“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

    Yet lost are the stories on the other side of these history-making moments, the athletes who experienced not transcendent glory but crushing disappointment: the cornerback who missed the tackle on the big touchdown; the relief pitcher who lost the series; the world-record holding Olympian who fell on the ice.In Losing Isn’t Everything, famed sportscaster Curt Menefee, joined by bestselling writer Michael Arkush, examines a range of signature "disappointments" from the wide world of sports, interviewing the subject at the heart of each loss and uncovering what it means—months, years, or decades later—to be associated with failure. While history is written by the victorious, Menefee argues that these moments when an athlete has fallen short are equally valuable to sports history, offering deep insights into the individuals who suffered them and about humanity itself.Telling the losing stories behind such famous moments as the Patriots’ Rodney Harrison guarding the Giants' David Tyree during the "Helmet Catch" in Super Bowl XLII, Mary Decker’s fall in the 1984 Olympic 1500m, and Craig Ehlo who gave up "The Shot" to Michael Jordan in the 1989 NBA playoffs, Menefee examines the legacy of the hardest loses, revealing the unique path that athletes have to walk after they lose on their sport’s biggest stage. Shedding new light some of the most accepted scapegoat stories in the sports cannon, he also revisits both the Baltimore Colts' loss to the Jets in Super Bowl III, as well as the Red Sox loss in the 1986 World Series, showing why, despite years of humiliation, it might not be all Bill Buckner's fault.Illustrated with sixteen pages of color photos, this considered and compassionate study offers invaluable lessons about pain, resilience, disappointment, remorse, and acceptance that can help us look at our lives and ourselves in a profound new way.

    Each mini-chapter adds one feature to the ray tracer, and by the end the reader can produce the image on the book cover. Details of basic ray tracing code architecture and C++ classes are given.

    Nothing, however, could have prepared de Blecourt for the twisted nightmare she would endure. During her year-long struggle to extricate her newly adopted little boy from that post-Soviet country's corrupt social service and judicial systems, de Blecourt was insulted, physically assaulted, and arrested. Worse, her months of loneliness, worry, and fear drove her to the brink of spiritual despair. But God had no intention of abandoning de Blecourt or her family. Her amazing story-culminating in a spine-chilling race to freedom-offers dramatic proof that God's light shines on even in the deepest darkness.

    Negroponte's fans will want to get a copy of Being Digital, which is an edited version of the 18 articles he wrote for Wired about "being digital." Negroponte's text is mostly a history of media technology rather than a set of predictions for future technologies. In the beginning, he describes the evolution of CD-ROMs, multimedia, hypermedia, HDTV (high-definition television), and more. The section on interfaces is informative, offering an up-to-date history on visual interfaces, graphics, virtual reality (VR), holograms, teleconferencing hardware, the mouse and touch-sensitive interfaces, and speech recognition. In the last chapter and the epilogue, Negroponte offers visionary insight on what "being digital" means for our future. Negroponte praises computers for their educational value but recognizes certain dangers of technological advances, such as increased software and data piracy and huge shifts in our job market that will require workers to transfer their skills to the digital medium. Overall, Being Digital provides an informative history of the rise of technology and some interesting predictions for its future.

    Huge commercial databases track your finances and sell that information to anyone willing to pay. Host sites on the World Wide Web record every page you view, and “smart” toll roads know where you drive. Every day, new technology nibbles at our privacy. Does that make you nervous?David Brin is worried, but not just about privacy. He fears that society will overreact to these technologies by restricting the flow of information, frantically enforcing a reign of secrecy. Such measures, he warns, won’t really preserve our privacy. Governments, the wealthy, criminals, and the techno-elite will still find ways to watch us. But we’ll have fewer ways to watch them. We’ll lose the key to a free society: accountability.The Transparent Society is a call for “reciprocal transparency.” If police cameras watch us, shouldn’t we be able to watch police stations? If credit bureaus sell our data, shouldn't we know who buys it? Rather than cling to an illusion of anonymity - a historical anomaly, given our origins in close-knit villages - we should focus on guarding the most important forms of privacy and preserving mutual accountability. The biggest threat to our freedom, Brin warns, is that surveillance technology will be used by too few people, now by too many.A society of glass houses may seem too fragile. Fearing technology-aided crime, governments seek to restrict online anonymity; fearing technology-aided tyranny, citizens call for encrypting all data. Brins shows how, contrary to both approaches, windows offer us much better protection than walls; after all, the strongest deterrent against snooping has always been the fear of being spotted. Furthermore, Brin argues, Western culture now encourages eccentricity - we’re programmed to rebel! That gives our society a natural protection against error and wrong-doing, like a body’s immune system. But “social T-cells” need openness to spot trouble and get the word out.The Transparent Society is full of such provocative and far-reaching analysis. The inescapable rush of technology is forcing us to make new choices about how we want to live. This daring book reminds us that an open society is more robust and flexible than one where secrecy reigns. In an era of gnat-sized cameras, universal databases, and clothes-penetrating radar, it will be more vital than ever for us to be able to watch the watchers. With reciprocal transparency we can detect dangers early and expose wrong-doers. We can gauge the credibility of pundits and politicians. We can share technological advances and news. But all of these benefits depend on the free, two-way flow of information.

    This book explains the technical aspects of hacking, including stack based overflows, heap based overflows, string exploits, return-into-libc, shellcode, and cryptographic attacks on 802.11b.

    Book by Reynolds, Glenn

    Learn how to choose the right bike, ride safely in traffic, treat and prevent injuries, train for a century, and perform basic maintenance. Packed with quick tips from the pros at Bicycling magazine, this volume provides everything the new cyclist needs to achieve optimum cycling performance.

