Kingpin: How One Hacker Took Over the Billion-Dollar Cybercrime Underground


Kevin Poulsen - 2011
    Max 'Vision' Butler was a white-hat hacker and a celebrity throughout the programming world, even serving as a consultant to the FBI. But there was another side to Max. As the black-hat 'Iceman', he'd seen the fraudsters around him squabble, their ranks riddled with infiltrators, their methods inefficient, and in their dysfunction was the ultimate challenge: he would stage a coup and steal their ill-gotten gains from right under their noses.Through the story of Max Butler's remarkable rise, KINGPIN lays bare the workings of a silent crime wave affecting millions worldwide. It exposes vast online-fraud supermarkets stocked with credit card numbers, counterfeit cheques, hacked bank accounts and fake passports. Thanks to Kevin Poulsen's remarkable access to both cops and criminals, we step inside the quiet,desperate battle that law enforcement fights against these scammers. And learn that the boy next door may not be all he seems.

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

Just for Fun: The Story of an Accidental Revolutionary


Linus Torvalds - 2001
    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.

The Cuckoo's Egg: Tracking a Spy Through the Maze of Computer Espionage


Clifford Stoll - 1989
    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.

Ubuntu: The Beginner's Guide


Jonathan Moeller - 2011
     In the Guide, you'll learn how to: -Use the Ubuntu command line. -Manage users, groups, and file permissions. -Install software on a Ubuntu system, both from the command line and the GUI. -Configure network settings. -Use the vi editor to edit system configuration files. -Install and configure a Samba server for file sharing. -Install SSH for remote system control using public key/private key encryption. -Install a DHCP server for IP address management. -Install a LAMP server. -Install web applications like WordPress and Drupal. -Configure an FTP server. -Manage ebooks. -Convert digital media. -Manage and configure Unity, the default Ubuntu environment. -Manage and halt processes from the command line. -Set up both a VNC server and a client. -Enjoy games on Ubuntu. -And many other topics.

Growing Rails Applications in Practice


Henning Koch - 2014
    

Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution


Steven Levy - 1984
    That was before one pioneering work documented the underground computer revolution that was about to change our world forever. With groundbreaking profiles of Bill Gates, Steve Wozniak, MIT's Tech Model Railroad Club, and more, Steven Levy's Hackers brilliantly captured a seminal moment when the risk-takers and explorers were poised to conquer twentieth-century America's last great frontier. And in the Internet age, the hacker ethic-first espoused here-is alive and well.

Hackers & Painters: Big Ideas from the Computer Age


Paul Graham - 2004
    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.

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.

Life After Google: The Fall of Big Data and the Rise of the Blockchain Economy


George Gilder - 2018
    Gilder says or writes is ever delivered at anything less than the fullest philosophical decibel... Mr. Gilder sounds less like a tech guru than a poet, and his words tumble out in a romantic cascade." “Google’s algorithms assume the world’s future is nothing more than the next moment in a random process. George Gilder shows how deep this assumption goes, what motivates people to make it, and why it’s wrong: the future depends on human action.” — Peter Thiel, founder of PayPal and Palantir Technologies and author of Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future The Age of Google, built on big data and machine intelligence, has been an awesome era. But it’s coming to an end. In Life after Google, George Gilder—the peerless visionary of technology and culture—explains why Silicon Valley is suffering a nervous breakdown and what to expect as the post-Google age dawns. Google’s astonishing ability to “search and sort” attracts the entire world to its search engine and countless other goodies—videos, maps, email, calendars….And everything it offers is free, or so it seems. Instead of paying directly, users submit to advertising. The system of “aggregate and advertise” works—for a while—if you control an empire of data centers, but a market without prices strangles entrepreneurship and turns the Internet into a wasteland of ads. The crisis is not just economic. Even as advances in artificial intelligence induce delusions of omnipotence and transcendence, Silicon Valley has pretty much given up on security. The Internet firewalls supposedly protecting all those passwords and personal information have proved hopelessly permeable. The crisis cannot be solved within the current computer and network architecture. The future lies with the “cryptocosm”—the new architecture of the blockchain and its derivatives. Enabling cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin and ether, NEO and Hashgraph, it will provide the Internet a secure global payments system, ending the aggregate-and-advertise Age of Google. Silicon Valley, long dominated by a few giants, faces a “great unbundling,” which will disperse computer power and commerce and transform the economy and the Internet. Life after Google is almost here.   For fans of "Wealth and Poverty," "Knowledge and Power," and "The Scandal of Money."

