Book picks similar to
Understanding the Digital World: What You Need to Know about Computers, the Internet, Privacy, and Security by Brian W. Kernighan
technology
computer-science
tech
non-fiction
Understanding Cryptography: A Textbook For Students And Practitioners
Christof Paar - 2009
Today's designers need a comprehensive understanding of applied cryptography.After an introduction to cryptography and data security, the authors explain the main techniques in modern cryptography, with chapters addressing stream ciphers, the Data Encryption Standard (DES) and 3DES, the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES), block ciphers, the RSA cryptosystem, public-key cryptosystems based on the discrete logarithm problem, elliptic-curve cryptography (ECC), digital signatures, hash functions, Message Authentication Codes (MACs), and methods for key establishment, including certificates and public-key infrastructure (PKI). Throughout the book, the authors focus on communicating the essentials and keeping the mathematics to a minimum, and they move quickly from explaining the foundations to describing practical implementations, including recent topics such as lightweight ciphers for RFIDs and mobile devices, and current key-length recommendations.The authors have considerable experience teaching applied cryptography to engineering and computer science students and to professionals, and they make extensive use of examples, problems, and chapter reviews, while the book's website offers slides, projects and links to further resources. This is a suitable textbook for graduate and advanced undergraduate courses and also for self-study by engineers.
Implementing Domain-Driven Design
Vaughn Vernon - 2013
Vaughn Vernon couples guided approaches to implementation with modern architectures, highlighting the importance and value of focusing on the business domain while balancing technical considerations.Building on Eric Evans’ seminal book, Domain-Driven Design, the author presents practical DDD techniques through examples from familiar domains. Each principle is backed up by realistic Java examples–all applicable to C# developers–and all content is tied together by a single case study: the delivery of a large-scale Scrum-based SaaS system for a multitenant environment.The author takes you far beyond “DDD-lite” approaches that embrace DDD solely as a technical toolset, and shows you how to fully leverage DDD’s “strategic design patterns” using Bounded Context, Context Maps, and the Ubiquitous Language. Using these techniques and examples, you can reduce time to market and improve quality, as you build software that is more flexible, more scalable, and more tightly aligned to business goals.
UML Distilled: A Brief Guide to the Standard Object Modeling Language
Martin Fowler - 1997
This third edition is the best resource for quick, no-nonsense insights into understanding and using UML 2.0 and prior versions of the UML. Some readers will want to quickly get up to speed with the UML 2.0 and learn the essentials of the UML. Others will use this book as a handy, quick reference to the most common parts of the UML. The author delivers on both of these promises in a short, concise, and focused presentation. This book describes all the major UML diagram types, what they're used for, and the basic notation involved in creating and deciphering them. These diagrams include class, sequence, object, package, deployment, use case, state machine, activity, communication, composite structure, component, interaction overview, and timing diagrams. The examples are clear and the explanations cut to the fundamental design logic. Includes a quick reference to the most useful parts of the UML notation and a useful summary of diagram types that were added to the UML 2.0. If you are like most developers, you don't have time to keep up with all the new innovations in software engineering. This new edition of Fowler's classic work gets you acquainted with some of the best thinking about efficient object-oriented software design using the UML--in a convenient format that will be essential to anyone who designs software professionally.
