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Introducing Artificial Intelligence: A Graphic Guide by Henry Brighton
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Alan Turing: The Enigma
Andrew Hodges - 1983
His breaking of the German U-boat Enigma cipher in World War II ensured Allied-American control of the Atlantic. But Turing's vision went far beyond the desperate wartime struggle. Already in the 1930s he had defined the concept of the universal machine, which underpins the computer revolution. In 1945 he was a pioneer of electronic computer design. But Turing's true goal was the scientific understanding of the mind, brought out in the drama and wit of the famous "Turing test" for machine intelligence and in his prophecy for the twenty-first century.Drawn in to the cockpit of world events and the forefront of technological innovation, Alan Turing was also an innocent and unpretentious gay man trying to live in a society that criminalized him. In 1952 he revealed his homosexuality and was forced to participate in a humiliating treatment program, and was ever after regarded as a security risk. His suicide in 1954 remains one of the many enigmas in an astonishing life story.
Python 3 Object Oriented Programming
Dusty Phillips - 2010
Many examples are taken from real-world projects. The book focuses on high-level design as well as the gritty details of the Python syntax. The provided exercises inspire the reader to think about his or her own code, rather than providing solved problems. If you're new to Object Oriented Programming techniques, or if you have basic Python skills and wish to learn in depth how and when to correctly apply Object Oriented Programming in Python, this is the book for you. If you are an object-oriented programmer for other languages, you too will find this book a useful introduction to Python, as it uses terminology you are already familiar with. Python 2 programmers seeking a leg up in the new world of Python 3 will also find the book beneficial, and you need not necessarily know Python 2.
The Fourth Age: Smart Robots, Conscious Computers, and the Future of Humanity
Byron Reese - 2018
will mean for us, it also forces readers to challenge their preconceptions. And it manages to do all this in a way that is both entertaining and engaging.” —The New York Times As we approach a great turning point in history when technology is poised to redefine what it means to be human, The Fourth Age offers fascinating insight into AI, robotics, and their extraordinary implications for our species.In The Fourth Age, Byron Reese makes the case that technology has reshaped humanity just three times in history: - 100,000 years ago, we harnessed fire, which led to language. - 10,000 years ago, we developed agriculture, which led to cities and warfare. - 5,000 years ago, we invented the wheel and writing, which lead to the nation state. We are now on the doorstep of a fourth change brought about by two technologies: AI and robotics. The Fourth Age provides extraordinary background information on how we got to this point, and how—rather than what—we should think about the topics we’ll soon all be facing: machine consciousness, automation, employment, creative computers, radical life extension, artificial life, AI ethics, the future of warfare, superintelligence, and the implications of extreme prosperity. By asking questions like “Are you a machine?” and “Could a computer feel anything?”, Reese leads you through a discussion along the cutting edge in robotics and AI, and, provides a framework by which we can all understand, discuss, and act on the issues of the Fourth Age, and how they’ll transform humanity.
The Man Who Knew Too Much: Alan Turing and the Invention of the Computer
David Leavitt - 2006
Then, attempting to break a Nazi code during World War II, he successfully designed and built one, thus ensuring the Allied victory. Turing became a champion of artificial intelligence, but his work was cut short. As an openly gay man at a time when homosexuality was illegal in England, he was convicted and forced to undergo a humiliating "treatment" that may have led to his suicide.With a novelist's sensitivity, David Leavitt portrays Turing in all his humanity—his eccentricities, his brilliance, his fatal candor—and elegantly explains his work and its implications.
Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code
Martin Fowler - 1999
Significant numbers of poorly designed programs have been created by less-experienced developers, resulting in applications that are inefficient and hard to maintain and extend. Increasingly, software system professionals are discovering just how difficult it is to work with these inherited, non-optimal applications. For several years, expert-level object programmers have employed a growing collection of techniques to improve the structural integrity and performance of such existing software programs. Referred to as refactoring, these practices have remained in the domain of experts because no attempt has been made to transcribe the lore into a form that all developers could use... until now. In Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Software, renowned object technology mentor Martin Fowler breaks new ground, demystifying these master practices and demonstrating how software practitioners can realize the significant benefits of this new process.
