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Posted: July 4th, 2009, 7:14am CEST
As an open source, community-based content management system and web site application development framework, Drupal allows you to create interactive, media-based, database-driven web sites that become a part of everyday activities and communications. This unique book is the first of its kind to tackle the challenging task of leveraging Drupal to get a site done right and make that site work for you, based on industry-wide software development best practices.
Within these pages, you will gain insight into how to work with any release of Drupal, approach your project, establish a development environment, plan for deployment, and avoid pitfalls along the way. A real-world example of a web site application based on Drupal—an online Literary Workshop—is used throughout the book, and it walks you through the entire development lifecycle. You'll learn how to bring your web site into the exciting Drupal mainstream, customize Drupal for your specific needs, and even make "non-Drupal" looking sites. With this hands-on guide, you'll discover how to use Drupal to efficiently publish, manage, and organize a wide variety of content on your web site.
What you will learn from this book
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Best practices to optimize the way you approach development projects
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Methods for setting up a development environment using version control and issue tracking tools
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How the Drupal theming system works and how it separates content from presentation and style
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Techniques for upgrading and deploying the online Literary Workshop
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The future of Drupal and how it might be developed and used
This book is for Drupal users of all levels of expertise who are looking to put together a sophisticated web application.
Wrox guides are crafted to make learning programming languages and technologies easier than you think. Written by programmers for programmers, they provide a structured, tutorial format that will guide you through all the techniques involved.
Full download
Posted: July 4th, 2009, 7:12am CEST
The first question that potential readers might be tempted to ask is, why another book on strategy? Strategic Innovation: New Game Strategies for Competitive Advantage has many of the same features that existing textbooks have. It draws on the latest research in strategic management and innovation, it is peppered with the latest examples from key business cases, it is easy to read, and so on. However, it has six distinctive features that give it a unique position vis-à-vis existing strategy and innovation books.
First, Strategic Innovation: New Game Strategies for Competitive Advantage is about change. While existing textbooks acknowledge the importance of change, especially in an ever-changing world, they devote very little or no attention to the subject of change. All the chapters in New Game Strategies are about change and strategic management—about how to create and appropriate value in the face of new games. Second, existing strategic management texts tend to have very few or no numerical examples. This lack of numerical examples does little to reinforce the growing consensus that strategy is about winning but rather, it might be promoting the “anything goes in strategy” attitude that is not uncommon to students who are new to the field of strategic management. Nine of the thirteen chapters in the book have numerical examples that link elements of the balance sheet to components of the income statement. Of course, the book is also full of case examples. Third, while other texts are more descriptive than analytical, this book is more analytical than descriptive. It is largely about the why and how of things, and less about the what of things. Fourth, the book includes a detailed framework for assessing the profitability potential of a strategy, resource, business unit, brand, product, etc. Called the AVAC (activities, value, appropriability, and change), the framework is distinctive in that it includes not only both firm-specific and industry-specific factors that impact firm profitability, but also a change component. Fifth, the book’s emphasis is on those activities that can be linked to the determinants of profitability; that is, the book focuses on those aspects of strategy that can be logically linked to elements of the balance sheet and income statement. Sixth, the book summarizes the major strategic management frameworks that are otherwise scattered in other texts. This is a useful one-stop reference for many students.
To many outsiders, mathematicians appear to think like computers, grimly grinding away with a strict formal logic and moving methodically--even algorithmically--from one black-and-white deduction to another. Yet mathematicians often describe their most important breakthroughs as creative, intuitive responses to ambiguity, contradiction, and paradox. A unique examination of this less-familiar aspect of mathematics,
How Mathematicians Think reveals that mathematics is a profoundly creative activity and not just a body of formalized rules and results.
Nonlogical qualities, William Byers shows, play an essential role in mathematics. Ambiguities, contradictions, and paradoxes can arise when ideas developed in different contexts come into contact. Uncertainties and conflicts do not impede but rather spur the development of mathematics. Creativity often means bringing apparently incompatible perspectives together as complementary aspects of a new, more subtle theory. The secret of mathematics is not to be found only in its logical structure.
The creative dimensions of mathematical work have great implications for our notions of mathematical and scientific truth, and How Mathematicians Think provides a novel approach to many fundamental questions. Is mathematics objectively true? Is it discovered or invented? And is there such a thing as a "final" scientific theory?
