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Construction Program Management (Best Practices in Portfolio, Program, and Project Management)
by Joseph DelaneyAlthough the construction industry is one of the largest enterprises in the United States, widely accepted management principles, such as those contained in PMI's Standard for Program Management are still not widely implemented. This book explores how an improved understanding of these principles could boost construction program success rates. It outlines a process-based approach to construction program management that leverages structure to bring order to what can otherwise feel like an overwhelming challenge. The book includes case studies that illustrate the proper implementation of the steps outlined in the book.
Constructive Side-Channel Analysis and Secure Design: 5th International Workshop, COSADE 2014, Paris, France, April 13-15, 2014. Revised Selected Papers (Lecture Notes in Computer Science #8622)
by Emmanuel ProuffThis book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-conference proceedings of the 5th International Workshop, COSADE 2014, held in Paris, France, in April 2014. The 20 revised full papers presented together with two invited talks were carefully selected from 51 submissions and collect truly existing results in cryptographic engineering, from concepts to artifacts, from software to hardware, from attack to countermeasure.
Contabilidad Fácil Para Ebay
by Carlos Blanco Nick Vulich¿Serio acerca de su negocio en el Internet? Contabilidad Fácil para eBay es un iniciador financiero para los vendedores en el Internet. Lo ayudará a domar la bestia, para que Ud. pueda dejar de hacer malabares con sus recibos, los formularios de impuestos y el miedo a una auditoría del Servicio de Rentas Internas. El libro es como una Maestría en Administración de Empresas presentada en cortos y simples bytes. > He aquí una muestra de lo que Ud. aprenderá. > Eliminaremos el misterio de la contabilidad > Le daremos los términos básicos de negocio que Ud. necesita saber > Le ayudaremos a domar el monstruo que es GoDaddy Bookkeeping > Le ayudaremos a maniobrar en el laberinto de los impuestos, las licencias de negocio y las deducciones de negocio más comunes. Si UD. se ha preguntado alguna vez si puede tomar la deducción por usar su casa para negocios , reclamar los gastos por kilometraje por usar su carro para negocios; consideró deducir una nueva computadora, iPad o iPhone; o pensó acerca de deducir sus próximas vacaciones como un viaje de negocios. ¡No se preocupe! Se lo explicaremos todo. Y si vende en múltiples plataformas, también lo ayudaremos. Contabilidad Fácil para eBay aplica a vendedores de Amazon y de Etsy también. Recoja su copia hoy y aprenda como hacer crecer su negocio - ¡Un número detrás otro!:
Contemporary Issues in Exploratory Data Mining in the Behavioral Sciences: Contemporary Issues In Exploratory Data Mining In The Behavioral Sciences (Quantitative Methodology Series)
by John J. McArdle Gilbert RitschardThis book reviews the latest techniques in exploratory data mining (EDM) for the analysis of data in the social and behavioral sciences to help researchers assess the predictive value of different combinations of variables in large data sets. Methodological findings and conceptual models that explain reliable EDM techniques for predicting and understanding various risk mechanisms are integrated throughout. Numerous examples illustrate the use of these techniques in practice. Contributors provide insight through hands-on experiences with their own use of EDM techniques in various settings. Readers are also introduced to the most popular EDM software programs. A related website at http://mephisto.unige.ch/pub/edm-book-supplement/offers color versions of the book’s figures, a supplemental paper to chapter 3, and R commands for some chapters. The results of EDM analyses can be perilous – they are often taken as predictions with little regard for cross-validating the results. This carelessness can be catastrophic in terms of money lost or patients misdiagnosed. This book addresses these concerns and advocates for the development of checks and balances for EDM analyses. Both the promises and the perils of EDM are addressed. Editors McArdle and Ritschard taught the "Exploratory Data Mining" Advanced Training Institute of the American Psychological Association (APA). All contributors are top researchers from the US and Europe. Organized into two parts--methodology and applications, the techniques covered include decision, regression, and SEM tree models, growth mixture modeling, and time based categorical sequential analysis. Some of the applications of EDM (and the corresponding data) explored include: selection to college based on risky prior academic profiles the decline of cognitive abilities in older persons global perceptions of stress in adulthood predicting mortality from demographics and cognitive abilities risk factors during pregnancy and the impact on neonatal development Intended as a reference for researchers, methodologists, and advanced students in the social and behavioral sciences including psychology, sociology, business, econometrics, and medicine, interested in learning to apply the latest exploratory data mining techniques. Prerequisites include a basic class in statistics.