Tubes: A Journey to the Center of the Internet
Andrew Blum - 2012
But what is it physically? And where is it really? Our mental map of the network is as blank as the map of the ocean that Columbus carried on his first Atlantic voyage. The Internet, its material nuts and bolts, is an unexplored territory. Until now.In Tubes, journalist Andrew Blum goes inside the Internet's physical infrastructure and flips on the lights, revealing an utterly fresh look at the online world we think we know. It is a shockingly tactile realm of unmarked compounds, populated by a special caste of engineer who pieces together our networks by hand; where glass fibers pulse with light and creaky telegraph buildings, tortuously rewired, become communication hubs once again. From the room in Los Angeles where the Internet first flickered to life to the caverns beneath Manhattan where new fiber-optic cable is buried; from the coast of Portugal, where a ten-thousand-mile undersea cable just two thumbs wide connects Europe and Africa, to the wilds of the Pacific Northwest, where Google, Microsoft, and Facebook have built monumental data centers—Blum chronicles the dramatic story of the Internet's development, explains how it all works, and takes the first-ever in-depth look inside its hidden monuments.This is a book about real places on the map: their sounds and smells, their storied pasts, their physical details, and the people who live there. For all the talk of the "placelessness" of our digital age, the Internet is as fixed in real, physical spaces as the railroad or telephone. You can map it and touch it, and you can visit it. Is the Internet in fact "a series of tubes" as Ted Stevens, the late senator from Alaska, once famously described it? How can we know the Internet's possibilities if we don't know its parts?Like Tracy Kidder's classic The Soul of a New Machine or Tom Vanderbilt's recent bestseller Traffic, Tubes combines on-the-ground reporting and lucid explanation into an engaging, mind-bending narrative to help us understand the physical world that underlies our digital lives.
ng-book - The Complete Book on AngularJS
Ari Lerner - 2013
Ready to master AngularJS? What if you could master the entire framework – with solid foundations – in less time without beating your head against a wall? Imagine how quickly you could work if you knew the best practices and the best tools? Stop wasting your time searching and have everything you need to be productive in one, well-organized place, with complete examples to get your project up without needing to resort to endless hours of research.
Grokking Deep Learning
Andrew W. Trask - 2017
Loosely based on neuron behavior inside of human brains, these systems are rapidly catching up with the intelligence of their human creators, defeating the world champion Go player, achieving superhuman performance on video games, driving cars, translating languages, and sometimes even helping law enforcement fight crime. Deep Learning is a revolution that is changing every industry across the globe.Grokking Deep Learning is the perfect place to begin your deep learning journey. Rather than just learn the “black box” API of some library or framework, you will actually understand how to build these algorithms completely from scratch. You will understand how Deep Learning is able to learn at levels greater than humans. You will be able to understand the “brain” behind state-of-the-art Artificial Intelligence. Furthermore, unlike other courses that assume advanced knowledge of Calculus and leverage complex mathematical notation, if you’re a Python hacker who passed high-school algebra, you’re ready to go. And at the end, you’ll even build an A.I. that will learn to defeat you in a classic Atari game.
The Pattern on the Stone: The Simple Ideas that Make Computers Work
William Daniel Hillis - 1998
What they don't realize—and what Daniel Hillis's short book brilliantly demonstrates—is that computers' seemingly complex operations can be broken down into a few simple parts that perform the same simple procedures over and over again.Computer wizard Hillis offers an easy-to-follow explanation of how data is processed that makes the operations of a computer seem as straightforward as those of a bicycle. Avoiding technobabble or discussions of advanced hardware, the lucid explanations and colorful anecdotes in The Pattern on the Stone go straight to the heart of what computers really do.Hillis proceeds from an outline of basic logic to clear descriptions of programming languages, algorithms, and memory. He then takes readers in simple steps up to the most exciting developments in computing today—quantum computing, parallel computing, neural networks, and self-organizing systems.Written clearly and succinctly by one of the world's leading computer scientists, The Pattern on the Stone is an indispensable guide to understanding the workings of that most ubiquitous and important of machines: the computer.
HTML & XHTML: The Definitive Guide
Chuck Musciano - 1996
For nearly a decade, hundreds of thousands of web developers have turned to HTML & XHTML: The Definitive Guide to master standards-based web development. Truly a definitive guide, the book combines a unique balance of tutorial material with a comprehensive reference that even the most experienced web professionals keep close at hand. From basic syntax and semantics to guidelines aimed at helping you develop your own distinctive style, this classic is all you need to become fluent in the language of web design.The new sixth edition guides you through every element of HTML and XHTML in detail, explaining how each element works and how it interacts with other elements. You'll also find detailed discussions of CSS (Cascading Style Sheets), which is intricately related to web page development. The most all-inclusive, up-to-date book on these languages available, this edition covers HTML 4.01, XHTML 1.0, and CSS2, with a preview of the upcoming XHTML2 and CSS3. Other topics include the newer initiatives in XHTML (XForms, XFrames, and modularization) and the essentials of XML for advanced readers. You'll learn how to:Use style sheets to control your document's appearance Work with programmatically generated HTML Create tables, both simple and complex Use frames to coordinate sets of documents Design and build interactive forms and dynamic documents Insert images, sound files, video, Java applets, and JavaScript programs Create documents that look good on a variety of browsersThe authors apply a natural learning approach that uses straightforward language and plenty of examples. Throughout the book, they offer suggestions for style and composition to help you decide how to best use HTML and XHTML to accomplish a variety of tasks. You'll learn what works and what doesn't, and what makes sense to those who view your web pages and what might be confusing. Written for anyone who wants to learn the language of the Web--from casual users to the full-time design professionals--this is the single most important book on HTML and XHTML you can own.Bill Kennedy is chief technical officer of MobileRobots, Inc. When not hacking new HTML pages or writing about them, "Dr. Bill" (Ph.D. in biophysics from Loyola University of Chicago) is out promoting the company's line of mobile, autonomous robots that can be used for artificial intelligence, fuzzy logic research, and education.Chuck Musciano began his career as a compiler writer and crafter of tools at Harris Corporations' Advanced Technology Group and is now a manager of Unix Systems in Harris' Corporate Data Center.