Ultimately, How Mathematicians Think shows that the nature of mathematical thinking can teach us a great deal about the human condition itself
About the Author
William Byers is Professor of Mathematics at Concordia University in Montreal. He has published widely in mathematics journals.
One of the most important texts of modern times, Herbert Marcuse's analysis and image of a one-dimensional man in a one-dimensional society has shaped many young radical's way of seeing and experiencing life.
Herbert Marcuse's One-Dimensional Man was one of the most important books of the 1960s. 1 First published in 1964, it was immediately recognized as a significant critical diagnosis of the present age and was soon taken up by the emergent New Left as a damning indictment of contemporary Western societies, capitalist and communist. Conceived and written in the 1950s and early 1960s, the book reflects the stifling conformity of the era and provides a powerful critique of new modes of domination and social control. Yet it also expresses the hopes of a radical philosopher that human freedom and happiness could be greatly expanded beyond the one-dimensional thought and behavior prevalent in the established society.
About the Author
Marcuse is a Beacon Press author.
...provides a good introduction to relative consistence proofs in axiomatic set theory. It can be recommended as a graduate text on the subject. --
Zentralblatt für Mathematik Paperback. Many branches of abstract mathematics have been affected by the modern independence proofs in set theory. This book provides an introduction to relative consistency proofs in axiomatic set theory, and is intended to be used as a text in beginning graduate courses in that subject. It is hoped that this treatment will make the subject accessible to those mathematicians whose research is sensitive to axiomatics. The readers should have had the equivalent of an undergraduate course on cardinals and ordinals, but no specific training in logic is necessary.
The volume includes a discussion of modern techniques in forcing, as well as coverage of infinitary combinatorics and its relevance to independence proofs. The work also features a lucid treatment of basic facts about constructibility.
Typical travel guides have sections on architecture, art, literature, music and cinema. Rarely are any science-related sites identified. For example, a current travel guide for Germany contains one tidbit on science: Einstein is identified as the most famous citizen of Ulm. By contrast, this travel guide walks a tourist through Berlin and identifies where Max Planck started the quantum revolution, where Einstein lived and gave his early talks on general relativity, and where, across the street, Einstein’s books were burned by the Nazis. Or, if you are walking in Paris, this guide tells you where radioactivity was discovered and where radium was discovered. Scientific discoveries of the past, like art of the past, have shaped life in the 21
st century. From this travel guide, a tourist will learn what other guides leave out.
Scientists from many disciplines, including physics, chemistry, biology, and neuroscience, contribute to the study of cognition. Cognitive psychology, the science of the human mind and of how people process information, is at the core of empirical investigations into the nature of mind and thought. This anthology is based on the assumption that cognitive psychology is at heart empirical philosophy. Many of the core questions about thought, language, perception, memory, and knowledge of other people's minds were for centuries the domain of philosophy. The book begins with the philosophical foundations of inquiry into the nature of mind and thought, in particular the writings of Descartes, and then covers the principal topics of cognitive psychology including memory, attention, and decision making. The book organizes a daunting amount of information, underlining the essentials, while also introducing readers to the ambiguities and controversies of research. It is arranged thematically and includes many topics not typically taught in cognition courses, including human factors and ergonomics, evolutionary psychology, music cognition, and experimental design. The contributors include Daniel Dennett, Daniel Kahneman, Jay McClelland, Donald Norman, Michael Posner, Stephen Palmer, Eleanor Rosch, John Searle, Roger Shepard, and Anne Treisman.
About the Author
Daniel J. Levitin is Assistant Professor of Psychology at McGill University, where he holds the Bell Chair in the Psychology of Electronic Communication and the FQRT Strategic Professor Chair in Psychology.
Focusing on the six simple machines--levers, wheels and axles, pulleys, screws, inclined planes, and wedges--this fun and informative series introduces young readers to several basic concepts of physics--such as work, force, gravity, and friction. Includes easy-to-do experiments, colorful photographs, clear text, and fun activities. Supports the national science education standards Unifying Concepts and Processes: Evidence, Models, and Explanation; Unifying Concepts and Processes: Form and Function; Science as Inquiry; Physical Science; and Science and Technology as outlined by the National Academics of Science and endorsed by the National Science Teachers Association.