Context-Aware Systems and Applications: Second International Conference, ICCASA 2013, Phu Quoc Island, Vietnam, November 25-26, 2013, Revised Selected Papers (Lecture Notes of the Institute for Computer Sciences, Social Informatics and Telecommunications Engineering #128)
by Phan Cong Vinh Vangalur Alagar Emil Vassev Ashish KhareThis book constitutes the thoroughly refereed proceedings of the Second International Conference on Context-Aware Systems and Applications, ICCASA 2013, held in Phu Quoc Island, Vietnam in November 2013. The 36 revised full papers presented were carefully selected and reviewed from over 100 submissions and cover a wide spectrum of issues in the area of context-aware systems (CAS) and context-based recommendation systems.
Context in Computing: A Cross-Disciplinary Approach for Modeling the Real World
by Patrick Brézillon Avelino J. GonzalezThis volume explores how context has been and can be used in computing to model human behaviors, actions and communications as well as to manage data and knowledge. It addresses context management and exploitation of context for sharing experience across domains. The book serves as a user-centric guide for readers wishing to develop context-based applications, as well as an intellectual reference on the concept of context. It provides a broad yet deep treatment of context in computing and related areas that depend heavily on computing. The coverage is broad because of its cross-disciplinary nature but treats topics at a sufficient depth to permit a reader to implement context in his/her computational endeavors. The volume addresses how context can be integrated in software and systems and how it can be used in a computing environment. Furthermore, the use of context to represent the human dimension, individually as well as collectively is explained. Contributions also include descriptions of how context has been represented in formal as well as non-formal, structured approaches. The last section describes several human behavior representation paradigms based on the concept of context as its central representational element. The depth and breadth of this content is certain to provide useful as well as intellectually enriching information to readers of diverse backgrounds who have an interest in or are intrigued by using context to assist in their representation of the real world.
Continued Rise of the Cloud: Advances and Trends in Cloud Computing (Computer Communications and Networks)
by Zaigham MahmoodThis book captures the state of the art in cloud technologies, infrastructures, and service delivery and deployment models. The work provides guidance and case studies on the development of cloud-based services and infrastructures from an international selection of expert researchers and practitioners. Features: presents a focus on security and access control mechanisms for cloud environments, analyses standards and brokerage services, and investigates the role of certification for cloud adoption; evaluates cloud ERP, suggests a framework for implementing "big data" science, and proposes an approach for cloud interoperability; reviews existing elasticity management solutions, discusses the relationship between cloud management and governance, and describes the development of a cloud service capability assessment model; examines cloud applications in higher education, including the use of knowledge-as-a-service in the provision of education, and cloud-based e-learning for students with disabilities.
Continuous Delivery and DevOps – A Quickstart Guide - Second Edition
by Paul SwartoutIf you are an IT professional, software developer, or system administrator who wants to understand how to ship quality software regularly, effectively and efficiently, this book is for you. Previous knowledge of DevOps practices, Continuous Delivery, or using DevOps tools is not necessary.
