Dawn E. Holmes

This book suffers from several flaws:

1. It takes a fascinating topic and makes it boring
2. It’s sloppy in the use of technical terminology and ideas e.g. after providing an inaccurate definition of “phishing”, the author states: “But the main problem facing big data [as opposed to things like phishing] is that of hacking” Phishing IS a type of hacking, which is a general term for security attacks. or e.g. RFIDs are not yet ready for tracking to the extent claimed in the book, even four years later
3. It only briefly discusses the vast and important topic of machine learning and its relationship to big data
4. It spends way too much time on IT topics not specifically related to big data (e.g. Snowden and Assange)
5. It’s discussion of Facebook and Google advertising only briefly mentions some of the burning issues around privacy. The fact that this book is 4 years old is no excuse, because criticisms discussed in general media today, were actively discussed for years in more technical circles. And isn’t the idea of these books to bring expert knowledge to a wider audience?

Tl;dr this book is a terrible introduction to big data and another miss in the VSI series… (altro)