Black Software, for the first time, chronicles the long relationship between African Americans, computing technology, and the Internet. Through new archival sources and the voices of many of those who lived and made this history, the book centralizes African Americans' role in the Internet's creation and evolution, illuminating both the limits and possibilities for using digital technology to push for racial justice in the United States and across the globe.

Often referred to as the “black art” because of its complexity and uncertainty, software estimation is not as difficult or puzzling as people think. In fact, generating accurate estimates is straightforward—once you understand the art of creating them. In his highly anticipated book, acclaimed author Steve McConnell unravels the mystery to successful software estimation—distilling academic information and real-world experience into a practical guide for working software professionals. Instead of arcane treatises and rigid modeling techniques, this guide highlights a proven set of procedures, understandable formulas, and heuristics that individuals and development teams can apply to their projects to help achieve estimation proficiency. Discover how to: Estimate schedule and cost—or estimate the functionality that can be delivered within a given time frame Avoid common software estimation mistakes Learn estimation techniques for you, your team, and your organization * Estimate specific project activities—including development, management, and defect correction Apply estimation approaches to any type of project—small or large, agile or traditional Navigate the shark-infested political waters that surround project estimates When many corporate software projects are failing, McConnell shows you what works for successful software estimation.

From a leading expositor of testing methods, a practical, comprehensive, hands-on guide to the state-of-the-art black-box testing techniques This book fills a long-standing need in the software and general systems development communities to make the essential aspects of black-box testing available in one comprehensive work. Written by one of the world's most respected figures in the field of testing, it is both a valuable working resource for independent testers and programmers and an excellent practical introduction for students. Dr. Boris Beizer clearly explains the principles behind behavioral testing in general and behind the most important black-box testing techniques in use today, which involve testing a system based on its desired behavior or function and for conformance to its specifications. Then, with fully worked examples, he leads you step-by-step from specifications to finished test cases. Complete coverage of all important test techniquesæincluding those that apply to object-oriented software * Up-to-dateæincluding the most recent breakthroughs in domain testing that now make this technique available to the working tester with no tools needed beyond a calculator or spreadsheet * Examples based on the popular off-the-shelf tax preparation packages let you try the techniques on your favorite tax software * Includes all necessary IRS tax forms * Self-evaluation quizzes help you evaluate your understanding of the material

An updated edition of the best tips and tools to plan, build, and execute a structured test operation In this update of his bestselling book, Rex Black walks you through how to develop essential tools and apply them to your test project. He helps you master the basic tools, apply the techniques to manage your resources, and give each area just the right amount of attention so that you can successfully survive managing a test project! Offering a thorough review of the tools and resources you will need to manage both large and small projects for hardware and software, this book prepares you to adapt the concepts across a broad range of settings. Simple and effective, the tools comply with industry standards and bring you up to date with the best test management practices and tools of leading hardware and software vendors. Rex Black draws from his own numerous testing experiences-- including the bad ones, so you can learn from his mistakes-- to provide you with insightful tips in test project management. He explores such topics as: Dates, budgets, and quality-expectations versus reality Fitting the testing process into the overall development or maintenance process How to choose and when to use test engineers and technicians, contractors and consultants, and external test labs and vendors Setting up and using an effective and simple bug-tracking database Following the status of each test case The companion Web site contains fifty tools, templates, and case studies that will help you put these ideas into action--fast!

Black Hat, Inc. is the premier, worldwide provider of security training, consulting, and conferences. In Black Hat Physical Device Security: Exploiting Hardware and Software, the Black Hat experts show readers the types of attacks that can be done to physical devices such as motion detectors, video monitoring and closed circuit systems, authentication systems, thumbprint and voice print devices, retina scans, and more. The Black Hat Briefings held every year in Las Vegas, Washington DC, Amsterdam, and Singapore continually expose the greatest threats to cyber security and provide IT mind leaders with ground breaking defensive techniques. There are no books that show security and networking professionals how to protect physical security devices. This unique book provides step-by-step instructions for assessing the vulnerability of a security device such as a retina scanner, seeing how it might be compromised, and taking protective measures. The book covers the actual device as well as the software that runs it. By way of example, a thumbprint scanner that allows the thumbprint to remain on the glass from the last person could be bypassed by pressing a "gummy bear" piece of candy against the glass so that the scan works against the last thumbprint that was used on the device. This is a simple example of an attack against a physical authentication system. - First book by world-renowned Black Hat, Inc. security consultants and trainers - First book that details methods for attacking and defending physical security devices - Black Hat, Inc. is the premier, worldwide provider of security training, consulting, and conferences

A comprehensive political and design theory of planetary-scale computation proposing that The Stack—an accidental megastructure—is both a technological apparatus and a model for a new geopolitical architecture. What has planetary-scale computation done to our geopolitical realities? It takes different forms at different scales—from energy and mineral sourcing and subterranean cloud infrastructure to urban software and massive universal addressing systems; from interfaces drawn by the augmentation of the hand and eye to users identified by self—quantification and the arrival of legions of sensors, algorithms, and robots. Together, how do these distort and deform modern political geographies and produce new territories in their own image? In The Stack, Benjamin Bratton proposes that these different genres of computation—smart grids, cloud platforms, mobile apps, smart cities, the Internet of Things, automation—can be seen not as so many species evolving on their own, but as forming a coherent whole: an accidental megastructure called The Stack that is both a computational apparatus and a new governing architecture. We are inside The Stack and it is inside of us. In an account that is both theoretical and technical, drawing on political philosophy, architectural theory, and software studies, Bratton explores six layers of The Stack: Earth, Cloud, City, Address, Interface, User. Each is mapped on its own terms and understood as a component within the larger whole built from hard and soft systems intermingling—not only computational forms but also social, human, and physical forces. This model, informed by the logic of the multilayered structure of protocol “stacks,” in which network technologies operate within a modular and vertical order, offers a comprehensive image of our emerging infrastructure and a platform for its ongoing reinvention. The Stack is an interdisciplinary design brief for a new geopolitics that works with and for planetary-scale computation. Interweaving the continental, urban, and perceptual scales, it shows how we can better build, dwell within, communicate with, and govern our worlds. thestack.org

Winner, 2021 Harry Shaw and Katrina Hazzard-Donald Award for Outstanding Work in African-American Popular Culture Studies, given by the Popular Culture Association Winner, 2021 Nancy Baym Annual Book Award, given by the Association of Internet Researchers An explanation of the digital practices of the black Internet From BlackPlanet to #BlackGirlMagic, Distributed Blackness places blackness at the very center of internet culture. André Brock Jr. claims issues of race and ethnicity as inextricable from and formative of contemporary digital culture in the United States. Distributed Blackness analyzes a host of platforms and practices (from Black Twitter to Instagram, YouTube, and app development) to trace how digital media have reconfigured the meanings and performances of African American identity. Brock moves beyond widely circulated deficit models of respectability, bringing together discourse analysis with a close reading of technological interfaces to develop nuanced arguments about how “blackness” gets worked out in various technological domains. As Brock demonstrates, there’s nothing niche or subcultural about expressions of blackness on social media: internet use and practice now set the terms for what constitutes normative participation. Drawing on critical race theory, linguistics, rhetoric, information studies, and science and technology studies, Brock tabs between black-dominated technologies, websites, and social media to build a set of black beliefs about technology. In explaining black relationships with and alongside technology, Brock centers the unique joy and sense of community in being black online now.