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Customer Reviews (13)

He Certainly Makes His Point
He provides an eye-opening definition of real collaboration, with many examples. He certainly proves the real power of open dialogue and sincere listening, as well as showing the inevitable failure when we do not truly yield ourselves to a sincere dialogue.

"Collaboration" and "Dialogue" are certainly buzzwords these days, and there is much form in that regard, but not as much substance as we need. That is, there is much pretending in the way of "collaboration" and "listening" to the opinions of others, but in reality the "listening" is a show. His discussion of "listening" throughout this book, what it is and what it is not, is the bright spot in my opinion. There is a false way of listening that may appear as sincere as the real, but it's not, and it's not helpful. I also really like his statement that "The root of not listening is knowing.", or thinking you know. I can't count the number of times I have seen this happen, and how many times I have been guilty of it myself. When you think you know, you stop seeking and you are incapable of seeing the truth, even when it is right in front of you. It is self-deception of the highest order. "Being and expert is a severe impediment to listening and learning."


He shows the prerequisites for a successful collaboration and the astounding results that can be achieved. He advocates convincingly for a new approach to the toughest problems we face. I have been seeing this approach emphasized in other items I have been reading as well.

It was not his purpose, but I can't help but wish he would given us more technical details on his scenario building work, as well as more details on how to structure and facilitate the "dialogue" meetings he advocates. Don't let the use of the phrase "new realities" make you pause, it is not an expression of naive idealism, rather, it is his way of saying what can be achieved versus the ineveitable failure we have and will experience if we keep using the same failed approaches we have always used. You can't accuse him of being naive and unrealistic when everything he discusses is documented reality and in which he was a direct participant.

As I said, he accomplished his purpose with flying colors, I just wish his purpose was a little broader.

Solving Tough Problems
The book confirmed some concepts from other readings I have completed but overall it was a disappointment. The concepts were not completed in a manner which I found helpful and the key concepts were to my view lost in meaningless verbage.

I have recommended the book to others though as a starting point to grasp the concepts of dialogue and using scenario planning.

Listening and generative dialogue
Adam Kahane (2004) said that a friend of his told him that the old "1960s slogan `If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem' actually misses the most important about effecting change.The slogan should be, he said, `If you're not part of the problem, you can't be part of the solution.'If we cannot see how what we are doing or not doing is contributing to things being the way that they are, then logically we have no basis at all, zero leverage, for changing the ways things are--except from the outside, by persuasion or force" (pp. 83-84).

Any problem is part of a system, in other words, and if we are experiencing the problem, then we must, by definition, be a part of the problem.This book explores this concept and provides many tools and examples to help resolve conflict through deep listening and generative dialogue.

Enables deeper connections across communities
Mr. Kahane's book is the tip of the iceberg - a great start for someone looking for reflective practice that provides the skills and methods for addressing difficult challenges - individually and organizationally.The perspectives in Solving Tough Problems are from the heart, and present a valuable contribution to the growing awareness of how social technologies can provide containers for creating new realities...definitely recommended!

Jerry's review on Solving Tough Problems
At last! An easy to read book true to Bohm's vision of dialogue that will begin moving the subject from an esoteric phenomenon to a practice attainable by many.This book should not be considered as a primer on dialogue that could replace works such as "On Dialogue" or "dialogue, the art and practice of thinking together", rather it presents the author's experience in practical application of many of the concepts and principles discussed in those earlier works. ... Read more

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The progress of science and technology has placed Queueing Theory among the most popular disciplines in applied mathematics, operations research, and engineering. Although queueing has been on the scientific market since the beginning of this century, it is still rapidly expanding by capturing new areas in technology. Advances in Queueing provides a comprehensive overview of problems in this enormous area of science and focuses on the most significant methods recently developed.Written by a team of 24 eminent scientists, the book examines stochastic, analytic, and generic methods such as approximations, estimates and bounds, and simulation. The first chapter presents an overview of classical queueing methods from the birth of queues to the seventies. It also contains the most comprehensive bibliography of books on queueing and telecommunications to date. Each of the following chapters surveys recent methods applied to classes of queueing systems and networks followed by a discussion of open problems and future research directions.Advances in Queueing is a practical reference that allows the reader quick access to the latest methods. ... Read more

