Best of
Internet

2006

The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom


Yochai Benkler - 2006
    The phenomenon he describes as social production is reshaping markets, while at the same time offering new opportunities to enhance individual freedom, cultural diversity, political discourse, and justice. But these results are by no means inevitable: a systematic campaign to protect the entrenched industrial information economy of the last century threatens the promise of today’s emerging networked information environment.In this comprehensive social theory of the Internet and the networked information economy, Benkler describes how patterns of information, knowledge, and cultural production are changing—and shows that the way information and knowledge are made available can either limit or enlarge the ways people can create and express themselves. He describes the range of legal and policy choices that confront us and maintains that there is much to be gained—or lost—by the decisions we make today.

From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism


Fred Turner - 2006
    Bleak tools of the cold war, they embodied the rigid organization and mechanical conformity that made the military-industrial complex possible. But by the 1990s—and the dawn of the Internet—computers started to represent a very different kind of world: a collaborative and digital utopia modeled on the communal ideals of the hippies who so vehemently rebelled against the cold war establishment in the first place. From Counterculture to Cyberculture is the first book to explore this extraordinary and ironic transformation. Fred Turner here traces the previously untold story of a highly influential group of San Francisco Bay–area entrepreneurs: Stewart Brand and the Whole Earth network. Between 1968 and 1998, via such familiar venues as the National Book Award–winning Whole Earth Catalog, the computer conferencing system known as WELL, and, ultimately, the launch of the wildly successful Wired magazine, Brand and his colleagues brokered a long-running collaboration between San Francisco flower power and the emerging technological hub of Silicon Valley. Thanks to their vision, counterculturalists and technologists alike joined together to reimagine computers as tools for personal liberation, the building of virtual and decidedly alternative communities, and the exploration of bold new social frontiers. Shedding new light on how our networked culture came to be, this fascinating book reminds us that the distance between the Grateful Dead and Google, between Ken Kesey and the computer itself, is not as great as we might think.

Cat and Girl Volume I


Dorothy Gambrell - 2006
    There is every Cat and Girl cartoon from 2003 to 2005, except for one. There are a few cartoons you haven't seen before, some cartoons so extensively reworked you will swear you have never seen them before, and a subject index.

Tom Fitzmorris's New Orleans Food: More Than 225 of the City's Best Recipes to Cook at Home


Tom Fitzmorris - 2006
    Born in the Crescent City on Mardi Gras, he'd never left his favorite town for more than three weeks at a time--that is, until Hurricane Katrina struck and Tom and his family were forced to evacuate. Prior to the disaster, Tom was just putting the finishing touches on his magnum opus: a collection of recipes for the best of New Orleans food gathered and developed over more than 30 years spent reporting eating in the Big Easy. In addition to his weekly restaurant review column, which has been published continuously for 33 years, Tom is best known for his daily 3-hour radio show, The Food Show, broadcast every afternoon on WSMB. With New Orleans Food, Tom presents more than 250 great New Orleans recipes designed for the home cook, all steeped in the Creole and Cajun traditions, yet updated to reflect contemporary tastes and ingredients. From small plates (Shrimp Remoulade with Two Sauces) to main courses (Redfish Herbsaint, Root Beer-Glazed Ham) to desserts and drinks (Bananas Foster, Beignets, and Cafe au Lait), these are dishes both elegant and casual, traditional and evolved. Whether you are nostalgic for the taste of New Orleans or simply love good food, New Orleans Food should find a place on your cookbook shelf. Now every Monday, everywhere, can be red-beans-and-rice day. A portion of the profits from the sale of this book will benefit New Orleans recovery efforts.

PPK on JavaScript


Peter-Paul Koch - 2006
    In contrast, Peter-Paul Koch's book uses eight real-world scripts he created for real-world clients in order to earn real-world money. That means the scripts are guaranteed to do something useful (and sellable ) that enhances the usability of the page they're used on.The book's example scripts include one that sorts a data table according to the user's search queries, a form validation script, a script that shows form fields only when the user needs them, a drop-down menu, and a data retrieval script that uses simple Ajax and shows the data in an animation.After an overview of JavaScript's purpose, Peter-Paul provides theoretical chapters on the context (jobs for JavaScript, CSS vs. JavaScript), the browsers (debugging, the arcana of the browser string), and script preparation. Then follow practical chapters on Core, BOM, Events, DOM, CSS Modification, and Data Retrieval, all of which are explained through a combination of theoretical instruction and the taking apart of the relevant sections of the example scripts.

