Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) User Guide


Amazon Web Services - 2012
    This is official Amazon Web Services (AWS) documentation for Amazon Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2).This guide explains the infrastructure provided by the Amazon EC2 web service, and steps you through how to configure and manage your virtual servers using the AWS Management Console (an easy-to-use graphical interface), the Amazon EC2 API, or web tools and utilities.Amazon EC2 provides resizable computing capacity—literally, server instances in Amazon's data centers—that you use to build and host your software systems.

The Singularity is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology


Ray Kurzweil - 2005
    In his classic The Age of Spiritual Machines, he argued that computers would soon rival the full range of human intelligence at its best. Now he examines the next step in this inexorable evolutionary process: the union of human and machine, in which the knowledge and skills embedded in our brains will be combined with the vastly greater capacity, speed, and knowledge-sharing ability of our creations.

CISSP Study Guide


Eric Conrad - 2010
    The exam is designed to ensure that someone who is handling computer security in a company has a standardized body of knowledge. The book is composed of 10 domains of the Common Body of Knowledge. In each section, it defines each domain. It also provides tips on how to prepare for the exam and take the exam. It also contains CISSP practice quizzes to test ones knowledge. The first domain provides information about risk analysis and mitigation. It also discusses security governance. The second domain discusses different techniques for access control, which is the basis for all the security disciplines. The third domain explains the concepts behind cryptography, which is a secure way of communicating that is understood only by certain recipients. Domain 5 discusses security system design, which is fundamental for operating the system and software security components. Domain 6 is a critical domain in the Common Body of Knowledge, the Business Continuity Planning, and Disaster Recovery Planning. It is the final control against extreme events such as injury, loss of life, or failure of an organization. Domains 7, 8, and 9 discuss telecommunications and network security, application development security, and the operations domain, respectively. Domain 10 focuses on the major legal systems that provide a framework in determining the laws about information system.

The Art and Science of Java


Eric S. Roberts - 2007
    By following the recommendations of the Association of Computing Machinery's Java Task Force, this first edition text adopts a modern objects-first approach that introduces readers to useful hierarchies from the very beginning.KEY TOPICS: Introduction; Programming by Example; Expressions; Statement Forms; Methods; Objects and Classes; Objects and Memory; Strings and Characters; Object-Oriented Graphics; Event-Driven Programs; Arrays and ArrayLists; Searching and Sorting; Collection Classes; Looking Ahead.MARKET: A modern objects-first approach to the Java programming language that introduces readers to useful class hierarchies from the very beginning.

Smart Machines: IBM's Watson and the Era of Cognitive Computing


John E. Kelly III - 2013
    The victory of IBM's Watson on the television quiz show Jeopardy! revealed how scientists and engineers at IBM and elsewhere are pushing the boundaries of science and technology to create machines that sense, learn, reason, and interact with people in new ways to provide insight and advice.In Smart Machines, John E. Kelly III, director of IBM Research, and Steve Hamm, a writer at IBM and a former business and technology journalist, introduce the fascinating world of "cognitive systems" to general audiences and provide a window into the future of computing. Cognitive systems promise to penetrate complexity and assist people and organizations in better decision making. They can help doctors evaluate and treat patients, augment the ways we see, anticipate major weather events, and contribute to smarter urban planning. Kelly and Hamm's comprehensive perspective describes this technology inside and out and explains how it will help us conquer the harnessing and understanding of "big data," one of the major computing challenges facing businesses and governments in the coming decades. Absorbing and impassioned, their book will inspire governments, academics, and the global tech industry to work together to power this exciting wave in innovation.

Valley of Genius: The Uncensored History of Silicon Valley (As Told by the Hackers, Founders, and Freaks Who Made It Boom)


Adam Fisher - 2018
    It will take us all back to our roots in the counterculture, and will remind us of the true nature of the innovation process, before we tried to tame it with slogans and buzzwords." -- Po Bronson, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Nudist on the Late Shift and NurtureshockA candid, colorful, and comprehensive oral history that reveals the secrets of Silicon Valley -- from the origins of Apple and Atari to the present day clashes of Google and Facebook, and all the start-ups and disruptions that happened along the way.Rarely has one economy asserted itself as swiftly--and as aggressively--as the entity we now know as Silicon Valley. Built with a seemingly permanent culture of reinvention, Silicon Valley does not fight change; it embraces it, and now powers the American economy and global innovation. So how did this omnipotent and ever-morphing place come to be? It was not by planning. It was, like many an empire before it, part luck, part timing, and part ambition. And part pure, unbridled genius...Drawing on over two hundred in-depth interviews, VALLEY OF GENIUS takes readers from the dawn of the personal computer and the internet, through the heyday of the web, up to the very moment when our current technological reality was invented. It interweaves accounts of invention and betrayal, overnight success and underground exploits, to tell the story of Silicon Valley like it has never been told before. Read it to discover the stories that Valley insiders tell each other: the tall tales that are all, improbably, true.

