Author: Gerald M. Weinberg File Type: mobi This is part 1 of the latest edition of the classic series, Quality Software. It teaches how to understand the dynamics of software development organizations, to plan software projects, and to act effectively to carry out those plans. Written from a technical and psychological perspective, this comprehesive book describes how to think about what you do. The notation takes almost no effort to learn. The diagrams are simple and easy to understand and used in a consistent manner. How Software is Built offers ideas for coping with the very difficult problems that face those who work on projects where they dont have enough time, enough information, enough skill, or enough money to do a perfect job of anything. Given these limitations, managers have to make tradeoff decisions in light of the best understanding of cause and effect they can muster. Reviewers say the book is a treasure, containing within it the best definitions of quality ever published. Its written with a great sense of humor that helps make the lessons and insights you will get from the book easier to take. For example, why is software development so often plagued by crisis? Weinberg helps the reader step back from developing software and examine the dynamics and patterns of software creation. By discussing patterns of quality, patterns of managing, and patterns of software faults, the author shows that quality software begins with keen observation and clear thinking about software development. The text is extremely thought-provoking and is spiced with anecdotes drawn from decades of software experience. The book is divided into three sections Patterns of Quality, Patterns of Managing, and Demands that Stress Patterns. Each section has a number of chapters that examine different systemic aspects of the specific issues. In the Patterns of Quality section, Weinberg challenges our assumptions about what quality is, how to obtain it, and how to recognize how to change it. For those of you who are intimate with the SEI (Software Engineering Institute) CMM (Capability Maturity Model), this section provides compelling reasoning about the model, and about how dangerous level 2 can be to an organization. One reviewer said of The Patterns of Managing section It was truly eye opening for me. I had been working on a measurement system at the company, and had been spectacularly unsuccessful obtaining useful metrics. I thought we needed these measurements so that we could understand what worked for us, and what needed to change. This section gave me a new understanding of how other people see the organization and their roles within the organization. Demands that Stress Patterns discusses what happens in real organizations with real customers and real products. How Software is Built develops a number of ideas about how to keep the development organization working productively.

Author: Paul B. Armstrong File Type: pdf Literature matters, says Paul B. Armstrong, for what it reveals about human experience, and the very different perspective of neuroscience on how the brain works is part of that story. In How Literature Plays with the Brain, Armstrong examines the parallels between certain features of literary experience and functions of the brain. His central argument is that literature plays with the brain through experiences of harmony and dissonance which set in motion oppositions that are fundamental to the neurobiology of mental functioning. These oppositions negotiate basic tensions in the operation of the brain between the drive for pattern, synthesis, and constancy and the need for flexibility, adaptability, and openness to change.The challenge, Armstrong argues, is to account for the ability of readers to find incommensurable meanings in the same text, for example, or to take pleasure in art that is harmonious or dissonant, symmetrical or distorted, unified or discontinuous and disruptive.How Literature Plays with the Brain is the first book to use the resources of neuroscience and phenomenology to analyze aesthetic experience. For the neuroscientific community, the study suggests that different areas of researchthe neurobiology of vision and reading, the brain-body interactions underlying emotionsmay be connected to a variety of aesthetic and literary phenomena. For critics and students of literature, the study engages fundamental questions within the humanities What is aesthetic experience? What happens when we read a literary work? How does the interpretation of literature relate to other ways of knowing?**

Author: Don Thompson File Type: epub Acquiring contemporary art is about passion and lust, but it is also about branding, about the back story that comes with the art, about the relationship of money and status, and, sometimes, about celebrity. The Supermodel and the Brillo Box follows Don Thompsons 2008 bestseller The $12 Million Stuffed Shark and offers a further journey of discovery into what the Crash of 2008 did to the art market and the changing methods that the major auction houses and dealerships have implemented since then. It describes what happened to that market after the economic implosion following the collapse of Lehman Brothers and offers insights and art-world tales from dealers, auction houses, and former executives of each, from New York and London to Abu Dhabi and Beijing. It begins with the story of a wax, trophy-style, nude upper-body sculpture of supermodel Stephanie Seymour by Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan, which sold for $2.4 million to New York uber-collector and private dealer Jose Mugrabi, and recounts the story of a wooden Brillo box that sold for $722,500. The Supermodel and the Brillo Box looks at the increasing dominance of Christies, Sothebys, and a few uber dealers the hundreds of millions of new museums coming up in cities like Dubai, Abu Dhabi, and Beijing the growing importance of the digital art world and the shrinking role of the mainstream gallery.**ReviewBringing an economists curiosity to the inner workings of the contemporary art market, Don Thompson manages once again to explain, in laymens terms, how a lot of it works. Sarah Douglas, Culture Editor, The New York ObserverDon delivers entertaining and thoughtful insights into the inner workings of the art business, and does so in style! Check for Dons pointers on how to play the quiz of the contemporary art market. Very rewarding reading. Sergey Skaterschikov, Founder, Skates Art Market ResearchA highly readable account of the booming market for contemporary art, post 2008. Art economist Don Thompson lays bare the world of high-octane auctions, canny collectors, culture-hungry new economies and opaque million-dollar art deals. Georgina Adam, art market columnist, Financial TimesI started reading The Supermodel and the Brillo Box and could not put it down until I finished it! Interesting to read about a world one knows well looked at through a different perspective. For anyone who wants to learn about the art market is a must read. Pilar Ordovas, Ordovas gallery, London, and former deputy chairman for Postwar and Contemporary art, Christies EuropeAbout the Author Don Thompson is an economist and Emeritus Nabisco Brands Professor of Marketing and Strategy at the Schulich School of Business at York University in Toronto. He has taught at Harvard Business School and the London School of Economics, and is the author of 11 books. He writes on the economics of the art market for publications as diverse as The Times (UK), Harpers Magazine, and The Art Economist. He lives in Toronto, Canada.

Author: Robert E. Scholes File Type: pdf In this lively, personal book, Robert Scholes intervenes in ongoing discussions about modernism in the arts during the crucial half-century from 1895 to 1945. While critics of and apologists for modernism have defined modern art and literature in terms of binary oppositionshighlow, oldnew, hardsoft, poetryrhetoricScholes contends that these distinctions are in fact confused and misleading. Such oppositions are instances of paradoxyan apparent clarity that covers real confusion.Closely examining specific literary texts, drawings, critical writings, and memoirs, Scholes seeks to complicate the neat polar oppositions attributed to modernism. He argues for the rehabilitation of works in the middle ground that have been trivialized in previous evaluations, and he fights orthodoxy with such paradoxes as durable fluff, formulaic creativity, and iridescent mediocrity. The book reconsiders major figures like James Joyce while underscoring the value of minor figures and addressing new attention to others rarely studied. It includes twenty-two illustrations of the artworks discussed. Filled with the observations of a personable and witty guide, this is a book that opens up for a readers delight the rich cultural terrain of modernism.ReviewParadoxy of Modernism develops a powerful and persuasive new understanding of paradox and pleasure in modernist art and literature it is a must-read for modernists.James Phelan, editor of Narrative and author of Living to Tell About It (James Phelan ) About the AuthorRobert Scholes is Research Professor of Modern Culture and Media, Brown University. He is the author of numerous books, including most recently The Crafty Reader and The Rise and Fall of English, both published by Yale University Press.