A young physics student starts a revolutionary new marketplace immune to State coercion; he ends up ordering hits on people because they might threaten his great experiment, and is jailed for life without parole. Fully automated contractual systems are proposed to make business and the law work better; the contracts people actually write are unregulated penny stock offerings whose fine print literally states that you are buying nothing of any value. The biggest crowdfunding in history attracts $150 million on the promise that it will embody “the steadfast iron will of unstoppable code”; upon release it is immediately hacked, and $50 million is stolen. How did we get here? David Gerard covers the origins and history of Bitcoin to the present day, the other cryptocurrencies it spawned including Ethereum, the ICO craze and the 2017 crypto bubble, and the attempts to apply blockchains and smart contracts to business. Plus a case study on blockchains in the music industry. Bitcoin and blockchains are not a technology story, but a psychology story. Remember: if it sounds too good to be true, it almost certainly is.

    This resource guides readers through conducting a high-tech investigation, from acquiring digital evidence to reporting its findings. Updated coverage includes new software and technologies as well as up-to-date reference sections, and content includes how to set up a forensics lab, how to acquire the proper and necessary tools, and how to conduct the investigation and subsequent digital analysis. It is appropriate for students new to the field, or as a refresher and technology update for professionals in law enforcement, investigations, or computer security. The book features free downloads of the latest forensic software, so readers can become familiar with the tools of the trade.

    Build hands-on expertise through a series of lessons, exercises, and suggested practices—and help maximize your performance on the job.Provides in-depth, hands-on training you take at your own pace Focuses on job-role-specific expertise for using HTML5, JavaScript, and CSS3 to begin building modern web and Windows 8 apps Features pragmatic lessons, exercises, and practices Creates a foundation of skills which, along with on-the-job experience, can be measured by Microsoft Certification exams such as 70-480 Coverage includes: creating HTML5 documents; implementing styles with CSS3; JavaScript in depth; using Microsoft developer tools; AJAX; multimedia support; drawing with Canvas and SVG; drag and drop functionality; location-aware apps; web storage; offline apps; writing your first simple Windows 8 apps; and other key topics

    Corporations & government agencies around the world are pouring billions into achieving AI’s Holy Grail—human-level intelligence. Once AI has attained it, scientists argue, it will have survival drives much like our own. We may be forced to compete with a rival more cunning, more powerful & more alien than we can imagine. Thru profiles of tech visionaries, industry watchdogs & groundbreaking AI systems, James Barrat's Our Final Invention explores the perils of the heedless pursuit of advanced AI. Until now, human intelligence has had no rival. Can we coexist with beings whose intelligence dwarfs our own? Will they allow us to?

    Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) is a key component of the .NET Framework 3.0, giving you the power to create richer and more compelling applications than you dreamed possible. Whether you want to develop traditional user interfaces or integrate 3D graphics, audio/video, animation, dynamic skinning, rich document support, speech recognition, or more, WPF enables you to do so in a seamless, resolution-independent manner. Windows Presentation Foundation Unleashed is the authoritative book that covers it all, in a practical and approachable fashion, authored by .NET guru and Microsoft developer Adam Nathan. - Covers everything you need to know about Extensible Application Markup Language (XAML) - Examines the WPF feature areas in incredible depth: controls, layout, resources, data binding, styling, graphics, animation, and more - Features a chapter on 3D graphics by Daniel Lehenbauer, lead developer responsible for WPF 3D - Delves into non-mainstream topics: speech, audio/video, documents, bitmap effects, and more - Shows how to create popular UI elements, such as features introduced in the 2007 Microsoft Office System: Galleries, ScreenTips, custom control layouts, and more - Demonstrates how to create sophisticated UI mechanisms, such as Visual Studio-like collapsible/dockable panes - Explains how to develop and deploy all types of applications, including navigation-based applications, applications hosted in a Web browser, and applications with great-looking non-rectangular windows - Explains how to create first-class custom controls for WPF - Demonstrates how to create hybrid WPF software that leverages Windows Forms, ActiveX, or other non-WPF technologies - Explains how to exploit new Windows Vista features in WPF applications

