This is a great book, but it's definitely not introductory. I think Segaran's "Programming Collective Intelligence", mentioned above, is the best first bet, primarily because it's fun. And the code is good.
I applaud the fact that the post is advocating a bit of realism (something which is in short supply in the entrepreneurial world). I also don't deny that there is an element of luck in succeeding. But it's _not_ a total crapshoot. There is a lot more variance and room for planning in a business than there is sitting at a craps table.
I think on average people who at least try to start a company and work to build something are not comparable to people sitting on their asses pouring quarters into slots or lottery tickets.
> Graduating with a technical degree is like heading out into the real world armed with an assault rifle instead of a dull knife. Don't miss that opportunity because of some fuzzy romanticized view of liberal arts broadening your horizons -- that's a great way to end up wanting to kill yourself when you hit 30 and you realize you still haven't done anything with your life.
Instead of saying something cynical about the fact that you see business models as trumping human rights, I'll just link you to a more-balanced-than-I-can-be post about the sort of caution we should have regarding Google:
As far as Apple is concerned, they'll crack their own nuts. Biology 101 tells us that if you refuse to let anyone get near your nuts, you can't reproduce.
Just because people are interested in "Web2.0" doesn't mean they're not going to be interested in the kind of stuff in this book.
In my opinion, interest in this sort of material is going to be propelled forward by Web2.0. It's not at all true that web programmers "don't give a shit" about mathematical modelling, etc. It's just that there hasn't been much accessible code for people to look at (much of it tangled in obscure, obtuse, proprietary academic and military labs).
It's true that this book seems to be attempting to cover a lot of topics, but that's probably the point: a decade ago, there was no popular concept, let alone interest, in relational databases. That changed because the street found a use for it, as the saying goes.
Anyway, I'll second your Witten and Frank recommendation, cool book.
I find it sort of weird to talk about these books as if they were O'Reilly titles or something; they're not meant to be "used" so much as studied (slowly!).
Delusional much?