Can small artists still thrive in the Internet era? Can giant record labels avoid alienating their audiences? This is a book about the pitfalls and the opportunities that creative industries (and individuals) are confronting today — about how the old models have failed or found new footing, and about what might soon replace them. An essential read for anyone with a stake in the future of the arts, Information Doesn’t Want to Be Free offers a vivid guide to the ways creativity and the Internet interact today, and to what might be coming next.

    Then he wrote a groundbreaking operating system and distributed it via the Internet -- for free. Today Torvalds is an international folk hero. And his creation LINUX is used by over 12 million people as well as by companies such as IBM.Now, in a narrative that zips along with the speed of e-mail, Torvalds gives a history of his renegade software while candidly revealing the quirky mind of a genius. The result is an engrossing portrayal of a man with a revolutionary vision, who challenges our values and may change our world.

    Admittedly, computers now play chess at the grandmaster level, but do they understand the game as we do? Can a computer eventually do everything a human mind can do? In this absorbing and frequently contentious book, Roger Penrose--eminent physicist and winner, with Stephen Hawking, of the prestigious Wolf prize--puts forward his view that there are some facets of human thinking that can never be emulated by a machine. Penrose examines what physics and mathematics can tell us about how the mind works, what they can't, and what we need to know to understand the physical processes of consciousness. He is among a growing number of physicists who think Einstein wasn't being stubborn when he said his little finger told him that quantum mechanics is incomplete, and he concludes that laws even deeper than quantum mechanics are essential for the operation of a mind. To support this contention, Penrose takes the reader on a dazzling tour that covers such topics as complex numbers, Turing machines, complexity theory, quantum mechanics, formal systems, Godel undecidability, phase spaces, Hilbert spaces, black holes, white holes, Hawking radiation, entropy, quasicrystals, the structure of the brain, and scores of other subjects. The Emperor's New Mind will appeal to anyone with a serious interest in modern physics and its relation to philosophical issues, as well as to physicists, mathematicians, philosophers and those on either side of the AI debate.

     The six novels, published in order of importance, are: • Nineteen Eighty-Four (the most important dystopian novel ever written, together with Huxley's Brave New World, and Zamyatin's "We" • Animal Farm (1945) • Burmese Days (1934) • Coming Up for Air (1939) • A Clergyman's Daughter (1935) • Keep the Aspidistra Flying (1936) His three non fiction books are: • Homage to Catalonia (1938), about the Spanish Civil War. • Down and Out in Paris and London (1933) The last book of the collection is called "ESSAYS: From Hitler, Franco & the Atomic Bomb; to Tolstoi, Dickens & Twain". Orwell was an acclaimed analyst of his country's reality during World War II and beyond (including the beginning of the cold war), which he reflects in his many articles and pamphlets collected in this book. He also did very deep literary and personal analysis of men like Mark Twain, Adolf Hitler, or even Tolstoi. The following is the list of essays. 1. THE SPIKE 2. A HANGING (1931) 3. BOOKSHOP MEMORIES (1936) 4. SHOOTING AN ELEPHANT (1936) 5. SPILLING THE SPANISH BEANS (1937) 6. MARRAKECH (1939) 7. BOYS' WEEKLIES AND FRANK RICHARDS'S REPLY (1940) 8. CHARLES READE (1940) 9. THE ART OF DONALD MCGILL (1941) 10. WELLS, HITLER AND THE WORLD STATE (1941) 11. RUDYARD KIPLING (1942) 12. MARK TWAIN–THE LICENSED JESTER (1943) 13. POETRY AND THE MICROPHONE (1943) 14. W B YEATS (1943) 15. ARTHUR KOESTLER (1944) 16. BENEFIT OF CLERGY: SOME NOTES ON SALVADOR DALI (1944) 18. ANTISEMITISM IN BRITAIN (1945) 19. FREEDOM OF THE PARK (1945) 20. FUTURE OF A RUINED GERMANY (1945) 21. GOOD BAD BOOKS 22. NONSENSE POETRY 23. NOTES ON NATIONALISM (1945) 24. REVENGE IS SOUR (1945) 25. THE SPORTING SPIRIT 26. YOU AND THE ATOMIC BOMB (1945) 27. A GOOD WORD FOR THE VICAR OF BRAY 28. A NICE CUP OF TEA (1946) 29. BOOKS VS. CIGARETTES 30. CONFESSIONS OF A BOOK REVIEWER 31. DECLINE OF THE ENGLISH MURDER 32. HOW THE POOR DIE 33. PLEASURE SPOTS 34. POLITICS AND THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE 35. SOME THOUGHTS ON THE COMMON TOAD 36. THE PREVENTION OF LITERATURE 37. WHY I WRITE (1946) 38. LEAR, TOLSTOY AND THE FOOL 39. SUCH, SUCH WERE THE JOYS (1947) 40. WRITERS AND LEVIATHAN (1948)

    This well-respected text offers an accessible introduction to functional programming concepts and techniques for students of mathematics and computer science. The treatment is as nontechnical as possible, and it assumes no prior knowledge of mathematics or functional programming. Cogent examples illuminate the central ideas, and numerous exercises appear throughout the text, offering reinforcement of key concepts. All problems feature complete solutions.

    Assuming no prior knowledge of C, this introductory-level book demonstrates and explains how to write useful and marketable programs in Turbo C on the IBM PC, XT, AT, and PC/Z computers.