    Admittedly, computers now play chess at the grandmaster level, but do they understand the game as we do? Can a computer eventually do everything a human mind can do? In this absorbing and frequently contentious book, Roger Penrose--eminent physicist and winner, with Stephen Hawking, of the prestigious Wolf prize--puts forward his view that there are some facets of human thinking that can never be emulated by a machine. Penrose examines what physics and mathematics can tell us about how the mind works, what they can't, and what we need to know to understand the physical processes of consciousness. He is among a growing number of physicists who think Einstein wasn't being stubborn when he said his little finger told him that quantum mechanics is incomplete, and he concludes that laws even deeper than quantum mechanics are essential for the operation of a mind. To support this contention, Penrose takes the reader on a dazzling tour that covers such topics as complex numbers, Turing machines, complexity theory, quantum mechanics, formal systems, Godel undecidability, phase spaces, Hilbert spaces, black holes, white holes, Hawking radiation, entropy, quasicrystals, the structure of the brain, and scores of other subjects. The Emperor's New Mind will appeal to anyone with a serious interest in modern physics and its relation to philosophical issues, as well as to physicists, mathematicians, philosophers and those on either side of the AI debate.

    Full of insights, arguments and philosophical perspectives, the book covers an amazing array of topics. Beginning in antiquity with Democritus, it progresses through logic and set theory, computability and complexity theory, quantum computing, cryptography, the information content of quantum states and the interpretation of quantum mechanics. There are also extended discussions about time travel, Newcomb's Paradox, the anthropic principle and the views of Roger Penrose. Aaronson's informal style makes this fascinating book accessible to readers with scientific backgrounds, as well as students and researchers working in physics, computer science, mathematics and philosophy.

    But facing the sea change that AI will bring can be paralyzing. How should companies set strategies, governments design policies, and people plan their lives for a world so different from what we know? In the face of such uncertainty, many analysts either cower in fear or predict an impossibly sunny future.But in Prediction Machines, three eminent economists recast the rise of AI as a drop in the cost of prediction. With this single, masterful stroke, they lift the curtain on the AI-is-magic hype and show how basic tools from economics provide clarity about the AI revolution and a basis for action by CEOs, managers, policy makers, investors, and entrepreneurs.When AI is framed as cheap prediction, its extraordinary potential becomes clear: Prediction is at the heart of making decisions under uncertainty. Our businesses and personal lives are riddled with such decisions. Prediction tools increase productivity--operating machines, handling documents, communicating with customers. Uncertainty constrains strategy. Better prediction creates opportunities for new business structures and strategies to compete. Penetrating, fun, and always insightful and practical, Prediction Machines follows its inescapable logic to explain how to navigate the changes on the horizon. The impact of AI will be profound, but the economic framework for understanding it is surprisingly simple.

    Parts cover: Windows 8.1 Stuff Everybody Thinks You Already Know - an introduction to the dual interfaces, basic mechanics, file storage, and instruction on how to get the free upgrade to Windows 8.1.Working with Programs, Apps and Files - the basics of finding and launching apps, getting help, and printingGetting Things Done on the Internet - instructions for connecting a Windows 8.1 device, using web and social apps, and maintaining privacyCustomizing and Upgrading Windows 8.1 - Windows 8.1 offers big changes to what a user can customize on the OS. This section shows how to manipulate app tiles, give Windows the look you in, set up boot-to-desktop capabilities, connect to a network, and create user accounts.Music, Photos and Movies - Windows 8.1 offers new apps and capabilities for working with onboard and online media, all covered in this chapterHelp! - includes guidance on how to fix common problems, interpret strange messages, move files to a new PC, and use the built-in help systemThe Part of Tens - quick tips for avoiding common annoyances and working with Windows 8.1 on a touch device

    This is necessary because, in the words of Michael Polanyi, "we can know more than we can tell." Our design choices are not the result of an ineluctable chain of logic; they come from a deeper place, one which is visceral and inarticulate.Polanyi calls this "tacit knowledge", a thing which we only understand as part of something else. When we speak, we do not focus on making sounds, we focus on our words. We understand the muscular act of speech, but would struggle to explain it.To write software, we must learn where to draw boundaries. Good software is built through effective indirection. We seem to have decided that this skill can only be learned through practice; it cannot be taught, except by example. Our decisions may improve with time, but not our ability to explain them. It's true that the study of these questions cannot yield a closed-form solution for judging software design. We can make our software simple, but we cannot do the same to its problem domain, its users, or the physical world. Our tacit knowledge of this environment will always inform our designs.This doesn't mean that we can simply ignore our design process. Polanyi tells us that tacit knowledge only suffices until we fail, and the software industry is awash with failure. Our designs may never be provably correct, but we can give voice to the intuition that shaped them. Our process may always be visceral, but it doesn't have to be inarticulate.And so this book does not offer knowledge, it offers clarity. It is aimed at readers who know Clojure, but struggle to articulate the rationale of their designs to themselves and others. Readers who use other languages, but have a passing familiarity with Clojure, may also find this book useful.