"A vivid picture of how one man, by force of rigorous analysis and clear writing, taught a generation of biologists how to think about evolution."--New York Times
ith the publication of the international bestseller The Selfish Gene some thirty years ago, Richard Dawkins powerfully captured a newly emerging way of understanding evolution--a gene's eye view. Dawkins went on to publish five more bestselling books, including The Blind Watchmaker and Unweaving the Rainbow. He is one of the most high profile public intellectuals today and any attempt to understand the scientific view of the world must grapple with his ideas.
Now, in this exciting collection of original essays, some of the world's leading thinkers offer their take on how Dawkins has changed the way we think. Readers will find stimulating pieces by Daniel Dennett, the renowned philosopher of mind and author of Darwin's Dangerous Idea; Steven Pinker, the brilliant Harvard linguist who wrote The Language Instinct and The Blank Slate; Matt Ridley, author of the bestselling Genome; and James Watson, who with Francis Crick discovered the structure of DNA, arguably the greatest scientific discovery of the last century. Dawkins' widely admired literary style forms the subject of several pieces, including one from novelist Philip Pullman (author of the bestselling His Dark Materials trilogy). As one of the world's best known rationalists, Dawkins' stance on religion is another theme in this collection, explored by Simon Blackburn, Michael Ruse, Michael Shermer, and the Bishop of Oxford. Numbering twenty in all, these articles are not simply rosy tributes, but explore how Dawkins' ideas have shaped thinking and public debate, and include elements of criticism as well as thoughtful praise.
Richard Dawkins' work has had the rare distinction of generating as much excitement outside the scientific community as within it. This stimulating volume is a superb summation of the depth and range of his influence.
About the Author
Alan Grafen is Professor of Theoretical Biology in the Department of Zoology, at Oxford University. Mark Ridley lectures in the Department of Zoology at Oxford University. He is best known as the author of a number of popular books, including the critically acclaimed Mendel's Demon.
Our book is meant to be a text for a first undergraduate course in quantum physics. Both of us have taught this course numerous times and have used several different texts, some of them excellent. Obviously, though, there are changes we would make and that is the reason we are writing this book.
Two of the most widely used books for this course are the excellent texts by Griffiths (Prentice-Hall) and Gasiorowicz (Wiley), both of which we have used. Another, which neither of us has used but both of us are familiar with, is by Liboff (Addison-Wesley). While we find much to like about these books, there are matters of style, order of presentation and included subject matter that we obviously prefer. We do not wish our comments to be taken as criticism of other books but merely as a statement of our own preferences and the reasons that we believe our style and method can be helpful to students and instructors.
We wish to avoid a modern trend in textbooks that is to condense and compress these texts into ever smaller and smaller size. We are not sure whether this trend is to lower the cost of the book or to make the book seem less formidable to the student, but we believe that a textbook should be more than a one or two semester acquaintance. This is especially true for a course such as quantum mechanics which is likely taken by physics majors who will use the subject for the rest of their careers. We therefore believe that a textbook can (and should) contain material that an instructor will choose to omit. In keeping with this theme, there are topics included that are not normally covered in introductory textbooks, not necessarily too advanced, but not usually covered. Perhaps in years to come this student, now working as a physicist, is interested in the subject that was skipped during the course. He/she knows where to find the material in a book that is quite familiar to him/her. Both of us have many such books in our personal libraries. It seems as if modern physics texts are not built to be long term reference books. This is just our observation and we would like our book to have “staying power” and be long term companions.
The theory of connections is central not only in pure mathematics (differential and algebraic geometry), but also in mathematical and theoretical physics (general relativity, gauge fields, mechanics of continuum media). The now-standard approach to this subject was proposed by Ch. Ehresmann 60 years ago, attracting first mathematicians and later physicists by its transparent geometrical simplicity. Unfortunately, it does not extend well to a number of recently emerged situations of significant importance (singularities, supermanifolds, infinite jets and secondary calculus, etc.). Moreover, it does not help in understanding the structure of calculus naturally related with a connection.
In this unique book, written in a reasonably self-contained manner, the theory of linear connections is systematically presented as a natural part of differential calculus over commutative algebras. This not only makes easy and natural numerous generalizations of the classical theory and reveals various new aspects of it, but also shows in a clear and transparent manner the intrinsic structure of the associated differential calculus. The notion of a "fat manifold" introduced here then allows the reader to build a well-working analogy of this "connection calculus" with the usual one.