A People's History of Computing in the United States


Joy Lisi Rankin - 2018
    But throughout the 1960s and 1970s a diverse group of teachers and students working together on academic computing systems conducted many of the activities we now recognize as personal and social computing. Their networks were centered in New Hampshire, Minnesota, and Illinois, but they connected far-flung users. Joy Rankin draws on detailed records to explore how users exchanged messages, programmed music and poems, fostered communities, and developed computer games like The Oregon Trail. These unsung pioneers helped shape our digital world, just as much as the inventors, garage hobbyists, and eccentric billionaires of Palo Alto.By imagining computing as an interactive commons, the early denizens of the digital realm seeded today's debate about whether the internet should be a public utility and laid the groundwork for the concept of net neutrality. Rankin offers a radical precedent for a more democratic digital culture, and new models for the next generation of activists, educators, coders, and makers.

Coding Freedom: The Ethics and Aesthetics of Hacking


Gabriella Coleman - 2012
    In telling the story of the F/OSS movement, the book unfolds a broader narrative involving computing, the politics of access, and intellectual property.E. Gabriella Coleman tracks the ways in which hackers collaborate and examines passionate manifestos, hacker humor, free software project governance, and festive hacker conferences. Looking at the ways that hackers sustain their productive freedom, Coleman shows that these activists, driven by a commitment to their work, reformulate key ideals including free speech, transparency, and meritocracy, and refuse restrictive intellectual protections. Coleman demonstrates how hacking, so often marginalized or misunderstood, sheds light on the continuing relevance of liberalism in online collaboration.

How the Internet Works (How It Works)


Preston Gralla - 1991
     The Internet has changed the world... and, with everything from blogs to podcasts, Internet phones to video, it's still changing the world. Now, it's easy to understand how it all works! This book's big, brilliant, full-color illustrations and clear explanations make it all incredibly simple! DISCOVER HOW THE INTERNET REALLY WORKS... IT'S AMAZINGLY EASY! This new edition has been completely updated for today's hottest Internet technologies, Web connections, hardware, communications and entertainment services, and much more! - See how the Internet can deliver any kind of information, anywhere: web pages, email, music, video, phone calls, and more! - Understand the most exciting new Internet technologies, from blogs and podcasting to wikis and BitTorrent - Discover how your connection to the Internet works... wireless, cable modem, DSL, even cellphones - Go behind the scenes with today's most sophisticated websites, applications, and services - Protect yourself from the latest Internet dangers, including phishing, web surveillance, and wireless hacking Preston Gralla is the award-winning author of more than 30 books, including How the Internet Works, Complete Idiot's Guide to Internet Privacy and Security, Complete Idiot's Guide to Protecting Your Child Online, and How Wireless Works. He has written frequently about security issues, computer technology, the Internet, and has been a columnist for many magazines, websites and newspapers.

Dark Territory: The Secret History of Cyber War


Fred Kaplan - 2016
    The general said it was. This set in motion the first presidential directive on computer security.The first use of cyber techniques in battle occurred in George H.W. Bush's Kuwait invasion in 1991 to disable Saddam's military communications. One year later, the NSA Director watched Sneakers, in which one of the characters says wars will soon be decided not by bullets or bombs but by information. The NSA and the Pentagon have been rowing over control of cyber weapons ever since.From the 1994 (aborted) US invasion of Haiti, when the plan was to neutralize Haitian air-defenses by making all the telephones in Haiti busy at the same time, to Obama's Defense Department 2015 report on cyber policy that spells out the lead role played by our offensive operation, Fred Kaplan tells the story of the NSA and the Pentagon as they explore, exploit, fight, and defend the US. Dark Territory reveals all the details, including the 1998 incident when someone hacked into major US military commands and it wasn't Iraq, but two teenagers from California; how Israeli jets bomb a nuclear reactor in Syria in 2007 by hacking into Syrian air-defense radar system; the time in 2014 when North Korea hacks Sony's networks to pressure the studio to cancel a major Hollywood blockbuster; and many more. Dark Territory is the most urgent and controversial topic in national defense policy.

Prediction Machines: The Simple Economics of Artificial Intelligence


Ajay Agrawal - 2018
    But facing the sea change that AI will bring can be paralyzing. How should companies set strategies, governments design policies, and people plan their lives for a world so different from what we know? In the face of such uncertainty, many analysts either cower in fear or predict an impossibly sunny future.But in Prediction Machines, three eminent economists recast the rise of AI as a drop in the cost of prediction. With this single, masterful stroke, they lift the curtain on the AI-is-magic hype and show how basic tools from economics provide clarity about the AI revolution and a basis for action by CEOs, managers, policy makers, investors, and entrepreneurs.When AI is framed as cheap prediction, its extraordinary potential becomes clear: Prediction is at the heart of making decisions under uncertainty. Our businesses and personal lives are riddled with such decisions. Prediction tools increase productivity--operating machines, handling documents, communicating with customers. Uncertainty constrains strategy. Better prediction creates opportunities for new business structures and strategies to compete. Penetrating, fun, and always insightful and practical, Prediction Machines follows its inescapable logic to explain how to navigate the changes on the horizon. The impact of AI will be profound, but the economic framework for understanding it is surprisingly simple.

