This sky atlas contains star charts and information for all those who observe the night sky with the naked eye, binoculars, or a small telescope, or who just wish to look at constellations and interesting objects. Equally useful for the beginning observer and the old hand, the atlas presents - clearly arranged charts of all the stars visible with the naked eye (limiting magnitude 6m) - enlarged chart sections for binocular observation highlighting 250 interesting nebulae and stellar clusters (limiting magnitude 9m) - data on more than 1000 sky objects - coordinates in equinox 2000.0 - distances of double stars until the year 2010 The Observer's Sky Atlas is a handy, indispensable companion for every observer. Review FROM REVIEWS OF THE FIRST EDITION "the most informative little sky guide in the business." ASTRONOMY "The more experienced observer will find this slim volume useful at the telescope andpacked with interesting observing projects." SKY and TELESCOPE Sky and Telescope, on the first edition "The more experienced observer will find this slim volume useful at the telescope and ... packed with interesting observing projects." Read more...

Beginning Transact-SQL with SQL Server 2000 and 2005 Transact-SQL is a powerful implementation of the ANSI standard SQL database query language. In order to build effective database applications, you must gain a thorough understanding of these features. This book provides you with a comprehensive introduction to the T-SQL language and shows you how it can be used to work with both the SQL Server 2000 and 2005 releases. Beginning with an overview of the SQL Server query operations and tools that are used with T-SQL, the author goes on to explain how to design and build applications of increasing complexity. By gaining an understanding of the power of the T-SQL language, you'll be prepared to meet the ever-increasing demands of programming. What you will learn from this book * How T-SQL provides you with the means to create tools for managing hundreds of databases * Various programming techniques that use views and stored procedures * Ways to optimize query performance * How to create databases that will be an essential foundation to applications you develop later Who this book is for This book is for database developers and administrators who have not yet programmed with Transact-SQL. Some familiarity with relational databases and basic SQL is helpful, and some programming experience is helpful. Wrox Beginning guides are crafted to make learning programming languages and technologies easier than you think, providing a structured, tutorial format th Read more...

Based on the authors' experiences in developing and teaching Symbian OS, this practical guide is perfect for programmers and provides a series of example-based scenarios that show how to develop Symbian applications. * Exercises walk the reader through the initial development of a console-based card game engine to a graphical user interface(GUI)-based, two player blackjack game operating over a Bluetooth connection between two mobile phones * Addresses how Symbian offers a number of different variants to allow for different user interfaces and screen savers - the most prevalent of these is S60 * Discusses how the move toward 3G technology has resulted in an increasing need for mobile application development for S60 devices. About the Author Reuben Edwards and Paul Coulton are well-established researchers in the area of mobile systems and applications. As World leading academics for Symbian education, they are part of the Nokia Symbian Educators Group, which have been trained to the same standard as all Nokia Symbian developers. They run the only MSc in Mobile Games Design and M-Commerce Systems in the World and they have formed a company, which specializes in Mobile Applications Development. Read more...

Because probability and statistics are as much about intuition and problem solving, as they are about theorem proving, students can find it very difficult to make a successful transition from lectures to examinations and practice. Since the subject is critical in many modern applications, Yuri Suhov and Michael Kelbert have rectified deficiencies in traditional lecture-based methods, by combining a wealth of exercises for which they have supplied complete solutions. These solutions are adapted to needs and skills of students and include basic mathematical facts as needed. Review "All the ingredients that contribute to making a good lecture are in the book: well-explained theory, interesting examples, and funny jokes and amusing stories about famous probabilists and statisticians. The authors also give rhythm to the flow of the subjects, making the volume a very pleasant book to read." Mathematical Reviews "...authors claim that this book simplifies life for test-taking students by offering them a wealth of exercises along with complete solutions. Highly recommended." Choice Read more...

In Search of Lost Time" details mankind's quest, throughout the ages, to measure and understand time itself. The book is a reflection of Derek York's obsession with time and its measurement. It takes the reader from the pyramids of Egypt, through Stonehenge and the South China Plain, to the universities of Cambridge, McGill and Chicago, to the Patent Office in Berne, and back to the Ethiopian desert on the banks of the Awash River. On this time-odyssey the reader enters the mind-bending universe of the Special and General Theories of Relativity, the ghostly world of Quantum Mechanics and the unpredictable haunts of Chaos. Companions to share and illuminate the path range from Jonathan Swift's "Gulliver's Travels" and Lewis Carroll's "Alice" to J.B. Priestley's "Dangerous Corner". The reader will meet the father of master-spy Kim Philby in the Empty Quarter of Arabia, the fantasist Velikovsky in the clouds, and Newton, Darwin, Rutherford, Einstein and the great earth scientists of this century who fathomed the depths of lost time and discovered the age of the earth. Written in an engaging, non-technical style for the lay-reader this book should delight and amaze all who encounter it. Reviews Nature "This is a delightful little book." New Scientist "The trouble with time is that there is so much of it. Since writers woke up to this fact, book after book has appeared with histories of its past and histrionics about its future. So how to tell the wheat from the chaff? Read more...

