C++ is the primary language used in game development; however, game programming has a unique set of challenges, which general application development techniques and recommendations don't apply to. Written to address this issue, C++ for Game Programmers provides practical suggestions for what C++ features to use in game development and why. Many of the misconceptions of C++ are clarified, and programmers learn the most effective methods for using the language to create games. This is primarily a book about ideas and concepts: it is not just a source of C++ code to use in your game project. Instead, C++ for Game Programmers covers how things work from a game-development perspective, and provides practical rules to follow. It points out the most effective C++ practices and steers developers away from the potentially dangerous ones. It describes common C++ techniques to solve specific problems faced by most developers, and focuses on techniques that have been proven in real games. Additionally, specific new technologies such as STL are covered in detail, along with the challenges specific to different platforms such as PCs or game consoles. The techniques presented apply to all aspects of game programming, including graphics, physics, and AI. C++ for Game Programmers is the perfect resource for game programmers looking to perfect their C++ skills, and experienced programmers interested in entering the game industry. Graphics, embedded systems, and real-time systems programmers facing the same challenges as game programmers will also benefit from the ideas and techniques covered. (more…)

Since the introduction of the Apriori algorithm a decade ago, the problem of mining patterns is becoming a very active research area, and efficient techniques have been widely applied to the problems either in industry or science. Currently, the data mining community is focusing on new problems such as: mining new kinds of patterns, mining patterns under constraints, considering new kinds of complex data, and real-world applications of these concepts. Data Mining Patterns: New Methods and Applications provides an overall view of the recent solutions for mining, and also explores new kinds of patterns. This book offers theoretical frameworks and presents challenges and their possible solutions concerning pattern extractions, emphasizing both research techniques and real-world applications. Data Mining Patterns: New Methods and Applications portrays research applications in data models, techniques and methodologies for mining patterns, multi-relational and multidimensional pattern mining, fuzzy data mining, data streaming, incremental mining, and many other topics. (more…)

Goodtimes
'Offers hundreds of ideas, memory joggers and techniques that will help the novice bring their story to life.' –This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Writing Magazine
'Writing Your Life Story will help you make a polished job of your autobiography.' –This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Hard drive failures may be responsible for the biggest headaches IT professionals experience. Recovering lost or corrupted data from failed disks is a nightmare. Fortunately, you have help. TechRepublic asked its members what recovery methods worked best for them. Solutions poured in from IT professionals who've tried everything, revealing that, in many cases, hopeless situations aren't hopeless. In fact, data can often be retrieved from failed disks, if you know how. 200 Ways to Revive a Hard Drive collects more than 200 creative, resourceful, and crafty tips from TechRepublic members. In their own words, here are the solutions they've turned to when trying to rescue data following a hard disk crash or failure.

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How To Books
Writing for Magazines
How to Get Your Work Published in Local Newspapers and Magazines 4Th Ed
2007

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Designing Your Organization is a hands-on guide that provides managers with a set of practical tools to use when making organization design decisions. Based on Jay Galbraith’s widely used Star Model, the book covers the fundamentals of organization design and offers frameworks and tools to help leaders execute their strategy. The authors address the five specific design challenges that confront most of today’s organizations:
Designing around the customer
Organizing across borders
Making a matrix work
Solving the centralization—and decentralization dilemma
Organizing for innovation

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DOC (MS Word) + PDF + MP3 | English | 5.8 + 2.2 + 10.4 MB

• COVER: Why Pakistan Matters - Benazir Bhutto's assassination has plunged the Muslim nuclear power into chaos. Now the Bush Administration must help undo decades of flawed U.S. policy to save Pakistan
• Martyr Without a Cause - Bhutto was a brave, gutsy, secular and liberal woman. But she was a central part of Pakistan's problems, not a solution to them
• NATION: Death Penalty Walking - The Supreme Court prepares to hear a case on lethal injections that could cause us to rethink our haphazard system of capital punishment
• SOCIETY: Bringing Babies to Work - More businesses are allowing parents to take their infants to the office. Is having a cooing baby in the cubicle next door too much of a workplace distraction?
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This book is a look at the top 10 IT security threats for 2008 as selected by the editors and readers of Infosecurity Magazine. Each chapter is selected from the Syngress Security Library for its assessment of the risk, potential defenses, and disaster recovery should an intrusion occur. This book is a must have reference for any IT security professional. 

* Provides IT Security Professionals with a first look at likely new threats to their enterprise.

* Includes real-world examples of system intrusions and compromised data.

* Provides techniques and strategies to detect, prevent, and recover.

* Includes coverage of PCI, VoIP, XSS, Asterisk, Social Engineering, Botnets, and Convergence.

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At some point in their lives, many people fantasize about running a shop of their own. But while many of them actually do open their own shop, only about a quarter of them will succeed. Every year, nearly two million small specialty shops open in the U.S. alone, and more than 500,000 go out of business. The Specialty Shop shows readers how they can establish a business that they are passionate about and that will also be profitable for years to come.

Dorothy Finell has traveled the world in search of fascinating, creative, and successful shops. In The Specialty Shop, she describes more than 37 of them, including bakeries, gift shops, toy stores, book shops, tea houses, clothing boutiques, and even unique shops like Papier-Maché, a mask shop in Venice, Italy and The Carmel Doll Shop in Carmel, California. Based on interviews with shop owners, Finell offers advice on everything new shopowners need to know, from pre-planning, décor and display, finance, and customer service to marketing and community relations. She also includes appendices on trade and gift shows where shop owners can find the merchandise they need. Filled with lively vignettes and beautiful photographs, The Specialty Shop will show prospective owners how to open the shop of their dreams and nurture their business into a success

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Make Your Contacts Count is a practical, step-by-step guide for creating, cultivating, and capitalizing on networking relationships and opportunities. Packed with valuable tools, the book offers a field-tested "Hello to Goodbye" system that takes readers from entering a room, to making conversations flow, to following up. Updated from its first edition, the book now includes expanded advice on building social capital at work and in job hunting, as well as new case studies, examples, checklists, and questionnaires. Readers will discover how to:

* draft a networking plan
* cultivate current contacts
* make the most of memberships
* effectively exchange business cards
* avoid the top ten networking turn-offs
* share anecdotes that convey character and competence
* transform their careers with a networking makeover

Job-seekers, career-changers, entrepreneurs, and others will find all the networking help they need to supercharge their careers and boost their bottom lines.

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It's official: the old marketing model is dead, and word of mouth is king. But while a lot of attention has been paid to the mechanics of creating buzz, only the savviest of marketers have learned to focus on crafting the right kind of message — because without it, even the loudest buzz will soon die down. Beyond Buzz shows readers how to listen to customers, identify what is important to them, and then craft the kind of message that will truly resonate and spark conversation.

Filled with insightful examples of conversational marketing at work, Beyond Buzz gives readers the tools and inspiration they need to create an effective and interesting conversational theme that will engage their customers and take their marketing to a whole new level.

Without the right message in place, word of mouth marketing will never live up to its promise. This innovative and practical book shows readers how to ignite people's interest…and generate much more than buzz.

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After fifteen years of rising to the pinnacle of the hospitality industry, Chip Conley's company was suddenly undercapitalized and overexposed in the post-dot.com, post-9/11 economy. For relief and inspiration, Conley, the CEO and founder of Joie de Vivre Hospitality, turned to psychologist Abraham Maslow's iconic Hierarchy of Needs. This book explores how Conley's company "the second largest boutique hotelier in the world" overcame the storm that hit the travel industry by applying Maslow's theory to what Conley identifies as the key Relationship Truths in business with Employees, Customers and Investors.

Part memoir, part theory, and part application, the book tells of Joie de Vivre's remarkable transformation while providing real world examples from other companies and showing how readers can bring about similar changes in their work and personal lives. Conley explains how to understand the motivations of employees, customers, bosses, and investors, and use that understanding to foster better relationships and build an enduring and profitable corporate culture.

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Quality rigging and animation preparation is vital for creating characters that can truly act and make an audience believe they are live, emotive beings. LightWave 3D [8] Cartoon Character Creation - Volume 2: Rigging & Animation includes both general theory and comprehensive tutorials for every aspect of rigging and animating 3D characters. Learn how, why, and when to use the most efficient techniques so you can have fun animating your own fantastic 3D characters.

• Learn all about rigging characters, including weight mapping, bone creation, IK, and deformations.
• Discover advanced rigging techniques, including expressions, FK/IK blending, quadruped rigging, and more.
• Find out how to use the animation controls and animate using inverse kinematics.
• Explore the intricacies of facial animation, including morphs, facial expressions, lip sync, and advanced morph controls.
• Learn how to use dynamics for secondary body motion and clothing.