Product Description
Extending and generalizing the results of rational equations,

Dynamics of Third Order Rational Difference Equations with Open Problems and Conjectures focuses on the boundedness nature of solutions, the global stability of equilibrium points, the periodic character of solutions, and the convergence to periodic solutions, including their periodic trichotomies. The book also provides numerous thought-provoking open problems and conjectures on the boundedness character, global stability, and periodic behavior of solutions of rational difference equations.

After introducing several basic definitions and general results, the authors examine 135 special cases of rational difference equations that have only bounded solutions and the equations that have unbounded solutions in some range of their parameters. They then explore the seven known nonlinear periodic trichotomies of third order rational difference equations. The main part of the book presents the known results of each of the 225 special cases of third order rational difference equations. In addition, the appendices supply tables that feature important information on these cases as well as on the boundedness character of all fourth order rational difference equations.

A Framework for Future Research

The theory and techniques developed in this book to understand the dynamics of rational difference equations will be useful in analyzing the equations in any mathematical model that involves difference equations. Moreover, the stimulating conjectures will promote future investigations in this fascinating, yet surprisingly little known area of research. ... Read more

Product Description
Ninety percent of companies in the United States qualify as small businesses. Every day these employers have to deal with common computing problems, such as tracking electronic documents, scheduling, accounting functions, managing contact lists, and reducing spam. Many expensive software products are available to help solve these problems, but they often have features small businesses don’t need (or are missing the ones they do). Open source software presents easy-to-implement solutions at a fraction of the cost. Unfortunately, these solutions are relatively unknown to most small businesses.

Open Source Solutions for Small Business Problems explores operational problems most small businesses share. It identifies good open source software that can help businesses solve these problems, and compares them to their proprietary counterparts. The strengths and weaknesses of the open source packages are discussed, and additional information is included on how to integrate open source with existing proprietary systems to achieve specific goals. This is the perfect reference for the tech professional looking for help choosing and understanding excellent open source software to deploy in a business setting, as well as for small business proprietors interested in streamlining their business problems using computer-based solutions.

KEY FEATURES
* Teaches small business how to use open source to solve common computing problems such as scheduling, reducing spam, setting up e-mail, and tracking electronic documents using open source software
* Compares open source business software with their proprietary counterparts and examines the strengths and weaknesses of each
* Explores fundamental security issues and how to utilize open source technologies to keep data and servers safe from attack

On the CD!
* The Open CD v. 1.2 - An open source project that provides an array of high-quality Open Source Software for Windows (including OpenOffice.org 1.1.0, Mozilla 1.5, The GIMP 1.2.5, and AbiWord 2.0.1), along with essays and a short video about open source
* Mozilla Thunderbird 0.5 - An open source stand alone e-mail client
* Mozilla Firefox - 0.8 An open source stand along Web browser
* TortoiseSVN 1.0.3 - A Subversion client that can provide a standalone repository

SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS
Windows 98, Windows 2000, or later. Most applications will work in Windows NT 4.0; Pentium 233 MHz (Recommended 500 MHz or greater); at least 64 MB of RAM; 500 MB of hard drive space to install everything. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

good but out of date
The idea is very good, but every 6 months you might have something better, a better open source CRM .... so if you search on the internet you will get better content than the book

Provides a range of software for Windows
Ninety percent of companies in America quality as small businesses but have to deal with large-business headaches ranging from common computer programs, to management issues, to reducing spam. Consultant John Locke's Open Source Solutions For Small Business Problems is the key to understanding the operational problems most small businesses share; from identifying good open source software for solutions to these issues to understanding their strengths and weaknesses. Volume 1.2 of an accompanying 'Open CD' provides a range of software for Windows, essays, and a short video about open source issues, and will run on Windows 98 operating systems on up. An invaluable small business reference for any who use a computer to run operations.