Scalability Rules: 50 Principles for Scaling Web Sites
Martin L. Abbott - 2011
It's an essential read for anyone dealing with scaling an online business."--Chris Lalonde, VP, Technical Operations and Infrastructure Architecture, Bullhorn "Abbott and Fisher again tackle the difficult problem of scalability in their unique and practical manner. Distilling the challenges of operating a fast-growing presence on the Internet into 50 easy-to understand rules, the authors provide a modern cookbook of scalability recipes that guide the reader through the difficulties of fast growth."--Geoffrey Weber, Vice President, Internet Operations, Shutterfly "Abbott and Fisher have distilled years of wisdom into a set of cogent principles to avoid many nonobvious mistakes."--Jonathan Heiliger, VP, Technical Operations, Facebook "In "The Art of Scalability," the AKF team taught us that scale is not just a technology challenge. Scale is obtained only through a combination of people, process, "and "technology. With "Scalability Rules," Martin Abbott and Michael Fisher fill our scalability toolbox with easily implemented and time-tested rules that once applied will enable massive scale."--Jerome Labat, VP, Product Development IT, Intuit "When I joined Etsy, I partnered with Mike and Marty to hit the ground running in my new role, and it was one of the best investments of time I have made in my career. The indispensable advice from my experience working with Mike and Marty is fully captured here in this book. Whether you're taking on a role as a technology leader in a new company or you simply want to make great technology decisions, "Scalability Rules "will be the go-to resource on your bookshelf."--Chad Dickerson, CTO, Etsy ""Scalability Rules "provides an essential set of practical tools and concepts anyone can use when designing, upgrading, or inheriting a technology platform. It's very easy to focus on an immediate problem and overlook issues that will appear in the future. This book ensures strategic design principles are applied to everyday challenges."--Robert Guild, Director and Senior Architect, Financial Services "An insightful, practical guide to designing and building scalable systems. A must-read for both product-building and operations teams, this book offers concise and crisp insights gained from years of practical experience of AKF principals. With the complexity of modern systems, scalability considerations should be an integral part of the architecture and implementation process. Scaling systems for hypergrowth requires an agile, iterative approach that is closely aligned with product features; this book shows you how."--Nanda Kishore, Chief Technology Officer, ShareThis "For organizations looking to scale technology, people, and processes rapidly or effectively, the twin pairing of "Scalability Rules "and "The Art of Scalability "are unbeatable. The rules-driven approach in "Scalability Rules "makes this not only an easy reference companion, but also allows organizations to tailor the Abbott and Fisher approach to their specific needs both immediately and in the future!"--Jeremy Wright, CEO, BNOTIONS.ca and Founder, b5media 50 Powerful, Easy-to-Use Rules for Supporting Hypergrowth in Any Environment "Scalability Rules" is the easy-to-use scalability primer and reference for every architect, developer, web professional, and manager. Authors Martin L. Abbott and Michael T. Fisher have helped scale more than 200 hypergrowth Internet sites through their consulting practice. Now, drawing on their unsurpassed experience, they present 50 clear, proven scalability rules-and practical guidance for applying them. Abbott and Fisher transform scalability from a "black art" to a set of realistic, technology-agnostic best practices for supporting hypergrowth in nearly any environment, including both frontend and backend systems. For architects, they offer powerful new insights for creating and evaluating designs. For developers, they share specific techniques for handling everything from databases to state. For managers, they provide invaluable help in goal-setting, decision-making, and interacting with technical teams. Whatever your role, you'll find practical risk/benefit guidance for setting priorities-and getting maximum "bang for the buck." - Simplifying architectures and avoiding "over-engineering"- Scaling via cloning, replication, separating functionality, and splitting data sets- Scaling out, not up- Getting more out of databases without compromising scalability- Avoiding unnecessary redirects and redundant double-checking- Using caches and content delivery networks more aggressively, without introducing unacceptable complexity- Designing for fault tolerance, graceful failure, and easy rollback- Striving for statelessness when you can; efficiently handling state when you must- Effectively utilizing asynchronous communication- Learning quickly from mistakes, and much more
Feynman Lectures On Computation
Richard P. Feynman - 1996
Feynman gave his famous course on computation at the California Institute of Technology, he asked Tony Hey to adapt his lecture notes into a book. Although led by Feynman, the course also featured, as occasional guest speakers, some of the most brilliant men in science at that time, including Marvin Minsky, Charles Bennett, and John Hopfield. Although the lectures are now thirteen years old, most of the material is timeless and presents a “Feynmanesque” overview of many standard and some not-so-standard topics in computer science such as reversible logic gates and quantum computers.