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Character design, modeling, and texturing are the fundamental building blocks of character animation. LightWave 3D [8] Cartoon Character Creation Volume 1: Modeling & Texturing includes both general theory and comprehensive tutorials for every aspect of modeling and texturing 3D characters. Learn how, why, and when to use the most efficient techniques so you can have fun creating your own fantastic 3D characters.

• Find out how to configure LightWave 3D for character creation, and learn the necessary steps of the character concept, design, and planning stages.
• Discover multiple methods for modeling characters and clothing using subdivision patches.
• Understand the techniques for creating complex UV mapping.
• Learn about surface attributes and surfacing characters.
• Enhance the appearance of your characters through the use of gradients and procedural textures.
• Explore a variety of techniques for creating image maps and applying them to your characters.

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LightWave 3D is one of the most popular 3D packages on the market today, offering the most complete set of tools, the best-looking and fastest out-of-the-box renderer, and one of the most powerful IK engines available. Professional director and animator Timothy Albee updates the best-selling LightWave 3D 7 Character Animation with discussions of advanced animation tools, facial animation, and IK Booster. In addition, he details how to use LightWave to build strong, dependable character setups; provides proven, hands-on tools for mastering the complex mechanics of animation; and covers the importance of storytelling and acting through animation.

• Explore the complete crafting of powerful and reliable character setups.
• Master subtle acting techniques that imbue scenes with life, drama, and power, such as anticipation, gesture, overlapping action, and silhouette.
• Discover how IK Booster adds more power, ease, and functionality to LightWave’s existing Inverse Kinematics system.
• Use LightWave’s Dope Sheet, Dope Track, and Motion Mixer tools to improve your output in creating animation.
• Find out how to use morph targets to sculpt your characters’ facial performances.

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Although it was first published more than thirty-five years ago, Up the Organization continues to top the lists of best business books by groups as diverse as the American Management Association, Strategy + Business (Booz Allen Hamilton), and The Wharton Center for Leadership and Change Management. 1-800-CEO-READ ranks Townsend’s bestseller first among eighty books that “every manager must read.”

This commemorative edition offers a new generation the benefit of Robert Townsend’s timeless wisdom as well as reflections on his work and life by those who knew and worked with him. This groundbreaking book continues to remind us not to get mired in all those sacred organizational routines that stifle people and strangle both profits and profitability. He shows a way to humanize business and a way to have fun while making it all work better than it ever worked before.

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A concise introduction to the fundamentals of working with MySQL.

MySQL is an open-source relational database management system that is rapidly growing in popularity. Known for its speed, reliability, and ease of use, MySQL has proven itself to be particularly well suited both for beginners and for experienced developers to create sophisticated database-backed Web sites and applications.

MySQL Tutorial is a clear, concise introduction to the fundamental concepts and techniques of working with MySQL. It teaches the beginning MySQL user how to create and administer powerful databases that can be used at home, at work, and on the Web.

Whether you are a novice to databases or a technical professional looking to find out more about how MySQL works, MySQL Tutorial efficiently guides you through the information you need in order to get started with MySQL and quickly become proficient.

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The book provides complete coverage of fundamental IP networking in Java. It introduces the concepts behind TCP/IP and UDP and their intended use and purpose; gives complete coverage of Java networking APIs, includes an extended discussion of advanced server design, so that the various design principles and tradeoffs concerned are discussed and equips the reader with analytic queuing-theory tools to evaluate design alternatives; covers UDP multicasting, and covers multi-homed hosts, leading the reader to understand the extra programming steps and design considerations required in such environments.

After reading this book the reader will have an advanced knowledge of fundamental network design and programming concepts in the Java language, enabling them to design and implement distributed applications with advanced features and to predict their performance. Special emphasis is given to the scalable I/O facilities of Java 1.4 as well as complete treatments of multi-homing and UDP both unicast and multicast.

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Delve into the ultimate guide for professional photographers

Harness the power and flexibility of the latest version of Adobe Photoshop Lightroom, version 1.1, with this expert guide. Professional photographers David Huss and David Plotkin show you how to work smarter, faster, and more creatively with their personal tips, tricks, and techniques that you can incorporate into your own workflow.

Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 1.1 is a powerful tool that you can integrate into your existing workflow to increase your productivity and improve the overall quality of your work. With this ultimate resource by your side, youll learn how to:

Organize, adjust, process, output, and share digital pictures like the top professionals
Personalize Lightroom with a custom Identity plate
Seamlessly transition between Lightroom and your favorite photo editor
Quickly view and compare multiple shots, pairing selections down to your best work
Correct images, adjust white balance, and fine-tune tone, balance, and exposure, crop and undoall without altering your originals!
Automate your workflow by applying image adjustments to multiple photos
Output proof and contact sheets
Develop, print and display your digital pictures for friends and clients, all the while saving valuable time
Create slide shows and web postings
And much more..

As you move from traditional separate image editing applications to this next generation software that was designed specifically for photographers, Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 1.1 for the Professional Photographer unveils insider secrets and expert advice in this highly visual guide.

David Huss is a professional photographer and author who has written more than 30 books. His work has been translated into eight languages.
David Plotkin is a technical editor, photographer, and software writer who has written five books and numerous articles.

*The most comprehensive guide available on Adobe Photoshop Lightroom, fully up-to-date with all of the new features of version 1.1
*Learn how to integrate this powerful software into your own workflow to maximize your productivity
*Written by two industry experts and packed with inspiring images to show you what you can achieve with Lightroom 1.1 and this handy guide by your side!

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Packed with more than 500 techniques, this book delivers what you need to knowon the spot. It is suited to editors of all experience levels, whether you are:

* Migrating from another NLE
* Upgrading to Final Cut Studio 2
* Seeking a handy reference to raise your proficiency

No need to wade through tomes of documentation. Final Cut Studio On the Spot presents immediate solutions in an accessible format. Step-by-step instruction by Apple Certified Pros shows you how to:

* Optimize system performance
* Create impressive titles with Generators, Motion, LiveType, and Photoshop
* Build Commercial-quality transitions
* Work quickly with buttons and keyboard shortcuts
* Color correct to save vital shots, and keep them broadcast legal
* Fix and mix for professional-quality audio
* Use the compositing tools of master editors
* Design and import graphics seamlessly
* Integrate with other applications including Motion, Soundtrack Pro and Color
* Troubleshoot and recover files
* Manage media and backup strategies
* Export and publish finished projects to tape, DVD, or the Web

Key Features:
* 400 time-saving workflow techniques
* Concise presentation is great for as a reference or a casual read
* Covers the major Studio toolsets for the editor

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"…with an easy style and great depth, Final Cut Pro Workflows: The Independent Studio Handbook is an enjoyable and important read. Osder and Carman offer a diverse background and extensive experience with Final Cut Pro."
Richard Harrington, President, RHED Pixel; author, Photoshop for Video, 3rd Edition, Final Cut Studio on the Spot, 3rd Edition

"Builds the theory and practice of using FCP around a variety of real-world project scenarios. Final Cut Pro Workflows combines an encyclopedia of detailed information on technical specs for shooting and editing with surprisingly readable stories about applying the tools to actual projects. Not just how to use a hammer…how to build the house."
— Blaine Graboyes, Media Architect, Worldwide Biggies, NYC

"…what makes Final Cut Pro Workflows: The Independent Studio Handbook a standout in a crowded field of books on the 'how to' of digital editing is the recognition that it's not just about learning the technology, but about how you think, organize, and manage a project to bring it to successful conclusion. Osder and Carman have written a unique book that brings together the critical marriage of technology and the real world circumstances that confront nascent Final Cut Pro editors. Indispensable!"
Nina Gilden Seavey, Emmy Award-winning Filmmaker; Director, The Documentary Center, George Washington University

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FileMaker Web Publishing offers an unparalleled development strategy for database managers, web designers, and programmers who are interested in getting the most out of FileMaker databases on the web. As the book covers both introductory web publishing and advanced database programming on the web, it is ideal for all skill levels.
Allyson Olm is the owner of FMWebschool, a professional FileMaker training and development firm, as well as a well-known trainer and developer. She is the lead developer behind the FXForge product line.

Stephen Knight is a FileMaker developer with 10 years of experience creating FileMaker solutions.

Michael Petrov is a programmer and developer responsible for creating a host of web publishing applications with FileMaker. He was the lead developer on the FMStudio web publishing solution from FMWebschool.

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Dr. Tom Shinders ISA Server 2006 Migration Guide provides a clear, concise, and thorough path to migrate from previous versions of ISA Server to ISA Server 2006. ISA Server 2006 is an incremental upgrade from ISA Server 2004, this book provides all of the tips and tricks to perform a successful migration, rather than rehash all of the features which were rolled out in ISA Server 2004. Also, learn to publish Exchange Server 2007 with ISA 2006 and to build a DMZ.