Required for businesses considering switching to Linux
In the world of open source there is a plethora of books on installing and administering Linux.There are also many technical books available on setting up a web server or other specific areas of Linux.This book fills a very broad gap for the non-technical person who wants to know about open source products and how they can be beneficial to your needs.This is not a technical manual but a guide that gives a higher-level view of what the software can do and how to use it.

It includes information on obtaining and installing Mandrake Linux (but no troubleshooting if you have a problem), setting up an office network, setting up an email server, setting up a web server, customer relationship management, calendar and schedule management, document management, accounting, project management, security, and just about everything you need to know to setup and run your business on an open source solution.

Perhaps the best way to provide an indication of this book's perspective is to look at a specific chapter.One of the best ones for this purpose is the one on setting up a web server.The first thing addressed is why you need a web server in the first place.This is followed by an examination of the most common open source web server - Apache.It then provides enough information to understand some of the basics of configuration.This allows you to understand what the configuration files do and get a server up and running, but not enough information to actually configure a secure server.

So, what makes this book so unique that I would recommend it to anyone?It meets the needs of the manager in that it is general enough that someone who has no knowledge of Linux can understand what is going on and what to expect of an installation.Yet it also meets the needs of the technical Linux user who understands the details of all the configuration files but often does not have an overall view of what the complete system is supposed to do.For example, it gives a short conceptual view of Perl that is sufficient to let the reader know if it is something that they could use but provides no information on how to program it.Then again, there are many, many books on Perl programming available.

"Open Source Solutions for Small Business Problems" is a very highly recommended book for anyone who is looking at the open source market and particularly anyone considering Linux as an operating system of choice either on the desktop or as a server.This is easily one of the best Linux books of the year; providing a management level view of the Linux world without the technical focus of other books.

A unique mix of business and technical information...
I just finished a rather interesting and different book on Open Source Software.The title is Open Source Solutions for Small Business Problems by John Locke (Charles River Media).The author contacted me and asked if I'd like to review the book, and I accepted.Since this is an area which is grabbing more of my interest these days, it was helpful in many ways...

First, the chapter layout:
Part 1 - Small Business Computing Infrastructure - Open Source Software in Your Small Business; Why You Need A Server; Setting Up Your Office Network; Open Source on the Desktop; Setting Up an Email Server; Setting Up a Web Server
Part 2 - Computing Your Business Operations - Customer Relationship Management; Calendar and Schedule Management; Document Management; Financial Management; Managing Resources, Schedules, and Projects
Part 3 - Extending Your Business With Open Source - Sharing Information with Your Partners; Marketing Your Message; Connect from Offsite; Providing Private Communications
Part 4 - Keeping Your Network Secure and Intact - Securing Business Data; Network Security in a Wireless World; Disaster Recovery; Viruses and Spam
Appendices - The Open Source Definition; Basics Of Networking; Common Open Source Licenses

When I first started reading it, I was expecting something non-technical in nature, something that would be targeted for the average business owner that knows s/he wants to spend less on software and is looking for alternatives.And to be sure, the book does deliver to that group.But there are also chapters (or areas within each chapter) where the content gets pretty technical.For instance, the detail on how to set up a web server isn't for the person who simply wants to turn on their computer and go.These areas are going to appeal to the in-house technical support person who's been charged with making it all work.While you could (and probably should) find whole books on many of these topics, there's enough detail to get you started in the right direction.

I think Part 2 is extremely valuable, in that it helps both the business owner and the techie figure out what's available in terms of open source alternatives to the typical business software.You learn about OpenOffice.org as a replacement to Microsoft's Office.You learn about MySQL as an alternative to Microsoft Access or many other more expensive relational database systems.You'd be able to find all this out if you dug around on the web long enough, but the author packages up the information in a single location and helps you start to understand what's available for you.

There's also a CD in the back of the book that contains many of the open source packages discussed in the book.Being that these packages move pretty quickly as far as release cycles go, I think I'd prefer visit the web site for the specific package and download the latest.Still, if you're wanting something quick, you'll have it on the CD.

