare.

In other words, using this book made the course WORSE; made the students understand LESS than they would have without it; and helped produce another generation of future systems analysts and project managers who don't know what they are doing, will cost businesses millions of dollars in failed projects, and will make life a living hell for those who will work with them.

The only favor that the authors do for students is warn them on page 3 that this book requires you to already have a general knowledge of the subject matter, as provided in an introductory Information Systems course, before you start. This makes it clear to everyone that it is unsuitable as an introductory text - everyone except the instructors who keep using it as an introductory text for Information Systems courses, that is.

Before you jump to the conclusion that your humble reviewer is a 19-year-old slacker who is trying to C-minus his way through Komputer Kollege because his parents said "Either go to college, get a job, or move out of our basement", a bit of biographical info:

I am a 45 year old male human who is changing careers due to the horrible economy. I've owned my own business for 23 years, and have been geeking with computers for almost as long. I will end up with either an A or A-minus in this course, to go with the rest of my A grades. If I get an A-minus instead of an A, it will be due to tests based on bits of trivia in this book; trivia that was buried under thousands of superfluous words.

Back to the book...


There are several problems with the book, starting with the authors (yes, plural - it took three authors to pen this steaming mound of detritus) forgetting who their audience was. The book is written by people who know the subject matter, *for* people who know the subject matter. It's clear that the authors NEVER handed their book to a fairly bright potential student and asked him or her "Does this make sense to you?"

This explains why previous versions of the book have reviews from students who call it crap, and instructors who think it's just fine, and that the students are just lazy and stupid.


The second problem is the writing itself. The authors seem to live by a simple motto: "Never say in ten clear, simple words what you can say in 1500 impressively large words, strung together in a convoluted jumble of thoughts." I believe, in the bottom of my heart, that they were told by the publisher to make the book thicker, so they could justify charging $160 for it.


Problem 3: The layout of the book. Without seeing any previous versions, I would be willing to bet that the first edition of this book was sent directly to press from WordPerfect 5.1 (1992 technology, and not meant for Desktop Publishing), and the basic layout hasn't changed since. Tables and graphics are inserted in a nearly random fashion. Fonts used, line spacing, kerning and justification just scream "I was done on an old word processor."

The layout issue is not just one of how pretty the book is, it's a matter of readability. This book will HURT YOUR EYES as much as it will hurt your brain. A few examples of how it will hurt your eyes:

The font used in tables is too lightweight to be read by anyone over 20, and to compound the problem it's printed in grey rather than black. The labeling and text in most of the graphics are also tiny and, due to bad color choices, are even harder to read. The line spacing and column width changes from the start of a chapter to the inner pages, and the columns are too wide in any case. Full justification makes the whole book hard to read.

The authors win an Irony Award on page 258, in a section on "Designing the Human Interface." There are five "guidelines for displaying text" in a table on that page, that apply to printed materials as well as computer screens. After listing those five rules, they break three of them in the next two paragraphs, and break four of the five throughout the book.

It is particularly chuckle-worthy that in their admonishment to avoid hyphenation, the word "hyphenate" is itself hyphenated. Good going, guys. Alanis Morisette would be proud. Damn shame you don't take your own advice.


Problem 4: The graphics, tables, and diagrams scattered haphazardly throughout the book. If you happen to have a copy of the book, already opened to page 258 so you could marvel at the craptastic layout, look at the graphic at the bottom of the page. Congratulations, you are looking at one of the few clear, useful graphics in the book.

Now flip to pages 174-175. QUICK! What's that mammoth diagram all about?

Flip to 171. QUICK! Which diagram shows the correct way, and which shows the wrong way?

Try page 60, Figure 3-13. How long do you have to stare at that before it makes any sense?

Let's go all the way back to page 5, figure 1-3. Why are there double-ended arrows connecting the three little word-bubbles? (Answer: Because they made a worthless graphic from a template in PowerPoint.) How about page 6? What the hell is that? What does it mean?

These pages and graphics were chosen at random, by the way. It wasn't difficult to find 5 crappy graphics. I just had to flip to five different pages with graphics on them.


