Rating: 
Summary: Perfect gift for the hard-to-buy-for
Review: This has become such a hit in our family that everyone wants one. Well written, extremely entertaining, and easy reference for looking up a specific topic. Several copies will be under our Christmas tree!
Rating:
Summary: The best (and funniest) antidote to punditry in the universe
Review: This highly quotable and humorous--but accurately researched--book fills an important gap. It provides a unique window on history by demonstrating the uncertainty principle of so-called factualness. Using laughably fatheaded predictions from the ages as well as from just a few weeks ago, the authors show how profoundly wrong the "experts" are during any given moment. During the present bombardment of expert opinion from every direction, this book is especially valuable. You will never again be able to listen to the talking heads or read the newspaper in quite the same way after consulting even a single page of Cerf and Navasky! An excellent reference book, cautionary guide for any authority in any field, and a fine teaching text as well. I predict this book will be the biggest seller in the universe from now until the end of time. Buy it for your great-great-great grandchildren at the present low price.
Rating: 
Summary: Highly enjoyable
Review: This is a fun book of humorous quotations many about scientific predictions that were WAY off the mark. My favorites concern computers, and I've received some of them over the internet. Since I'm concerned about Urban Legends, this book was very helpful in discerning the veracity of these statements-though the authors are careful to point out quotes that could be Urban Legends or ones that have become part of the culture, whether historically accurate or not. Some good examples are:
Regarding Radio (and, perhaps now, cordless phones, cell phones, and Voice Over IP):
Well-informed people know it is impossible to transmit the voice over wires and that were it possible to do so, the thing would be of no practical value. (Editorial in the Boston Post, 1865
The radio craze ... will die out in time. Thomas Alva Edison
I do not look upon any system of wireless telegraphy as a serious competition with our cables. Some years ago I said the same think and nothing has since occurred to alter my views. (Sir John Wolfe-Barry, Chief Executive of Western Telegraph Company at their annual stockholder's meeting in 1907
Regarding the development of computers:
Worthless. (Sir George Bidell Airy, K.C.B., M.A., LL.D., D.C.L., F.R.S., F.R.A.S., Astronomer Royal of Great Britain, estimating for the Chancellor of the Exchequer the potential value of the "analytical engine" invented by Charles Babbage, September 15, 1842. This resulted in the British government discontinuing its funding for Babbage. Today, however, Babbage is hailed as the inventor of the computer.)
I have traveled the length and breadth of this country and talked with the best people, and I can assure you that data processing is a fad that won't last out the year. (The editor in charge of business books for Prentice Hall, Inc., 1957
Where a calculator on the ENIAC is equipped with 18,000 vacuum tubes and weighs 30 tons, computers in the future may have only 1,000 vacuum tubes and perhaps weigh 1 ½ tons. (Popular Mechanics, March 1949. [Interestingly, I recently received a photo by internet of the predicted "home computer" from 1954-it was huge.]
Personal computers:
It is quite impossible that the noble organs of human speech could be replaced by ignoble, senseless metal. Jean Bouillaud, member of the French Academy of Sciences, referring to Thomas Edison's phonograph.
What the hell is it good for? (Robert Lloyd, Engineer at the Advanced Computing Systems Division of IBM, c.1968, reacting to colleagues who insisted that the microprocessor was the wave of the future.
We don't need you. You haven't got through college yet. (Hewlett-Packard executive, responding to Apple Computer founders Steve Jobs' and Steve Wozniak's attempts to interest the company in the "personal computer" they had designed, 1976.
Get your feet off my desk, get out of here, you stink, and we're not going to buy your product. (Joe Keenan, President of Atari, responding to Steve Jobs' offer to sell him rights to the new personal computer he and Steve Wozniak had developed, 1976; and, of course, the very famous "quote":
640K ought to be enough for anybody. Attributed to Bill Gates, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Microsoft, 1981
Rating:
Summary: A humorous and very informative book!!
Review: This wonderful book, taught me many historical facts that I didn't know. It's great to see people who are "experts" and therefore smarter than me, wrong so often!!!
Rating:
Summary: A humorous and very informative book!!
Review: This wonderful book, taught me many historical facts that I didn't know. It's great to see people who are "experts" and therefore smarter than me, wrong so often!!!
Rating: 
Summary: Misinformation, Misquotations, and Bad Sources
Review: When a book claims to be "definitive" AND "authoritative" one might expect some level of accuracy and even a broadcast-quality fact checking. These authors use second and third party sources when inaccurately quoting reputable figures, even when primary sources are easily available. In three instances I researched, they claimed to "quote" from a book that has NO SUCH QUOTE! I own the source book and found it nowhere between the covers. I was appalled at the extent to which this method is used in _The Experts Speak_, ultimately leading to the spreading of misinformation--not the cataloging of it. I personally checked the book for persons and subjects familiar to me to find that 3 of 4 quotes were both innacurate and the sources were mislabeled AND misquoted. The problem is so widespread, and the resulting misinformation seems designed to support a political agenda of the authors. Buy at your own risk.
Rating:
Summary: Misinformation, Misquotations, and Bad Sources
Review: When a book claims to be "definitive" AND "authoritative" one might expect some level of accuracy and even a broadcast-quality fact checking. These authors use second and third party sources when inaccurately quoting reputable figures, even when primary sources are easily available. In three instances I researched, they claimed to "quote" from a book that has NO SUCH QUOTE! I own the source book and found it nowhere between the covers. I was appalled at the extent to which this method is used in _The Experts Speak_, ultimately leading to the spreading of misinformation--not the cataloging of it. I personally checked the book for persons and subjects familiar to me to find that 3 of 4 quotes were both innacurate and the sources were mislabeled AND misquoted. The problem is so widespread, and the resulting misinformation seems designed to support a political agenda of the authors. Buy at your own risk.
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