Kaustav Bhattacharya's profile

Insightful and intriguing, 26 Jan 2006

For many years I've heard much about Arundhati Roy but I've never picked up one of her books until recently. The Ordinary Person's Guide to Empire was being featured on the shelves of the Oxford Book Store, Park Street in Kolkata - India when I picked it up and started browsing through it. The book captured me immediately. As an Indian born and brought up outside India, over the last few years I have started taking a greater interest in my mother country. This book at first glance seemed to be a bit of an eye opener about some of the pre-conceptions I have about India and the what I believe to be trouble because of what I’ve read or been told by the mass media. This… Read more

Entertaining and frank, 5 Sep 2005

I randomly came across this book in Waterstones and started reading it. By the tenth page I was captivated with Ferguson's frank and hilarious account of his life in Japan. I just had to buy the book, so I did.

As a foreigner, Japan can pose many problems to any visitor. Language barriers, cultural differences, a different way of life and a value system which is distinct and unique when compared to the west. Ferguson's story tells a now familiar tail written by a number of other non-Japanese authors about the country they live and work in. Ferguson's story takes him on a hitch hiking journey from the southern most tip of Japan to the northern most tip, all the time chasing the cherry… Read more

A high level introduction, 5 Sep 2005

This book gives you a good high level introduction to the concepts and potentials of the Semantic Web. It does not go in to much detail and nore it this book meant to. The author details the core concepts in a lucid manner, opening up the readers imagination to the potential applicaton of this emerging method of organising information on the web. As well as RDF the book looks at OWL and the combination of the two emerging standards. There are many helpful references throughout the book for your further reading pleasure, many of which can be found online as well as in print.

For anyone wanting to get a good top level overview on the subject of the Semantic Web without getting bogged… Read more