xUnit Test Patterns: Refactoring Test Code
Gerard Meszaros - 2003
An effective testing strategy will deliver new functionality more aggressively, accelerate user feedback, and improve quality. However, for many developers, creating effective automated tests is a unique and unfamiliar challenge. xUnit Test Patterns is the definitive guide to writing automated tests using xUnit, the most popular unit testing framework in use today. Agile coach and test automation expert Gerard Meszaros describes 68 proven patterns for making tests easier to write, understand, and maintain. He then shows you how to make them more robust and repeatable--and far more cost-effective. Loaded with information, this book feels like three books in one. The first part is a detailed tutorial on test automation that covers everything from test strategy to in-depth test coding. The second part, a catalog of 18 frequently encountered "test smells," provides trouble-shooting guidelines to help you determine the root cause of problems and the most applicable patterns. The third part contains detailed descriptions of each pattern, including refactoring instructions illustrated by extensive code samples in multiple programming languages. Topics covered includeWriting better tests--and writing them faster The four phases of automated tests: fixture setup, exercising the system under test, result verification, and fixture teardown Improving test coverage by isolating software from its environment using Test Stubs and Mock Objects Designing software for greater testability Using test "smells" (including code smells, behavior smells, and project smells) to spot problems and know when and how to eliminate them Refactoring tests for greater simplicity, robustness, and execution speed This book will benefit developers, managers, and testers working with any agile or conventional development process, whether doing test-driven development or writing the tests last. While the patterns and smells are especially applicable to all members of the xUnit family, they also apply to next-generation behavior-driven development frameworks such as RSpec and JBehave and to other kinds of test automation tools, including recorded test tools and data-driven test tools such as Fit and FitNesse.Visual Summary of the Pattern Language Foreword Preface Acknowledgments Introduction Refactoring a Test PART I: The Narratives Chapter 1 A Brief Tour Chapter 2 Test Smells Chapter 3 Goals of Test Automation Chapter 4 Philosophy of Test Automation Chapter 5 Principles of Test Automation Chapter 6 Test Automation Strategy Chapter 7 xUnit Basics Chapter 8 Transient Fixture Management Chapter 9 Persistent Fixture Management Chapter 10 Result Verification Chapter 11 Using Test Doubles Chapter 12 Organizing Our Tests Chapter 13 Testing with Databases Chapter 14 A Roadmap to Effective Test Automation PART II: The Test Smells Chapter 15 Code Smells Chapter 16 Behavior Smells Chapter 17 Project Smells PART III: The Patterns Chapter 18 Test Strategy Patterns Chapter 19 xUnit Basics Patterns Chapter 20 Fixture Setup Patterns Chapter 21 Result Verification Patterns Chapter 22 Fixture Teardown Patterns Chapter 23 Test Double Patterns Chapter 24 Test Organization Patterns Chapter 25 Database Patterns Chapter 26 Design-for-Testability Patterns Chapter 27 Value Patterns PART IV: Appendixes Appendix A Test Refactorings Appendix B xUnit Terminology Appendix C xUnit Family Members Appendix D Tools Appendix E Goals and Principles Appendix F Smells, Aliases, and Causes Appendix G Patterns, Aliases, and Variations Glossary References Index "
Version Control By Example
Eric Sink - 2011
Topics covered include:Basic version control commands and conceptsIntroduction to Distributed Version Control Systems (DVCS)Advanced branching workflowsStrengths and weaknesses of DVCS vs. centralized toolsBest practicesHow distributed version control works under the hoodFeaturing these open source version control tools:Apache SubversionMercurialGitVeracity
The Hundred-Page Machine Learning Book
Andriy Burkov - 2019
During that week, you will learn almost everything modern machine learning has to offer. The author and other practitioners have spent years learning these concepts.Companion wiki — the book has a continuously updated wiki that extends some book chapters with additional information: Q&A, code snippets, further reading, tools, and other relevant resources.Flexible price and formats — choose from a variety of formats and price options: Kindle, hardcover, paperback, EPUB, PDF. If you buy an EPUB or a PDF, you decide the price you pay!Read first, buy later — download book chapters for free, read them and share with your friends and colleagues. Only if you liked the book or found it useful in your work, study or business, then buy it.
The Systems Bible: The Beginner's Guide to Systems Large and Small: Being the Third Edition of Systemantics
John Gall - 1977
Hardcover published by Quadragle/The New York Times Book Co., third printing, August 1977, copyright 1975.
Python Cookbook
David Beazley - 2002
Packed with practical recipes written and tested with Python 3.3, this unique cookbook is for experienced Python programmers who want to focus on modern tools and idioms.Inside, you’ll find complete recipes for more than a dozen topics, covering the core Python language as well as tasks common to a wide variety of application domains. Each recipe contains code samples you can use in your projects right away, along with a discussion about how and why the solution works.Topics include:Data Structures and AlgorithmsStrings and TextNumbers, Dates, and TimesIterators and GeneratorsFiles and I/OData Encoding and ProcessingFunctionsClasses and ObjectsMetaprogrammingModules and PackagesNetwork and Web ProgrammingConcurrencyUtility Scripting and System AdministrationTesting, Debugging, and ExceptionsC Extensions
Coders: The Making of a New Tribe and the Remaking of the World
Clive Thompson - 2019
And this may sound weirdly obvious, but every single one of those pieces of software was written by a programmer. Programmers are thus among the most quietly influential people on the planet. As we live in a world made of software, they're the architects. The decisions they make guide our behavior. When they make something newly easy to do, we do a lot more of it. If they make it hard or impossible to do something, we do less of it.If we want to understand how today's world works, we ought to understand something about coders. Who exactly are the people that are building today's world? What makes them tick? What type of personality is drawn to writing software? And perhaps most interestingly -- what does it do to them?One of the first pieces of coding a newbie learns is the program to make the computer say "Hello, world!" Like that piece of code, Clive Thompson's book is a delightful place to begin to understand this vocation, which is both a profession and a way of life, and which essentially didn't exist little more than a generation ago, but now is considered just about the only safe bet we can make about what the future holds. Thompson takes us close to some of the great coders of our time, and unpacks the surprising history of the field, beginning with the first great coders, who were women. Ironically, if we're going to traffic in stereotypes, women are arguably "naturally" better at coding than men, but they were written out of the history, and shoved out of the seats, for reasons that are illuminating. Now programming is indeed, if not a pure brotopia, at least an awfully homogenous community, which attracts people from a very narrow band of backgrounds and personality types. As Thompson learns, the consequences of that are significant - not least being a fetish for disruption at scale that doesn't leave much time for pondering larger moral issues of collateral damage. At the same time, coding is a marvelous new art form that has improved the world in innumerable ways, and Thompson reckons deeply, as no one before him has, with what great coding in fact looks like, who creates it, and where they come from. To get as close to his subject has he can, he picks up the thread of his own long-abandoned coding practice, and tries his mightiest to up his game, with some surprising results.More and more, any serious engagement with the world demands an engagement with code and its consequences, and to understand code, we must understand coders. In that regard, Clive Thompson's Hello, World! is a marvelous and delightful master class.
