In Empires of Light, historian Jill Jonnes portrays this extraordinary trio and their riveting and ruthless world of cutting-edge science, invention, intrigue, money, death, and hard-eyed Wall Street millionaires. At the heart of the story are Thomas Alva Edison, the nation’s most famous and folksy inventor, creator of the incandescent light bulb and mastermind of the world’s first direct current electrical light networks; the Serbian wizard of invention Nikola Tesla, elegant, highly eccentric, a dreamer who revolutionized the generation and delivery of electricity; and the charismatic George Westinghouse, Pittsburgh inventor and tough corporate entrepreneur, an industrial idealist who in the era of gaslight imagined a world powered by cheap and plentiful electricity and worked heart and soul to create it. Edison struggled to introduce his radical new direct current (DC) technology into the hurly-burly of New York City as Tesla and Westinghouse challenged his dominance with their alternating current (AC), thus setting the stage for one of the eeriest feuds in American corporate history, the War of the Electric Currents. The battlegrounds: Wall Street, the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair, Niagara Falls, and, finally, the death chamber - Jonnes takes us on the tense walk down a prison hallway and into the sunlit room where William Kemmler, convicted ax murderer, became the first man to die in the electric chair. Empires of Light is the gripping history of electricity, the “mysterious fluid,” and how the fateful collision of Edison, Tesla, and Westinghouse left the world utterly transformed.

    Today that number is one percent. What went so wrong? Losing the Signal is a riveting story of a company that toppled global giants before succumbing to the ruthlessly competitive forces of Silicon Valley. This is not a conventional tale of modern business failure by fraud and greed. The rise and fall of BlackBerry reveals the dangerous speed at which innovators race along the information superhighway. With unprecedented access to key players, senior executives, directors and competitors, Losing the Signal unveils the remarkable rise of a company that started above a bagel store in Ontario. At the heart of the story is an unlikely partnership between a visionary engineer, Mike Lazaridis, and an abrasive Harvard Business school grad, Jim Balsillie. Together, they engineered a pioneering pocket email device that became the tool of choice for presidents and CEOs. The partnership enjoyed only a brief moment on top of the world, however. At the very moment BlackBerry was ranked the world's fastest growing company internal feuds and chaotic growth crippled the company as it faced its gravest test: Apple and Google's entry in to mobile phones. Expertly told by acclaimed journalists, Jacquie McNish and Sean Silcoff, this is an entertaining, whirlwind narrative that goes behind the scenes to reveal one of the most compelling business stories of the new century.

    Joining the professional web designers and programmers are new audiences who need to know a little bit of code at work (update a content management system or e-commerce store) and those who want to make their personal blogs more attractive. Many books teaching HTML and CSS are dry and only written for those who want to become programmers, which is why this book takes an entirely new approach. • Introduces HTML and CSS in a way that makes them accessible to everyone—hobbyists, students, and professionals—and it’s full-color throughout • Utilizes information graphics and lifestyle photography to explain the topics in a simple way that is engaging • Boasts a unique structure that allows you to progress through the chapters from beginning to end or just dip into topics of particular interest at your leisureThis educational book is one that you will enjoy picking up, reading, then referring back to. It will make you wish other technical topics were presented in such a simple, attractive and engaging way!

    Includes a compact disc which is playable on CD-ROM and audio CD players.

    He is ultra competitive but never forgets to have fun. An immensely likeable man.' Damon HillThe world’s foremost designer in Formula One, Adrian Newey OBE is arguably one of Britain’s greatest engineers and this is his fascinating, powerful memoir.How to Build a Car explores the story of Adrian’s unrivalled 35-year career in Formula One through the prism of the cars he has designed, the drivers he has worked alongside and the races in which he’s been involved.A true engineering genius, even in adolescence Adrian’s thoughts naturally emerged in shape and form – he began sketching his own car designs at the age of 12 and took a welding course in his school summer holidays. From his early career in IndyCar racing and on to his unparalleled success in Formula One, we learn in comprehensive, engaging and highly entertaining detail how a car actually works. Adrian has designed for the likes of Mario Andretti, Nigel Mansell, Alain Prost, Damon Hill, David Coulthard, Mika Hakkinen, Mark Webber and Sebastian Vettel, always with a shark-like purity of purpose: to make the car go faster. And while his career has been marked by unbelievable triumphs, there have also been deep tragedies; most notably Ayrton Senna’s death during his time at Williams in 1994.Beautifully illustrated with never-before-seen drawings, How to Build a Car encapsulates, through Adrian’s remarkable life story, precisely what makes Formula One so thrilling – its potential for the total synchronicity of man and machine, the perfect combination of style, efficiency and speed.