* Highlights key issues for migrating from previous versions of ISA Server to ISA Server 2006.
* Learn to Publish Exchange Server 2007 Using ISA Server 2006.
* Create a DMZ using ISA Server 2006.

* Dr. Tom Shinders previous two books on configuring ISA Server have sold more than 50,000 units worldwide.
* Dr. Tom Shinder is a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) for ISA Server and a member of the ISA Server beta testing team.
* This book will be the Featured Product on the Internets most popular ISA Server site www.isaserver.org.

About the Author
Thomas W. Shinder, MD is an MCSE and has been awarded the Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) award for his work with ISA Server and is recognized in the firewall community as one of the foremost experts on ISA Server. His first two books on ISA Server have sold more than 50,000 units worldwide. Tom has consulted with major companies and organizations such as Microsoft Corp., Xerox, Lucent Technologies, FINA Oil, Hewlett-Packard, and the U.S. Department of Energy. Tom is the primary contributor on ISAserver.org (www.isaserver.org), where he answers hundreds of questions per week on the discussion boards and is the leading content contributor.

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Complete coverage of DirectX 3D graphics programming. Topics include understanding how DirectX interfaces with PC graphics devices and Windows, mastering 2D and 3D animation basics, harnessing Direct3D retained mode programming to create true 3D animations, manipulating frames, meshes, textures, mipmaps, lights and shadows, and more. Softcover.

From the Publisher
Inside this book you'll find complete coverage of DirectX 3D graphics programming:

Understand how DirectX interfaces with PC graphics devices and Windows

Master 2D and 3D animation basics, from modeling and rendering to matrices

Take control of blitting and blit-time transformations using DirectDraw

Take advantage of sprites, flips, and other DirectDraw animation techniques

Harness Direct3D retained programming to create true 3D animations

Manipulate frames, meshes, textures, mipmaps, lights, and shadows

Fine-tune motion with tweening, morphing, and other animation techniques

BONUS CD-ROM INCLUDES:
All C++ source code from the book
Microsoft DirectX 7 Software Development Kit

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You love it as the world’s most popular desktop Linux distribution, and now Ubuntu is available at a server near you. Embracing the very same features desktop users have grown to love, system administrators are rapidly adopting Ubuntu due to their ability to configure, deploy, and manage network services more effectively than ever.

Practical Ubuntu Server Administration guides you through all of the key configuration and administration tasks you’ll need to know. Whether you’re interested in adopting Ubuntu within a Fortune 500 environment or just want to use Ubuntu to manage your home network, this book is your go-to guide to using the distribution securely for a wide variety of network services. Topics include file, print, web, and FTP management, command-line tips and tricks, automated installation, configuration and deployment processes, and kernel management.

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Most books on operating systems deal with theory while ignoring practice. While the usual principles are covered in detail, the book describes a small, but real UNIX-like operating system: MINIX. The book demonstrates how it works while illustrating the principles behind it. Operating Systems: Design and Implementation Second Edition provides the MINIX source code. The relevant selections of the MINIX code are described in detail. When it first came out, MINIX caused something of a revolution. Within weeks, it had its own newsgroup on USENET, with 40,000 people. Most wanted to make MINIX bigger and fancier. Instead, Linux was created. That has become quite popular, very large, and complicated. MINIX, on the other hand, has remained small and suitable for instruction and example. The book has been revised to include updates in MINIX, which started out as a v 7 unix clone for a floppy-disk only 8088. It is now aimed at 386, 486, and pentium machines and is based on the international posix standard instead of on v7. There are now also versions of MINIX for the Macintosh and SPARC available. Professional programmers will find this book to be a valuable resource and reference book. (more…)

Written for the intermediate or advanced C++ programmer, renowned C++ expert Scott Meyers provides essential techniques for getting more out of the Standard Template Library in Effective STL, a tutorial for doing more with this powerful library.

STL is a hugely powerful feature of today's C++, but one with a well-earned reputation for complexity. The book is organized into 50 tips that explore different areas of the STL. Besides providing a list of dos and don'ts, Meyers presents a lot of background on what works and what doesn't with STL. Each tip is demonstrated with in-depth coding samples, many of which make use of two-color printing to highlight the most important lines of code. (Advanced developers will enjoy Meyers's in-depth explanations, while those who are in a hurry can skip ahead to the recommended tip itself.)

A good part of this book involves using containers, like vectors and maps, which are built into STL. (Besides the standard built-in containers, the author also highlights recent additions to STL like B-trees, which are available as extensions from other vendors.) You'll learn the best ways to allocate, add, change, and delete items inside containers, including associative containers like maps. You'll also learn to avoid common pitfalls, which can result in writing code that is slow or just plain wrong.

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On the Effective C++ CD, well-known C++ guru Scott Meyers combines the complete text of two of his books, Effective C++ and More Effective C++. Since the format of these two books provides a laundry list of tips for improving C++ code (Effective C++ contains 50 tips, while More Effective C++ adds 35 more), the CD-ROM format is a natural fit and a convenient way to read both titles. The CD-ROM format adds extra material, including several magazine articles and an annotated list of books for further reading. A handy full-text search engine lets you cross-reference material from both books. (Alternatively, you can just browse and read at your own pace.) The CD-ROM provides full control of image size and other options, making it useful for virtually any system, from desktop to laptop. (It requires only Netscape 4 or Microsoft Internet Explorer 4 browsers or later). While the author himself writes that he likes printed books, this CD-ROM makes good use of the greater flexibility of HTML. The additional material makes this electronic version even more comprehensive than the two previous titles combined. –Richard Dragan (more…)

A 2 Hour video lesson which teaches Actionscript 3 Flash Email Forms (with "Flash Cookies")

Watch Step by Step Instructions for Creating the Form shown, with these key featurs

- Locally Shared Objects (basically, Flash "cookies") are created to save the form for filling in later.
 or example, fill in some of the fields above. Press TAB or "Save Form", then close the window and come back. Upon return the information filled in previously will appear. This is a good feature for lengthy forms that might extend over multiple swfs.

- Restrict input text to specific characters. Also error messages can prompt users about typing restricted text. You can test this out in the Order # field above. If you type letters instead of numbers, an error prompt will show up.

- Prior to submitting the form, required fields can be tested for accurate info. For example, if you exclude the @ symbol or a period in the Email field, the form will prompt you to enter a valid email address

- Learn to use four common Components: Checkboxes, Label Buttons, Pulldown Menus, and Scrollbars. Also these components can work together, for example certain pulldown menu's will switch the checkbox to being selected.

- Scripted Motion Tweens can be added to make user messages slide in instead of appearing abruptly. You can test this out in the Order # field above. If you type letters instead of numbers, an error prompt will slide / fade in.

- Input and Dynamic Text boxes are taught extensively.
- The PHP file to send the form is also included and can be modified as well.

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The world of IT is always evolving, but in every area there are stable, core concepts that anyone just setting out needed to know last year, needs to know this year, and will still need to know next year. The purpose of the Foundations series is to identify these concepts and present them in a way that gives you the strongest possible starting point, no matter what your endeavor.

TCP/IP Foundations provides essential knowledge about the two protocols that form the basis for the Internet, as well as many other networks. What you learn here will benefit you in the short term, as you acquire and practice your skills, and in the long term, as you use them. Topics covered include:

• The origins of TCP/IP and the Internet
• The layers comprising the OSI and DoD models
• TCP/IP addressing
• Subnet masks
• Creating custom subnet masks
• Supernetting and Classless Inter-Domain Routing (CIDR)
• Name resolution
• The Domain Name System (DNS) and Dynamic DNS
• Windows Internet Naming Services (WINS)
• The Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP)
• What to expect with IPv6

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Are you ready to reap the benefits of the bestselling contact relationship manager (CRM) software on the market today? Well, then—get into the act with ACT! 2008 and find out how the latest version of this exciting software enables you to set up a database that’s right for you so that you can focus on your business and career growth while also saving time and money.

With this fun and friendly guide in hand, you’ll discover how ACT! organizes customer information in one place, safely shares customer info between workgroups, and provides you with forecast tools, reports, and a contact database. Whether you’re new to the features of ACT! or you are familiar with the basics but have not yet put to use ACT!’s more advanced abilities, this nuts-and-bolts reference has been updated and revised to make sure that you are up to speed on the most efficient way to organize your customer relationships and activities.