Continuous Enterprise Development in Java
by Aslak Knutsen Andrew Lee RubingerLearn a use-case approach for developing Java enterprise applications in a continuously test-driven fashion. With this hands-on guide, authors and JBoss project leaders Andrew Lee Rubinger and Aslak Knutsen show you how to build high-level components, from persistent storage to the user interface, using the Arquillian testing platform and several other JBoss projects and tools.Through the course of the book, you'll build a production-ready software conference tracker called GeekSeek, using source code from GitHub. Rubinger and Knutsen demonstrate why testing is the very foundation of development--essential for ensuring that code is consumable, complete, and correct.Bootstrap an elementary Java EE project from start to finish before diving into the full-example application, GeekSeekUse both relational and NoSQL storage models to build and test GeekSeek's data persistence layersTackle testable business logic development and asynchronous messaging with an SMTP serviceExpose enterprise services as a RESTful interface, using Java EE's JAX-RS frameworkImplement OAuth authentication with JBoss's PicketLink identity management serviceValidate the UI by automating interaction in the browser and reading the rendered pagePerform full-scale integration testing on the final deployable archive
Continuous Software Engineering
by Jan BoschThis book provides essential insights on the adoption of modern software engineering practices at large companies producing software-intensive systems, where hundreds or even thousands of engineers collaborate to deliver on new systems and new versions of already deployed ones. It is based on the findings collected and lessons learned at the Software Center (SC), a unique collaboration between research and industry, with Chalmers University of Technology, Gothenburg University and Malmö University as academic partners and Ericsson, AB Volvo, Volvo Car Corporation, Saab Electronic Defense Systems, Grundfos, Axis Communications, Jeppesen (Boeing) and Sony Mobile as industrial partners. The 17 chapters present the "Stairway to Heaven" model, which represents the typical evolution path companies move through as they develop and mature their software engineering capabilities. The chapters describe theoretical frameworks, conceptual models and, most importantly, the industrial experiences gained by the partner companies in applying novel software engineering techniques. The book's structure consists of six parts. Part I describes the model in detail and presents an overview of lessons learned in the collaboration between industry and academia. Part II deals with the first step of the Stairway to Heaven, in which R&D adopts agile work practices. Part III of the book combines the next two phases, i. e. , continuous integration (CI) and continuous delivery (CD), as they are closely intertwined. Part IV is concerned with the highest level, referred to as "R&D as an innovation system," while Part V addresses a topic that is separate from the Stairway to Heaven and yet critically important in large organizations: organizational performance metrics that capture data, and visualizations of the status of software assets, defects and teams. Lastly, Part VI presents the perspectives of two of the SC partner companies. The book is intended for practitioners and professionals in the software-intensive systems industry, providing concrete models, frameworks and case studies that show the specific challenges that the partner companies encountered, their approaches to overcoming them, and the results. Researchers will gain valuable insights on the problems faced by large software companies, and on how to effectively tackle them in the context of successful cooperation projects.
Continuum Mechanics using Mathematica®: Fundamentals, Methods, and Applications (Modeling and Simulation in Science, Engineering and Technology)
by Antonio Romano Addolorata MarascoThis textbook's methodological approach familiarizes readers with the mathematical tools required to correctly define and solve problems in continuum mechanics. Covering essential principles and fundamental applications, this second edition of Continuum Mechanics using Mathematica® provides a solid basis for a deeper study of more challenging and specialized problems related to nonlinear elasticity, polar continua, mixtures, piezoelectricity, ferroelectricity, magneto-fluid mechanics and state changes (see A. Romano, A. Marasco, Continuum Mechanics: Advanced Topics and Research Trends, Springer (Birkhäuser), 2010, ISBN 978-0-8176-4869-5). Key topics and features: * Concise presentation strikes a balance between fundamentals and applications * Requisite mathematical background carefully collected in two introductory chapters and one appendix * Recent developments highlighted through coverage of more significant applications to areas such as wave propagation, fluid mechanics, porous media, linear elasticity. This second edition expands the key topics and features to include: * Two new applications of fluid dynamics: meteorology and navigation * New exercises at the end of the existing chapters * The packages are rewritten for Mathematica 9 Continuum Mechanics using Mathematica®: Fundamentals, Applications and Scientific Computing is aimed at advanced undergraduates, graduate students and researchers in applied mathematics, mathematical physics and engineering. It may serve as a course textbook or self-study reference for anyone seeking a solid foundation in continuum mechanics.
A Contrario Line Segment Detection (SpringerBriefs in Computer Science)
by Rafael Grompone von GioiThe reliable detection of low-level image structures is an old and still challenging problem in computer vision. This book leads a detailed tour through the LSD algorithm, a line segment detector designed to be fully automatic. Based on the a contrario framework, the algorithm works efficiently without the need of any parameter tuning. The design criteria are thoroughly explained and the algorithm's good and bad results are illustrated on real and synthetic images. The issues involved, as well as the strategies used, are common to many geometrical structure detection problems and some possible extensions are discussed.
