Gamer Theory or TOAD Handbook

Gamer Theory

Author: McKenzie Wark

Listen to a short interview with McKenzie Wark

Host: Chris Gondek | Producer: Heron & Crane

Ever get the feeling that life's a game with changing rules and no clear sides, one you are compelled to play yet cannot win? Welcome to gamespace. Gamespace is where and how we live today. It is everywhere and nowhere: the main chance, the best shot, the big leagues, the only game in town. In a world thus configured, McKenzie Wark contends, digital computer games are the emergent cultural form of the times. Where others argue obsessively over violence in games, Wark approaches them as a utopian version of the world in which we actually live. Playing against the machine on a game console, we enjoy the only truly level playing field—where we get ahead on our strengths or not at all.

Gamer Theory uncovers the significance of games in the gap between the near-perfection of actual games and the highly imperfect gamespace of everyday life in the rat race of free-market society. The book depicts a world becoming an inescapable series of less and less perfect games. This world gives rise to a new persona. In place of the subject or citizen stands the gamer. As all previous such personae had their breviaries and manuals, Gamer Theory seeks to offer guidance for thinking within this new character. Neither a strategy guide nor a cheat sheet for improving one's score or skills, the book is instead a primer in thinking about a world made over as a gamespace, recast as an imperfect copy of the game.

Michael McArthur - Library Journal

Gamer Theory, or GAM3R 7H30RY, as it would be better known to those following its progress, began its public life was published in draft form under a Creative Commons license. Following Wark's book about intellectual property, A Hacker Manifesto, it attempts to ascertain whether it is possible to establish a critical theory of games. Further, it explores similarities between games and life. Online, the book was organized into little vignettes, and the organization used here can be traced to that formatting, as each page retains the online numbering scheme. A wonderful addition to universities supporting science or media and cultural studies.

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TOAD Handbook

Author: Bert Scalzo

TOAD Handbook is a guide for developing Oracle applications and administering Oracle databases with TOAD. Starting with installation and configuration, the book covers the TOAD SQL editors in depth, including dozens of helpful, undocumented features. Later chapters discuss reporting and exporting data and using several add-on tools designed to enhance TOAD development. Along the way, the authors provide critical insights into the workings of TOAD and how developers can use it to make the most of their applications. Includes a foreword by Jim McDaniel, the inventor of TOAD.

Table of Contents:

1	Setting Up TOAD for Successful Use	5
2	Using TOAD's Schema Browser	21
3	TOAD SQL Editor	41
4	TOAD Procedure Editor	77
5	Using TOAD for Routine DBA Tasks	119
6	Using TOAD for Non-Routine DBA Tasks	149
7	Generating Database Reports via TOAD	197
8	Exporting Table Data	209
9	Using Other Powerful TOAD Tools	219
10	Knowing the TOAD World and Its Add-ons	255
	Index	273