{"product_id":"bits-to-bitcoin-isbn-9780262551076","title":"Bits to Bitcoin","description":"\u003cb\u003eAn accessible guide to our digital infrastructure, explaining the basics of operating systems, networks, security, and other topics for the general reader.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMost of us feel at home in front of a computer; we own smartphones, tablets, and laptops; we look things up online and check social media to see what our friends are doing. But we may be a bit fuzzy about how any of this really works. In \u003ci\u003eBits to Bitcoin,\u003c\/i\u003e Mark Stuart Day offers an accessible guide to our digital infrastructure, explaining the basics of operating systems, networks, security, and related topics for the general reader. He takes the reader from a single process to multiple processes that interact with each other; he explores processes that fail and processes that overcome failures; and he examines processes that attack each other or defend themselves against attacks.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eDay tells us that steps are digital but ramps are analog; that computation is about “doing something with stuff” and that both the “stuff” and the “doing” can be digital. He explains timesharing, deadlock, and thrashing; virtual memory and virtual machines; packets and networks; resources and servers; secret keys and public keys; Moore's law and Thompson's hack. He describes how building in redundancy guards against failure and how endpoints communicate across the Internet. He explains why programs crash or have other bugs, why they are attacked by viruses, and why those problems are hard to fix. Finally, after examining secrets, trust, and cheating, he explains the mechanisms that allow the Bitcoin system to record money transfers accurately while fending off attacks.Preface ix\u003cbr\u003eAcknowledgments xiii\u003cbr\u003e1 Introduction 1\u003cbr\u003eI Single Process\u003cbr\u003e2 Steps 5\u003cbr\u003e3 Processes 17\u003cbr\u003e4 Names 31\u003cbr\u003e5 Recursion 41\u003cbr\u003e6 Limits: Imperfect Programs 49\u003cbr\u003e7 Limits: Perfect Programs 65\u003cbr\u003eII Interacting Processes\u003cbr\u003e8 Coordination 81\u003cbr\u003e9 State, Change, and Equality 89\u003cbr\u003e10 Controlled Access 101\u003cbr\u003e11 Interrupts 111\u003cbr\u003e12 Virtualization 123\u003cbr\u003e13 Separation 135\u003cbr\u003e14 Packets 151\u003cbr\u003e15 Browsing 155\u003cbr\u003eIII Unstoppable Processes\u003cbr\u003e16 Failure 177\u003cbr\u003e17 Software Failure 199\u003cbr\u003e18 Reliable Networks 207\u003cbr\u003e19 Inside the Cloud 217\u003cbr\u003e20 Browsing Revisited 241\u003cbr\u003eIV Defending Processes\u003cbr\u003e21 Attackers 253\u003cbr\u003e22 Thompson's Hack 263\u003cbr\u003e23 Secrets 273\u003cbr\u003e24 Secure Channel, Key Distribution, and Certificates 289\u003cbr\u003e25 Bitcoin Goals 307\u003cbr\u003e26 Bitcoin Mechanisms 315\u003cbr\u003e27 Looking Back 335\u003cbr\u003eIndex of Metaphors and Examples 337\u003cbr\u003eSubject Index 341Mark Stuart Day was Chief Scientist at Riverbed Technology for a decade and is currently Visiting Lecturer at MIT. With more than thirty patented inventions, he has also made technical contributions at Dropbox, IBM, Cisco, Digital, and BBN.","brand":"The MIT Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46300761981157,"sku":"NP9780262551076","price":30.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780262551076.jpg?v=1767722663","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/bits-to-bitcoin-isbn-9780262551076","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}