Contributions to Sampling Statistics (Contributions to Statistics)
by Fulvia Mecatti Pier Luigi Conti Maria Giovanna RanalliThis book contains a selection of the papers presented at the ITACOSM 2013 Conference, held in Milan in June 2013 It is intended as an international forum of scientific discussion on the developments of theory and application of survey sampling methodologies and applications in human and natural sciences. The book gathers research papers carefully selected from both invited and contributed sessions of the conference. The whole book appears to be a relevant contribution to various key aspects of sampling methodology and techniques; it deals with some hot topics in sampling theory, such as calibration, quantile-regression and multiple frame surveys and with innovative methodologies in important topics of both sampling theory and applications Contributions cut across current sampling methodologies such as interval estimation for complex samples, randomized responses, bootstrap, weighting, modeling, imputation, small area estimation and effective use of auxiliary information; applications cover a wide and enlarging range of subjects in official household surveys, Bayesian networks, auditing, business and economic surveys, geostatistics and agricultural statistics. The book is an updated, high level reference survey addressed to researchers, professionals and practitioners in many fields.
Control and Estimation Methods over Communication Networks
by Magdi S. MahmoudThis book provides a rigorous framework in which to study problems in the analysis, stability and design of networked control systems. Four dominant sources of difficulty are considered: packet dropouts, communication bandwidth constraints, parametric uncertainty, and time delays. Past methods and results are reviewed from a contemporary perspective, present trends are examined, and future possibilities proposed. Emphasis is placed on robust and reliable design methods. New control strategies for improving the efficiency of sensor data processing and reducing associated time delay are presented. The coverage provided features: · an overall assessment of recent and current fault-tolerant control algorithms; · treatment of several issues arising at the junction of control and communications; · key concepts followed by their proofs and efficient computational methods for their implementation; and · simulation examples (including TrueTime simulations) to provide hands-on experience. In addition to the theoretical coverage, the author describes a number of applications that demonstrate the real-world relevance of this material, and these include: · a servo system; · a triple inverted pendulum; · power system control; · wireless control of a cart with inverted pendulum and wireless servo application with emphasis on controller area networks; and · switched ethernet and wireless area networks. Researchers and graduate students working in networked and distributed control will find this text a useful guide in avoiding and ameliorating common and serious problems with these systems. The increasing prevalence of networks in many fields of engineering will make Control and Estimation Methods over Communication Networks of interest to practitioners with backgrounds in communications, process engineering, robotics, power, automotive and other areas.
Control Design and Analysis for Underactuated Robotic Systems
by Xin Xin Yannian LiuThe last two decades have witnessed considerable progress in the study of underactuated robotic systems (URSs). Control Design and Analysis for Underactuated Robotic Systems presents a unified treatment of control design and analysis for a class of URSs, which include systems with multiple-degree-of-freedom and/or with underactuation degree two. It presents novel notions, features, design techniques and strictly global motion analysis results for these systems. These new materials are shown to be vital in studying the control design and stability analysis of URSs. Control Design and Analysis for Underactuated Robotic Systems includes the modelling, control design and analysis presented in a systematic way particularly for the following examples: l directly and remotely driven Acrobots l Pendubot l rotational pendulum l counter-weighted Acrobot 2-link underactuated robot with flexible elbow joint l variable-length pendulum l 3-link gymnastic robot with passive first joint l n-link planar robot with passive first joint l n-link planar robot with passive single joint double, or two parallel pendulums on a cart l 3-link planar robots with underactuation degree two 2-link free flying robot The theoretical developments are validated by experimental results for the remotely driven Acrobot and the rotational pendulum. Control Design and Analysis for Underactuated Robotic Systems is intended for advanced undergraduate and graduate students and researchers in the area of control systems, mechanical and robotics systems, nonlinear systems and oscillation. This text will not only enable the reader to gain a better understanding of the power and fundamental limitations of linear and nonlinear control theory for the control design and analysis for these URSs, but also inspire the reader to address the challenges of more complex URSs.