Problem 5: The authors suffer from a slavish devotion to the SDLC, which is their chosen development model. It is outdated, and applies only to software development in the real world, yet it is applied (with a hammer when necessary) to all manner of projects in a typical course in project management or systems design.


Problem 5.5: Since the authors' favorite model is the SDLC, you'd think that they would diagram it completely at least once in the text. They do not. The representations of the SDLC are always the same ridiculous circular diagram (because, y'know, projects never really END, do they?)

Not once in the 400+ pages of the book do they list all phases and steps in the SDLC in one place, nor do they explain what the SDLC is. On the latter point, they almost come close once, in the glossary. "The series of steps used to mark the phases of development for an information system." A better definition would be "A filing cabinet to organize the steps you have to do to develop an information system."

On the former point, hey guys, ever heard of an outline? How hard would *this* be?

SDLC:

Planning and Selection (Project Initiation)
- Project Identification and Selection
- Project Initiation and Planning

Analysis (Project Planning)
- Requirements Determination
- Requirements Structuring

Design (Project Execution)
- Designing the Human Interface
- Designing Databases

Implementation and Operation (Project Closedown)
- Coding
- Testing
- Installation
- Documentation
- Training
- Support
- Maintenance


There are more problems, but I'm not going to be an unpaid editor for the fifth edition of this foul and rancid book.


Advice to instructors: Find another book. I know it's a boring subject and there is a dearth of good material on it, but making your students pay top-dollar for this tripe is adding insult to injury.


Advice to students: If you see this book, RUN AWAY! RUN AWAY! Quickly before it burns your eyes!


Advice to insomniacs: Buy a copy. Helluva lot cheaper long-term than Ambien.


Advice to the authors:

1. Hang your heads in shame for making a bunch of students who would make excellent project managers think they're too stupid to do it, and pushing them to abandon a career path that might appeal to them if not for your book.

2. My college offers an online writing course for under $400. Take it. Respond to this review with an email address if you want the info.

3. Farm out the graphics and layout to professionals, you're not good at it.

Good coverage of major concepts
The book is short, 432 pages. But it does cover the foundations of systems development, systems planning and selection, systems analysis, systems design, and systems implementation operation.
With only 10 chapters, it is fine for a course in the undergraduate curriculum.

Case problems are continuing one chapter after another.It will be better if each chapter has a case by itself.

Essentials of System Analysis and Design (4th Edition)
I am satisfied with the book I received. I bought it used and was very impressed with the final product, it looked very new to me. Delivery was timely. I highly recommend it. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Hugh, mixing his profession and his hobby, well!
I knew Hugh Aitken through the 1970's when we both lived in Amherst, Mass -- he a professor of economic history at Amherst College , and I a business student at UMassAmherst -- connected by our shared hobby of amateur radio.

I lost track of him when I left Amherst, and only 20+ years later did I stumble upon this book in the stacks at UConn.I found him again via email, and learned that creation of this book on sebatical, had been a dream of his, to make use of his considerable talent as an economic historian, and his love of radio through our hobby.

I'm not equipped to judge this book against others of tech history (maybe someday in retirement!), but I can relay to the reader, the pure joy that Hugh got from creating this book.For those who want to continue the story where this leaves off, Hugh's "part 2" -- The Continuous Wave -- continues the story well into the 20th century.Less magic, more detail.

Maybe it's great for historians..
I inherited a copy of this book and, being a fan of the history of technology, looked forward to at least poking a bit.Now, I am pretty much what some historians and scholars condemn as a nuts-and-bolts sort of person, an engineer, even.That's probably why the introduction, which is a very long argument about the philosophy of invention and the concept of bandwidth, began to make my mind wander about the fourth page.The author even gives a warning about this, which I should have heeded; and I should have understood that this book is far more devoted to matters like patent priorities and revelations of communication between workers in a very important field.

It is clear from the introduction that the author is a historian of great note, and that he has given the matter at hand a lot of thought and a great deal of effort.