POD People: Beating The Print-On-Demand Stigma


Jeremy Robinson - 2006
    Seems like they're everywhere all of a sudden. Thousands of authors are publishing their books via print-on-demand, but only a very small percentage of them find any kind of success. Why? POD People must not only act as author, but also publisher, advertiser, editor, agent and graphic designer. The sad truth is that many POD People don't know what to do when they're starting out and plunge blindfolded into the publishing world. Most POD books fade into obscurity, selling only a few copies and leaving the author disappointed and in many cases, broke. This failure is due primarily to the negative POD stigma. Many people avoid self- published books and loathe POD books even more. It's a harsh reality, but there is hope. Bestselling POD author, Jeremy Robinson, reveals how to beat the POD stigma and make your book stand out. "Robinson has penned the essential guide to self-publishing success in today's market. If you're looking for a way to traverse the challenging world of print-on-demand, consider this book a Hummer with a full tank of gas." - POD-DY MOUTH

The Cinematic Mode of Production: Attention Economy and the Society of the Spectacle


Jonathan Beller - 2006
    This process, he says, underpins the current global economy. By exploring a set of films made since the late 1920s, Beller argues that, through cinema, capital first posits and then presupposes looking as a value-productive activity. He argues that cinema, as the first crystallization of a new order of media, is itself an abstraction of assembly-line processes, and that the contemporary image is a politico-economic interface between the body and capitalized social machinery. Where factory workers first performed sequenced physical operations on moving objects in order to produce a commodity, in the cinema, spectators perform sequenced visual operations on moving montage fragments to produce an image. Beller develops his argument by highlighting various innovations and film texts of the past century. These innovations include concepts and practices from the revolutionary Soviet cinema, behaviorism, Taylorism, psychoanalysis, and contemporary Hollywood film. He thus develops an analysis of what amounts to the global industrialization of perception that today informs not only the specific social functions of new media, but also sustains a violent and hierarchical global society.

Software Engineering for Internet Applications


Eve Andersson - 2006
    Unlike the desktop applications that most students have already learned to build, server-based applications have multiple simultaneous users. This fact, coupled with the unreliability of networks, gives rise to the problems of concurrency and transactions, which students learn to manage by using the relational database system.After working their way to the end of the book, students will have the skills to take vague and ambitious specifications and turn them into a system design that can be built and launched in a few months. They will be able to test prototypes with end-users and refine the application design. They will understand how to meet the challenge of extreme business requirements with automatic code generation and the use of open-source toolkits where appropriate. Students will understand HTTP, HTML, SQL, mobile browsers, VoiceXML, data modeling, page flow and interaction design, server-side scripting, and usability analysis.The book, which originated as the text for an MIT course, is suitable for classroom use and will be a useful reference for software professionals developing multi-user Internet applications. It will also help managers evaluate such commercial software as Microsoft Sharepoint of Microsoft Content Management Server.

Who Controls the Internet?: Illusions of a Borderless World


Jack L. Goldsmith - 2006
    It's a book about the fate of one idea--that the Internet might liberate us forever from government, borders, and even our physical selves. We learn of Google's struggles with the French government and Yahoo's capitulation to the Chinese regime; of how the European Union sets privacy standards on the Net for the entire world; and of eBay's struggles with fraud and how it slowly learned to trust the FBI. In a decade of events the original vision is uprooted, as governments time and time again assert their power to direct the future of the Internet. The destiny of the Internet over the next decades, argue Goldsmith and Wu, will reflect the interests of powerful nations and the conflicts within and between them.While acknowledging the many attractions of the earliest visions of the Internet, the authors describe the new order, and speaking to both its surprising virtues and unavoidable vices. Far from destroying the Internet, the experience of the last decade has lead to a quiet rediscovery of some of the oldest functions and justifications for territorial government. While territorial governments have unavoidable problems, it has proven hard to replace what legitimacy governments have, and harder yet to replace the system of rule of law that controls the unchecked evils of anarchy. While the Net will change some of the ways that territorial states govern, it will not diminish the oldest and most fundamental roles of government and challenges of governance.Well written and filled with fascinating examples, including colorful portraits of many key players in Internet history, this is a work that is bound to stir heated debate in the cyberspace community.