Author and full-time ACT! Certified Consultant and ACT! Premier Trainer Karen Fredricks walks you through tasks such as:

• Setting up the contact database
• Adding multiple contacts to a group and adding contacts to a company
• Changing contact-level security access
• Scheduling activities
• Using the basic ACT! Reports
• Designing new reports
• Automating the backup process
• Integrating with Outlook
• Creating groups

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The Ultimate Resource for Professional Game Animators

Game animation is a demanding art. Not only do you have to deliver realistic, beautiful animations, but you have to do so under strict real-time, video-game constraints. The Game Animator's Guide to Maya is your focused resource for using Maya to create professional-level game animations for console and PC games. Written by a game industry veteran and featuring interviews with professional animators and artists from around the country, this focused book features specific, detailed, real-world game animation techniques. It's the perfect reference and tutorial for those looking to develop or refine their game animation skills.

The enclosed CD features more than $3000 worth of exclusive content, including models, high-resolution textures, animations, concept art, and animation reference videos. It also includes the Maya Personal Learning Edition and project files so you can complete the hands-on tutorials.

The Game Animator's Guide to Maya gives you an insider's view of the animation business and teaches the skills necessary to animate everything from characters to vehicles to lip-synching audio. First, you'll get an introduction to the industry and typical game development pipelines, then learn rigging and animation basics before moving on to advanced techniques and the detailed tutorials. Inside, you'll find:
* Game Career Guide: Industry information, demo reel advice, job descriptions, game asset pipeline overview
* Animation Techniques: detailed explanation of animation terms, techniques, tools, concepts, and editors
* Rigging and Animation Setup: IK and FK, joint hierarchies, skeleton controls, constraints, selection handles, and more
* True Game Animation: real-world assignments that mimic the day-to-day jobs of professional game animators–walk cycles, run cycles, idle cycles, action sequences, lip-synching to audio, and more

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This book describes an approach to software management based on establishing an infrastructure that serves as the foundation for the project. This infrastructure defines people roles, necessary technology, and interactions between people and technology. This infrastructure automates repetitive tasks, organizes project activities, tracks project status, and seamlessly collects project data to provide measures necessary for decision making. Most importantly, this infrastructure sustains and facilitates the improvement of human-defined processes.

The methodology described in the book, which is called Automated Defect Prevention (ADP) stands out from the current software landscape as a result of two unique features: its comprehensive approach to defect prevention, and its far-reaching emphasis on automation. ADP is a practical and thorough guide to implementing and managing software projects and processes. It is a set of best practices for software management through process improvement, which is achieved by the gradual automation of repetitive tasks supported and sustained by this flexible and adaptable infrastructure, an infrastructure that essentially forms a software production line.

In defining the technology infrastructure, ADP describes necessary features rather than specific tools, thus remaining vendor neutral. Only a basic subset of features that are essential for building an effective infrastructure has been selected. Many existing commercial and non-commercial tools support these, as well as more advanced features. Appendix E contains such a list

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The next five years will be […] a period of opportunity for China to speed up the growth of software and information services outsourcing. China will continue to generate strong market demand for the global software industry.

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The effects of digital technology on the security industry require constant vigilance by security distributors, sales staff, and installation professionals. Today and for the predictable future, all security professionals must have at least a basic understanding of digital technology. CCTV in the Digital Age will be the first book of its kind that addresses this new challenge. As it traces the stream of digital video flow from the computer industry through compression, transmission, display and storage, how analog video signal is converted into a digital signal the reader will learn and understand the mysteries of digital science.

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*One of the leading experts on business data mining shows managers how to leverage SQL and Excel to perform sophisticated types of business analysis without the expense of data mining tools and consultants

*Explains how to use the relatively simple tools of SQL and Excel to extract useful business information from relational databases

*Each chapter discusses why and when to perform a particular type of business analysis to obtain a useful business result, how to design and perform the analysis using SQL and Excel, and what the results look like in SQL and Excel

*Presents hints, warnings, and technical asides about Excel, SQL, and data analysis/mining

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• New to Python? The definitive guide to Python development for experienced programmers

• Covers core language features thoroughly, including those found in the latest Python releases

• Learn advanced topics such as regular expressions, networking, multithreading, GUI, and Web/CGI

• Includes brand-new chapters on database, Internet, Jython, and COM Client programming

• Presents hundreds of code samples and practical exercises to strengthen your Python skills

Python is an agile, robust, expressive, fully object-oriented, extensible, and scalable programming language. It combines the power of compiled languages with the simplicity and rapid development of scripting languages. In Core Python Programming, Second Edition, leading Python developer and trainer Wesley Chun helps you learn Python quickly and comprehensively so that you can immediately succeed with any Python project.

Using practical code examples, Chun introduces all the fundamentals of Python programming: syntax, objects and memory management, data types, operators, files and I/O, functions, generators, error handling and exceptions, loops, iterators, functional programming, object-oriented programming and more. After you learn the core fundamentals of Python, he shows you what you can do with your new skills, delving into advanced topics, such as regular expressions, networking programming with sockets, multithreading, GUI development, Web/CGI programming and extending Python in C.

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Flash | 10 MB

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Review
’With the communications world almost totally digital in its approach and the various disciplines not so much converged as collided, there is great need for a volume such as this which embraces each area and neatly joins them as though they had always been one. This is also a book you can dip into and just tease out the information you require, so no matter what your interest is you will be able to see clearly how it relates and merges, indeed converges with the other sectors of the industry.

Anyone working in the communications industry should have a copy of this book on his or her reference shelf.’

Peter H. Bartlett, Technical Manager, University of Dundee
Journal of Educational Media, Vol. 26, No. 2

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Beginning Linux Programming, Fourth Edition continues its unique approach to teaching UNIX programming in a simple and structured way on the Linux platform. Through the use of detailed and realistic examples, students learn by doing, and are able to move from being a Linux beginner to creating custom applications in Linux. The book introduces fundamental concepts beginning with the basics of writing Unix programs in C, and including material on basic system calls, file I/O, interprocess communication (for getting programs to work together), and shell programming. Parallel to this, the book introduces the toolkits and libraries for working with user interfaces, from simpler terminal mode applications to X and GTK+ for graphical user interfaces. Advanced topics are covered in detail such as processes, pipes, semaphores, socket programming, using MySQL, writing applications for the GNOME or the KDE desktop, writing device drivers, POSIX Threads, and kernel programming for the latest Linux Kernel.

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Assuming only basic knowledge of C# 2008, Beginning C# 2008 Databases teaches all the fundamentals of database technology and database programming readers need to quickly become highly proficient database users and application developers.

A comprehensive tutorial on both SQL Server 2005 and ADO.NET 3.0, Beginning C# 2008 Databases explains and demonstrates how to create database objects and program against them in both T-SQL and C#. Full of practical, detailed examples, it’s been fully revised and updated for C# 2008 and offers the most complete, detailed, and gentle introduction to database technology for all C# programmers at any level of experience.

• Comprehensively and concisely explains fundamental database concepts and programming techniques
• Rich in working examples of both T-SQL and C# programs
• Covers all the features most database programming ever requires

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Distributed business component computing–the assembling of business components into electronic business processes, which interact via the Internet–caters to a new breed of enterprise systems that are flexible, relatively easy to maintain and upgrade to accommodate new business processes, and relatively simple to integrate with other enterprise systems. Companies with unwieldy, large, and heterogeneous inherited information systems–known as legacy systems–find it extremely difficult to align their old systems with novel business processes. Legacy systems are not only tightly intertwined with existing business processes and procedures but also have a brittle architecture after years of ad-hoc fixes and offer limited openness to other systems. In this book, Willem-Jan van den Heuvel provides a methodological framework that offers pragmatic techniques for aligning component-based business processes and legacy systems.

Van den Heuvel's methodology is based on three building blocks: reverse engineering, which allows legacy systems to be componentized; forward engineering, which derives a set of business components from requirements of the new business processes; and alignment of new business processes and componentized legacy systems. Van den Heuvel provides a theoretical foundation for these, with chapters that discuss component-based development, introduce a case study that is used throughout the book to illustrate the methodology, and assess methods and technologies for legacy integration, component adaptation, and process alignment. He describes the methodological framework itself and its techniques to align new business processes with legacy systems by adopting a meet-in-the-middle strategy. Drawing on topics from a wide range of disciplines, including component-based development, distributed computing, business process modeling, and others, Aligning Modern Business Processes and Legacy Systems offers theoretically grounded practical methodology that has been explored and tested in a variety of experiments as well as some real-world projects.

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C# 2008 offers powerful new features, and Accelerated C# 2008 is the
fastest path to mastering them, and the rest of C#, for both experienced
C# programmers moving to C# 2008 and programmers moving to C# from
another object-oriented language. Many books introduce C#, but very few
also explain how to use it optimally with the .NET common language
runtime (CLR). This book teaches both core C# language concepts and how
to wisely employ C# idioms and object-oriented design patterns to
exploit the power of C# and the CLR. This book is both a rapid tutorial
and a permanent reference. You'll quickly master C# syntax while
learning how the CLR simplifies many programming tasks. You'll also
learn best practices that ensure your code will be efficient, reusable,
and robust. Why spend months or years discovering the best ways to
design and code C# when this book will show you how to do things the
right way, right from the start?
- Comprehensively and concisely explains both C# 2005 and C# 2008
features
- Focuses on the language itself and on how to use C# 2008
proficiently for all .NET application development
- Concentrates on how C# features work and how to best use them for
robust, high-performance code.

