Even as China is central to the contemporary global economy, its socialist past continues to shape its capitalist present. This volume's contributors see contemporary China as haunted by the promises of capitalism, the institutional legacy of the Maoist regime, and the spirit of Marxist resistance. China's development does not result from historical imperatives or deliberate economic strategies, but from the effects of discrete practices the contributors call protocols, which stem from an overlapping mix of socialist and capitalist institutional strategies, political procedures, legal regulations, religious rituals, and everyday practices. Analyzing the process of urbanization and the ways marginalized communities and migrant workers are positioned in relation to the transforming social landscape, the contributors show how these protocols constitute the Chinese national imaginary while opening spaces for new emancipatory possibilities. Offering a nuanced theory of contemporary China's hybrid political economy, Ghost Protocol situates China's development at the juncture between the world as experienced and the world as imagined. Contributors. Yomi Braester, Alexander Des Forges, Kabzung, Rachel Leng, Ralph A. Litzinger, Lisa Rofel, Carlos Rojas, Bryan Tilt, Robin Visser, Biao Xiang, Emily T. Yeh

LOS ANGELES. PRAGUE. DUBAI. VANCOUVER. THE MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE - GHOST PROTOCOL CAST AND CREW TRAVELED THE GLOBE FOR SIX MONTHS OF INTENSIVE SHOOTING TO CREATE THE MOST SPECTACULAR FILM IN THE BLOCKBUSTER FRANCHISE TO DATE. Veteran unit photographer David James was there, documenting every moment of principal production with stars Tom Cruise, Jeremy Renner, Simon Pegg, and Paula Patton. An unusually daring team, they braved sandstorms and crashed cars in the streets of Dubai, dove underwater in British Columbia, evaded explosions in an old Czech prison, and scaled the tallest building in the world, the Burj Khalifa. James's Shooting Diary is a remarkable visual record of these exhilarating stunts and exotic locations-the features that make Mission: Impossible one of the most exciting film series in history.

Primary and initial release of a series of instructional texts in regard to the upcoming software development language: GhostProtocol. Covering the basis of functions necessary to gain a moderately capable understanding within the flow and syntax of the language.

As a ghost, psychologist Elizabeth Cole is symbiotically linked to her supervisor and the creator of the Ghost Protector, who is forbidden to interact with her, which prompts her to search for the truth surrounding her own existence.

This book introduces all the technical features that make up blockchain technology today. It starts with a thorough explanation of all technological concepts necessary to understand any discussions related to distributed ledgers and a short history of earlier implementations. It then discusses in detail how the Bitcoin network looks and what changes are coming in the near future, together with a range of altcoins that were created on the same base code. To get an even better idea, the book shortly explores how Bitcoin might be forked before going into detail on the Ethereum network and cryptocurrencies running on top of the network, smart contracts, and more. The book introduces the Hyperledger foundation and the tools offered to create private blockchain solutions. For those willing, it investigates directed acyclic graphs (DAGs) and several of its implementations, which could solve several of the problems other blockchain networks are still dealing with to this day. In Chapter 4, readers can find an overview of blockchain networks that can be used to build solutions of their own and the tools that can help them in the process.

When the Predator Becomes the Prey They were best friends until the murders. Now with Cristal presumed dead, Tamar has plans to rise in the underworld as a hired gun. State to state, Tamar is fearlessly dishing out Murdergrams for a huge profit without remorse. High on power and notoriety, Tamar sets out to settle an old beef, but the person she's hunting is actually hunting her. This time she could be the one on the receiving end of a Murdergram.

This practical new book offers the distributed-computing fundamental knowledge for individuals to connect with one another in a more secure and efficient way than with traditional blockchains. These new forms of secure, scalable blockchains promise to replace centralized institutions to connect individuals without the risks of user manipulations or data extortions. The techniques taught herein consist of enhancing blockchain security and making blockchain scalable by relying on the observation that no blockchain can exist without solving the consensus problem. First, the state-of-the-art of consensus protocols are analyzed, hence motivating the need for a new family of consensus protocols offering strong (deterministic) guarantees. Second, a didactic series of classic blockchain vulnerabilities is presented to illustrate the importance of novel designs better suited for the adversarial environment of open networks. These cutting-edge solutions are illustrated through the Redbelly blockchain design, which solves a different problem from the classic Byzantine consensus problem of 1982 and which delivers—in the modern blockchain context—high performance at large scale. Topics and features: Covers the combination of security and distributed computing to devise the new generation of blockchains Shows how blockchain has shed new light on decades of research in distributed systems Provides instruction on the security needed by the industry to use blockchains in production Explains didactically the necessary ingredients to make blockchain efficient at large scale Helps fill the gap of knowledge in the highly demanded blockchain sector This unique volume contains the building blocks to design secure and scalable blockchains. As such, it is dedicated to developers, application designers, and computer scientists and requires only a minimal undergraduate level in mathematics and computer science. Vincent Gramoli is an Australian Research Council Future Fellow at the University of Sydney and the Chief Technology Officer of Redbelly Network. He teaches the Blockchain Scalability course on Coursera.