    Big Blue, as the company is known, tends to rely for its success on magical thinking but that magic ran out a long time ago. The company got in trouble back in the 1990s and had to hire for the first time an outside CEO, Lou Gerstner, to save the day. Gerstner pushed IBM into services with spectacular results but this hurt the company, too. As services have became commoditized IBM could only compete by offshoring the work and quality suffered. The other negative impact of Gerstner was his compensation which was for the first time in IBM history very high. Only the Watson family had become rich running IBM with later CEOs like John Opel and John Akers living comfortable lives with lots of perks, but they never got BIG RICH. That changed with Gerstner. Sam Palmisano an IBM lifer followed Gerstner as CEO and followed, too, the Gerstner playbook. Palmisano retired three years ago with a retirement package worth $241 million, replaced by IBM's first woman CEO, Ginni Rometty, who certainly expects a comparable golden parachute. In order to achieve these numbers, though, IBM has essentially sacrificed both its customers and employees. In order to have ever growing earnings per share the company has cut labor to the bone, off-shored everything it can, dropped quality, deliberately underbid contracts to win them then not performed. IBM's acquisition policy is one of buying companies to get their sales then cutting costs to the bone and under-delivering. This and share buybacks have kept earnings growing until this house of cards recently began to fall. Ginni Rometty, who will end up taking the fall for Palmisano's flawed strategy, has stated a very specific earnings goal for 2015 that she will destroy the company to achieve if she must. This book how IBM fell from grace, where it is headed, and what specifically can be done to save the company before it is too late.

    But it is much more than that, too. It is a public ledger to which everyone has access, but which no single person controls. It allows for companies and individuals to collaborate with an unprecedented degree of trust and transparency. It is cryptographically secure, but fundamentally open. And soon it will be everywhere.In Blockchain Revolution, Don and Alex Tapscott reveal how this game-changing technology will shape the future of the world economy, dramatically improving everything from healthcare records to online voting, and from insurance claims to artist royalty payments. Brilliantly researched and highly accessible, this is the essential text on the next major paradigm shift. Read it, or be left behind.

    When their phone is out of sight or the signal wavers, anxiety rises. You hear people saying again and again: 'I can't live without my phone, ' and sadly technology which should be a wonderful boon to us has started to blight lives; the more you are addicted, the less you get out of it. Technology can turn against us if we let it. Allen Carr's Easyway is the most successful stop-smoking method of all time. It works by unravelling the brainwashing that leads us to desire the very thing that is bad for us and it can help beat any addiction. For the first time, it has been applied to the problems of overusing your mobile phone, and it works

    Arguing that the processes creating the technium are akin to those of biological evolution, Kelly devotes the opening sections of his exposition to that analogy, maintaining that the technium exhibits a similar tendency toward self-organizing complexity. Having defined the technium, Kelly addresses its discontents, as expressed by the Unabomber (although Kelly admits to trepidation in taking seriously the antitechnology screeds of a murderer) and then as lived by the allegedly technophobic Amish. From his observations and discussions with some Amish people, Kelly extracts some precepts of their attitudes toward gadgets, suggesting folk in the secular world can benefit from the Amish approach of treating tools as servants of self and society rather than as out-of-control masters. Exploring ramifications of technology on human welfare and achievement, Kelly arrives at an optimistic outlook that will interest many, coming, as it does, from the former editor of Wired magazine."Gilbert Taylor, Booklist

    It covers the basic steps needed to create a vSphere HA and vSphere DRS cluster and to implement vSphere Storage DRS. Even more important, it explains the concepts and mechanisms behind HA, DRS and Storage DRS which will enable you to make well educated decisions. This book will take you in to the trenches of HA, DRS and Storage DRS and will give you the tools to understand and implement e.g. HA admission control policies, DRS resource pools, Datastore Clusters and resource allocation settings. On top of that each section contains basic design principles that can be used for designing, implementing or improving VMware infrastructures and fundamental supporting features like (Storage) vMotion, Storage I/O Control and much more are described in detail for the very first time. This book is also the ultimate guide to be prepared for any HA, DRS or Storage DRS related question or case study that might be presented during VMware VCDX, VCP and or VCAP exams.Coverage includes: HA node types HA isolation detection and response HA admission control VM Monitoring HA and DRS integration DRS imbalance algorithm Resource Pools Impact of reservations and limits CPU Resource Scheduling Memory Scheduler DPM Datastore Clusters Storage DRS algorithm Influencing SDRS recommendationsBe prepared to dive deep!