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You probably use Google everyday, but do you know… the Google Snake Game? Googledromes? Memecodes? Googlesport? The Google Calculator? Googlepark and Google Weddings? Google hacking, fighting and rhyming? In this book, you'll find Google-related games, oddities, cartoons, tips, stories and everything else that's fun. Reading it, you won't be the same searcher as before! No programming skills needed. (From the author of Google Blogoscoped.)

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As a major force in the world of affordable, advanced web site deployment, Joomla! has become the most important noncommercial Content Management System (CMS) in the world. The number of Joomla! downloads and add-ons continues to grow at lightning pace, spurring the need for a resource that explores the diverse needs of professional Joomla! developers. This book fills that void by covering the two main areas of the Joomla! field–development and deployment–with a focus on the new Joomla! version 1.5 and all the features it provides.

Seasoned author Dan Rahmel walks you through the process of creating all three types of Joomla! extensions (modules, components, and plug-ins), explains how best to use Ajax technology, and shows you how to adopt design patterns and incorporate source code control. You'll examine the underlying technologies (PHP, Apache, etc.) that can be tuned to offer the best system performance, and you'll explore interfacing with outside content, Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) setup, and much more. You'll even delve into the internal structure of the Joomla! framework, and obtain a unique behind-the-scenes education so that you can modify and extend Joomla! to meet the needs of you and your customers.

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ActionScript has matured into a full-fledged, object-oriented programming language for creating cutting-edge Web applications, and this comprehensive book is just what you need to succeed. If you want to add interactivity to Flash, build Flex applications, or work with animation — it's all here, and more. Packed with clear instruction, step-by-step tutorials, and advanced techniques, this book is your go-to guide to unlock the power of this amazing language. Learn the basics, apply object-oriented programming, and more.

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Advanced JavaScript 3rd Edition is an in-depth examination of the most important features of JavaScript. The book assumes readers have a basic understanding of web development, but includes a review of JavaScript fundamentals in Chapters 1 through 3. This book gives the reader a comprehensive look at the fundamentals of JavaScript by examining objects, arrays, date and time functions, math, and all the essentials that are needed for complex yet robust JavaScript scripts. Topics are thoroughly examined with several complete examples.

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Maintaining SQL Server 2005 high availability in a global information environment is the database administrator's greatest practical challenge. Availability is as much about people and processes as it is about technology. Pro SQL Server 2005 High Availability covers the technology, people, processes, and real-world best practices for planning, deploying, administering, and maintaining highly available SQL Server 2005 instances.

With years of experience as a database consultant and production DBA, Allan Hirt provides in-depth, detailed advice on what it takes to ensure SQL Server high availability for businesses of any size. This is not an academic text; it's not based on lab experiments, but on real-world experience. This book is a dramatic update and revision of the author's previous best-seller on SQL Server 2000. It gives sound guidance to DBAs and system administrators on how to really get the job done.

• This book provides comprehensive, clear, detailed coverage of all major availability issues.
• The author covers both availability and performance, from the perspective of high availability.
• The book addresses the crucial needs of enterprise-class, 24×7 SQL Server 2005 implementations.
• You'll gain insight that other SQL Server documentation and whitepapers don't provide.

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For a number of years, the healthy and environment-friendly building material clay, in common use for thousands of years, has been enjoying increasing popularity, including in industrialized nations. In hot dry and temperate climate zones, clay offers numerous advantages over other materials. Its particular texture and composition also holds great aesthetic appeal.

This handbook offers a practical systematic overview of the many uses of clay and techniques for processing it. Its properties and physical characteristics are described in informed and knowledgeable detail. The authors presentation reflects the rich and varied experiences gained over thirty years of building earth structures in Germany and abroad. Numerous photographs of construction sites and drawings show the concrete execution of clay architecture.

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• One of the leading experts on business data mining shows managers how to leverage SQL and Excel to perform sophisticated types of business analysis without the expense of data mining tools and consultants
• Explains how to use the relatively simple tools of SQL and Excel to extract useful business information from relational databases
• Each chapter discusses why and when to perform a particular type of business analysis to obtain a useful business result, how to design and perform the analysis using SQL and Excel, and what the results look like in SQL and Excel
• Presents hints, warnings, and technical asides about Excel, SQL, and data analysis/mining

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It's not a one-browser web anymore. You need to reach audiences that use cell phones, PDAs, game consoles, or other "alternative" browsers, as well as users with disabilities. Legal requirements for assistive technologies as well as a wide array of new browsing experiences means you need to concentrate on semantics, alternate access paths, and progressive enhancement.

Give your audience the power to interact with your content on their own terms. It's the right thing to do, and with a $100 billion a year market for accessible content, new laws and new technologies, you can't afford to ignore accessibility.

With this book, you'll learn basic principles and techniques for developing accessible HTML, audio, video, and multimedia content. In addition, you will understand how to apply the principles you learn in this book to new technologies when they emerge.

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Cisco CCNA certification proves your professional worth. It tells prospective employers that you can handle the day-to-day work of running a a mid- to large-sized Cisco network.

The two-exam CCNA process covers lots of innovative features, which better reflect the skills and knowledge you’ll need on the job. Passing both exams is your first step towards higher-level Cisco certification.

CBT Nuggets Trainer Jeremy Cioara responded to Cisco’s second exam with a video series carefully mapped to that test.

Every mid- to large-sized business today uses VLANs. Jeremy’s training gives you all the information you need to design, configure and manage in a VLAN environment.

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Wouldn't it be cool to walk into a small business that has no network and configure a fairly advanced network from the ground up using Cisco gear? Let the CBT Nuggets' Cisco CCNA/CCENT - Exam-Pack 640-822: ICND1 video series teach you the essential skills for passing the CCENT certification exam and meeting the network support needs of employers and clients.

Successful networking careers begin with Cisco CCENT certification and the fundamental knowledge it represents. Trainer Jeremy Cioara carefully explains the certification process by walking you through CCENT networking basics and mapping those basics directly to the exam. His organized and captivating presentation prepares new users for junior administrator positions and provides managers of any description with a sound understanding of what their technicians are talking about.

You proceed at your own pace, watching videos that break down the CCENT certification process and basic Cisco networking into bite-sized nuggets. Video by video you learn how to install, operate and troubleshoot a small enterprise branch network — including basic network security.

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As a web developer, you’ll already know that JavaScript™ is a powerful language, allowing you to add an impressive array of dynamic functionality to otherwise static web sites. But there is more power waiting to be unlocked–JavaScript is capable of full object-oriented capabilities, and by applying OOP principles, best practices, and design patterns to your code, you can make it more powerful, more efficient, and easier to work with alone or as part of a team.

With Pro JavaScript Design Patterns, you’ll start with the basics of object-oriented programming in JavaScript applicable to design patterns, including making JavaScript more expressive, inheritance, encapsulation, information hiding, and more. With that covered, you can kick-start your JavaScript development in the second part of the book, where you’ll find detail on how to implement and take advantage of several design patterns in JavaScript, including composites, decorators, façades, adapters, and many more.

Each chapter is packed with real-world examples of how the design patterns are best used and expert advice on writing better code, as well as what to watch out for. Along the way you’ll discover how to create your own libraries and APIs for even more efficient coding.

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Learn to access Oracle databases through SQL statements and construct PL/SQL programs with guidance from Oracle expert, Jason Price. Published by Oracle Press, Oracle Database 11g SQL explains how to retrieve and modify database information, use SQL Plus and SQL Developer, work with database objects, write PL/SQL programs, and much more. Inside, you'll find in-depth coverage of the very latest SQL features and tools, performance optimization techniques, advanced queries, Java support, and XML. This book contains everything you need to master SQL.

• Explore SQL Plus and SQL Developer
• Use SQL SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE, and DELETE statements
• Write PL/SQL programs
• Create tables, sequences, indexes, views, and triggers
• Write advanced queries containing complex analytical functions
• Create database objects and collections to handle abstract data
• Use large objects to handle multimedia files containing music and movies
• Write Java programs to access an Oracle Database using JDBC
• Tune your SQL statements to make them execute faster
• Explore the XML capabilities of the Oracle Database
• Master the very latest Oracle Database 11g features, such as PIVOT and UNPIVOT, flashback archives, and much more

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In recent years, much work has been put into creating programming languages that embody a blend of many of the most admired characteristics of their predecessors. One such language is D, which provides developers with the speed of languages such as C and C++ combined with the power and flexibility of languages such as Ruby and Python.

