James Freeman

This book examines the Thatcher government’s attempt to revolutionise Britain’s pensions system in the 1980s and create a nation of risk-taking savers with an individual stake in capitalism. Drawing upon recently-released archival records, it shows how the ideas motivating these reforms journeyed from the writings of neoliberal intellectuals into government and became the centrepiece of a plan to abolish significant parts of the UK’s welfare state and replace these with privatised personal pensions. Revealing a government that veered between political caution and radicalism, the book explains why this revolution failed and charts the malign legacy left by the evolutionary changes that ministers salvaged from the wreckage of their reforms. The book contributes to understanding of policy change, Thatcherism, and international neoliberalism by showing how major reforms to social security could reflect neoliberal thought and yet profoundly disappoint their architects.

This book examines the Thatcher government’s attempt to revolutionise Britain’s pensions system in the 1980s and create a nation of risk-taking savers with an individual stake in capitalism. Drawing upon recently-released archival records, it shows how the ideas motivating these reforms journeyed from the writings of neoliberal intellectuals into government and became the centrepiece of a plan to abolish significant parts of the UK’s welfare state and replace these with privatised personal pensions. Revealing a government that veered between political caution and radicalism, the book explains why this revolution failed and charts the malign legacy left by the evolutionary changes that ministers salvaged from the wreckage of their reforms.The book contributes to understanding of policy change, Thatcherism, and international neoliberalism by showing how major reforms to social security could reflect neoliberal thought and yet profoundly disappoint their architects.

With the non-mathematician in mind, the sixth edition of Statistics for Business and Economics teaches learners the key concepts of statistics in business, management and economics. The authors blend statistical methodology with applications of data analysis to illustrate the fundamental role of statistics in problem-solving and decision making. Computational methods give students a solid foundation to master statistical application and interpretation. At the end of each section, practical exercises encourage conceptual understanding of real-world problems. New content on big data enriches the learning experience and prepares students for the workplace.

Leverage the power of Ansible to gain complete control over your systems and automate deployments along with implementing configuration changes Key Features Orchestrate major cloud platforms such as OpenStack, AWS, and Azure Use Ansible to automate network devices Automate your containerized workload with Docker, Podman, or Kubernetes Purchase of the print or Kindle book includes a free PDF eBook Book DescriptionAnsible empowers you to automate a myriad of tasks, including software provisioning, configuration management, infrastructure deployment, and application rollouts. It can be used as a deployment tool as well as an orchestration tool. While Ansible provides simple yet powerful features to automate multi-layer environments using agentless communication, it can also solve other critical IT challenges, such as ensuring continuous integration and continuous deployment (CI/CD) with zero downtime. In this book, you'll work with the latest release of Ansible and learn how to solve complex issues quickly with the help of task-oriented scenarios. You'll start by installing and configuring Ansible on Linux and macOS to automate monotonous and repetitive IT tasks and learn concepts such as playbooks, inventories, and roles. As you progress, you'll gain insight into the YAML syntax and learn how to port between Ansible versions. Additionally, you'll understand how Ansible enables you to orchestrate multi-layer environments such as networks, containers, and the cloud. By the end of this Ansible book, you'll be well versed in writing playbooks and other related Ansible code to overcome all your IT challenges, from infrastructure-as-a-code provisioning to application deployments and handling mundane day-to-day maintenance tasks.What you will learn Explore the fundamentals of the Ansible framework Understand how collections enhance your automation efforts Avoid common mistakes and pitfalls when writing automation code Extend Ansible by developing your own modules and plugins Contribute to the Ansible project by submitting your own code Follow best practices for working with cloud environment inventories Troubleshoot issues triggered during Ansible playbook runs Who this book is forThis book is for DevOps engineers, administrators, or any IT professionals looking to automate IT tasks using Ansible. Prior knowledge of Ansible is not a prerequisite.

This book is the result of our love for music, for our families, our musical colleagues, and even our dogs. The story is by no means chronological, though after a "Prelude," it does follow very loosely accounts of our youth, our education, our musical experiences, and adventures. Those experiences have included playing with the Pittsburgh Symphony, the Boston Pops, Peter Nero's Philly Pops, our concerts in Moscow (in the midst of a revolution), St. Petersburg, Carnegie Hall, the Salzburg Festival, Havana, Puerto Rico, Mexico, Japan, Taiwan, Slovenia, Denmark, Norway, Italy, England, Germany, Peru, and the Library of Congress. It is also a history of Orchestra 2001, the Swarthmore College- and Philadelphia-based contemporary music ensemble I founded and directed from 1988 to 2015. It includes in the appendices a complete list of O2001's concerts, repertoire, and recordings, as well as highlights and critical commentary about many of those performances and CDs.