Cypherpunks: Freedom and the Future of the Internet


Julian Assange - 2012
    Julian Assange, the editor-in-chief of and visionary behind WikiLeaks, has been a leading voice in the cypherpunk movement since its inception in the 1980s.Now, in what is sure to be a wave-making new book, Assange brings together a small group of cutting-edge thinkers and activists from the front line of the battle for cyber-space to discuss whether electronic communications will emancipate or enslave us. Among the topics addressed are: Do Facebook and Google constitute "the greatest surveillance machine that ever existed," perpetually tracking our location, our contacts and our lives? Far from being victims of that surveillance, are most of us willing collaborators? Are there legitimate forms of surveillance, for instance in relation to the "Four Horsemen of the Infopocalypse" (money laundering, drugs, terrorism and pornography)? And do we have the ability, through conscious action and technological savvy, to resist this tide and secure a world where freedom is something which the Internet helps bring about?The harassment of WikiLeaks and other Internet activists, together with attempts to introduce anti-file sharing legislation such as SOPA and ACTA, indicate that the politics of the Internet have reached a crossroads. In one direction lies a future that guarantees, in the watchwords of the cypherpunks, "privacy for the weak and transparency for the powerful"; in the other lies an Internet that allows government and large corporations to discover ever more about internet users while hiding their own activities. Assange and his co-discussants unpick the complex issues surrounding this crucial choice with clarity and engaging enthusiasm.

Microsoft .NET - Architecting Applications for the Enterprise


Dino Esposito - 2014
    But the principles and practices of software architecting–what the authors call the “science of hard decisions”–have been evolving for cloud, mobile, and other shifts. Now fully revised and updated, this book shares the knowledge and real-world perspectives that enable you to design for success–and deliver more successful solutions. In this fully updated Second Edition, you will: Learn how only a deep understanding of domain can lead to appropriate architecture Examine domain-driven design in both theory and implementation Shift your approach to code first, model later–including multilayer architecture Capture the benefits of prioritizing software maintainability See how readability, testability, and extensibility lead to code quality Take a user experience (UX) first approach, rather than designing for data Review patterns for organizing business logic Use event sourcing and CQRS together to model complex business domains more effectively Delve inside the persistence layer, including patterns and implementation.

Love For The Lost


Catherine Fox - 2000
    Finally, the experiences of loss which have haunted her psyche since childhood manifest themselves physically when she discovers the washed-up body of a child on the beach. It vanishes with the next wave - did she imagine it?

Big Data: A Revolution That Will Transform How We Live, Work, and Think


Viktor Mayer-Schönberger - 2013
    “Big data” refers to our burgeoning ability to crunch vast collections of information, analyze it instantly, and draw sometimes profoundly surprising conclusions from it. This emerging science can translate myriad phenomena—from the price of airline tickets to the text of millions of books—into searchable form, and uses our increasing computing power to unearth epiphanies that we never could have seen before. A revolution on par with the Internet or perhaps even the printing press, big data will change the way we think about business, health, politics, education, and innovation in the years to come. It also poses fresh threats, from the inevitable end of privacy as we know it to the prospect of being penalized for things we haven’t even done yet, based on big data’s ability to predict our future behavior.In this brilliantly clear, often surprising work, two leading experts explain what big data is, how it will change our lives, and what we can do to protect ourselves from its hazards. Big Data is the first big book about the next big thing.www.big-data-book.com

Explain the Cloud Like I'm 10


Todd Hoff - 2018
    And I mean all the time. Every day there’s a new cloud-based dating app; a new cloud-based gizmo for your house; a new cloud-based game; or a thousand other new things—all in the cloud.The cloud is everywhere! Everything is in the cloud! What does it mean! Let’s slow down. Take a deep breath. That’s good. Take another. Excellent. This book teaches you all about the cloud. I’ll let you in on a little secret: the cloud is not that hard to understand. It’s not. It’s just that nobody has taken the time to explain to you what the cloud is. They haven’t, have they?Deep down I think this is because they don’t understand the cloud either, but I do. I’ve been a programmer and writer for over 30 years. I’ve been in cloud computing since the very start, and I’m here to help you on your journey to understand the cloud. Consider me your tour guide. I’ll be with you every step of the way, but not in a creepy way.I take my time with this book. I go slow and easy, so you can build up an intuition about what the cloud really is, one idea at a time. When you finish reading, you’ll understand the cloud. When you hear someone say some new cool thing is in the cloud, you’ll understand exactly what they mean. That’s a promise. How do I deliver on that promise? I use lots and lots of pictures. I use lots and lots of examples. We’ll reveal the secret inner-workings of AWS, Netflix, Facebook Messenger, Amazon Kindle, Apple iCloud, Google Maps, Nest and cloud DVRs. You’ll learn by seeing and understanding; no matter if you're a complete beginner, someone who knows a little and wants to learn more, or a programmer looking to change their career to the cloud.The cloud is the future. You don't want to miss out on the future, do you? Read this book and we'll discover it together.I’m excited. This will be fun. Let’s get started!