Learning to Tango with D introduces you to the powerful D language, with special attention given to the Tango software library. A concise yet thorough overview of the language’s syntax and features is presented, followed by an introduction to Tango, the popular general–purpose library you’ll return to time and again when building your D applications.

Authored by prominent D developers Kris Bell, Lars Ivar Igesund, Sean Kelly, and Michael Parker, this book supplies not only the knowledge required to begin building your own D applications, but also the insight these authors have acquired due to their extensive experience working with and participating in the development of the D language.

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Practical Apache Struts 2 Web 2.0 Projects will be one of the first books to cover the agile, lightweight open source Apache Struts 2 Web Framework, an essentially new and improved Struts platform that should meet today's more agile Java development needs.

Apache Struts remains the most popular framework for building Java-driven web sites, despite continued challenges from competitive frameworks and APIs like JavaServer Faces (JSF), Wicket, Grails, and more. The new features incorporated into Struts 2 will help this powerful framework to maintain its #1 position for the foreseeable future.

Additionally, this book will be the only one with a practical, Web 2.0 projects-oriented approach, most useful to today's more common integrated Java Web application stack development covering both the Web and Presentation-tiers.

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Presenting innovative Microsoft Excel techniques for top management professionals, this reference for company leaders who do not have the time to attend courses or read bulky books on the program provides basics, special shortcuts, and tips that cover the special features of Excel. Useful facts, trivia, and insider secrets about Excel are interspersed throughout the text, and readers have the choice of jumping directly to the section of real-life case studies to learn by the innovative Do & Learn (D&L) approach. This reference is fully updated to reflect Excel 12.

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Expert Access 2007 Programming shows experienced developers how to create professional-level Access database applications. The authors—software engineers on the Access development team at Microsoft—show how to apply software engineering methodologies to Access application development. The book is organized to cover all phases of Access development. The authors demonstrate techniques for creating Access controls, forms, and reports that help streamline development and produce more user-friendly applications. They also cover such overlooked areas as custom deployment and documentation. The book contains many useful code examples designed so they can be used with minimal modification.

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FileMaker Web Publishing offers an unparalleled development strategy for database managers, web designers, and programmers who are interested in getting the most out of FileMaker databases on the web. As the book covers both introductory web publishing and advanced database programming on the web, it is ideal for all skill levels.

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C++/CLI is Microsoft's latest extension to C++ that targets the heart of .NET 2.0, the common language runtime. Expert Visual C++/CLI is written by visual C++ MVP Marcus Heege, who examines the core of the C++/CLI language. He explains both how the language elements work and how Microsoft intends them to be used.

Even if you're new to C++/CLI but are planning to migrate to it from another language, this book will ground you in the core language elements and give you the confidence to explore further and migrate effectively. It provides concise, yet in-depth coverage of all major C++/CLI features: short code examples succinctly illustrate syntax and concepts, and more elaborate examples show how C++/CLI should be used.

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Get the most out of Google products and services with help from this easy-to-use guide. How to Do Everything with Google Tools shows you that Google is so much more than a search engine, offering other features such as shopping, mapping, blogging, advertising, and much more. You'll also learn to use the email, communication, document, and spreadsheet tools that make up Google Apps. This book shows you how to maximize the Google tools that can make your work more efficient, your business more profitable, and your online experience more fun.

• Shop on Google Product Search and streamline purchasing with Google Checkout
• Navigate with Google Maps and Google Earth–or create custom maps
• Communicate on Google Groups and with Google Talk
• Manage and share photos and other images with Picasa
• Promote your business with AdWords
• Make money on your site by hosting AdSense ads
• Customize your online experience with iGoogle, Google Notebook, Web Accelerator, and Google Desktop
• Make Gmail work for you with custom filters and calendars
• Use the Google Documents & Spreadsheets program
• Design Web sites with Google Page Creator
• Create and manage a blog with Google Blogger

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Django, the Python-based equivalent to the Ruby on Rails web development framework, is presently one of the hottest topics in web development today. In The Definitive Guide to Django: Web Development Done Right, Adrian Holovaty, one of Django's creators, and Django lead developer Jacob Kaplan-Moss show you how they use this framework to create award-winning web sites. Over the course of three parts, they guide you through the creation of a web application reminiscent of chicagocrime.org.

The first part of the book introduces Django fundamentals like installation and configuration. You'll learn about creating the components that power a Django-driven web site. The second part delves into the more sophisticated features of Django, like outputting non-HTML content (such as RSS feeds and PDFs), plus caching and user management. The third part serves as a detailed reference to Django's many configuration options and commands. The book even includes seven appendixes for looking up configurations options and commands. In all, this book provides the ultimate tutorial and reference to the popular Django framework.

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Incorporate the hottest new Web technologies into your blog! How to Do Everything with Your Web 2.0 Blog makes it easy to choose the blogging tools that are best for you and master the basics of blog design and template manipulation. You'll learn how to add different Web 2.0 services to your blog, including images, video, audio, forums, tags, wikis, and even money-making features. It's time to take your blog to the next level and get more hits, more fans, more friends, and more customers.

• Learn about different blogging tools, including Blogger, TypePad, WordPress, and ExpressionEngine
• Customize your blog's design by editing templates and style sheets
• Share your blog headlines and story feeds via RSS and Atom
• Add photos, video, and audio–including podcasts–to your blog
• Drive traffic to your site with tagging, social bookmarking, and ranking services
• Collaborate with users through wikis
• Promote visitor participation using forums, community blogs, and newsletters
• Make money through your blog with Google AdSense, Amazon, and other affiliate programs
• Track, optimize, maintain, and back up your blog

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A practical tutorial to using Microsoft AJAX to enhance the user experience of your ASP.NET web applications covering the most up to date versions of the AJAX tools. With ASP.NET AJAX (formerly known as ATLAS) developers can quickly create rich and responsive web pages with efficient server communication by simply adding a few server controls to their pages. Because ASP.NET AJAX is integrated with ASP.NET, developers have full access to the built-in ASP.NET 2.0 application services and the entire .NET Framework. This book is the most practical and efficient resource a reader can get to enter the exciting world of AJAX in ASP.NET. Targeting the most recent version of the ASP.NET AJAX tools, this book will teach you how to create faster, lighter, and richer web applications by using the Microsoft AJAX technologies to their full potential. Beginning with a hands-on tour of the basic technologies associated with AJAX, JavaScript, XMLHttpRequest, JSON, and the DOM, you'll move on to a crash course in the Microsoft AJAX tools. You'll understand the architecture of the Microsoft AJAX components, how they all fit together, and exactly what they can do for you. At every stage of your journey, you'll be able to try out examples to illuminate the theory, and consolidate your understanding. In addition to learning about the client and server controls, you'll also see how to handle errors and debug your ASP.NET AJAX applications. To get your client pages interacting with your server, the Microsoft AJAX framework allows you to consume web services on the client without having to worry about the underlying protocol used for exchanging the data. You will see how to create ASP.NET web services in practice, and consume them in your AJAX applications. To get your client pages interacting with servers on other domains, the Microsoft AJAX framework provides bridges that allow you to make cross-domain calls seamlessly.

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 Flex is a very powerful and versatile technology for creating web application front-ends. But what every good web application needs is a robust data source, be it XML, or a database. Flex is very adaptable in terms of connecting to data sources, and that is the main focus of this book. In Foundation Flex for Developers, Sas Jacobs assumes that you've got the basics of Flex down already, and explores in detail how to create professional data-centric Flex 2 and Flex 3 applications. In the first half of the book, she starts off with a brief exploration of Flex and ActionScript 3.0, before looking at application essentials in detailcreating custom components, user and web browser interactions, binding, formatting, and validating data, debugging, and more. In the second half of the book, the focus is on connecting Flex to data sources, and covers XML, Flex Data Services, PHP, ASP.NET, and ColdFusion in detail, via a series of step-by-step case studies.

• Covers Flex application basics
• Covers connecting Flex 2 and Flex 3 to a variety of Data Sources
• Includes several complete case studies.

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Use Case Driven Object Modeling with UML–Theory and Practice shows how to drive an object-oriented software design from use case all the way through coding and testing, based on the minimalist, UML-based ICONIX process. In addition to a comprehensive explanation of the foundations of the approach, the book makes extensive use of examples and provides exercises at the back of each chapter.

This book leads by example. It demonstrates common analysis and design errors, shows how to detect and fix them, and suggests how to avoid making the same errors in the future. The book also encourages you to examine its UML examples and to search for specific errors. You'll get clues, then later receive the answers during "review sessions" toward the end of the book.

