How can today's computers perform such a bewildering variety of tasks if computing is just glorified arithmetic? The answer, as Martin Davis lucidly illustrates, lies in the fact that computers are essentially engines of logic. Their hardware and software embody concepts developed over centuries by logicians such as Leibniz, Boole, and Godel, culminating in the amazing insights of Alan Turing. The Universal Computer traces the development of these concepts by exploring with captivating detail the lives and work of the geniuses who first formulated them. Readers will come away with a revelatory understanding of how and why computers work and how the algorithms within them came to be.

    Spanning three continents and a decade of high level infiltration, they created chaos amongst some of the world's biggest and most powerful organisations, including NASA and the US military. Brilliant and obsessed, many of them found themselves addicted to hacking and phreaking. Some descended into drugs and madness, others ended up in jail.As riveting as the finest detective novel and meticulously researched, Underground follows the hackers through their crimes, their betrayals, the hunt, raids and investigations. It is a gripping tale of the digital underground.

    You’ll learn how to apply MongoDB design patterns to several challenging domains, such as ecommerce, content management, and online gaming. Using Python and JavaScript code examples, you’ll discover how MongoDB lets you scale your data model while simplifying the development process.Many businesses launch NoSQL databases without understanding the techniques for using their features most effectively. This book demonstrates the benefits of document embedding, polymorphic schemas, and other MongoDB patterns for tackling specific big data use cases, including:Operational intelligence: Perform real-time analytics of business dataEcommerce: Use MongoDB as a product catalog master or inventory management systemContent management: Learn methods for storing content nodes, binary assets, and discussionsOnline advertising networks: Apply techniques for frequency capping ad impressions, and keyword targeting and biddingSocial networking: Learn how to store a complex social graph, modeled after Google+Online gaming: Provide concurrent access to character and world data for a multiplayer role-playing game

    As the size and complexity of commercial software have grown, the gap between academic computer science and industry has widened. It's an open secret that there is little engineering in software engineering, which continues to rely not on codified scientific knowledge but on intuition and experience.Barr, who worked as a programmer for more than twenty years, describes how the industry has evolved, from the era of mainframes and Fortran to today's embrace of the cloud. He explains bugs and why software has so many of them, and why today's interconnected computers offer fertile ground for viruses and worms. The difference between good and bad software can be a single line of code, and Barr includes code to illustrate the consequences of seemingly inconsequential choices by programmers. Looking to the future, Barr writes that the best prospect for improving software engineering is the move to the cloud. When software is a service and not a product, companies will have more incentive to make it good rather than "good enough to ship."

    Its starting point is the annual Turing Test, which pits artificial intelligence programs against people to determine if computers can “think.”Named for computer pioneer Alan Turing, the Tur­ing Test convenes a panel of judges who pose questions—ranging anywhere from celebrity gossip to moral conundrums—to hidden contestants in an attempt to discern which is human and which is a computer. The machine that most often fools the panel wins the Most Human Computer Award. But there is also a prize, bizarre and intriguing, for the Most Human Human.In 2008, the top AI program came short of passing the Turing Test by just one astonishing vote. In 2009, Brian Christian was chosen to participate, and he set out to make sure Homo sapiens would prevail.The author’s quest to be deemed more human than a com­puter opens a window onto our own nature. Interweaving modern phenomena like customer service “chatbots” and men using programmed dialogue to pick up women in bars with insights from fields as diverse as chess, psychiatry, and the law, Brian Christian examines the philosophical, bio­logical, and moral issues raised by the Turing Test.One central definition of human has been “a being that could reason.” If computers can reason, what does that mean for the special place we reserve for humanity?

    The aim of The Node Beginner Book is to get you started with developing applications for Node.js, teaching you everything you need to know about advanced JavaScript along the way on 59 pages.

    Today, Rails developers and architects need better ways to interface with legacy systems, move into the cloud, and scale to handle higher volumes and greater complexity. In Service-Oriented Design with Ruby and Rails Paul Dix introduces a powerful, services-based design approach geared toward overcoming all these challenges. Using Dix's techniques, readers can leverage the full benefits of both Ruby and Rails, while overcoming the difficulties of working with larger codebases and teams. Dix demonstrates how to integrate multiple components within an enterprise application stack; create services that can easily grow and connect; and design systems that are easier to maintain and upgrade. Key concepts are explained with detailed Ruby code built using open source libraries such as ActiveRecord, Sinatra, Nokogiri, and Typhoeus. The book concludes with coverage of security, scaling, messaging, and interfacing with third-party services. Service-Oriented Design with Ruby and Rails will help you Build highly scalable, Ruby-based service architectures that operate smoothly in the cloud or with legacy systems Scale Rails systems to handle more requests, larger development teams, and more complex code bases Master new best practices for designing and creating services in Ruby Use Ruby to glue together services written in any language Use Ruby libraries to build and consume RESTful Web services Use Ruby JSON parsers to quickly represent resources from HTTP services Write lightweight, well-designed API wrappers around internal or external services Discover powerful non-Rails frameworks that simplify Ruby service implementation Implement standards-based enterprise messaging with Advanced Message Queuing Protocol (AMQP) Optimize performance with load balancing and caching Provide for security and authentication

