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The Elements of Computing Systems is a great book if he really wants to get a grasp of computers from the level of logic gates on up.

Working through the exercises in each chapter, you use HDL to design your own logic gates, build them into more advanced circuits (DFF, adder, ALU, etc.), and then a full-fledged Von Neumann computer.

After that, you move into software mode, starting with machine language, then assembly, and finally a high-level Java-like language. Along the way your write your own symbolic assembler and compiler!

It's really unique - kind of like Petzold's Code, except you really create the stuff you're learning about.

Check out http://www1.idc.ac.il/tecs/

You start with NOT gates and build (in simulation) RAM, CPU, etc. Then you go on to program it in assembly and then implement a VM and compiler. It eables somebody to understand how a line of java code is implemented down to the gates in the CPU. I can't recommend this book highly enough.

I rather like The Elements of Computing Systms as an educational tool, you build a computer in an emulator.

Wow, just WoW,, Are you arguing with documented history? I mean besides the fact that the turks understood the kurds would gain sufficient ground to resolve their territorial issues in the reformation of Iraq, we had troops amassed on the Turkish border waiting to go in until protests of the Turkish population forced the government of Turkey to deny our passage. This isn't anything that some secret document on wikileaks revealed either, it was full blown front page news coverage in all the US and most international media outlets. To suggest that Bush or Rumsfield knew that Turkey would yank permission to use their border after they already gave it and allowed us to invest heavy resources and time in doing so by staging violent protests within it's own population that threatened the stability of the Turkish government is absolutely absurd. It's as if you are purposely refusing to admit the facts in order to retain your ideological stances that are little more then ideological beliefs.

But you are merely pushing their ignorance. They may have had Erdogan on board, but he was only a party leader, not Prime Minister. Did they check the Turkish Parliament?

Indeed, from http://meria.idc.ac.il/journal/2006/issue3/jv10no3a3.html

In the lead-up to the second Gulf War, Bush Administration officials appear not to have fully appreciated the extent of Turkish apprehension about American policy objectives in Iraq throughout the 1990s. For Turkish policy-makers, especially those in the military, the first Persian Gulf War was anathema to Turkish security interests. They were concerned that the war would cause great regional instability with economic and possibly military consequences for Turkey. Immediately after the war, despite Turkey's official support of U.S. policy, a strong suspicion emerged in Ankara that the United States was sympathetic towards the Iraqi Kurds and that it would support the establishment of an independent Kurdish state in northern Iraq and southeastern Turkey. In the 1980s and 1990s, Turkish politics was consumed by Turkey's bloody war with Kurdish separatist guerillas, which claimed more than 30,000 lives.

In Turkey, there is no existential fear more palpable from the man on the street to the President of the Republic than that of a foreign power dividing up Turkey's territory. This fear, often referred to as the Sevre mentality, has its roots in the Treaty of Sevre imposed on the defeated Ottoman Empire at the end of World War I, which divided Ottoman territory among the allied victors. The struggle to establish a modern Turkish nation-state by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the father of the Turkish republic, was a direct response to the Sevre humiliation. For many in the Turkish political establishment, there was a concern following the first Persian Gulf War that U.S. policy towards Iraq would eventually lead to a Sevre-like outcome for Turkey, namely the establishment of an independent Kurdish state. Turkish officials fear that an independent Kurdistan in northern Iraq would inevitably make claims on large parts of southeastern Turkey where much of the population is of Kurdish origin. They also worry that it would embolden Kurdish separatists in Turkey and lead to all-out civil war that could physically pull the country apart.

The author mentions that Powell (you know, an actual general who dealt with the Turks during Desert Storm) warned that while the Turks might have permitted overflight, asking to deploy ground troops would be too much.

And

Powell ultimately lost the argument to Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and Franks who insisted that a northern front was necessary and that the Turks would ultimately permit it. The Pentagon's optimistic outlook was reinforced by unofficial backchannels of communications from some of Erdogan's political advisers signaling that Turkey would ultimately come through. One of these voices belonged to Cuneyd Zapsu,

I keep meaning to work through The Elements of Computing Systems: Building a modern computer from first principles.

There's a website that supports the book, and a Google tech-talk video.

http://www.faculty.idc.ac.il/arik/site/seam-video.asp

That's not from the ground up. This is from the ground up. There's a course and some videos on the net built on this named "from NAND to tetris". I think I saw a curriculum somewhere, where the students actually started by going to the lab to make a single NAND gate with lithography, then do the rest of the course with simulated gates.

Like this course ? I saw a brief (1h) Google video of a talk that the professor gave. Didn't I come across that link from the Slashdot front page? Anyway, yeah, I'd take that course. Even if it just intellectual curiosity.

For educational purposes you can start at the gate level and work you way up: http://www1.idc.ac.il/tecs/.

And the full resolution demo video.

They are relying on the so-called Voter Vault, a computer at GOP headquarters loaded with voting history and consumer information that can be used to "micro-target" voters. By analyzing such bits of data as what magazines the members of a household subscribe to, how many children they have, what types of cars they drive and what churches they attend, the program can pinpoint who is most likely to be open to a Republican appeal.