    This book presents some of the most important modeling and prediction techniques, along with relevant applications. Topics include linear regression, classification, resampling methods, shrinkage approaches, tree- based methods, support vector machines, clustering, and more. Color graphics and real-world examples are used to illustrate the methods presented. Since the goal of this textbook is to facilitate the use of these statistical learning techniques by practitioners in science, industry, and other fields, each chapter contains a tutorial on implementing the analyses and methods presented in R, an extremely popular open source statistical software platform. Two of the authors co-wrote The Elements of Statistical Learning (Hastie, Tibshirani and Friedman, 2nd edition 2009), a popular reference book for statistics and machine learning researchers. An Introduction to Statistical Learning covers many of the same topics, but at a level accessible to a much broader audience. This book is targeted at statisticians and non-statisticians alike who wish to use cutting-edge statistical learning techniques to analyze their data. The text assumes only a previous course in linear regression and no knowledge of matrix algebra.

    It reveals the visions they shared, the sacrifices they made, and the rewards they reaped.

    You'll learn how to:Read and write files efficiently Use signals, clocks, and timers Create processes and execute programs Write secure programs Write multithreaded programs using POSIX threads Build and use shared libraries Perform interprocess communication using pipes, message queues, shared memory, and semaphores Write network applications with the sockets API While The Linux Programming Interface covers a wealth of Linux-specific features, including epoll, inotify, and the /proc file system, its emphasis on UNIX standards (POSIX.1-2001/SUSv3 and POSIX.1-2008/SUSv4) makes it equally valuable to programmers working on other UNIX platforms.The Linux Programming Interface is the most comprehensive single-volume work on the Linux and UNIX programming interface, and a book that's destined to become a new classic.Praise for The Linux Programming Interface "If I had to choose a single book to sit next to my machine when writing software for Linux, this would be it." —Martin Landers, Software Engineer, Google "This book, with its detailed descriptions and examples, contains everything you need to understand the details and nuances of the low-level programming APIs in Linux . . . no matter what the level of reader, there will be something to be learnt from this book." —Mel Gorman, Author of Understanding the Linux Virtual Memory Manager "Michael Kerrisk has not only written a great book about Linux programming and how it relates to various standards, but has also taken care that bugs he noticed got fixed and the man pages were (greatly) improved. In all three ways, he has made Linux programming easier. The in-depth treatment of topics in The Linux Programming Interface . . . makes it a must-have reference for both new and experienced Linux programmers." —Andreas Jaeger, Program Manager, openSUSE, Novell "Michael's inexhaustible determination to get his information right, and to express it clearly and concisely, has resulted in a strong reference source for programmers. While this work is targeted at Linux programmers, it will be of value to any programmer working in the UNIX/POSIX ecosystem." —David Butenhof, Author of Programming with POSIX Threads and Contributor to the POSIX and UNIX Standards ". . . a very thorough—yet easy to read—explanation of UNIX system and network programming, with an emphasis on Linux systems. It's certainly a book I'd recommend to anybody wanting to get into UNIX programming (in general) or to experienced UNIX programmers wanting to know 'what's new' in the popular GNU/Linux system." —Fernando Gont, Network Security Researcher, IETF Participant, and RFC Author ". . . encyclopedic in the breadth and depth of its coverage, and textbook-like in its wealth of worked examples and exercises. Each topic is clearly and comprehensively covered, from theory to hands-on working code. Professionals, students, educators, this is the Linux/UNIX reference that you have been waiting for." —Anthony Robins, Associate Professor of Computer Science, The University of Otago "I've been very impressed by the precision, the quality and the level of detail Michael Kerrisk put in his book. He is a great expert of Linux system calls and lets us share his knowledge and understanding of the Linux APIs." —Christophe Blaess, Author of Programmation systeme en C sous Linux ". . . an essential resource for the serious or professional Linux and UNIX systems programmer. Michael Kerrisk covers the use of all the key APIs across both the Linux and UNIX system interfaces with clear descriptions and tutorial examples and stresses the importance and benefits of following standards such as the Single UNIX Specification and POSIX 1003.1." —Andrew Josey, Director, Standards, The Open Group, and Chair of the POSIX 1003.1 Working Group "What could be better than an encyclopedic reference to the Linux system, from the standpoint of the system programmer, written by none other than the maintainer of the man pages himself? The Linux Programming Interface is comprehensive and detailed. I firmly expect it to become an indispensable addition to my programming bookshelf." —Bill Gallmeister, Author of POSIX.4 Programmer's Guide: Programming for the Real World ". . . the most complete and up-to-date book about Linux and UNIX system programming. If you're new to Linux system programming, if you're a UNIX veteran focused on portability while interested in learning the Linux way, or if you're simply looking for an excellent reference about the Linux programming interface, then Michael Kerrisk's book is definitely the companion you want on your bookshelf." —Loic Domaigne, Chief Software Architect (Embedded), Corpuls.com

    With the many upgraded features, C# is more expressive than ever. However, an in depth understanding is required to get the most out of the language.C# in Depth, Second Edition is a thoroughly revised, up-to-date book that covers the new features of C# 4 as well as Code Contracts. In it, you'll see the subtleties of C# programming in action, learning how to work with high-value features that you'll be glad to have in your toolkit. The book helps readers avoid hidden pitfalls of C# programming by understanding "behind the scenes" issues.Purchase of the print book comes with an offer of a free PDF, ePub, and Kindle eBook from Manning. Also available is all code from the book.

