Instead of giving you the most broadly popular result, Google now tries to predict what you are most likely to click on. According to MoveOn.org board president Eli Pariser, Google's change in policy is symptomatic of the most significant shift to take place on the Web in recent years - the rise of personalization. In this groundbreaking investigation of the new hidden Web, Pariser uncovers how this growing trend threatens to control how we consume and share information as a society-and reveals what we can do about it.Though the phenomenon has gone largely undetected until now, personalized filters are sweeping the Web, creating individual universes of information for each of us. Facebook - the primary news source for an increasing number of Americans - prioritizes the links it believes will appeal to you so that if you are a liberal, you can expect to see only progressive links. Even an old-media bastion like "The Washington Post" devotes the top of its home page to a news feed with the links your Facebook friends are sharing. Behind the scenes a burgeoning industry of data companies is tracking your personal information to sell to advertisers, from your political leanings to the color you painted your living room to the hiking boots you just browsed on Zappos.In a personalized world, we will increasingly be typed and fed only news that is pleasant, familiar, and confirms our beliefs - and because these filters are invisible, we won't know what is being hidden from us. Our past interests will determine what we are exposed to in the future, leaving less room for the unexpected encounters that spark creativity, innovation, and the democratic exchange of ideas.While we all worry that the Internet is eroding privacy or shrinking our attention spans, Pariser uncovers a more pernicious and far-reaching trend on the Internet and shows how we can - and must - change course. With vivid detail and remarkable scope, The Filter Bubble reveals how personalization undermines the Internet's original purpose as an open platform for the spread of ideas and could leave us all in an isolated, echoing world.

    The quick reference section organizes all the core functions of PHP alphabetically so you can find what you need easily; the slim size means you can keep it handy beside your keyboard for those times when you want to look up a function quickly without closing what you're doing.This valuable little book provides an authoritative overview of PHP packed into a pocket-sized guide that's easy to take anywhere. It is also the ideal companion for O'Reilly's comprehensive book on PHP, Programming PHP.The PHP Pocket Reference an indispensable (and inexpensive) tool for any serious PHP coder.

    . . . Put this one on your must-have list if you have software, love software, hate programmers, or even ARE a programmer, because Mr. Platt (who teaches programming) has set out to puncture the bloated egos of all those who think that just because they can write a program, they can make it easy to use. . . . This book is funny, but it is also an important wake-up call for software companies that want to reduce the size of their customer support bills. If you were ever stuck for an answer to the question, 'Why do good programmers make such awful software?' this book holds the answer."--John McCormick, Locksmith columnist, TechRepublic.com "I must say first, I don't get many computing manuscripts that make me laugh out loud. Between the laughs, Dave Platt delivers some very interesting insight and perspective, all in a lucid and engaging style. I don't get much of that either!"--Henry Leitner, assistant dean for information technology andsenior lecturer on computer science, Harvard University "A riotous book for all of us downtrodden computer users, written in language that we understand."--Stacy Baratelli, author's barber "David's unique take on the problems that bedevil software creation made me think about the process in new ways. If you care about the quality of the software you create or use, read this book."--Dave Chappell, principal, Chappell & Associates "I began to read it in my office but stopped before I reached the bottom of the first page. I couldn't keep a grin off my face! I'll enjoy it after I go back home and find a safe place to read."--Tsukasa Makino, IT manager "David explains, in terms that my mother-in-law can understand, why the software we use today can be so frustrating, even dangerous at times, and gives us some real ideas on what we can do about it."--Jim Brosseau, Clarrus Consulting Group, Inc. A Book for Anyone Who Uses a Computer Today...and Just Wants to Scream! Today's software sucks. There's no other good way to say it. It's unsafe, allowing criminal programs to creep through the Internet wires into our very bedrooms. It's unreliable, crashing when we need it most, wiping out hours or days of work with no way to get it back. And it's hard to use, requiring large amounts of head-banging to figure out the simplest operations.It's no secret that software sucks. You know that from personal experience, whether you use computers for work or personal tasks. In this book, programming insider David Platt explains why that's the case and, more importantly, why it doesn't have to be that way. And he explains it in plain, jargon-free English that's a joy to read, using real-world examples with which you're already familiar. In the end, he suggests what you, as a typical user, without a technical background, can do about this sad state of our software--how you, as an informed consumer, don't have to take the abuse that bad software dishes out.As you might expect from the book's title, Dave's expose is laced with humor--sometimes outrageous, but always dead on. You'll laugh out loud as you recall incidents with your own software that made you cry. You'll slap your thigh with the same hand that so often pounded your computer desk and wished it was a bad programmer's face. But Dave hasn't written this book just for laughs. He's written it to give long-overdue voice to your own discovery--that software does, indeed, suck, but it shouldn't.