But the rest of the book isn't much better.If the author is truly interested in the principles of radio, it isn't obvious.Every so often he breaks through with an insight that's somewhat interesting and then settles back into the philosophy of 'syntony' and why it's a word that we ought to be using instead of 'resonance,' or'tuning,' or whatever.

The illustrations are poor; mostly patent drawings that were made long before there were anything resembling standard symbols.This is understandable, but the lack of any translation into conventional circuit symbols is not.

The organization of the book is generally wretched.

Now, part of the difficulty is that this book is based on the history and philosophy of science, a discipline which typically endeavors to exclude technical applications, aka engineering.That is presumably why it's more concerned with patent disputes than the development of radio circuitry, and I suppose that these are interesting to anyone fascinated with the fact that scientists might get into squabbles like anyone else.

But I'm not entirely sure that the author understands the fact that identical inventions often appear simultaneously from inventors operating entirely independently, and I also don't believe that he understands that most scientists, inventors and engineers are generally more interested in the progress made by others in fields that they love than in fighting for priority in court.There is some of the latter, but not as much as laypeople would like to think.

Like many important technologies, radio was invented several times over by many different people who came upon the basic principles about at the same time.Anyone who wishes to assume that this indicates the theft of ideas is welcome to do so, but what really happened is that technology was at a point where 'second order' electrical effects were starting to noticed and examined.A 'first order' effect would be ohmic heating and electromagnetism. A 'second order' effect would be behavior and external effects of arcs formed by currents through inductances, the energy storage available in capacitors, and the effects of inductance and capacitance in the same circuit.Hertz realized arcs applied through resonant circuits produced a form of electromagnetic radiation akin to light, (and if the authors had discussed Hertz' work with a few illustrations and technical details it wouldn't have hurt a bit.)

As telegraph systems grew in size and the technical crews grew in sophistication, a lot was learned about induced currents and cross-talk.Tesla became interested in resonant phenomena and did some of the groundwork in this field.

And then, just about at the end of the 19th century, it all came together, and a number of inventors figured out radio at the same time.Ideas might have been stolen outright, but for the most part scientists like to talk to each other and share what they've found.And even a stolen idea is useless unless it's presented to someone already thoroughly experienced in the field.

As for Mr Marconi, his principal sin is that he had the wit to take the technology and run with it.While his work was undoubtedly influenced by the work of others--as that of others was influenced by his--there is no doubt that he understood the principles and applications of radio and that his research was both valid and valuable.The fact that he made a lot of money with it is not important except to the extent that his success helped to drive further work in the field.

Be it known that I may change my opinion of this book on future readings if I can talk myself into making the effort.But the late gentleman from whose library this book came from was an avid reader of technical material, and I found between its pages several articles--one an exchange of letters between readers of the IEEE _Spectrum_--that helped me recall what good technical writing, and good historical technical writing, is like.

Mark Kinsler

The Marconi Monopoly and the Development of Modern Radio
The book chronicles the role of the Marconi monopoly on the development of modern radio and the struggle of Oliver Lodge to promote a superior technology in the face of technology shortfalls and entrenched commercial interests. I found it interesting because Marconi is the prototype oftodays tecchie entrepreneur and franchiser who will atempt to enlist finaciers, regulators and the legal system to establish a monopoly to minimize the risks and maximize the returns of introducing a new technology.

In Marconi's case the franchise was radio contact with ships at sea, which was a critical element to the success of Great Britain's commercial empire. radio rooms on board commercial vessels were marconi franchises.

Eventually the Marconi monopoly was broken by congestion of the airwaves through broadcasts from broad spectrum spark transmitters (his technology)and the invention of the audion by Lee de Forest which finally allowed implemantation of the syntony concept (tuned circuits) promoted by Lodge. US trustbusters may have played a role as well.

Note also the role of David Sarnoff, the founder of Radio Corporation of America who was the first to receive the distress signal from a Marconi franchise on board the Titanic and who played a critical role in the commercialization of the audion, another struggle that is woth its own story.

