This thesis is on the subject of network protocol design. It takes a collection of known, practical problems that we face on the Internet—namely, abuses of the network—and considers these problems in light of both existing practical countermeasures and abstract analysis. Protocol design features and techniques with Machiavellian robustness are then proposed to address these problems, to the extent that such a remedy is possible. A protocol called ‘Invite’ is then designed from scratch using these new techniques. The Invite protocol thus serves as a practical example of design for Machiavellian robustness, but its duty as a protocol is to convey that robustness to some other protocol, so it is then applied to email (and its well-known abuses such as spamming and mailbombing). In that context, its effectiveness is analysed and compared with other approaches, both proposed and currently practised. Lastly, the broader implications of Machiavellian robustness are considered, suggesting possible avenues of future research.
Knowing how to manage the losses from water supply networks and how to get to the next level in bettering your system is a major problem and one that is most common in the majority of water companies worldwide. Sometimes water companies set their sights too high and cannot deliver due to non-realistic targets setting. Of course this is considered or seen as a failure within the company or country when it is really just exceeding expectations of what can be delivered. The aim of System Losses from Water Supply Networks is to assist water companies to identify where they are on the ‘water loss ladder’ and what is required to move to the next level. The book will provide an understanding of what the water companies need to achieve and where they should be aiming for in their efforts to reduce water losses. The book provides useful and practical information on non-revenue water (NRW) issues and solutions enriched with relevant case studies.
Principles of Computer System Design is the first textbook to take a principles-based approach to the computer system design. It identifies, examines, and illustrates fundamental concepts in computer system design that are common across operating systems, networks, database systems, distributed systems, programming languages, software engineering, security, fault tolerance, and architecture.Through carefully analyzed case studies from each of these disciplines, it demonstrates how to apply these concepts to tackle practical system design problems. To support the focus on design, the text identifies and explains abstractions that have proven successful in practice such as remote procedure call, client/service organization, file systems, data integrity, consistency, and authenticated messages. Most computer systems are built using a handful of such abstractions. The text describes how these abstractions are implemented, demonstrates how they are used in different systems, and prepares the reader to apply them in future designs.The book is recommended for junior and senior undergraduate students in Operating Systems, Distributed Systems, Distributed Operating Systems and/or Computer Systems Design courses; and professional computer systems designers. - Concepts of computer system design guided by fundamental principles - Cross-cutting approach that identifies abstractions common to networking, operating systems, transaction systems, distributed systems, architecture, and software engineering - Case studies that make the abstractions real: naming (DNS and the URL); file systems (the UNIX file system); clients and services (NFS); virtualization (virtual machines); scheduling (disk arms); security (TLS) - Numerous pseudocode fragments that provide concrete examples of abstract concepts - Extensive support. The authors and MIT OpenCourseWare provide on-line, free of charge, open educational resources, including additional chapters, course syllabi, board layouts and slides, lecture videos, and an archive of lecture schedules, class assignments, and design projects
Designed for managers struggling to understand the risks in organizations dependent on secure networks, this book applies economics not to generate breakthroughs in theoretical economics, but rather breakthroughs in understanding the problems of security.
Joly's (1831-78) Dialogue aux enfers entre Machiavel et Montesquieu is the major source of one of the world's most infamous and damaging forgeries, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. That, however, was concocted some two decades after he died, and American political scientist Waggoner points to Joly's own text for evidence that he was not anti-semitic and was an intransigent enemy of the kind of tyranny the forgery served during the 1930s. He translates the text and discusses Joly's intentions in writing it and his contribution to the understanding of modern politics. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR.