Googled: The End of the World as We Know It


Ken Auletta - 2009
    This is a ride on the Google wave, and the fullest account of how it formed and crashed into traditional media businesses. With unprecedented access to Google's founders and executives, as well as to those in media who are struggling to keep their heads above water, Ken Auletta reveals how the industry is being disrupted and redefined.Auletta goes inside Google's closed-door meetings, introducing Google's notoriously private founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, as well as those who work with - and against - them. In Googled, the reader discovers the 'secret sauce' of the company's success and why the worlds of 'new' and 'old' media often communicate as if residents of different planets. It may send chills down traditionalists' spines, but it's a crucial roadmap to the future of media business: the Google story may well be the canary in the coal mine.Googled is candid, objective and authoritative. Crucially, it's not just a history or reportage: it's ahead of the curve and unlike any other Google books, which tend to have been near-histories, somewhat starstruck, now out of date or which fail to look at the full synthesis of business and technology.

Hatching Twitter: A True Story of Money, Power, Friendship, and Betrayal


Nick Bilton - 2013
    In barely six years, a small group of young, ambitious programmers in Silicon Valley built an $11.5 billion business out of the ashes of a failed podcasting company. Today Twitter boasts more than 200 million active users and has affected business, politics, media, and other fields in innumerable ways. Now Nick Bilton of the New York Times takes readers behind the scenes with a narrative that shows what happened inside Twitter as it grew at exponential speeds. This is a tale of betrayed friendships and high-stakes power struggles as the four founders—Biz Stone, Evan Williams, Jack Dorsey, and Noah Glass—went from everyday engineers to wealthy celebrities, featured on magazine covers, Oprah, The Daily Show, and Time’s list of the world’s most influential people. Bilton’s exclusive access and exhaustive investigative reporting—drawing on hundreds of sources, documents, and internal e-mails—have enabled him to write an intimate portrait of fame, influence, and power. He also captures the zeitgeist and global influence of Twitter, which has been used to help overthrow governments in the Middle East and disrupt the very fabric of the way people communicate.

Cyberspies: The Secret History of Surveillance, Hacking, and Digital Espionage


Gordon Corera - 2015
    The book is rich with historical detail and characters, as well as astonishing revelations about espionage carried out in recent times by the UK, US, and China. Using unique access to the National Security Agency, GCHQ, Chinese officials, and senior executives from some of the most powerful global technology companies, Gordon Corera has gathered compelling stories from heads of state, hackers and spies of all stripes.Cyberspies is a ground-breaking exploration of the new space in which the worlds of espionage, diplomacy, international business, science, and technology collide.

Move Fast and Break Things: How Facebook, Google, and Amazon Cornered Culture and Undermined Democracy


Jonathan Taplin - 2017
    Since 2001, newspaper and music revenues have fallen by 70%, book publishing, film and television profits have also fallen dramatically. Revenues at Google in this same period grew from $400 million to $74.5 billion. Google's YouTube today controls 60% of the streaming audio business and pays only 11% of the streaming audio revenues. More creative content is being consumed than ever before, but less revenue is flowing to creators and owners of the content.With the reallocation of money to monopoly platforms comes a shift in power. Google, Facebook, and Amazon now enjoy political power on par with Big Oil and Big Pharma, which in part explains how such a tremendous shift in revenues from artists to platforms could have been achieved and why it has gone unchallenged for so long.The stakes in this story go far beyond the livelihood of any one musician or journalist. As Taplin observes, the fact that more and more Americans receive their news, music and other forms of entertainment from a small group of companies poses a real threat to democracy. Move Fast and Break Things offers a vital, forward-thinking prescription for how artists can reclaim their audiences using knowledge of the past and a determination to work together. Using his own half-century career as a music and film producer and early pioneer of streaming video online, Taplin offers new ways to think about the design of the World Wide Web and specifically the way we live with the firms that dominate it.Table of contentsIntroduction1. The Great Disruption2. Levon's Story3. Tech's Counterculture Roots4. The Libertarian Counterinsurgency5. Digital Destruction6. Monopoly in the Digital Age7. Google's Regulatory Capture8. The Social Media Revolution9. Pirates of the Internet10. Libertarian and the 1 Percent11. What It Means to Be Human12. The Digital RenaissanceAfterword