With the release of iOS 7, Apple has also provided developers with a completely updated version of Xcode, that is, its Integrated Development Environment (IDE). Xcode 5 is a major step forward, complete with more tools and features available than ever before. Understanding the powerful features of your IDE is the key to high productivity and overall ease of development. In this chapter, we will…
Statistical distances have two very important uses in statistical analysis. Firstly, they can be applied naturally to the case of parametric statistical inference. The idea of minimum distance estimation has been around for a while and there are many nice properties that the minimum distance estimators enjoy. Minimum distance estimation was pioneered by Wolfowitz in the 1950s (1952, 1953, 195…
The American architect Louis Henry Sullivan described his design philosophy with the simple statement "form follows function." By this credo he meant that a structure's physical layout and design should reflect as precisely as possible how this structure will be used. Every door and window is where it is for a reason. He was talking about building skyscrapers, but this philosophy is perhaps …
For many decades multi-party computation (MPC) had been a predominantly theoretic endeavour in cryptography, but in recent years interest has arisen on the practical side. This has resulted in various implementation improvements and such protocols are becoming more applicable to practical situations. A key part in this transformation from theory to practice is in adapting theoretical protocols …
It’s a tough challenge to find the right depth and the right level of abstraction when introducing a new technology. A book can go too deep, and risk miring the reader in technological minutiae. This is hardly helpful, and—more often than not—it’s boring. A book can also stay at a very abstract level, and revel in theory, but even this is boring and useless for someone who hopes to achi…
To understand what cloud computing is and is not, it is important to understand how this model of computing has evolved. As Alvin Toffler notes in his famous book, The Third Wave (Bantam, 1980), civilization has progressed in waves (three of them to date: the first wave was agricultural societies, the second was the industrial age, and the third is the information age). Within each wave, there …
You are responsible for managing your company’s foreign exchange positions. Your boss, or your boss’s boss, has been reading about derivatives losses suffered by other companies, and wants to know if the same thing could happen to his company. That is, he wants to know just how much market risk the company is taking. What do you say? You could start by listing and describing the company’s…
In the social and behavioral sciences, statistics serve two general purposes. First, they can be used to describe what happened in a particular study (descriptive statistics). Second, they can be used to help draw conclu- sions about what those results mean in some broader context (inferential statistics). The main question in inferential statistics is whether a result, finding, or observation …
Microsoft officially announced SQL Server 2008, codenamed Katmai, at the first Microsoft Business Intelligence (BI) conference in May 2007. I suppose I had the same reaction as many others — ‘‘Already?’’ SQL Server 2005 had only been released a year and a half earlier, and I started to wonder if it was too soon. I can’t tell you why I thought that. I also knew that it wasn’t unu…
In a relatively short period of time, Android has become the world’s most popular mobile platform. Although originally designed for smartphones, it now powers tablets, TVs, and wearable devices, and will soon even be found in cars. Android is being developed at a breathtaking pace, with an average of two major releases per year. Each new release brings a better UI, performance improvements, a…
One of the unique features of the Android operating system that has allowed it to grow rapidly has been that the binaries and source code are released as open source software. You can download the entire source code of the Android operating system, and it takes up approximately 2.6 GB of disk space. In theory, this allows anyone to design and build a phone that runs Android. The idea of keeping…
Network security is currently becoming one of the main problems for the develop- ment of new technologies and services in telecommunication networks. Hackers are constantly evolving towards new attack techniques and new target tech- nologies at a very high speed [1] [2], thus making the task of building defense mechanisms a hard mission. In this context, many efforts have been done by the rese…
The A+ Essentials exam is the first of CompTIA’s two exams required for completing the A+ certification. The A+ certification is an entry-level certification for those individuals who wish to pursue their careers in computer hardware and software support. The candidate must pass two exams in order to get his A+ certification. You can choose one of the other three elective exams—IT Technicia…
“The suspense was killing me. I just had to read it straight through!” Although these responses to our book would be gratifying, it’s doubtful that any book on digital security will ever garner this type of reaction. Digital security is the computer equivalent of disaster insurance. Few people care very much about it or give it much thought, and everyone hates paying for it … until a ca…
In this introductory chapter, the subject of the book is explained in more detail by focusing on two central issues of the control of networks: open-loop control of interconnected systems and synchronization. While the first topic emphasizes the computational aspects involved in controlling interconnected systems, the second theme of synchronization discusses the impact of couplings on the shap…
Recently, the number of social networking sites is rapidly increasing, and the number of users joining these sites is dramatically increasing as well. This paper aims at comprehensively comparing three social networking sites, and provides an in-depth analysis. We compare three of the most popular social networking sites, i.e., Facebook, Twitter and MySpace. Specifically, we evaluate those soci…