Silence on the Wire: A Field Guide to Passive Reconnaissance and Indirect Attacks
Michal Zalewski - 2005
Silence on the Wire uncovers these silent attacks so that system administrators can defend against them, as well as better understand and monitor their systems.Silence on the Wire dissects several unique and fascinating security and privacy problems associated with the technologies and protocols used in everyday computing, and shows how to use this knowledge to learn more about others or to better defend systems. By taking an indepth look at modern computing, from hardware on up, the book helps the system administrator to better understand security issues, and to approach networking from a new, more creative perspective. The sys admin can apply this knowledge to network monitoring, policy enforcement, evidence analysis, IDS, honeypots, firewalls, and forensics.
Don't Make Me Think, Revisited: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability
Steve Krug - 2000
And it’s still short, profusely illustrated…and best of all–fun to read.If you’ve read it before, you’ll rediscover what made Don’t Make Me Think so essential to Web designers and developers around the world. If you’ve never read it, you’ll see why so many people have said it should be required reading for anyone working on Web sites.
Mac OS X: Tiger Edition
David Pogue - 2001
The new Mac OS X 10.4, better known as Tiger, is faster than its predecessors, but nothing's too fast for Pogue and Mac OS X: The Missing Manual. There are many reasons why this is the most popular computer book of all time.With its hallmark objectivity, the Tiger Edition thoroughly explores the latest features to grace the Mac OS. Which ones work well and which do not? What should you look for? This book tackles Spotlight, an enhanced search feature that helps you find anything on your computer; iChat AV for videoconferencing; Automator for automating repetitive, manual or batch tasks; and the hundreds of smaller tweaks and changes, good and bad, that Apple's marketing never bothers to mention.Mac OS X: The Missing Manual, Tiger Edition is the authoritative book that's ideal for every user, including people coming to the Mac for the first time. Our guide offers an ideal introduction that demystifies the Dock, the unfamiliar Mac OS X folder structure, and the entirely new Mail application. There are also mini-manuals on iLife applications such as iMovie, iDVD, and iPhoto, those much-heralded digital media programs, and a tutorial for Safari, Mac's own web browser.And plenty more: learn to configure Mac OS X using the System Preferences application, keep your Mac secure with FileVault, and learn about Tiger's enhanced Firewall capabilities. If you're so inclined, this Missing Manual also offers an easy introduction to the Terminal application for issuing basic Unix commands.There's something new on practically every page, and David Pogue brings his celebrated wit and expertise to every one of them. Mac's brought a new cat to town and we have a great new way to tame it.
Working Effectively with Legacy Code
Michael C. Feathers - 2004
This book draws on material Michael created for his renowned Object Mentor seminars, techniques Michael has used in mentoring to help hundreds of developers, technical managers, and testers bring their legacy systems under control. The topics covered include: Understanding the mechanics of software change, adding features, fixing bugs, improving design, optimizing performance Getting legacy code into a test harness Writing tests that protect you against introducing new problems Techniques that can be used with any language or platform, with examples in Java, C++, C, and C# Accurately identifying where code changes need to be made Coping with legacy systems that aren't object-oriented Handling applications that don't seem to have any structureThis book also includes a catalog of twenty-four dependency-breaking techniques that help you work with program elements in isolation and make safer changes.
Machine, Platform, Crowd: Harnessing Our Digital Future
Andrew McAfee - 2017
Now they’ve written a guide to help readers make the most of our collective future. Machine | Platform | Crowd outlines the opportunities and challenges inherent in the science fiction technologies that have come to life in recent years, like self-driving cars and 3D printers, online platforms for renting outfits and scheduling workouts, or crowd-sourced medical research and financial instruments.