In Search of Stupidity: Over Twenty Years of High Tech Marketing Disasters, Second Edition

I don't generally read the 2nd edition of books that I have already read, and I have read (and enjoyed) the first version of this book very much. I have pretty good memory and very low tolerance for boredom.

I was very pleased to se that there are a lot of new stuff in the book, and that the stuf that I have read already is still extremely entertaining. I just went back and read my first review of this book, and I still stand behind every word there. It is an hilarious book, and probably something that should be mandatory reading for a lot of people in the tech world.

A lot of the stuff that I read are stuff that I can personally relate to. (Throwing out a working printers database and starting from scratch sound a lot like running after the latest tech in a lot of customers that I see.)

The comment I made previously about errors the author has done still stand, and it still bothers me. And there are several instances where I felt that the author ignores other factors that are relevant to the issue at hand. A good example of this is that the positioning conflict between Windows 9x and Windows NT. There are a lot of technical / business reasons for this, which affected the decision, which the author simply ignored. That was not mal-practice that brought this, it was the very valid issues that brought this decision.

The new stuff from the first version seems to be case analsys that explains what he thinks would have been a good solutions to the stupid ations done. And some new (and recent) perspectives. His treatment of the Google's issues with "Do No Evil (for anyone with less than a billion)" was really good, for instance. And I fully agree with the stupidity of having 6 versions of Windows Vista.

You really should read this book, as an amusing passtime at the very least. It is comedy, history and warning combined into one book. At the very least, you can now (hopefully) say: "This hasn't work for XYZ when they tried it...", etc.

Highly recommended reading.