Contents: Elements of Differential Calculus over Commutative Algebras:; Algebraic Tools; Smooth Manifolds; Vector Bundles; Vector Fields; Differential Forms; Lie Derivative; Basic Differential Calculus on Fat Manifolds:; Basic Definitions; The Lie Algebra of Der-operators; Fat Vector Fields; Fat Fields and Vector Fields on the Total Space; Induced Der-operators; Fat Trajectories; Inner Structures; Linear Connections:; Basic Definitions and Examples; Parallel Translation; Curvature; Operations with Linear Connections; Linear Connections and Inner Structures; Covariant Differential:; Fat de Rham Complexes; Covariant Differential; Compatible Linear Connections; Linear Connections Along Fat Maps; Covariant Lie Derivative; Gauge/Fat Structures and Linear Connections; Cohomological Aspects of Linear Connections:; An Introductory Example; Cohomology of Flat Linear Connections; Maxwell's Equations; Homotopy Formula for Linear Connections; Characteristic Classes.
Using Solaris 8 and Linux 7.1 as their reference flavors, Robin Anderson and Andy Johnston (as well as a slew of contributors) show how to be a system administrator--and get all sorts of other work done--in the fourth edition of
Unix Unleashed. Significantly different from its predecessors, this book stays generally clear of very basic matters, as well as subjects of interest primarily to software developers. The middle ground that's left--and there is a lot of it, as this book spans more than 1,100 mostly unillustrated pages--is the knowledge that a system administrator needs. Since lots of the people who work with Unix are administrators (either of databases, Internet sites, or some other kind of back-end resource), the shift in focus makes sense.
The authors employ a style that's nicely suited to the personality of administrators, as well as their job. To satisfy the "job" side of the equation, there are "best practices" sections that recommend how to configure various pieces of the system. For the "personality" side, there's rather a lot of explanatory material to explain why the best practices are what they are, and why they're not without flaw. There's very little step-by-step guidance in these pages. The authors instead prefer to use prose to explain solid thought processes: "This is what we want to accomplish (say, harden a system before it's connected to the network), here are the issues associated with that goal (known openings in default configurations, known techniques that attackers use, and so on), and here are the tools and procedures recommended for combating those problems." It's an excellent approach for administrators who approach their jobs as engineering problems. --David Wall
Topics covered: How to be a Unix system administrator with deep knowledge of all of your machine's critical subsystems. Sections deal with configuring, defending, and performance-optimizing mail services, Web services, authentication, printing, and applications. There is, unfortunately, not enough information on firewalls.
About the Author
Robin Anderson began her involvement with computers innocently enough with an Amiga, WordPerfect, and Infocom games. In late 1993, she turned her hand to student consulting at the University of MD, Baltimore County (UMBC), working with PCs, Macs, VAXen, and, finally, UNIX machines.
After graduating with honors in Computer Science and History, Robin remained at UMBC and is now a UNIX SysAdmin Specialist in OIT (UMBC's Office of Information Technology). She also managed OIT's Operations Support Staff and is a member of the Security Work Group.
Robin developed and taught an undergraduate UNIX SysAdmin course for UMBC's CS/EE department in 2000. She has earned two security certifications from the SANS Institute: the GCUX (UNIX Administrator, with honors) and the GCIH (Incident Handling). She works with SANS to develop online exam materials and presentations, and she recently taught SANS LevelOne security courses for UMBC's Department of Professional Education and Training.
Andy Johnston was born in May of 1958. Most of the rest has been improvisation. After teaching high school math, he became a programmer. He worked for the State of Maryland making population projections and lots of maps, and later for Computer Sciences Corporation, where he worked on spacecraft-tracking software and environmental modeling. One day, the UNIX system in which his virtual fish swam suffered a drive crash, and he (quickly) became a UNIX systems administrator. Andy provided system support for several projects, including the International Ultraviolet Explorer. In 1999, he took his current position at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC)Office of Information Technology as a manager of UNIX support staff and IT security. Andy holds a Bachelor's degree in Biology from Princeton University and a Master's degree in Mathematics from UMBC. He has been involved at various times in the Baltimore and Washington, D.C. SAGE groups and has spoken at SANS conferences.