Presents the definitive insider's guide to the design and development of the C++ programming language. Provides insights into the aims, principles, and real-world constraints which shaped C++. Paper. DLC: C++ (Computer program language) From the Inside Flap "He who does not plow, must write." --Martin A. Hansen The ACM HOPL-2 conference on the History of Programming Languages asked me to write a paper on the history of C++. This seemed a reasonable idea and a bit of an honor, so I started writing. To get a more comprehensive and balanced view of C++'s growth, I asked a few friends from the early days of C++ for their recollections. That caused news of this project to travel through the grapevine. There, the story mutated, and one day I received a message from a friend asking where he could buy my new book on the design of C++. That email message is the real origin of this book. Traditional books about programming and programming languages explain what a language is and how to use it. However, many people are also curious about why a language is the way it is and how it came to be that way. This book answers these last two questions for C++. It explains how C++ evolved from its first design to the language in use today. It describes the key problems, design aims, language ideas, and constraints that shaped C++, and how they changed over time. Naturally, C++ and the ideas about design and programming that shaped it didn't just mutate by themselves. What rea Read more...

Everyone loves Google, and it's the first place many people turn to locate information on the Internet. There's a big gap, though, between knowing that you can use Google to get advance information on your blind date and having a handle on the considerable roster of fact-finding tools that the site makes available. Google Hacks reveals--and documents in considerable detail--a large collection of Google capabilities that many readers won't have even been aware of. Want to find the best price on a pair of leg warmers? Try the Froogle price-searcher that's hidden within the Google site. Interested in finding weblog commentary about a particular subject? Tara Calishain and Rael Dornfest call your attention to the special Google syntaxes for that purpose. This book makes it clear that there's lots more to the Google site than typing in a few keywords and trusting the search engine to yield useful results. If you're a programmer--or even just familiar with a HTML or a scripting language--Google opens up even further. A large part of Google Hacks concerns itself with the Google API (the collection of capabilities that Google exposes for use by software) and other programmers' resources. For example, the authors include a simple Perl application that queries the Google engine with terms specified by the user. They also document XooMLe, which delivers Google results in XML form. In brief, this is the best compendium of Google's lesser-known capabilities available anywhere, including Read more...

From the Back Cover What do topics ranging from organic chemistry to Napoleon's campaigns have to do with computer programming? This collection of essays demonstrates the many varied aspects of programming, showing how programming can be both a fun and elegant science. Some of the essays cover programming techniques, like how profilers can provide insight into the dynamic behavior of programs, and methods for making data files self-describing. These techniques deal with real programs and they are realistically illustrated, using the C and Awk languages. Bentley also provides the reader with some tricks of the programmer's trade, like a collection of rules of thumb and hints for finding simple solutions to hard problems. These essays also originally appeared in the author's column in Communication of the ACM, and have been substantially revised, incorporating new sections, problems, and reader comments. Read more...

Amazon.com Fourteen years after it was first issued, C++ expert Jon Bentley reinvents a true classic with the second edition of his Programming Pearls. Completely revised and brought up to date with all new code examples in C and C++, this book remains an exceptional tutorial for learning to think like a programmer. The "pearls" in question center not only on choosing the right algorithms (like binary searches, sorting techniques, or sparse arrays) but also on showing how to solve problems effectively. Each chapter frames a particular programming task--such as sorting numbers, creating anagrams, or counting the words in a block of text--many drawn from Bentley's experiences in his long career as a developer. The book traces the process of arriving at a fast, efficient, and accurate solution, along with code profiling to discover what works best. After refining the correct answer, each chapter enumerates programming principles that you can use on your own. The author also challenges you to think like an engineer, and each chapter ends with about a dozen problems to get you thinking creatively about design issues. (Sidebars on such historical topics as the first computer solutions to computer chess, spell-checking, and even architectural design help create a perspective on successful problem solving and make for a truly educational and enjoyable tour of how to become a better programmer.) Bentley also asks the reader to think analytically about the world with "back of the Read more...