    

    Tracy Kidder got a preview of this world in the late 1970s when he observed the engineers of Data General design and build a new 32-bit minicomputer in just one year. His thoughtful, prescient book, The Soul of a New Machine, tells stories of 35-year-old "veteran" engineers hiring recent college graduates and encouraging them to work harder and faster on complex and difficult projects, exploiting the youngsters' ignorance of normal scheduling processes while engendering a new kind of work ethic.These days, we are used to the "total commitment" philosophy of managing technical creation, but Kidder was surprised and even a little alarmed at the obsessions and compulsions he found. From in-house political struggles to workers being permitted to tease management to marathon 24-hour work sessions, The Soul of a New Machine explores concepts that already seem familiar, even old-hat, less than 20 years later. Kidder plainly admires his subjects; while he admits to hopeless confusion about their work, he finds their dedication heroic. The reader wonders, though, what will become of it all, now and in the future. —Rob Lightner

    In How to Create a Mind, Kurzweil presents a provocative exploration of the most important project in human-machine civilization—reverse engineering the brain to understand precisely how it works and using that knowledge to create even more intelligent machines.Kurzweil discusses how the brain functions, how the mind emerges from the brain, and the implications of vastly increasing the powers of our intelligence in addressing the world’s problems. He thoughtfully examines emotional and moral intelligence and the origins of consciousness and envisions the radical possibilities of our merging with the intelligent technology we are creating.Certain to be one of the most widely discussed and debated science books of the year, How to Create a Mind is sure to take its place alongside Kurzweil’s previous classics which include Fantastic Voyage: Live Long Enough to Live Forever and The Age of Spiritual Machines.

    I'm sure you'll find the read rewarding." --From the Foreword by Scott Meyers D is a programming language built to help programmers address the challenges of modern software development. It does so by fostering modules interconnected through precise interfaces, a federation of tightly integrated programming paradigms, language-enforced thread isolation, modular type safety, an efficient memory model, and more. The D Programming Language is an authoritative and comprehensive introduction to D. Reflecting the author's signature style, the writing is casual and conversational, but never at the expense of focus and pre-cision. It covers all aspects of the language (such as expressions, statements, types, functions, contracts, and modules), but it is much more than an enumeration of features. Inside the book you will find In-depth explanations, with idiomatic examples, for all language features How feature groups support major programming paradigms Rationale and best-use advice for each major feature Discussion of cross-cutting issues, such as error handling, contract programming, and concurrency Tables, figures, and "cheat sheets" that serve as a handy quick reference for day-to-day problem solving with D Written for the working programmer, The D Programming Language not only introduces the D language--it presents a compendium of good practices and idioms to help both your coding with D and your coding in general.

    This guide also illustrates how to handle input and output, make programs perform repetitive tasks, manipulate data, hide information, use functions and build flexible, easily modifiable programs.

    Who are these people, what motivates them, and why should you care?Consider these facts: Everything around us is turning into computers. Your typewriter is gone, replaced by a computer. Your phone has turned into a computer. So has your camera. Soon your TV will. Your car was not only designed on computers, but has more processing power in it than a room-sized mainframe did in 1970. Letters, encyclopedias, newspapers, and even your local store are being replaced by the Internet.Hackers & Painters: Big Ideas from the Computer Age, by Paul Graham, explains this world and the motivations of the people who occupy it. In clear, thoughtful prose that draws on illuminating historical examples, Graham takes readers on an unflinching exploration into what he calls “an intellectual Wild West.”The ideas discussed in this book will have a powerful and lasting impact on how we think, how we work, how we develop technology, and how we live. Topics include the importance of beauty in software design, how to make wealth, heresy and free speech, the programming language renaissance, the open-source movement, digital design, internet startups, and more.

    Beginners and intermediate developers will appreciate the comprehensive tutorial that walks step-by-step through building a real client/server database, from concept to deployment and beyond -- and points out key pitfalls to avoid throughout the process. Experienced users will appreciate the book's comprehensive coverage of the Transact-SQL language, from basic to advanced level; detailed ODBC database access information; expert coverage of concurrency control, and more. The book includes thorough, up-to-the-minute guidance on building multi-tier applications; SQL Server performance tuning; and other crucial issues for advanced developers. For all database developers, system administrators, and Web application developers who interact with databases in Microsoft-centric environments.

    But can machines really think? Is the mind just a complicated computer program? Introducing Artificial Intelligence focuses on the issues behind one of science's most difficult problems.

    Every piece of the web application stack, from HTTP requests to browser-side scripts, comes with important yet subtle security consequences. To keep users safe, it is essential for developers to confidently navigate this landscape.In The Tangled Web, Michal Zalewski, one of the world's top browser security experts, offers a compelling narrative that explains exactly how browsers work and why they're fundamentally insecure. Rather than dispense simplistic advice on vulnerabilities, Zalewski examines the entire browser security model, revealing weak points and providing crucial information for shoring up web application security. You'll learn how to:Perform common but surprisingly complex tasks such as URL parsing and HTML sanitization Use modern security features like Strict Transport Security, Content Security Policy, and Cross-Origin Resource Sharing Leverage many variants of the same-origin policy to safely compartmentalize complex web applications and protect user credentials in case of XSS bugs Build mashups and embed gadgets without getting stung by the tricky frame navigation policy Embed or host user-supplied content without running into the trap of content sniffing For quick reference, "Security Engineering Cheat Sheets" at the end of each chapter offer ready solutions to problems you're most likely to encounter. With coverage extending as far as planned HTML5 features, The Tangled Web will help you create secure web applications that stand the test of time.