At first, the mix of technical and non-technical content in each chapter didn't quite set right.I wanted the book to target one or the other.But the longer I read, the more I liked the fact that the book could serve as a single volume to allow both the tech and non-tech sides of a business to come together on common ground.The non-techies can ignore the parts that are over their heads, but still understand the possibilities.The techies will understand where the business is coming from, and will get a good start on implementing the software.As a result, I give this book high marks for anyone wanting to some or all of their business computing to an open source model. ... Read more

Product Description
System and Control Theory is one of the most exciting areas of contemporary engineering mathematics. From the analysis of Watt's steam engine governor - which enabled the Industrial Revolution - to the design of controllers for consumer items, chemical plants and modern aircraft, the area has always drawn from a broad range of tools. It has provided many challenges and possibilities for interaction between engineering and established areas of 'pure' and 'applied' mathematics. This impressive volume collects a discussion of more than fifty open problems which touch upon a variety of subfields, including: chaotic observers, nonlinear local controllability, discrete event and hybrid systems, neural network learning, matrix inequalities, Lyapunov exponents, and many other issues. Proposed and explained by leading researchers, they are offered with the intention of generating further work, as well as inspiration for many other similar problems which may naturally arise from them. With extensive references, this book will be a useful reference source - as well as an excellent addendum to the textbooks in the area. ... Read more

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This book focuses on several major, open questions in thetheory of anomalous metals with correlated electrons, complementingtheoretical advances with the latest experimental results on relatedmaterials, all presented by leaders in the field. The main emphasis ison the physics of cuprates and high temperature superconductors,charge- and spin-ordering and fluctuations, manganites and colossalmagnetoresistance, low-dimensional systems and transport, Mott-Hubbardtransition and infinite dimensional systems, and the quantum Halleffect. ... Read more

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Open Learning Units offer a very flexible approach to the teaching of psychology. They are designed to be more than sufficient for the purposes of A/S and A-Level psychology, and the applied emphasis will appeal to various vocational courses such as those offered by BTEC and also to mature students on Access courses.
Their primary use will be in the classroom with a tutor's guidance, but the interactive style makes them equally appropriate for the purposes of self-study. More advanced students might want to use the Units to learn at their own pace, and in all cases, the careful structure of the writing and the extensive use of Examples, Open Questions and Self-Assessment Questions make them ideal revision guides. ... Read more

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In this largely antimetaphysical treatment of free will and determinism, Mark Balaguer argues that the philosophical problem of free will boils down to an open scientific question about the causal histories of certain kinds of neural events. In the course of his argument, Balaguer provides a naturalistic defense of the libertarian view of free will.

Balaguer claims that the compatibilism debate (the question of whether free will is compatible with determinism) is essentially irrelevant to metaphysical questions about the nature of human freedom, most notably "Do humans have free will?" Likewise, the questions "What is free will?" and "Which kinds of freedom are required for moral responsibility?" are argued to be irrelevant to substantive questions about the metaphysics of human free will. The metaphysical component of the problem of free will, Balaguer argues, essentially boils down to the question of whether humans possess libertarian free will. Furthermore, he argues that, contrary to the traditional wisdom, the libertarian question reduces to a question about indeterminacy—in particular, to a straightforward empirical question about whether certain neural events in our heads are causally undetermined in a certain specific way. In other words, Balaguer argues that the right kind of indeterminacy would bring with it all of the other requirements for libertarian free will. Finally, he argues that because there is no good evidence as to whether or not the relevant neural events are undetermined in the way that's required, the question of whether human beings possess libertarian free will is a wide-open empirical question.