Design, develop, and solve real-world automation and orchestration problems by unlocking Ansible's automation capabilitiesKey FeaturesCompletely revised and updated for Ansible 4.0 and beyondTackle complex automation challenges with the newly added features in AnsibleLearn about the rapidly expanding field of network automation using Ansible, with the help of practical examples for configuring network devicesBook DescriptionAnsible is a modern, YAML-based automation tool (built on top of Python, one of the world's most popular programming languages) with a massive and ever-growing user base. Its popularity and Python underpinnings make it essential learning for all in the DevOps space. This fourth edition of Mastering Ansible provides complete coverage of Ansible automation, from the design and architecture of the tool and basic automation with playbooks to writing and debugging your own Python-based extensions. You'll learn how to build automation workflows with Ansible's extensive built-in library of collections, modules, and plugins. You'll then look at extending the modules and plugins with Python-based code and even build your own collections — ultimately learning how to give back to the Ansible community. By the end of this Ansible book, you'll be confident in all aspects of Ansible automation, from the fundamentals of playbook design to getting under the hood and extending and adapting Ansible to solve new automation challenges.What you will learnGain an in-depth understanding of how Ansible works under the hoodGet to grips with Ansible collections and how they are changing and shaping the future of AnsibleFully automate the Ansible playbook executions with encrypted dataUse blocks to construct failure recovery or cleanupExplore the playbook debugger and Ansible consoleTroubleshoot unexpected behavior effectivelyWork with cloud infrastructure providers and container systemsWho this book is forIf you are an Ansible developer or operator who has a detailed understanding of its core elements and applications but are now looking to enhance your skills in applying automation using Ansible, this book is for you. Prior experience working with core system administration tasks on Linux and basic familiarity with concepts such as cloud computing, containers, network devices, and fundamentals of a high-level programming language will help you make the most of this book.

Leverage the power of Ansible to gain complete control over your systems and automate application deploymentKey FeaturesUse Ansible 2.9 to automate and control your infrastructureDelve into advanced functionality such as plugins and custom modules in AnsibleAutomate and orchestrate major cloud platforms such as OpenStack, AWS, and Azure using AnsibleBook DescriptionAnsible enables you to automate software provisioning, configuration management, and application roll-outs, and can be used as a deployment and orchestration tool. While Ansible provides simple yet powerful features to automate multi-layer environments using agentless communication, it can also solve other critical IT challenges, such as ensuring continuous integration and continuous deployment (CI/CD) with zero downtime.In this book, you'll work with Ansible 2.9 and learn to solve complex issues quickly with the help of task-oriented scenarios. You'll start by installing and configuring Ansible on Linux and macOS to automate monotonous and repetitive IT tasks and get to grips with concepts such as playbooks, inventories, and network modules. As you progress, you'll gain insight into the YAML syntax and learn how to port between Ansible versions. In addition to this, you'll also understand how Ansible enables you to orchestrate multi-layer environments such as networks, containers, and the cloud.By the end of this Ansible book, you'll be well - versed in writing playbooks and other related Ansible code to overcome just about all of your IT challenges, from infrastructure-as-code provisioning to application deployments, and even handling the mundane day-to-day maintenance tasks that take up so much valuable time.What you will learnBecome familiar with the fundamentals of the Ansible frameworkSet up role-based variables and dependenciesAvoid common mistakes and pitfalls when writing automation code in AnsibleExtend Ansible by developing your own modules and pluginsContribute to the Ansible project by submitting your own codeFollow best practices for working with cloud environment inventoriesTroubleshoot issues triggered during Ansible playbook runsWho this book is forIf you are a DevOps engineer, administrator, or any IT professional looking to automate IT tasks using Ansible, this book is for you. Prior knowledge of Ansible is not necessary.

Achieve enterprise automation in your Linux environment with this comprehensive guideKey FeaturesAutomate your Linux infrastructure with the help of practical use cases and real-world scenariosLearn to plan, build, manage, and customize OS releases in your environmentEnhance the scalability and efficiency of your infrastructure with advanced Linux system administration conceptsBook DescriptionAutomation is paramount if you want to run Linux in your enterprise effectively. It helps you minimize costs by reducing manual operations, ensuring compliance across data centers, and accelerating deployments for your cloud infrastructures.Complete with detailed explanations, practical examples, and self-assessment questions, this book will teach you how to manage your Linux estate and leverage Ansible to achieve effective levels of automation. You'll learn important concepts on standard operating environments that lend themselves to automation, and then build on this knowledge by applying Ansible to achieve standardization throughout your Linux environments.By the end of this Linux automation book, you'll be able to build, deploy, and manage an entire estate of Linux servers with higher reliability and lower overheads than ever before.What you will learnPerform large-scale automation of Linux environments in an enterpriseOvercome the common challenges and pitfalls of extensive automationDefine the business processes needed to support a large-scale Linux environmentGet well-versed with the most effective and reliable patch management strategiesAutomate a range of tasks from simple user account changes to complex security policy enforcementLearn best practices and procedures to make your Linux environment automatableWho this book is forThis book is for anyone who has a Linux environment to design, implement, and maintain. Open source professionals including infrastructure architects and system administrators will find this book useful. You’re expected to have experience in implementing and maintaining Linux servers along with knowledge of building, patching, and maintaining server infrastructure. Although not necessary, knowledge of Ansible or other automation technologies will be beneficial.

