Bluffer's Guide to Computers: Bluff Your Way in Computers - Softcover

Ainsley, Robert

 
9781902825885: Bluffer's Guide to Computers: Bluff Your Way in Computers

Inhaltsangabe

A snappy little book containing facts, jargon, and inside information--all that readers need to know to hold their own among the experts.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

The co-authors of this book met while working for ground-breaking computer magazines. Once at the cutting edge, they have long been superseded by younger rivals. The authors that is. Most of the magazines are still going strong.

Alexander Rae is a world-weary Glaswegian ex-journalist, with a wife and two violent teenagers. His age is 29, but only in hex. After years as a PR executive for a multinational industrial conglomerate, he now bluffs professionally in his own computer training, public relations and freelance writing business (he has a very short concentration span).

Rob Ainsley version 1 was a mathematics package which Oxford's tutors found never worked properly. Ainsley 2, from the mid-1980s, was a utility for teaching English in Japan, but was prone to crashing, usually in karaoke bars after being bought beer all night. In 1987 version 3 appeared, a suite of editing facilities. This went through v3.1 (8000 Plus), v3.2 (New Computer Express) and v3.3 (Classic CD, a music monthly) and had the advantage of being cheap.

In 1995 came a new on-line incarnation, Rob 4.0, handling web sites for classical music and his home town of Bath. Like Microsoft Word, the newer versions of Rob have proved expensive and overloaded with impressive but useless features. Version 5 is promised to put all these problems right, but like all new software, the release date keeps being moved back.

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The truth is that everyone who talks about computers, however confident they seem at a party, is bluffing to a greater or lesser extent. Except Microsoft chairman Bill Gates, of course, who is the one person who does understand everything. But as he is a multi-billionaire, you are unlikely to meet him at a party.
The purpose of this book is to enable you to bluff to the greatest extent possible with the minimum amount of knowledge needed to impress and influence people, cunningly deployed for maximum effect.
Bluffer's Guides is a series of snappy little books containing facts, jargon, and all you need to know for instant expertise.

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The Bluffer's Guide to Computers

By Ainsley, Robert

Oval Books

Copyright © 1999 Ainsley, Robert
All right reserved.

ISBN: 1902825888
Computer manuals
Reading the average computer manual, you realise that the industry has been infiltrated at the highest levels by world-class bluffers. If others believe you understand them, your reputation is assured forever.

PC power
Increased computer power is not harnessed to make computers work faster. It is used to make them easier and more foolproof. Programmers now make software so intuitive that it is possible to sneeze on your keyboard and discover you have worked out your expenses for last month.

Technical questions
Your 'detailed' knowledge of computers may lead someone to ask you a technical question. Never be worried about these; the fact that they ask means they would not understand the answer anyway.

Random memory
The term 'memory' refers to RAM (random access or working memory) - the area of the computer where it works out all its sums. Switch off the electricity and it immediately forgets everything in there - rather different from human memory where it takes the infusion of 10 or 12 pints of beer to do the same thing.

Word processing
Any word-processing program will give you anything up to 36 different ways of opening a file and 79 ways of emboldening text. (This is to make it compatible with the commands for every other word processor ever written, including some that only sold three copies in Lithuania.)


Continues...
Excerpted from The Bluffer's Guide to Computersby Ainsley, Robert Copyright © 1999 by Ainsley, Robert. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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9781903096406: The Bluffer's Guide to Computers: Bluff Your Way in Computers (The Bluffer's Guide Series)

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ISBN 10:  1903096405 ISBN 13:  9781903096406
Verlag: Oval Books, 2004
Softcover