A Bradford Book ... Read more

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This book discusses problems of scientific methodology, including the nature of scientific reasoning, experimentation, evidence, theory-change, and controversy in science. The essays examine methodological issues involved in various episodes in the history of science from Newtonian physics in the 17th and 18th centuries to quantum mechanics in the 20th century. The book is of interest to those working in the history and philosophy of science. It is accessible to non-specialists as well. ... Read more

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An up-to-date, in-depth treatment of the major current issues, theories and findings. It introduces a representative selection of different research methods and the reader is encouraged, by means of activities and self-assessment questions, to become an active participant in cognitive psychology. In particular, the student is introduced to problem solving by working through actual problems and so is able to test and develop theoretical frameworks by "hands on" experience. The first edition of this book established itself as an innovative and accessible introduction to problem solving. This second edition has been extensively rewritten to take account of the latest research developments in the subject.The first of three main parts considers the analysis of problem structures and the strategies used in solving problems, exploring the concept of humans as active processors of information. This leads, in the second part, to an examination of the role of previous experience in solving (new) problems, and of the use of computers to model the processes involved in problem solving and learning. The final part looks at recent research on "intelligence" by cognitive psychologists.The processes underlying behaviour on a subset of intellgence-test tasks are examined and the question of whether or not intelligence can be trained is explored - in particular whether training on particular intelligence-test tasks generalizes to different situations, such as classroom performance. ... Read more

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While astrophysical jets have begun to reveal their mysteries, many basic aspects of jets have not yet been fully explained. This volume offers contributions by distinguished researchers who present the latest results of their inquiries into these open problems in the study of jets. Featuring discussions relating to stellar and galactic jets, their origin, propagation and termination, this volume provides a comprehensive overview of the state of the art in this fascinating area of study. It is an essential reference for researchers and graduate students in such fields as magnetohydrodynamics, active galactic nuclei, quasars and star formation. ... Read more

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This self-contained monograph provides systematic, instructive analysis ofsecond-order rational difference equations. After classifying the various types of these equations and introducing some preliminary results, the authors systematically investigate each equation for semicycles, invariant intervals, boundedness, periodicity, and global stability. Of paramount importance in their own right, the results presented also offer prototypes towards the development of the basic theory of the global behavior of solutions of nonlinear difference equations of order greater than one. The techniques and results in this monograph are also extremely useful in analyzing the equations in the mathematical models of various biological systems and other applications. Each chapter contains a section of open problems and conjectures that will stimulate further research interest in working towards a complete understanding of the dynamics of the equation and its functional generalizations-many of them ideal for research projects or Ph.D. theses. Clear, simple, and direct exposition combined with thoughtful uniformity in the presentation make Dynamics of Second Order Rational Difference Equations valuable as an advanced undergraduate or a graduate-level text, a reference for researchers, and as a supplement to every textbook on difference equations at all levels of instruction.Amazon.com Review
Reference, supplement, and textbook, this volume hits the trifecta of mathematical publishing. Careful analyses of second-order rational difference equations precede a discussion of potential global solutions and reams of thorny problems crying out for work. --Rob Lightner ... Read more

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Originally published in 1922.This volume from the Cornell University Library's print collections was scanned on an APT BookScan and converted to JPG 2000 format by Kirtas Technologies.All titles scanned cover to cover and pages may include marks notations and other marginalia present in the original volume. ... Read more

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This work consists of 15 articles, each of which is an introduction to a set of open research problems in Lie theory. The unifying theme is "positivity", which means ordering on the level of manifolds, semigroups on the level of groups, and cones on the level of linear spaces and Lie algebras. The topics range from geometric and algebraic structure theory through harmonic analysis, representation theory as far as control theory and probability. A characteristic feature of the field called "Positivity in Lie Theory" is that notions of positivity in Lie theory occur in quite diverse settings, are motivated by a wide variety of problems and applications, and are approached from quite varying mathematical viewpoints. While this diversity is attractive for the specialists, it is often difficult for newcomers to the field to see the relation between the various aspects and to pick the right problems. The editors of this book have tried to put together a collection of problems with commentary that would serve as an invitation and a guide to the field. The problem described in this book primarily reflect recent developments.The intensive work during the 80s on the structure of subsemigroups of Lie groups as well as semigroup closures of linear algebraic groups laid the foundation for more specialized and application-oriented research conducted in recent years. New results on structure theory of Lie semigroups and causal spaces are now usually motivated by and obtained in the context of either control theory, harmonic analysis or representation theory. ... Read more