    Mitnick claims that this socialengineering tactic was the single-most effective method in hisarsenal. This indispensable book examines a variety of maneuversthat are aimed at deceiving unsuspecting victims, while it alsoaddresses ways to prevent social engineering threats.Examines social engineering, the science of influencing atarget to perform a desired task or divulge informationArms you with invaluable information about the many methods oftrickery that hackers use in order to gather information with theintent of executing identity theft, fraud, or gaining computersystem accessReveals vital steps for preventing social engineeringthreatsSocial Engineering: The Art of Human Hacking does itspart to prepare you against nefarious hackers--now you can doyour part by putting to good use the critical information withinits pages.

    (Continued from National Geographic's "Battlefield Afghanistan")This is undoubtedly the most honest and raw account of an Officer's thoughts and actions during combat that has ever been written. After publishing this book, Donny O'Malley's job options are now reduced to low level sales and day labor construction. It is still unclear how he ever made it out of the Marines without court martial.Senior officer's will slam him, military historians will be shocked, and all civilians will be 100% certain he's psychotic.Fortunately, the book is written for the opposite of those mentioned above. It’s written for Enlisted guys.Officers who are brave enough to read will either cry themselves to sleep, jerk themselves off to Donny's picture, or will ask their buddies to write them up for an award with V for having the moral courage to finish the book."My moto boner is still raging strong and I read this book three days ago. I'm certain that my dick is going to explode, and I really don't care, because this book was that fucking good."-Marine I served with."858-555-5555- Hey bro that's my wife's phone number. You can fuck her whenever you want, just wear a condom and try not to blow anywhere near the face. I understand mistakes happen, but do your best. Thanks for writing the book, I really needed that." -Marine I never served with"Just wanted to say that your book is cracking me up. I think the people on the subway think I'm nuts because I can't stop uncontrollably laughing. I think I crack up because I know your jabroni ass and know that the shit you write about that is going on in your head is true, no bullshit. You are completely fucked up, in the good way. If people were to question if you were making this up I could say that it's no bullshit because I spent enough time with you to know that you beat off 10 times a day. I slept above you on ship and heard you beating dick all the time. Fuck it, what man doesn't beat off constantly?It's raw and honest. Like you said, as professional as all of us try to be (officers especially) deep down we are fuckin animals, neanderthals who just love pussy and talking about sucking dick, in a gay way, and when we get the chance, killing bad guys. Anyone who denies that, other than maybe the Col, is a fuckin liar.......PS-your description of Major Dyce is spot on... fuckin moron. Someone should have blew him up." -Lieutenant I served with.A message from the author-This book is a reach-around to all enlisted, and a FUCK YOU to every Officer who has ever written a politically correct, full-of-shit, “I’m a great leader,” book about combat. Every single one of those fucking jerkoffs wrote a book for civilians that not a single enlisted guy ever gave two-shits about. The truth is that Marines love killing more than they love pussy; they fantasize about mowing down insurgents with a 240 on post while 70 virgins take turns blowing them.This is who we are, and I’m sick and tired of nerdy ass book writers hiding our reality from the public.

    By “reverse engineering the fastest growing company in the history of the world,” author Jeff Jarvis, proprietor of Buzzmachine.com, one of the Web’s most widely respected media blogs, offers indispensible strategies for solving the toughest new problems facing businesses today. With a new afterword from the author, What Would Google Do? is the business book that every leader or potential leader in every industry must read.

    Unfortunately, the stories of birth mothers in non-Western societies are sometimes inaccessible, ignored, or misunderstood

    In Adventurer at Heart he shares his life story, and provides a compelling and unique insight into this remarkable pursuit.It takes a Tour de France cyclist about 90 hours of cycling, spread over three weeks with rest days, to complete the race. An adventure race, however, can take up to 160 hours of non-stop racing over as much as six days, with virtually no sleep or rest. To excel at this sport requires an elite level of skill in mountain running, mountain biking, kayaking, rafting and navigation but, above all, an almost superhuman capacity to endure suffering and pain.Part-Samoan, Nathan was raised in Nelson, and it was as a wayward adolescent that he discovered outdoor adventure. Since then he has never looked back, and has been a full-time adventurer working as an outdoor educator, the owner of multiple adventure-based businesses, and a professional athlete.Nathan’s career has taken him all over the world, and he has raced in the deserts of Africa, Mexico and the Emirates, the plains of Tibet and China, and the peaks and valleys of Nepal, Ecuador, Brazil, Patagonia, Russia, the European Alps, and New Zealand.Adventurer at Heart is a story of courage and perseverance, and of overcoming tremendous challenges. Nathan Fa’avae is an outstanding New Zealander, and this book is an inspiring account of what it takes to become a world champion.

    His name was Norman "Angus" Zahrt, a married World War II flight surgeon with whom she'd engaged in a secret love affair, just before he deployed to the Pacific and disappeared. Intrigued by his mother's hidden longing, Dobbs embarked on a reporter's quest to uncover Zahrt's fate, and that of his family. The story he returned with is an extraordinary tale of love, war, and how we confront the lost chances in our lives.David Dobbs writes features and essays for publications including the Atlantic, the New York Times Magazine, National Geographic, Wired, the Guardian. Several of his stories have been chosen for leading science anthologies; most recently, his much-discussed feature for the Atlantic, "The Orchid Children," for Ecco/HarperPerennial's Best American Science Writing 2010. He is now writing his fourth book, The Orchid and the Dandelion (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), which explores the genetics of temperament—and the idea that the genes underlying some of our most troublesome traits and behaviors also generate some of our greatest strengths and accomplishments.