Cool Infographics
by Randy KrumMake information memorable with creative visual design techniquesResearch shows that visual information is more quickly and easily understood, and much more likely to be remembered. This innovative book presents the design process and the best software tools for creating infographics that communicate. Including a special section on how to construct the increasingly popular infographic resume, the book offers graphic designers, marketers, and business professionals vital information on the most effective ways to present data. Explains why infographics and data visualizations work Shares the tools and techniques for creating great infographicsCovers online infographics used for marketing, including social media and search engine optimization (SEO)Shows how to market your skills with a visual, infographic resumeExplores the many internal business uses of infographics, including board meeting presentations, annual reports, consumer research statistics, marketing strategies, business plans, and visual explanations of products and services to your customersWith Cool Infographics, you'll learn to create infographics to successfully reach your target audience and tell clear stories with your data.
COOP 2014 - Proceedings of the 11th International Conference on the Design of Cooperative Systems, 27-30 May 2014, Nice (France)
by David Martin Luigina Ciolfi Chiara Rossitto Bernard ConeinThis volume presents the proceedings of the 11th International Conference on the Design of Cooperative Systems (COOP 2014). The conference is a venue for multidisciplinary research contributing to the design, assessment and analysis of cooperative systems and their integration in organizations, public venues, and everyday life. COOP emerged from the European tradition of Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) and Cognitive Ergonomics as practiced in France These proceedings are a collection of 28 papers reflecting the variety of research activities in the field, as well as an increasing interest in investigating the use and design of ICT in all aspects of everyday life and society, and not merely in the workplace. The papers represent a variety of research topics, from healthcare to sustainable mobility to disaster response, in settings from all over the world. For the first time, the proceedings include papers presented in an Early-Career Researchers Track which was organized in order to give young researchers the opportunity to discuss their work with an international community. This collection of papers provides a picture of new developments and classic topics of research around cooperative systems, based on the principle that a deep knowledge of cooperative practices is a key to understanding technology impacts and producing quality designs. The articles presented will appeal to researchers and practitioners alike, as they combine an understanding of the nature of work with the possibilities offered by novel digital technologies.
Cooperative Control of Multi-Agent Systems: Optimal and Adaptive Design Approaches (Communications and Control Engineering)
by Frank L. Lewis Abhijit Das Hongwei Zhang Kristian Hengster-MovricCooperative Control of Multi-Agent Systems extends optimal control and adaptive control design methods to multi-agent systems on communication graphs. It develops Riccati design techniques for general linear dynamics for cooperative state feedback design, cooperative observer design, and cooperative dynamic output feedback design. Both continuous-time and discrete-time dynamical multi-agent systems are treated. Optimal cooperative control is introduced and neural adaptive design techniques for multi-agent nonlinear systems with unknown dynamics, which are rarely treated in literature are developed. Results spanning systems with first-, second- and on up to general high-order nonlinear dynamics are presented. Each control methodology proposed is developed by rigorous proofs. All algorithms are justified by simulation examples. The text is self-contained and will serve as an excellent comprehensive source of information for researchers and graduate students working with multi-agent systems.
Cooperative Control of Multi-Agent Systems: A Consensus Region Approach (Automation and Control Engineering #57)
by Zhongkui Li Zhisheng DuanDistributed controller design is generally a challenging task, especially for multi-agent systems with complex dynamics, due to the interconnected effect of the agent dynamics, the interaction graph among agents, and the cooperative control laws. Cooperative Control of Multi-Agent Systems: A Consensus Region Approach offers a systematic framework for designing distributed controllers for multi-agent systems with general linear agent dynamics, linear agent dynamics with uncertainties, and Lipschitz nonlinear agent dynamics. Beginning with an introduction to cooperative control and graph theory, this monograph: Explores the consensus control problem for continuous-time and discrete-time linear multi-agent systems Studies the H∞ and H2 consensus problems for linear multi-agent systems subject to external disturbances Designs distributed adaptive consensus protocols for continuous-time linear multi-agent systems Considers the distributed tracking control problem for linear multi-agent systems with a leader of nonzero control input Examines the distributed containment control problem for the case with multiple leaders Covers the robust cooperative control problem for multi-agent systems with linear nominal agent dynamics subject to heterogeneous matching uncertainties Discusses the global consensus problem for Lipschitz nonlinear multi-agent systems Cooperative Control of Multi-Agent Systems: A Consensus Region Approach provides a novel approach to designing distributed cooperative protocols for multi-agent systems with complex dynamics. The proposed consensus region decouples the design of the feedback gain matrices of the cooperative protocols from the communication graph and serves as a measure for the robustness of the protocols to variations of the communication graph. By exploiting the decoupling feature, adaptive cooperative protocols are presented that can be designed and implemented in a fully distributed fashion.