    Cooper details many of these meta functions to explain his central thesis: programmers need to seriously re-evaluate the many user-hostile concepts deeply embedded within the software development process. Rather than provide users with a straightforward set of options, programmers often pile on the bells and whistles and ignore or de-prioritise lingering bugs. For the average user, increased functionality is a great burden, adding to the recurrent chorus that plays: "computers are hard, mysterious, unwieldy things." (An average user, Cooper asserts, who doesn't think that way or who has memorised all the esoteric commands and now lords it over others, has simply been desensitised by too many years of badly designed software.) Cooper's writing style is often overblown, with a pantheon of cutesy terminology (i.e. "dancing bearware") and insider back-patting. (When presenting software to Bill Gates, he reports that Gates replied: "How did you do that?" to which he writes: "I love stumping Bill!") More seriously, he is also unable to see beyond software development's importance--a sin he accuses programmers of throughout the book. Even with that in mind, the central questions Cooper asks are too important to ignore: Are we making users happier? Are we improving the process by which they get work done? Are we making their work hours more effective? Cooper looks to programmers, business managers and what he calls "interaction designers" to question current assumptions and mindsets. Plainly, he asserts that the goal of computer usage should be "not to make anyone feel stupid." Our distance from that goal reinforces the need to rethink entrenched priorities in software planning. -- Jennifer Buckendorff, Amazon.com

    We will soon be able to meet and exceed the basic needs of every man, woman and child on the planet. Abundance for all is within our grasp. This bold, contrarian view, backed up by exhaustive research, introduces our near-term future, where exponentially growing technologies and three other powerful forces are conspiring to better the lives of billions. An antidote to pessimism by tech entrepreneur turned philanthropist, Peter H. Diamandis and award-winning science writer Steven Kotler. Since the dawn of humanity, a privileged few have lived in stark contrast to the hardscrabble majority. Conventional wisdom says this gap cannot be closed. But it is closing—fast. The authors document how four forces—exponential technologies, the DIY innovator, the Technophilanthropist, and the Rising Billion—are conspiring to solve our biggest problems. Abundance establishes hard targets for change and lays out a strategic roadmap for governments, industry and entrepreneurs, giving us plenty of reason for optimism.Examining human need by category—water, food, energy, healthcare, education, freedom—Diamandis and Kotler introduce dozens of innovators making great strides in each area: Larry Page, Steven Hawking, Dean Kamen, Daniel Kahneman, Elon Musk, Bill Joy, Stewart Brand, Jeff Skoll, Ray Kurzweil, Ratan Tata, Craig Venter, among many, many others.

    The books also provides a companion web site that provides the toold and materials necessary to build the hardware and software.

    In this revision, the author takes a structured approach to explaining how networks function.

    This staggering amount of information—unprecedented in history—can tell us a great deal about who we are—the fears, desires, and behaviors that drive us, and the conscious and unconscious decisions we make. From the profound to the mundane, we can gain astonishing knowledge about the human psyche that less than twenty years ago, seemed unfathomable.Everybody Lies offers fascinating, surprising, and sometimes laugh-out-loud insights into everything from economics to ethics to sports to race to sex, gender and more, all drawn from the world of big data. What percentage of white voters didn’t vote for Barack Obama because he’s black? Does where you go to school effect how successful you are in life? Do parents secretly favor boy children over girls? Do violent films affect the crime rate? Can you beat the stock market? How regularly do we lie about our sex lives and who’s more self-conscious about sex, men or women?Investigating these questions and a host of others, Seth Stephens-Davidowitz offers revelations that can help us understand ourselves and our lives better. Drawing on studies and experiments on how we really live and think, he demonstrates in fascinating and often funny ways the extent to which all the world is indeed a lab. With conclusions ranging from strange-but-true to thought-provoking to disturbing, he explores the power of this digital truth serum and its deeper potential—revealing biases deeply embedded within us, information we can use to change our culture, and the questions we’re afraid to ask that might be essential to our health—both emotional and physical. All of us are touched by big data everyday, and its influence is multiplying. Everybody Lies challenges us to think differently about how we see it and the world.

    citizen recognized its ominous potential. Armed with clear evidence of computer espionage, he began a highly personal quest to expose a hidden network of spies that threatened national security. But would the authorities back him up? Cliff Stoll's dramatic firsthand account is "a computer-age detective story, instantly fascinating [and] astonishingly gripping" (Smithsonian). Cliff Stoll was an astronomer turned systems manager at Lawrence Berkeley Lab when a 75-cent accounting error alerted him to the presence of an unauthorized user on his system. The hacker's code name was "Hunter" -- a mysterious invader who managed to break into U.S. computer systems and steal sensitive military and security information. Stoll began a one-man hunt of his own: spying on the spy. It was a dangerous game of deception, broken codes, satellites, and missile bases -- a one-man sting operation that finally gained the attention of the CIA...and ultimately trapped an international spy ring fueled by cash, cocaine, and the KGB.