Counter Hack Reloaded: A Step-By-Step Guide to Computer Attacks and Effective Defenses
Edward Skoudis - 2005
I asked other people and they didn't seem to know how these things work, or at least they couldn't explain them in a way that I could understand. Counter Hack Reloaded is the clearest explanation of these tools I have ever seen. Thank you!" --Stephen Northcutt, CEO, SANS Institute "Ed Skoudis does it again! With this new edition, Ed takes a phenomenal work to the next level! This book is a 'must-have' and a 'must-read' for anyone remotely associated with computers and computer security." --Harlan Carvey, CISSP, author of Windows Forensics and Incident Recovery "Ed Skoudis is a rare individual. He knows the innards of all the various systems, knows all the latest exploits and defenses, and yet is able to explain everything at just the right level. The first edition of Counter Hack was a fascinating read. It's technically intriguing and very clear. . . . A book on vulnerabilities, though, will get out of date, and so we definitely needed this updated and significantly rewritten second edition. This book is a wonderful overview of the field." --From the Foreword by Radia Perlman, series editor, The Radia Perlman Series in Computer Networking and Security; author of Interconnections; and coauthor of Network Security: Private Communications in a Public World "What a great partnership! Ed Skoudis and Tom Liston share an uncanny talent for explaining even the most challenging security concepts in a clear and enjoyable manner. Counter Hack Reloaded is an indispensable resource for those who want to improve their defenses and understand the mechanics of computer attacks." --Lenny Zeltser, coauthor of Malware: Fighting Malicious Code "Ed Skoudis does it again! With this new edition, Ed takes a phenomenal work to the next level! This book is a 'must-have' and a 'must-read' for anyone remotely associated with computers and computer security." --Harlan Carvey, CISSP, author of Windows Forensics and Incident Recovery "In addition to having breadth of knowledge about and probing insights into network security, Ed Skoudis's real strength is in his ability to show complex topics in an understandable form. By the time he's done, what started off as a hopeless conglomeration of acronyms starts to sound comfortable and familiar. This book is your best source for understanding attack strategies, attack tools, and the defenses against both." --William Stearns, network security expert, www.stearns.org "This book is a must-have for anyone in the Internet security game. It covers everything from the basic principles to the fine details of online attack methods and counter-strategies and is very engagingly written." --Warwick Ford, coauthor of Secure Electronic Commerce For years, Counter Hack has been the primary resource for every network/system administrator and security professional who needs a deep, hands-on understanding of hacker attacks and countermeasures. Now, leading network security expert Ed Skoudis, with Tom Liston, has thoroughly updated this best-selling guide, showing how to defeat today's newest, most sophisticated, and most destructive attacks.For this second edition, more than half the content is new and updated, including coverage of the latest hacker techniques for scanning networks, gaining and maintaining access, and preventing detection. The authors walk you through each attack and demystify every tool and tactic. You'll learn exactly how to establish effective defenses, recognize attacks in progress, and respond quickly and effectively in both UNIX/Linux and Windows environments.Important features of this new edition includeAll-new "anatomy-of-an-attack" scenarios and tools An all-new section on wireless hacking: war driving, wireless sniffing attacks, and more Fully updated coverage of reconnaissance tools, including Nmap port scanning and "Google hacking" New coverage of tools for gaining access, including uncovering Windows and Linux vulnerabilities with Metasploit New information on dangerous, hard-to-detect, kernel-mode rootkits
Program or Be Programmed: Ten Commands for a Digital Age
Douglas Rushkoff - 2010
But for all the heat of claim and counter-claim, the argument is essentially beside the point: it’s here; it’s everywhere. The real question is, do we direct technology, or do we let ourselves be directed by it and those who have mastered it? “Choose the former,” writes Rushkoff, “and you gain access to the control panel of civilization. Choose the latter, and it could be the last real choice you get to make.” In ten chapters, composed of ten “commands” accompanied by original illustrations from comic artist Leland Purvis, Rushkoff provides cyberenthusiasts and technophobes alike with the guidelines to navigate this new universe.In this spirited, accessible poetics of new media, Rushkoff picks up where Marshall McLuhan left off, helping readers come to recognize programming as the new literacy of the digital age––and as a template through which to see beyond social conventions and power structures that have vexed us for centuries. This is a friendly little book with a big and actionable message. World-renowned media theorist and counterculture figure Douglas Rushkoff is the originator of ideas such as “viral media,” “social currency” and “screenagers.” He has been at the forefront of digital society from its beginning, correctly predicting the rise of the net, the dotcom boom and bust, as well as the current financial crisis. He is a familiar voice on NPR, face on PBS, and writer in publications from Discover Magazine to the New York Times.