Cooperative Robots and Sensor Networks (Studies in Computational Intelligence #507)
by Anis Koubâa Abdelmajid KhelilMobile robots and Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) have enabled great potentials and a large space for ubiquitous and pervasive applications. Robotics and WSNs have mostly been considered as separate research fields and little work has investigated the marriage between these two technologies. However, these two technologies share several features, enable common cyber-physical applications and provide complementary support to each other. The primary objective of book is to provide a reference for cutting-edge studies and research trends pertaining to robotics and sensor networks, and in particular for the coupling between them. The book consists of five chapters. The first chapter presents a cooperation strategy for teams of multiple autonomous vehicles to solve the rendezvous problem. The second chapter is motivated by the need to improve existing solutions that deal with connectivity prediction, and proposed a genetic machine learning approach for link-quality prediction. The third chapter presents an architecture for indoor navigation using an Android smartphone for guiding a variety of users, from sighted to the visually impaired, to their intended destination. In chapter four, the authors deal with accurate prediction modeling of ocean currents for underwater glider navigation. In chapter five, the authors discuss the challenges and limitations of RSS-based localization mechanisms and propose, EasyLoc, an autonomous and practical RSS-based localization technique that satisfies ease of deployment and implementation.
Coordination, Organizations, Institutions, and Norms in Agent Systems IX: COIN 2013 International Workshops, COIN@AAMAS, St. Paul, MN, USA, May 6, 2013, COIN@PRIMA, Dunedin, New Zealand, December 3, 2013, Revised Selected Papers (Lecture Notes in Computer Science #8386)
by Tina Balke, Frank Dignum, M. Birna Riemsdijk and Amit K. ChopraThis book constitutes the thoroughly refereed proceedings of the 9th International Workshops on Coordination, Organizations, Institutions and Norms in Agent Systems, COIN 2013. The workshops were co-located with AAMAS 2013, held in St. Paul, MN, USA in May 2013, and with PRIMA 2013, held in Dunedin, New Zealand, in December 2013. The 18 full papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 28 submissions and are presented together with two invited papers. The papers are organized in topical sections such as coordination, organizations, institutions, norms, norm conflict, and norm-aware agents.
Corporate Audiobooks: Hörspiele, Features & Co. in der Unternehmenskommunikation (X.media.press)
by Dietmar Pokoyski Stefanie PützDie Kopfhörer auf den Ohren so vieler Menschen belegen es: Audio-Medien sind aus unserem Alltag nicht mehr wegzudenken. Auch Unternehmen haben längst den Nutzen des Audio-Kanals für ihre Corporate Identity erkannt. Audio-Branding und Podcasts sind unverzichtbare Elemente einer zeitgemäßen Unternehmenskommunikation geworden. Doch eines ist auffällig: Während das Hörbuch im Consumer-Bereich einen regelrechten Boom erlebt, werden narrative und dokumentarische Audio-Formate in Unternehmen nur selten eingesetzt. Dabei bergen Hörspiele und Features ein besonders hohes Potenzial als Instrument der Mitarbeiter- und Kundenbindung. "Corporate Audiobooks" widmet sich ausführlich diesem bislang unterschätzten Medium. Erstmals bietet ein deutschsprachiges Buch einen Überblick über Geschichte, Methoden und Nutzen narrativer und dokumentarischer Audio-Formate im Kontext der internen und externen Unternehmenskommunikation - ob als attraktiv gestaltete CD und/oder als Audio-Clip fürs Inter- und Intranet.