The Design of Sites: Patterns for Creating Winning Web Sites


Douglas K. van Duyne - 2006
    The Design of Sites Patterns for Creating Winning Web Sites 2nd Edition published in the year 2006 was published by Prentice-Hall. The author of this book is Douglas K. van Duyne. James A. Landay. Jason I. Hong. This is the Paperback version of the title "The Design of Sites Patterns for Creating Winning Web Sites 2nd Edition" and have around pp. xli + 981 pages. The Design of Sites Patterns for Creating Winning Web Sites 2nd Edition is currently Available with us. The Paperback version of this book is also available here. The other volumes of this book is/are The Design of Sites Patterns for Creating Winning Web Sites .

Internet Dates From Hell


Trisha Ventker - 2006
    Of those, approximately thirty-five million will look at online dating sites this year alone. Internet Dates from Hell provides the ins and outs of Internet dating from one woman's experiences, ranging from funny to scary to downright shocking. Internet Dates from Hell is not only a guide; it is also a seven-year journey through author Trisha Ventker's dating life as a single kindergarten teacher who relocated from the suburbs to New York City to find her soul mate. Fielding over four hundred responses on a given day, and receiving more than fifty-two thousand hits on her personal ad in an eight-month span, Ventker shares her frightening but true dating encounters in the wonderful world of online dating. Follow Ventker through the trials and tribulations of her quest to find "Mr. Right". Along the path, Trisha Ventker endures hundreds of first dates. Encounters include a conspiracy theorist living in the United Kingdom, a religious fanatic from Texas, a sadomasochistic psychiatrist, and even a pre-op transsexual, to name a few. Ventker's brutally honest memoir lets you step inside her shoes and experience her exciting journey firsthand.

PHP 5 in Practice


Elliott White III - 2006
    In just a few years, PHP has become one of the most popular languages for powering web content worldwide. This popularity affords both new users and long-time developers access to a large cadre of applications and a vast community of expertise. PHP 5, the latest revision of the language, has extended many concepts of the base language, especially in object-oriented programming, and has necessitated new approaches to PHP programming and new best practices. PHP 5 in Practice is a compendium of best practices and solutions. Targeted both to the novice and the expert in PHP, this book provides answers to many common problems software developers may face on a day-to-day basis. The solutions cover a large range of topics, including database access, dynamic web page creation, and so-called Web 2.0 technologies. This book is not a tutorial on the use of PHP, but a how-to answer book; when there is a new problem to solve, readers should be able to quickly find a solution that will meet their needs completely or provide insight on how to best solve their particular problem. various presentations at international PHP and Web conferences on topics such as PHP, CSS, and XHTML, as well as helping Brainbench develop some of their programming certifications. He currently works for digg.com as a senior PHP programmer. Jonathan Eisenhamer has served as systems administrator and software developer for the Astronomy department at UCLA. From there, he moved on to the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI), where he began his work in PHP, developing websites to disseminate the scientific results from the Hubble Space Telescope to the general public. He currently is the supervisor of the Web and Print group at STScI.

The Illustrated Network: How Tcp/IP Works in a Modern Network


Walter Goralski - 2006
    Richard Stevens and Addison-Wesley published a networking classic: TCP/IP Illustrated. The model for that book was a brilliant, unfettered approach to networking concepts that has proven itself over time to be popular with readers of beginning to intermediate networking knowledge. The Illustrated Network takes this time-honored approach and modernizes it by creating not only a much larger and more complicated network, but also by incorporating all the networking advancements that have taken place since the mid-1990s, which are many.This book takes the popular Stevens approach and modernizes it, employing 2008 equipment, operating systems, and router vendors. It presents an ?illustrated? explanation of how TCP/IP works with consistent examples from a real, working network configuration that includes servers, routers, and workstations. Diagnostic traces allow the reader to follow the discussion with unprecedented clarity and precision. True to the title of the book, there are 330+ diagrams and screen shots, as well as topology diagrams and a unique repeating chapter opening diagram. Illustrations are also used as end-of-chapter questions. A complete and modern network was assembled to write this book, with all the material coming from real objects connected and running on the network, not assumptions. Presents a real world networking scenario the way the reader sees them in a device-agnostic world. Doesn't preach one platform or the other.Here are ten key differences between the two: Stevens Goralski's Older operating systems (AIX, svr4, etc.) Newer OSs (XP, Linux, FreeBSD, etc.)Two routers (Cisco, Telebit (obsolete)) Two routers (M-series, J-series)Slow Ethernet and SLIP link Fast Ethernet, Gigabit Ethernet, and SONET/SDH links (modern)Tcpdump for traces Newer, better utility to capture traces (Ethereal, now has a new name!)No IPSec IPSecNo multicast MulticastNo router security discussed Firewall routers detailedNo Web Full Web browser HTML considerationNo IPv6 IPv6 overviewFew configuration details More configuration details (ie, SSH, SSL, MPLS, ATM/FR consideration, wireless LANS, OSPF and BGP routing protocols