It also shows how mMrconi exploited the ideas of Heinrich Hertz who without a promoter, never profited from the intellectual property he developed.

It is ironic the Marconi got a Nobel Prize for Physics for his business acumen.

In short a fascinating read.

For those interested in these struggles, the accounts of Farnsworth's role in the commercialization of television, and the struggle between Fleming, I believe the inventor of FM broadcaststing, both of which involved the Radio Corporation of America, itself a monopolistic Marconi competitor, are also interesting. ... Read more

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A scholarly, comprehensive performance edition of the Angelo Michele Bartolotti suites from the publication "Secondo Libro Di Chitarra of 1655".Included are chapters on the "transcription process", "13 Suites from Secondo Libro Di Chitarra" scored for guitar solo, and facsimile reproductions of the original tablatures.This is a historic edition which should augment any guitarist's library. ... Read more

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This digital document is an article from Environmental Health Perspectives, published by National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences on October 1, 2004. The length of the article is 7001 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Statistical methods for linking health, exposure, and hazards.(Public Health Tracking / Mini-Monograph)
Author: Frances Jean Mather
Publication: Environmental Health Perspectives (Magazine/Journal)
Date: October 1, 2004
Publisher: National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences
Volume: 112Issue: 14Page: 1440(6)

Distributed by Thomson Gale ... Read more

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Recent critiques of air quality management approaches currently employed in developed and many developing countries have suggested that efficiencies could be achieved if air quality management practices shifted from pollutant-by-pollutant approaches to a comprehensive multipollutant approach in which emission reduction decisions are based on relative risk and evaluated on their effectiveness in meeting environmental and health goals.This bookassesses our technical readiness to undertake such an approach, and it outlines the technical developments that will be needed to achieve a risk-based approach air quality management that includes means for measuring the effectiveness of management decisions. ... Read more

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Product DescriptionWritten Primarily for undergraduates in CIS and MIS programs. This briefer text is particularly appropriate for SAD courses where a streamlined approach is necessary due to lab assignments, projects, contact time, and/or outside reading requirements.From the Inside FlapPreface Our ApproachIn today's information and technology-driven business world, students need to be aware of three key factors. First, it is more crucial than ever to know how to organize and access information strategically. Second, success often depends on the ability to work as part of a team. Third, the Internet will play an important part in their work lives. We developed Essentials of Systems Analysis and Design to address these key factors.We have over 40 years' combined teaching experience in systems analysis and design and have used that experience to create Essentials of Systems Analysis and Design, a text that emphasizes hands-on, experimental learning. We provide a clear presentation of the concepts, skills, and techniques students need to become effective systems analysts who work with others to create information systems for businesses. We use the systems development life cycle model as an organizing tool throughout the book to provide students with a strong conceptual and systematic framework.Internet coverage is provided in each chapter via an integrated, extended illustrative case (Pine Valley WebStore), an end-of-chapter case (Broadway Entertainment Company, Inc.), and a margin feature (Net Search). ... Read more

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In this book Jeffrey P. Davidson shows entrepreneurs how to penetrate the huge corporate market and begin filling the needs of the nation's most lucrative accounts. "Selling to the Giants" is the culmination of a three-year study involving surveys of Fortune 500 purchasing agents, reviews of effective corporate-sponsored small business procurement programmes, and analysis of marketing techniques used by vendors who consistently sell to large corporations. The work aims to provide a guide to developing profitable, long term business relationships within the corporate world. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Practical and Sensible advice...
Although it provides lots of practical and sensible tips and advice, this book is old so many of the examples in there refer to the early '90s. Since then competition has improved the performance of most suppliers to large corporations. Large corporations have also changed in their requirements of their suppliers. So read this book with that in mind.

Overall though, it is a good start... ... Read more

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Title: A Practical Handbook on Sheep and Wool for the Farmer, With Which Is Incorporated Professor Perkins' Report in 1906 on the Sheep at the Roseworthy Agricultural College FarmPublisher: Adelaide, Printed by Vardon ... Read more