    With a growing and diverse population of internet users out there, the world has definitely become a smaller place. Over 450 million people use the Internet for email correspondence, ecommerce, social networking, research, local and worldwide news reports, and much more. Whether you are just starting out in your online travels or even if you have been online for awhile, The Internet For Dummies, shows you how to do everything better and faster. You'll surf the Web, do research, conduct business transactions, and much more--like a seasoned pro!The Internet For Dummies will walk you through the fundamentals of the Internet, as well as provide more advanced techniques and features to explore once you get your feet on the ground. This resourceful guide will help you:Connect to the Internet and understand the different ways to connect, including wireless, DSL, and cable Set up an e-mail account and communicate through e-mail Explore other communication tools such as Instant Messaging and message boards Use search engines like Yahoo! and Google to browse and research Shop and sell online Investigate online Web communities like blogs and social sites Create your own Web page and handle general Internet housekeeping In this fully updated edition, The Internet for Dummies will help you get the most out of your Internet experience. Written by renowned authors, this book is sure to be valuable to both new users and experienced ones alike.

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

    If you want to leverage OpenGL 2.1's major improvements, you really need the Fourth Edition. It's a comprehensive tutorial, systematic API reference, and massive code library, all in one. You'll start with the fundamental techniques every graphics programmer needs: transformations, lighting, texture mapping, and so forth. Then, building on those basics, you'll move towards newer capabilities, from advanced buffers to vertex shaders. Of course, OpenGL's cross-platform availability remains one of its most compelling features. This book's extensive multiplatform coverage has been thoroughly rewritten, and now addresses everything from Windows Vista to OpenGL ES for handhelds. This is stuff you absolutely want the latest edition for. A small but telling point: This book's recently been invited into Addison-Wesley's OpenGL Series, making it an "official" OpenGL book -- and making a powerful statement about its credibility. Bill Camarda, from the August 2007 href="http://www.barnesandnoble.com/newslet... Only

    

    As the open source implementation of Google's BigTable architecture, HBase scales to billions of rows and millions of columns, while ensuring that write and read performance remain constant. Many IT executives are asking pointed questions about HBase. This book provides meaningful answers, whether you’re evaluating this non-relational database or planning to put it into practice right away. Discover how tight integration with Hadoop makes scalability with HBase easier Distribute large datasets across an inexpensive cluster of commodity servers Access HBase with native Java clients, or with gateway servers providing REST, Avro, or Thrift APIs Get details on HBase’s architecture, including the storage format, write-ahead log, background processes, and more Integrate HBase with Hadoop's MapReduce framework for massively parallelized data processing jobs Learn how to tune clusters, design schemas, copy tables, import bulk data, decommission nodes, and many other tasks

    This idea--using computers to spy on people and groups perceived as a threat, both at home and abroad--drove ARPA to develop the internet in the 1960s, and continues to be at the heart of the modern internet we all know and use today. As Levine shows, surveillance wasn't something that suddenly appeared on the internet; it was woven into the fabric of the technology.But this isn't just a story about the NSA or other domestic programs run by the government. As the book spins forward in time, Levine examines the private surveillance business that powers tech-industry giants like Google, Facebook, and Amazon, revealing how these companies spy on their users for profit, all while doing double duty as military and intelligence contractors. Levine shows that the military and Silicon Valley are effectively inseparable: a military-digital complex that permeates everything connected to the internet, even coopting and weaponizing the antigovernment privacy movement that sprang up in the wake of Edward Snowden.With deep research, skilled storytelling, and provocative arguments, Surveillance Valley will change the way you think about the news--and the device on which you read it.

    In fact, as @WAR shows, U.S. hackers were crucial to our victory in Iraq. Shane Harris delves into the frontlines of America’s new cyber war. As recent revelations have shown, government agencies are joining with tech giants like Google and Facebook to collect vast amounts of information. The military has also formed a new alliance with tech and finance companies to patrol cyberspace, and Harris offers a deeper glimpse into this partnership than we have ever seen before. Finally, Harris explains what the new cybersecurity regime means for all of us, who spend our daily lives bound to the Internet — and are vulnerable to its dangers.

    "The Rails(TM) 3 Way"is the only comprehensive, authoritative guide to delivering production-quality code with Rails 3. Pioneering Rails expert Obie Fernandez and a team of leading experts illuminate the entire Rails 3 API, along with the idioms, design approaches, and libraries that make developing applications with Rails so powerful. Drawing on their unsurpassed experience and track record, they address the real challenges development teams face, showing how to use Rails 3 to maximize your productivity. Using numerous detailed code examples, the author systematically covers Rails 3 key capabilities and subsystems, making this book a reference that you will turn to again and again. He presents advanced Rails programming techniques that have been proven effective in day-to-day usage on dozens of production Rails systems and offers important insights into behavior-driven development and production considerations such as scalability. Dive deep into the Rails 3 codebase and discover why Rails is designed the way it is--and how to make it do what you want it to do.This book will help youLearn what's new in Rails 3 Increase your productivity as a web application developer Realize the overall joy in programming with Rails Leverage Rails' powerful capabilities for building REST-compliant APIs Drive implementation and protect long-term maintainability using RSpec Design and manipulate your domain layer using Active Record Understand and program complex program flows using Action Controller Master sophisticated URL routing concepts Use Ajax techniques via Rails 3 support for unobtrusive JavaScript Learn to extend Rails with popular gems and plugins, and how to write your own Extend Rails with the best third-party plug-ins and write your own Integrate email services into your applications with Action Mailer Improve application responsiveness with background processing Create your own non-Active Record domain classes using Active Model Master Rails' utility classes and extensions in Active Support