Correct-by-Construction System on Chip Design
by Parthasarathi Roop Samik Basu Roopak SinhaThis book describes an approach for designing Systems-on-Chip such that the system meets precise mathematical requirements. The methodologies presented enable embedded systems designers to reuse intellectual property (IP) blocks from existing designs in an efficient, reliable manner, automatically generating correct SoCs from multiple, possibly mismatching, components.
Countdown to Zero Day: Stuxnet and the Launch of the World's First Digital Weapon
by Kim ZetterTop cybersecurity journalist Kim Zetter tells the story behind the virus that sabotaged Iran's nuclear efforts and shows how its existence has ushered in a new age of warfare--one in which a digital attack can have the same destructive capability as a megaton bomb. In January 2010, inspectors with the International Atomic Energy Agency noticed that centrifuges at an Iranian uranium enrichment plant were failing at an unprecedented rate. The cause was a complete mystery--apparently as much to the technicians replacing the centrifuges as to the inspectors observing them. Then, 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 crashing and rebooting repeatedly. At first, the firm's programmers believed the malicious code on the machines was a simple, routine piece of malware. But as they and other experts around the world investigated, they discovered a mysterious virus of unparalleled complexity. They had, they soon learned, stumbled upon the world's first digital weapon. For Stuxnet, as it came to be known, was unlike any other virus or worm built before: Rather than simply hijacking targeted computers or stealing information from them, it escaped the digital realm to wreak actual, physical destruction on a nuclear facility. In these pages, Wired journalist Kim Zetter draws on her extensive sources and expertise to tell the story behind Stuxnet's planning, execution, and discovery, covering its genesis in the corridors of Bush's White House and its unleashing on systems in Iran--and telling the spectacular, unlikely tale of the security geeks who managed to unravel a sabotage campaign years in the making. But Countdown to Zero Day ranges far beyond Stuxnet itself. Here, Zetter shows us how digital warfare developed in the US. She takes us inside today's flourishing zero-day "grey markets," in which intelligence agencies and militaries pay huge sums for the malicious code they need to carry out infiltrations and attacks. She reveals just how vulnerable many of our own critical systems are to Stuxnet-like strikes, from nation-state adversaries and anonymous hackers alike--and shows us just what might happen should our infrastructure be targeted by such an attack. Propelled by Zetter's unique knowledge and access, and filled with eye-opening explanations of the technologies involved, Countdown to Zero Day is a comprehensive and prescient portrait of a world at the edge of a new kind of war.
A Course in In-Memory Data Management: The Inner Mechanics of In-Memory Databases
by Hasso PlattnerRecent achievements in hardware and software development, such as multi-core CPUs and DRAM capacities of multiple terabytes per server, enabled the introduction of a revolutionary technology: in-memory data management. This technology supports the flexible and extremely fast analysis of massive amounts of enterprise data. Professor Hasso Plattner and his research group at the Hasso Plattner Institute in Potsdam, Germany, have been investigating and teaching the corresponding concepts and their adoption in the software industry for years. This book is based on an online course that was first launched in autumn 2012 with more than 13,000 enrolled students and marked the successful starting point of the openHPI e-learning platform. The course is mainly designed for students of computer science, software engineering, and IT related subjects, but addresses business experts, software developers, technology experts, and IT analysts alike. Plattner and his group focus on exploring the inner mechanics of a column-oriented dictionary-encoded in-memory database. Covered topics include - amongst others - physical data storage and access, basic database operators, compression mechanisms, and parallel join algorithms. Beyond that, implications for future enterprise applications and their development are discussed. Step by step, readers will understand the radical differences and advantages of the new technology over traditional row-oriented, disk-based databases. In this completely revised 2nd edition, we incorporate the feedback of thousands of course participants on openHPI and take into account latest advancements in hard- and software. Improved figures, explanations, and examples further ease the understanding of the concepts presented. We introduce advanced data management techniques such as transparent aggregate caches and provide new showcases that demonstrate the potential of in-memory databases for two diverse industries: retail and life sciences.