    The cause of their failure was a complete mystery.Five months later, a seemingly unrelated event occurred. A computer security firm in Belarus was called in to troubleshoot some computers in Iran that were caught in a reboot loop—crashing and rebooting repeatedly. At first, technicians with the firm believed the malicious code they found on the machines was a simple, routine piece of malware. But as they and other experts around the world investigated, they discovered a virus of unparalleled complexity and mysterious provenance and intent. They had, they soon learned, stumbled upon the world’s first digital weapon.Stuxnet, as it came to be known, was unlike any other virus or worm built before: It was the first attack that reached beyond the computers it targeted to physically destroy the equipment those computers controlled. It was an ingenious attack, jointly engineered by the United States and Israel, that worked exactly as planned, until the rebooting machines gave it all away. And the discovery of Stuxnet was just the beginning: Once the digital weapon was uncovered and deciphered, it provided clues to other tools lurking in the wild. Soon, security experts found and exposed not one but three highly sophisticated digital spy tools that came from the same labs that created Stuxnet. The discoveries gave the world its first look at the scope and sophistication of nation-state surveillance and warfare in the digital age.Kim Zetter, a senior reporter at Wired, has covered hackers and computer security since 1999 and is one of the top journalists in the world on this beat. She was among the first reporters to cover Stuxnet after its discovery and has authored many of the most comprehensive articles about it. In COUNTDOWN TO ZERO DAY: Stuxnet and the Launch of the World’s First Digital Weapon, Zetter expands on this work to show how the code was designed and unleashed and how its use opened a Pandora’s Box, ushering in an age of digital warfare in which any country’s infrastructure—power grids, nuclear plants, oil pipelines, dams—is vulnerable to the same kind of attack with potentially devastating results. A sophisticated digital strike on portions of the power grid, for example, could plunge half the U.S. into darkness for weeks or longer, having a domino effect on all other critical infrastructures dependent on electricity.

    Instead of relying on another attacker's tools, this book will teach you to forge your own weapons using the Python programming language. This book demonstrates how to write Python scripts to automate large-scale network attacks, extract metadata, and investigate forensic artifacts. It also shows how to write code to intercept and analyze network traffic using Python, craft and spoof wireless frames to attack wireless and Bluetooth devices, and how to data-mine popular social media websites and evade modern anti-virus.

    Harvard Professor Lawrence Lessig warns that, if we're not careful we'll wake up one day to discover that the character of cyberspace has changed from under us. Cyberspace will no longer be a world of relative freedom; instead it will be a world of perfect control where our identities, actions, and desires are monitored, tracked, and analyzed for the latest market research report. Commercial forces will dictate the change, and architecture—the very structure of cyberspace itself—will dictate the form our interactions can and cannot take. Code And Other Laws of Cyberspace is an exciting examination of how the core values of cyberspace as we know it—intellectual property, free speech, and privacy-—are being threatened and what we can do to protect them. Lessig shows how code—the architecture and law of cyberspace—can make a domain, site, or network free or restrictive; how technological architectures influence people's behavior and the values they adopt; and how changes in code can have damaging consequences for individual freedoms. Code is not just for lawyers and policymakers; it is a must-read for everyone concerned with survival of democratic values in the Information Age.

    In How the Internet Happened, he chronicles the whole fascinating story for the first time, beginning in a dusty Illinois basement in 1993, when a group of college kids set off a once-in-an-epoch revolution with what would become the first “dotcom.”Depicting the lives of now-famous innovators like Netscape’s Marc Andreessen and Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, McCullough also reveals surprising quirks and unknown tales as he tracks both the technology and the culture around the internet’s rise. Cinematic in detail and unprecedented in scope, the result both enlightens and informs as it draws back the curtain on the new rhythm of disruption and innovation the internet fostered, and helps to redefine an era that changed every part of our lives.

    From Mary, Queen of Scots, trapped by her own code, to the Navajo Code Talkers who helped the Allies win World War II, to the incredible (and incredibly simple) logisitical breakthrough that made Internet commerce secure, The Code Book tells the story of the most powerful intellectual weapon ever known: secrecy.Throughout the text are clear technical and mathematical explanations, and portraits of the remarkable personalities who wrote and broke the world’s most difficult codes. Accessible, compelling, and remarkably far-reaching, this book will forever alter your view of history and what drives it. It will also make you wonder how private that e-mail you just sent really is.

