Archives for reviews - Page 33
Book Review – Bullets and Brains by Leo Murray
Brains and Bullets: How Psychology Wins Wars by Leo Murray My rating: 5 of 5 stars This is an excellent and very readable book which tries to put some hard numbers on a variety of psychological tactics that can be used to persuade your own troops to fight and the enemy to give up. This is an excellent work on what happens in combat and why. It is very readable, structured into bite sized chunks on the key phenomena and then some joining up when it has all been explained. Each chapter opens with an account from a real soldier who experienced that psychological effect in combat. This is then analysed and explained, pulling in other examples as required to show that it isn't an isolated incident but a general effect. Those examples range from the Napoleonic Wars right up…
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Book Review – Spies Under Berlin by David Stafford
Spies Beneath Berlin by David Stafford My rating: 4 of 5 stars This is a very well put together story of the Berlin spy tunnel, and some of the context that lead up to it being dug. It looks at the contemporary views and also re-evaluates the impact of the tunnel and whether or not it could be considered a success. The tale is an interesting one, because the existence of the tunnel was betrayed to the Soviets before it was even dug. Blake took the minutes of meeting that decided to build it, and told his Soviet handler about it. Despite this the KGB didn't share the information as they wanted to protect Blake as a source, so they couldn't stop the tunnel until there was a reasonable excuse from another source. For two years the British and Americans…
Book Review – Command Decision by Elizabeth Moon
Command Decision by Elizabeth Moon My rating: 4 of 5 stars I read this very quickly. It was a great continuation of the series and managed to have a few twists in it as well as some usual predictable pieces too, which is good because it made it satisfying as a story. I like that there is a wide range of aspects to the series. More than just a series of space battles and shipboard routine. There are legal elements, corporate governance, organised crime and government. On top of all of that there is a good layer of human interaction and emotion from some flawed characters that you can empathise with. So this is a very good space opera that is fun and enjoyable to read. Not up there with Banks, but still well worth a go. View all my…
Book Review – First There Wasn’t, Then There Was by Troy Blackford
First There Wasn't, Then There Was by Troy Blackford My rating: 4 of 5 stars This is a very strange tale, and definitely the sort of thing you'd expect to hear from someone who'd lost everything and was living on the streets. The premise is that four young guys, all smokers, see an old man shambling around every day when they are out on their smoke breaks. The old man is always talking, never stops or addresses anyone directly and refuses money or any other attempts to engage. He never stands still long enough for them to hear what he says. One day one of the young smokers has an idea, they pop a digital dictaphone in his pocket and record what he says for a few hours. When they listen back they find an unexpectedly coherent story, told consciously…
3 Step Guide on How to stream Demand 5 on linux (and windows and Mac too)
I like to watch the Mentalist, and my PVR is a bit flaky, which means that I need to fall back on Demand 5 to watch it when I miss it. If you have tried this you'll know that it is a much maligned video on demand service offered by Channel 5 in the UK. There's a reason for this, there's too much going on with their page because it is badly developed. They've certainly not designed with the user need in mind like GDS are getting the UK government to do. So inspired by this post and after reading lots of other posts telling me I needed to install hal and stuff I came up with the following three steps to get Demand 5 working: Install Firefox Flash Block Ad Killer 1. Install Firefox I tried it with both Mozilla Firefox…