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Use Case Driven Object Modeling with UML–Theory and Practice shows how to drive an object-oriented software design from use case all the way through coding and testing, based on the minimalist, UML-based ICONIX process. In addition to a comprehensive explanation of the foundations of the approach, the book makes extensive use of examples and provides exercises at the back of each chapter.

This book leads by example. It demonstrates common analysis and design errors, shows how to detect and fix them, and suggests how to avoid making the same errors in the future. The book also encourages you to examine its UML examples and to search for specific errors. You'll get clues, then later receive the answers during "review sessions" toward the end of the book.

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 Explore new territories in the land of data handling and user interface (UI) design with ActionScript 3 language in Flash CS3. With John Ulliman as your guide, this video series provides plenty of hands-on experience as you learn how to design a typical shopping application, handle external graphic data, and learn how to draw and manipulate graphs and display text data. You’ll also look at different types of data and how to load and use them in your Flash applications, and discover how to use the new Component elements in Flash CS3.

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 Explore new territories in the land of data handling and user interface (UI) design with ActionScript 3 language in Flash CS3. With John Ulliman as your guide, this video series provides plenty of hands-on experience as you learn how to design a typical shopping application, handle external graphic data, and learn how to draw and manipulate graphs and display text data. You’ll also look at different types of data and how to load and use them in your Flash applications, and discover how to use the new Component elements in Flash CS3.

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With Oracle in the process of de-supporting SQLJ, JDBC is now really the only recommended means of interfacing between Java and Oracle. Consequently, this book is a must have for any developer building an Oracle Java application.

Many Java developers tend to treat Oracle as a "black box"; as a consequence, developers tend to write incorrect, non-scalable code. If you don't intimately know how Oracle works and expects you to program, you might avoid Oracle extensions to the standard for fear of your code becoming database-dependent. If you give in to that fear, you'll miss out on the extensive out-of-the-box functionality that Oracle offers. This book teaches you how to build efficient, high-performance, and robust Oracle-based JDBC applications. You'll discover the full details of Oracle's implementation of the JDBC 3.0 standard (what it supports, what it doesn't and what extensions Oracle provides), and more.

This book tackles issues head-on, detailing concisely and clearly the vital details of Oracle's architecture and mode of operation that directly impact the manner in which JDBC applications should be written. Only when armed with this knowledge, a willingness to exploit the database to its full potential in your JDBC code, and the ability to use Oracle's SQL and PL/SQL features when appropriate, is it possible to write truly efficient, robust, scalable and high performance applications.

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With Oracle in the process of de-supporting SQLJ, JDBC is now really the only recommended means of interfacing between Java and Oracle. Consequently, this book is a must have for any developer building an Oracle Java application.

Many Java developers tend to treat Oracle as a "black box"; as a consequence, developers tend to write incorrect, non-scalable code. If you don't intimately know how Oracle works and expects you to program, you might avoid Oracle extensions to the standard for fear of your code becoming database-dependent. If you give in to that fear, you'll miss out on the extensive out-of-the-box functionality that Oracle offers. This book teaches you how to build efficient, high-performance, and robust Oracle-based JDBC applications. You'll discover the full details of Oracle's implementation of the JDBC 3.0 standard (what it supports, what it doesn't and what extensions Oracle provides), and more.

This book tackles issues head-on, detailing concisely and clearly the vital details of Oracle's architecture and mode of operation that directly impact the manner in which JDBC applications should be written. Only when armed with this knowledge, a willingness to exploit the database to its full potential in your JDBC code, and the ability to use Oracle's SQL and PL/SQL features when appropriate, is it possible to write truly efficient, robust, scalable and high performance applications.

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"…with an easy style and great depth, Final Cut Pro Workflows: The Independent Studio Handbook is an enjoyable and important read. Osder and Carman offer a diverse background and extensive experience with Final Cut Pro."
Richard Harrington, President, RHED Pixel; author, Photoshop for Video, 3rd Edition, Final Cut Studio on the Spot, 3rd Edition

"Builds the theory and practice of using FCP around a variety of real-world project scenarios. Final Cut Pro Workflows combines an encyclopedia of detailed information on technical specs for shooting and editing with surprisingly readable stories about applying the tools to actual projects. Not just how to use a hammer…how to build the house."
— Blaine Graboyes, Media Architect, Worldwide Biggies, NYC

"…what makes Final Cut Pro Workflows: The Independent Studio Handbook a standout in a crowded field of books on the 'how to' of digital editing is the recognition that it's not just about learning the technology, but about how you think, organize, and manage a project to bring it to successful conclusion. Osder and Carman have written a unique book that brings together the critical marriage of technology and the real world circumstances that confront nascent Final Cut Pro editors. Indispensable!"
Nina Gilden Seavey, Emmy Award-winning Filmmaker; Director, The Documentary Center, George Washington University

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From my earliest days using After Effects, I owe much of what I know to Trish and Chris Meyers classes and books. Alex Lindsay, ex-ILM/JAK Films, Chief Architect, Pixel Corp

Motion graphics and moving images are essential to communicating in a memorable way. Trish and Chris Meyer are masters of their craft and are uniquely qualified to guide anyone learning Adobe After Effects. –Michael Coleman, Product Manager, Adobe After Effects

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Packed with more than 500 techniques, this book delivers what you need to knowon the spot. It is suited to editors of all experience levels, whether you are:

* Migrating from another NLE
* Upgrading to Final Cut Studio 2
* Seeking a handy reference to raise your proficiency

No need to wade through tomes of documentation. Final Cut Studio On the Spot presents immediate solutions in an accessible format. Step-by-step instruction by Apple Certified Pros shows you how to:

* Optimize system performance
* Create impressive titles with Generators, Motion, LiveType, and Photoshop
* Build Commercial-quality transitions
* Work quickly with buttons and keyboard shortcuts
* Color correct to save vital shots, and keep them broadcast legal
* Fix and mix for professional-quality audio
* Use the compositing tools of master editors
* Design and import graphics seamlessly
* Integrate with other applications including Motion, Soundtrack Pro and Color
* Troubleshoot and recover files
* Manage media and backup strategies
* Export and publish finished projects to tape, DVD, or the Web

Key Features:
* 400 time-saving workflow techniques
* Concise presentation is great for as a reference or a casual read
* Covers the major Studio toolsets for the editor

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The book provides complete coverage of fundamental IP networking in Java. It introduces the concepts behind TCP/IP and UDP and their intended use and purpose; gives complete coverage of Java networking APIs, includes an extended discussion of advanced server design, so that the various design principles and tradeoffs concerned are discussed and equips the reader with analytic queuing-theory tools to evaluate design alternatives; covers UDP multicasting, and covers multi-homed hosts, leading the reader to understand the extra programming steps and design considerations required in such environments.

After reading this book the reader will have an advanced knowledge of fundamental network design and programming concepts in the Java language, enabling them to design and implement distributed applications with advanced features and to predict their performance. Special emphasis is given to the scalable I/O facilities of Java 1.4 as well as complete treatments of multi-homing and UDP both unicast and multicast.

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Tech journalist Pamela Pfiffner explores the rich history behind the modern publishing revolution, as seen through the lens of one of its most important players. In the past 20 years, Adobe Systems has become synonymous with great design tools, and the company's impact on how we work in publishing, graphic arts, and on the Web is unmatched. Join Pfiffner on a colorful journey from the roots of the desktop publishing revolution through the rise of the Web and interactive design. Along the way, you'll witness the birth and evolution of PostScript, the explosion of the Photoshop market, the realization of the paperless office, and other events that have shaped the way we communicate.

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Even if you weren’t intimidated before, that tidbit is probably enough to make you reach for the Excedrin. Just reach for Ajax For Dummies instead. With screen shots, actual code and explanations, and live Web sites where you can see Ajax applications doing their thing, it will have you using Ajax to create Web applications that look an act like desktop applications in no time. With Ajax, you can speed up and clean up your Web applications. Shoppers at your online store can fill their carts without waiting for multiple page refreshes. Searchers on your sites can get instant results on the same page.

This guide takes you on a tour of how Ajax is used today, complete with examples of Ajax applications in action, such as an Ajax-enabled Yahoo! search or an Ajax-based chat application. Then it gives you basics on using JavaScript. After that you dive in and get info on:

• Writing some Ajax, interactive mouseovers using Ajax, passing data to the server with GET or POST, and more
• Connecting to Google for a live search
• Using free Ajax frameworks so you don’t have to start from scratch, including Ajax Gold (written specifically for this book), AJAXLib, and grabbing XML with libXmlRequest
• All kinds of Ajax techniques, such as using Ajax for drag-and-drop operations, pop-up menus, downloading images behind the scenes, and more
• Using SACK (simple AJAX code kit), decoding XML with Sarissa, and creating visual effects with Rico
• Handling XML int Ajax Applications
• Working with cascading style sheets (CCS) in Ajax, including setting up the styles, displaying a menu, styling text, handling colors and backgrounds, and more
• Working with Ajax and PHP

Complete with a companion Web site, free Ajax frameworks, and sample code you can use, Ajax for Dummies is your friendly guide to creating truly user-friendly Web sites!