Cisco IOS Cookbook (Cookbooks (O'Reilly))


Kevin Dooley - 2006
    IOS is powerful and flexible, but also confusing and daunting. Most tasks can be accomplished in several different ways. And you don't want to spend precious time figuring out which way is best when you're trying to solve a problem quickly. That's what this cookbook is for. Fortunately, most router configuration tasks can be broken down into several more or less independent steps: you configure an interface, you configure a routing protocol, you set up backup links, you implement packet filters and other access control mechanisms. What you really need is a set of recipes that show you how to perform the most common tasks, so you can quickly come up with a good configuration for your site. And you need to know that these solutions work: you don't want to find yourself implementing a backup link at 2 A.M. because your main link is down and the backup link you set up when you installed the router wasn't quite right. Thoroughly revised and expanded, Cisco IOS Cookbook, 2nd Edition, adds sections on MPLS, Security, IPv6, and IP Mobility, and presents solutions to the most common configuration problems, including: Configuring interfaces of many types, from serial to ATM and Frame Relay Configuring all of the common IP routing protocols (RIP, EIGRP, OSPF, and BGP) Configuring authentication Configuring other services, including DHCP and NTP Setting up backup links, and using HSRP to configure backup routers Managing the router, including SNMP and other solutions Using access lists to control the traffic through the router If you work with Cisco routers, you need a book like this to help you solve problems quickly and effectively. Even if you're experienced, the solutions and extensive explanations will give you new ideas and insights into router configuration. And if you're not experienced--if you've just been given responsibility for managing a network with Cisco routers--this book could be a job-saver.

How to Use Flickr: The Digital Photography Revolution


Richard Giles - 2006
    Provides information on using the digital photography management community.

Wireless Writing in the Age of Marconi


Timothy Campbell - 2006
    Marconi produced and detected sound waves over long distances, using the curvature of the earth for direction, and laid the foundations for what we know as radio—the original mobile, voice-activated, and electronic media community. Timothy C. Campbell demonstrates that Marconi’s invention of the wireless telegraph was not simply a technological act but also had an impact on poetry and aesthetics and linked the written word to the rise of mass politics. Reading influential works such as F. T. Marinetti’s futurist manifestos, Rudolf Arnheim’s 1936 study Radio, writings by Gabriele D’Annunzio, and Ezra Pound’s Cantos, Campbell reveals how the newness of wireless technology was inscribed in the ways modernist authors engaged with typographical experimentation, apocalyptic tones, and newly minted models for registering voices. Wireless Writing in the Age of Marconi presents an alternative history of modernism that listens as well as looks and bears in mind the altered media environment brought about by the emergence of the wireless. Timothy C. Campbell is associate professor of Italian at Cornell University.

Build Your Own Website The Right Way Using HTML & CSS


Ian Lloyd - 2006
    This book introduces you to HTML and CSS as you follow along with the author, step-by-step, to build a fully functional web site from the ground up.However, unlike countless other "learn web design" books, this title concentrates on modern, best-practice techniques from the very beginning, which means you'll get it right the first time. The web sites you'll build will:Look good on a PC, Mac or Linux computer Render correctly whether your visitors are using Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera, or Safari Use web standards so your sites will be fast loading and easy to maintain Be accessible to disabled users who use screenreaders to browse the Web By the end of the book, you'll be equipped with enough knowledge to set out on your first projects as a professional web developer, or you can simply use the knowledge you've gained to create attractive, functional, usable and accessible sites for personal use.