“Douglas Rushkoff is one of the great thinkers––and writers––of our time.” —Timothy Leary“Rushkoff is damn smart. As someone who understood the digital revolution faster and better than almost anyone, he shows how the internet is a social transformer that should change the way your business culture operates." —Walter Isaacson
Machine Learning: A Probabilistic Perspective
Kevin P. Murphy - 2012
Machine learning provides these, developing methods that can automatically detect patterns in data and then use the uncovered patterns to predict future data. This textbook offers a comprehensive and self-contained introduction to the field of machine learning, based on a unified, probabilistic approach.The coverage combines breadth and depth, offering necessary background material on such topics as probability, optimization, and linear algebra as well as discussion of recent developments in the field, including conditional random fields, L1 regularization, and deep learning. The book is written in an informal, accessible style, complete with pseudo-code for the most important algorithms. All topics are copiously illustrated with color images and worked examples drawn from such application domains as biology, text processing, computer vision, and robotics. Rather than providing a cookbook of different heuristic methods, the book stresses a principled model-based approach, often using the language of graphical models to specify models in a concise and intuitive way. Almost all the models described have been implemented in a MATLAB software package—PMTK (probabilistic modeling toolkit)—that is freely available online. The book is suitable for upper-level undergraduates with an introductory-level college math background and beginning graduate students.
Future Crimes
Marc Goodman - 2015
Hackers can activate baby monitors to spy on families, thieves are analyzing social media posts to plot home invasions, and stalkers are exploiting the GPS on smart phones to track their victims’ every move. We all know today’s criminals can steal identities, drain online bank accounts, and wipe out computer servers, but that’s just the beginning. To date, no computer has been created that could not be hacked—a sobering fact given our radical dependence on these machines for everything from our nation’s power grid to air traffic control to financial services. Yet, as ubiquitous as technology seems today, just over the horizon is a tidal wave of scientific progress that will leave our heads spinning. If today’s Internet is the size of a golf ball, tomorrow’s will be the size of the sun. Welcome to the Internet of Things, a living, breathing, global information grid where every physical object will be online. But with greater connections come greater risks. Implantable medical devices such as pacemakers can be hacked to deliver a lethal jolt of electricity and a car’s brakes can be disabled at high speed from miles away. Meanwhile, 3-D printers can produce AK-47s, bioterrorists can download the recipe for Spanish flu, and cartels are using fleets of drones to ferry drugs across borders. With explosive insights based upon a career in law enforcement and counterterrorism, Marc Goodman takes readers on a vivid journey through the darkest recesses of the Internet. Reading like science fiction, but based in science fact, Future Crimes explores how bad actors are primed to hijack the technologies of tomorrow, including robotics, synthetic biology, nanotechnology, virtual reality, and artificial intelligence. These fields hold the power to create a world of unprecedented abundance and prosperity. But the technological bedrock upon which we are building our common future is deeply unstable and, like a house of cards, can come crashing down at any moment. Future Crimes provides a mind-blowing glimpse into the dark side of technological innovation and the unintended consequences of our connected world. Goodman offers a way out with clear steps we must take to survive the progress unfolding before us. Provocative, thrilling, and ultimately empowering, Future Crimes will serve as an urgent call to action that shows how we can take back control over our own devices and harness technology’s tremendous power for the betterment of humanity—before it’s too late.From the Hardcover edition.