after reading ridiculous, made up story of british SAS, hiding under alias “Andy McNab”, trying to tell his version of Rambo&Commando-style fictious account of Iraq operation i couldn’t find story that was so exaggerated and made-up. in reality, his total ineffectual commanding style and bravado led to death one of his own team members, and injuries as well as captivity for rest of them. that was independently verified by Michael Asher and Peter Ratcliffe. ...
…a book by Steve Davies is a very interesting coverage of USA pilots testing Russian Soviet-era MiG 15s, 17s, 19s, 21s and 23s at Tonopah range. the same that was used to test Lockheed F-117 and launch to simulated sorties with F-4, F-14, F-15, F-16 and F-18s coming in from Nellis AFB as part of Top Gun training. there’s next book on the same topic waiting for me in stack. recently, i was digging through a lot of air combat material, mainly because of getting hold of Osprey Combat Aircraft series. that included Vietnam-era series on MiG-17/19/21s, on F-14 in Iraqi Freedom and Enduring Freedom, F-15C, F-15E and F-117 during Desert Storm and SR-71 operating over Europe and middle East. on top of that, i recently read Skunk Works by Leo Janos, Flying the A-10 in the Gulf War and Flying the F-15E in the Gulf War. i highly discourage you for even trying to get hold of “Bandits Over Baghdad”. it contains a lot of errors, wrongly described photos and it seems - a lot of other content from both Skunk Works and F-117 books. ...
…how tightly coupled should it be? i can’t help to think about it. i’m writing this post on construction that was defended to his last days by Steve Jobs. according to his belief, only software tightly integrated with software can be effective and predictable. independently of what Steve believed, there are other examples of such thinking in the world. let’s take for an example company i work for - Cisco. most of our solutions are based on software integrated with hardware without ability to add questionable “apps” to the mix. only then vendor can claim predictability, and so it happens across the whole market of network devices (and not only them). ...
I just finished reading two books of the author mentioned in the title of the post. Fermat’s Last Theorem Code Book highly recommend reading both of them during break from work :)
all interesting and worth reading. as usual during summer holidays i’ve tried to catch up with my reading queue - it’s been interesting two weeks: rework - great book for every company owner and destined for big things - previous version of the book - getting real can be read online managing humans - of Rands in Repose blog author; a lot of useful observations and tips for dealing with humans in IT world; you can however skip being geek - most of the content can be found either in ‘managing humans’ or in blog; Stephen Greys Operation Snakebite, Gregory Feifers The Great Gamble, Doug Beatties Task Force Helmand and finally Bing Wests No true Glory - bunch of good books about Iraq and Afghanistan; it’s unbelievable how people tend to make the same mistakes even when previous generations documented them very clearly; Metro 2033 and Metro 2034 - great reading, each of them took me just one day and night; Scott Berkuns Myths of Innovation - wonderful; Born standing Up - Steve Martins biography, tells compelling story about Steve himself, but also about world and America; Richard Wisemans 59 seconds - very practical book worth reading and applying to your daily routines - follow up can be found on You’re not so smart blog; well. now it is time to get back to OSPF and EIGRP. it seems i failed last CCDE exam :) ...
it was a rule some time ago, right now its rare luxury - to have time to sit down with book that’s not about networking and spend time reading it from start to finish. i got back to most of Stanislaw Lem books, Anthony Beevor monography of both Berlin and Stalingrad battles. i’m still in front of Norman Davies ‘Uprising ‘44’ (i’m ashamed to admit, but no, I haven’t read it yet). also, i can recommend “www.1939.com.pl”, “www.1944.waw.pl”, “Mayor”, “Steel Curtain”, “Caucasian Epicenter”. i also had great time re-reading again “On the Beach”. ...
i’ve read two books recently, essentially as you can say ‘on one breath’. our polish books, important ones. first, legendary today is Black crosses over Poland by Stanisław Skalski. every military aviation fan should read this one, because it brilliantly and lively describes how it was in september 1939 to fight loosing war for polish sky. it was relentless, there was no integrated strategy, but pilots shown their best. cruel reality of second world war squeezed and twisted their lifes and they tried to live through it. would our current generation fare so well as they did? Robert Gretzyngier wrote ‘second part’ to this book - Poles in defense of Great Britain. i highly recommend for all of those that want to check what was after Skalskis book ends, and how despite Great Britain failed us as ally - we still fought for their freedom. ...
for all of those that are starting to make first steps with VoIP, or believe know everything - i’d like to highly recommend my fathers book that was just published via BTC publishing house. it covers both H.323 and SIP protocols, along with all auxiliary topics - like integration, and signaling over middleboxes like packet filters and stateful firewalls: Telefonia VoIP. Multimedialne sieci IP, Marek Bromirski, ISBN: 83-60233-07-1