Antifragile is a standalone book in Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s landmark Incerto series, an investigation of opacity, luck, uncertainty, probability, human error, risk, and decision-making in a world we don’t understand. The other books in the series are Fooled by Randomness, The Black Swan, Skin in the Game, and The Bed of Procrustes. Nassim Nicholas Taleb, the bestselling author of The Black Swan and one of the foremost thinkers of our time, reveals how to thrive in an uncertain world. Just as human bones get stronger when subjected to stress and tension, and rumors or riots intensify when someone tries to repress them, many things in life benefit from stress, disorder, volatility, and turmoil. What Taleb has identified and calls “antifragile” is that category of things that not only gain from chaos but need it in order to survive and flourish. In The Black Swan, Taleb showed us that highly improbable and unpredictable events underlie almost everything about our world. In Antifragile, Taleb stands uncertainty on its head, making it desirable, even necessary, and proposes that things be built in an antifragile manner. The antifragile is beyond the resilient or robust. The resilient resists shocks and stays the same; the antifragile gets better and better. Furthermore, the antifragile is immune to prediction errors and protected from adverse events. Why is the city-state better than the nation-state, why is debt bad for you, and why is what we call “efficient” not efficient at all? Why do government responses and social policies protect the strong and hurt the weak? Why should you write your resignation letter before even starting on the job? How did the sinking of the Titanic save lives? The book spans innovation by trial and error, life decisions, politics, urban planning, war, personal finance, economic systems, and medicine. And throughout, in addition to the street wisdom of Fat Tony of Brooklyn, the voices and recipes of ancient wisdom, from Roman, Greek, Semitic, and medieval sources, are loud and clear. Antifragile is a blueprint for living in a Black Swan world. Erudite, witty, and iconoclastic, Taleb’s message is revolutionary: The antifragile, and only the antifragile, will make it. Praise for Antifragile “Ambitious and thought-provoking . . . highly entertaining.”—The Economist “A bold book explaining how and why we should embrace uncertainty, randomness, and error . . . It may just change our lives.”—Newsweek
Prince of Networks is the first treatment of Bruno Latour specifically as a philosopher. It has been eagerly awaited by readers of both Latour and Harman since their public discussion at the London School of Economics in February 2008. Part One covers four key works that display Latour’s underrated contributions to metaphysics: Irreductions, Science in Action, We Have Never Been Modern, and Pandora’s Hope. Harman contends that Latour is one of the central figures of contemporary philosophy, with a highly original ontology centered in four key concepts: actants, irreduction, translation, and alliance. In Part Two, Harman summarizes Latour’s most important philosophical insights, ...
The network has become the core organizational structure for postmodern politics, culture, and life, replacing the modern era’s hierarchical systems. From peer-to-peer file sharing and massive multiplayer online games to contagion vectors of digital or biological viruses and global affiliations of terrorist organizations, the network form has become so invasive that nearly every aspect of contemporary society can be located within it. Borrowing their title from the hacker term for a program that takes advantage of a flaw in a network system, Alexander R. Galloway and Eugene Thacker challenge the widespread assumption that networks are inherently egalitarian. Instead, they contend that there exist new modes of control entirely native to networks, modes that are at once highly centralized and dispersed, corporate and subversive. In this provocative book-length essay, Galloway and Thacker argue that a whole new topology must be invented to resist and reshape the network form, one that is as asymmetrical in relationship to networks as the network is in relation to hierarchy.
In a new approach to philosophical anthropology, Bruno Latour offers answers to questions raised in We Have Never Been Modern: If not modern, what have we been, and what values should we inherit? An Inquiry into Modes of Existence offers a new basis for diplomatic encounters with other societies at a time of ecological crisis.
The forms taken by scientific writing help to determine the very nature of science itself. In this closely reasoned study, Charles Bazerman views the changing forms of scientific writing as solutions to rhetorical problems faced by scientists arguing for their findings. Examining such works as the early Philosophical Transactions and Newton's optical writings as well as Physical Review, Bazerman views the changing forms of scientific writing as solutions to rhetorical problems faced by scientists. The rhetoric of science is, Bazerman demonstrates, an embedded part of scientific activity that interacts with other parts of scientific activity, including social structure and empirical experience. This book presents a comprehensive historical account of the rise and development of the genre, and views these forms in relation to empirical experience.