    The Google Story takes you deep inside the company's wild ride from an idea that struggled for funding in 1998 to a firm that rakes in billions in profits, making Brin and Page the wealthiest young men in America. Based on scrupulous research and extraordinary access to Google, this fast-moving narrative reveals how an unorthodox management style and culture of innovation enabled a search engine to shake up Madison Avenue and Wall Street, scoop up YouTube, and battle Microsoft at every turn. Not afraid of controversy, Google is expanding in Communist China and quietly working on a searchable genetic database, initiatives that test the founders' guiding mantra: DON'T BE EVIL.

    Style and debugging also play a tremendous part in creating programs that run well and are easy to maintain. This book teaches you not only the mechanics of programming, but also describes how to create programs that are easy to read, debug, and update.Practical rules are stressed. For example, there are fifteen precedence rules in C (&& comes before || comes before ?:). The practical programmer reduces these to two: Multiplication and division come before addition and subtraction.Contrary to popular belief, most programmers do not spend most of their time creating code. Most of their time is spent modifying someone else's code. This books shows you how to avoid the all-too-common obfuscated uses of C (and also to recognize these uses when you encounter them in existing programs) and thereby to leave code that the programmer responsible for maintenance does not have to struggle with. Electronic Archaeology, the art of going through someone else's code, is described.This third edition introduces popular Integrated Development Environments on Windows systems, as well as UNIX programming utilities, and features a large statistics-generating program to pull together the concepts and features in the language.

    Version control, done well, is your "undo" button for the project: nothing is final, and mistakes are easily rolled back.This book describes Subversion 1.3, the latest and hottest open source version control system, using a recipe-based approach that will get you up and running quickly and correctly. Learn how to use Subversion the right way-the pragmatic way.With this book, you can:Keep all project assets safe--not just source code--and never run the risk of losing a great idea Know how to undo bad decisions--even directories and symlinks are versioned Learn how to share code safely, and work in parallel for maximum efficiency Install Subversion and organize, administer and backup your repository Share code over a network with Apache, svnserve, or ssh Create and manage releases, code branches, merges and bug fixes Manage 3rd party code safely Use all the latest Subversion 1.3 features including locking and path-based security, and much more!Now there's no excuse not to use professional-grade version control.

    Stylin with CSS teaches you everything you need to know start using CSS in your web development work, from the basics of markup of your content and styling text, through to creating multi-column page layouts without the use of tables. Learn how to create interface components, such as drop-down menus, navigation links, and animated graphical buttons, using only CSS no JavaScript required. Discover how to design code that will work on the latest standard-compliant browsers, while working around the quirks of the older browsers. With a mastery of CSS, your web design capabilities will move to a new level, and everything you need to know to get your started and build your skills is right here in this book. You ll be stylin in no time!"

    It discusses the ongoing, international standardization of C++, explores the importance of Clean C code in the common subset of the ISO C and C++ languages, and demonstrates other ways to program in a style that is more compatible with C++.

    It also gives readers the opportunity to test their understanding with multiple exercises. Readers can test their knowledge of individual concepts, and then test their comprehension of the topic in a larger setting.

    The world has become a law enforcer's nightmare and every criminal's dream. We bank online; shop online; date, learn, work and live online. But have the institutions that keep us safe on the streets learned to protect us in the burgeoning digital world? Have we become complacent about our personal security--sharing our thoughts, beliefs and the details of our daily lives with anyone who might care to relieve us of them?In this fascinating and compelling book, Misha Glenny, author of the international best seller "McMafia," explores the three fundamental threats facing us in the twenty-first century: cybercrime, cyberwarfare and cyberindustrial espionage. Governments and the private sector are losing billions of dollars each year fighting an ever-morphing, often invisible and often supersmart new breed of criminal: the hacker. Glenny has traveled and trawled the world. By exploring the rise and fall of the criminal website DarkMarket he has uncovered the most vivid, alarming and illuminating stories. Whether JiLsi or Matrix, Iceman, Master Splynter or Lord Cyric; whether Detective Sergeant Chris Dawson in Scunthorpe, England, or Agent Keith Mularski in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Glenny has tracked down and interviewed all the players--the criminals, the geeks, the police, the security experts and the victims--and he places everyone and everything in a rich brew of politics, economics and history.The result is simply unputdownable. DarkMarket is authoritative and completely engrossing. It's a must-read for everyone who uses a computer: the essential crime book for our times.