Design, develop, and solve real-world automation and orchestration problems by unlocking the automation capabilities of Ansible.Key FeaturesTackle complex automation challenges with the newly added features in Ansible 2.7Book DescriptionAutomation is essential for success in the modern world of DevOps. Ansible provides a simple, yet powerful, automation engine for tackling complex automation challenges.This book will take you on a journey that will help you exploit the latest version's advanced features to help you increase efficiency and accomplish complex orchestrations. This book will help you understand how Ansible 2.7 works at a fundamental level and will also teach you to leverage its advanced capabilities. Throughout this book, you will learn how to encrypt Ansible content at rest and decrypt data at runtime. Next, this book will act as an ideal resource to help you master the advanced features and capabilities required to tackle complex automation challenges. Later, it will walk you through workflows, use cases, orchestrations, troubleshooting, and Ansible extensions. Lastly, you will examine and debug Ansible operations, helping you to understand and resolve issues.By the end of the book, you will be able to unlock the true power of the Ansible automation engine and tackle complex, real- world actions with ease.What you will learnGain an in-depth understanding of how Ansible works under the hoodFully automate Ansible playbook executions with encrypted dataAccess and manipulate variable data within playbooksUse blocks to perform failure recovery or cleanupExplore the Playbook debugger and the Ansible ConsoleTroubleshoot unexpected behavior effectivelyWork with cloud infrastructure providers and container systemsDevelop custom modules, plugins, and dynamic inventory sourcesWho this book is forThis book is for Ansible developers and operators who have an understanding of its core elements and applications but are now looking to enhance their skills in applying automation using Ansible.

The alarming, untold story of Citigroup—one of the largest financial institutions in the world—from its founding in 1812 to its role in the 2008 financial crisis, and the many near-death experiences in between.During the 2008 financial crisis, we were told that Citi was a victim of events beyond its control—the larger financial panic, unforeseen economic disruptions and a perfect storm of credit expansion and private greed. To save the economy and keep the bank afloat, the government provided huge infusions of cash through multiple bailouts that frustrated and angered the American public.But, as Wall Street Journal writer James Freeman and financial expert Vern McKinley reveal, the 2008 crisis was just one of many disasters Citi has experienced since its founding more than two hundred years ago. In Borrowed Time they reveal Citi’s disturbing history of instability and government support. It’s a story that neither Citi nor Washington wants told.Citi has long been tied to the federal government in a relationship that has benefited both. From its earliest years, its well-connected leadership—most of its initial stockholders had owned stock in the Bank of the United States—took massive risks that led to crisis. But thanks to a rescue by private investors, including John Jacob Astor, the bank survived throughout the nineteenth century.This is just the tip of the iceberg. The scale of the financial panic of 2008 was hardly unprecedented. As Borrowed Time shows, crisis and outright disasters have been surprisingly common during the century of government-protected banking—especially at Citi.

"Why did I leave the 10-pin on that shot?" "Why isn't my ball hitting the pocket anymore?" "Should I change balls, or move?" "How heavy should my ball be?" "What's the best bowling ball?" "How do I get more hook?" "Why do I keep missing my spares?"We are faced with endless questions, problems, and choices every time we bowl. Answers and solutions abound, but a great many of them are ineffective or just plain wrong. How do we know what to do? How do we know what to believe?In this book we examine: What doesn't work, and what most bowlers have wrong. What's really happening on the lanes, and how things really work. What you need to change to get back to striking. How to properly make that change.This is not a basic "how to bowl" book. It will benefit bowlers at all skill levels, from league and recreational play through PBA pros. Everything in this book is backed up with facts and science, not opinion. We teach you how to figure out exactly what's wrong with your shot. We show you all of the adjustments available to you, explain what each one actually does, and show you how and when to apply it. We give you strategies that will improve your lane play and your decision making. Finally, we teach you a mathematically sound spare system that will simplify your game and make picking up your spares an easy proposition. We give you all of the knowledge and tools you need to take your game to the next level and become the bowler you want to be.