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Graphics and game developers must learn to program for mobility. This book will teach you how.

"This book - written by some of the key technical experts…provides a comprehensive but practical and easily understood introduction for any software engineer seeking to delight the consumer with rich 3D interactive experiences on their phone. Like the OpenGL ES and M3G standards it covers, this book is destined to become an enduring standard for many years to come."
- Lincoln Wallen, CTO, Electronic Arts, Mobile

This book is an escalator, which takes the field to new levels. This is especially true because the text ensures that the topic is easily accessible to everyone with some background in computer science…The foundations of this book are clear, and the authors are extremely knowledgeable about the subject.
- Tomas Akenine-Möller, bestselling author and Professor of Computer Science at Lund University

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Microsoft Silverlight allows you to create rich multimedia interfaces with the power and flexibility of Flash, but with the extensibility and the great tools that .NET offers. With Silverlight and ASP.NET Revealed, you’ll learn to use Microsoft’s Silverlight technology in conjunction with ASP.NET and Visual Studio 2008 (codename Orcas). You will ultimately incorporate Silverlight into an ASP.NET web site and use the ASP.NET controls that render Silverlight content. But you’ll also get the basics of Silverlight, too, making this book a must-read for any web developer curious about Silverlight.

Silverlight and ASP.NET Revealed assumes a deep knowledge of ASP.NET, but no knowledge of Silverlight.

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Laszlo in Action is the first comprehensive guide to the Laszlo system and its language LZX. OpenLaszlo is an increasingly popular open-source platform for the development and delivery of rich internet applications across multiple platforms: Flash, DHTML, and J2ME. The dramatic emergence of Ajax over the past year was a first step in the transition from page-oriented HTML web applications towards more full-featured rich internet applications. OpenLaszlo provides another important step in this continuing evolutionary process through the increased productivity resulting from LZX's declarative approach. It provides developers with the tools to create web-based applications offering the usability and interactivity associated with desktop applications, and the low costs associated with web-based deployment. The cross-platform nature of Laszlo LZX applications allows source code with only minimum modifications to run natively on all popular web browsers, on all desktop operating systems, on the Flash platform, and other platforms in the future. Written to address the needs of a wide spectrum of developers, ranging from client-side HTML and JavaScript developers all the way to enterprise-class Java or Rails engineers, this book provides a very hands-on approach towards building applications that solve real-world problems across both the Flash and DHTML platforms. Starting with the fundamentals of Laszlo LZX, the authors quickly move towards applying this knowledge to the design and development of a full-scale application called the Laszlo Market. This provides a working context to assist understanding the underlying concepts of Laszlo LZX and, more importantly, how to apply this knowledge in innovative ways. The construction of the Laszlo Market proceeds over the course of the book illustrating topics starting with an initial wireframe and storyboard design to optimization issues dealing with the application's deployment across the Flash and DHTML platforms.

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Flexible Rails is a unique, application-based guide for using Ruby on Rails 2 and Adobe Flex 3 to build rich Internet applications (RIAs). It is not an exhaustive Ruby on Rails or Flex reference. Instead, it is an extensive tutorial in which the reader builds multiple iterations of an interesting RIA using Flex and Rails together. Author Peter Armstrong walks readers through eleven iterations in which the sample application–pomodo–is variously built, refactored, debugged, sliced, diced and otherwise explored from every conceivable angle with respect to Ruby on Rails and Adobe Flex. The book unfolds both the application and the Flex-on-Rails approach side-by-side.

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This all in one cisco cbt training. It contains:

CCNA
CCDA
CCNP
CCDP
CCIP
CCSP

And many more…

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Delve into the ultimate guide for professional photographers.

Harness the power and flexibility of the latest version of Adobe Photoshop Lightroom, version 1.1, with this expert guide. Professional photographers David Huss and David Plotkin show you how to work smarter, faster, and more creatively with their personal tips, tricks, and techniques that you can incorporate into your own workflow.

Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 1.1 is a powerful tool that you can integrate into your existing workflow to increase your productivity and improve the overall quality of your work. With this ultimate resource by your side, youll learn how to:

Organize, adjust, process, output, and share digital pictures like the top professionals
Personalize Lightroom with a custom Identity plate
Seamlessly transition between Lightroom and your favorite photo editor
Quickly view and compare multiple shots, pairing selections down to your best work
Correct images, adjust white balance, and fine-tune tone, balance, and exposure, crop and undoall without altering your originals!
Automate your workflow by applying image adjustments to multiple photos
Output proof and contact sheets
Develop, print and display your digital pictures for friends and clients, all the while saving valuable time
Create slide shows and web postings
And much more..

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The Berkeley DB Book is a practical guide to the intricacies of the Berkeley DB. This book covers in-depth the complex design issues that are mostly only touched on in terse footnotes within the dense Berkeley DB reference manual. It explains the technology at a higher level and also covers the internals, providing generous code and design examples.

In this book, you will get to see a developer's perspective on intriguing design issues in Berkeley DB–based applications, and you will be able to choose design options for specific conditions. Also included is a special look at fault tolerance and high-availability frameworks. Berkeley DB is becoming the database of choice for large-scale applications like search engines and high-traffic web sites.'

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Designed for busy Maya users like you, this guide offers dozens of how-tos, workarounds, and shortcuts culled from years of experience in a fast-paced, deadline-driven production pipeline. You’ll discover tricks and timesavers on texturing particles, customizing Paint Effects brushes, modeling polygon faces, creating facial rigs with wire deformers, and much more—and helpful full-color illustrations reinforce the concepts. From modeling, animating, and rigging to texturing and lighting, this book will help you streamline workflow and improve your skills.

Work better and faster in Maya with the quick-hit tips and techniques in this practical book. Designed for busy Maya users, this guide offers dozens of how-tos, workarounds, and shortcuts culled from years of experience in a fast-paced, deadline-driven production pipeline. You'll discover tricks and timesavers on texturing particles, customizing Paint Effects brushes, modeling polygon faces, creating facial rigs with wire deformers, and much more—while useful, full-color illustrations reinforce the concepts. From modeling, animating, and rigging to texturing and lighting, this book will help you streamline workflow and improve your skills.

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In this book you'll learn:

• How to model an architectural scene and create stunning materials that breathe life into your projects
• How to use real-world photometric lights and global illumination to achieve photorealism
• Efficient project workflow and scene assembly
• Tips and tricks for the production environment that would take years to learn the hard way
• How to market your services to prospective clients

Welcome to the world of 3D architectural visualizations using the most powerful and versatile 3D software package on the planet: 3ds Max. In just the last few years, the visualization industry has arguably become the fastest-growing 3D industry, and may soon overtake all others in total number of users. Just as the use of CAD became the norm for nearly all architectural, engineering, and construction firms in the 90s, 3D visualizations have become standard practice today. This book takes you through the challenge of learning one of the most complex computer programs ever created, by way of easy-to-follow tutorials and instruction. It specifically focuses on those parts of the program you need to know to produce stunning architectural visualizations. The intent is not to show you every possible way to accomplish a task, but rather some of the fastest and most efficient ways. At the end of the book, there is a guide to marketing your services, as well as 20 top tips that took the author almost 10 years to learn in a production environmentsometimes the hard way. 3ds Max is a large and complex applicationbut by learning just the features that apply to visualizations, you'l be learning everything you need to know to get ahead in the industry in the shortest possible time. (more…)

The type of the release is: eBook
In the PDF format with ISBN: 1598220357 and Pub Date: August 31, 2007
The size of the release is: 02 disks x 1.44mb
And released on: 12/07/2007

Learn C# presents the C# programming language. It covers the language
features introduced in Visual Studio versions 1.0, 2.0, and 3.0, with an
emphasis on the powerful features introduced in C# 2.0 and the great
enhancements introduced in C# 3.0. The book demonstrates each language
feature with ready-to-run examples and drills. Each chapter ends with a
summary of the key points learned in that chapter.

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With this new version of the software, FileMaker Pro expands the dramatically new and efficient approach to database management that gives users exceptional flexibility. This book explores the features of the product–both new and old–and identifies situ

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The secret elements that spurred musicians to write songs like "Jumpin' Jack Flash" and "Dust in the Wind" are often, somewhat surprisingly, less than enigmatic. While writing "Sweet Emotion," Aerosmith bad boys Steven Tyler and Tom Hamilton "got into a big fight" over how to end it; Bob Dylan wrote a 20-page story that he then turned into "Like a Rolling Stone"; George Harrison wrote "Here Comes the Sun" while walking around Eric Clapton's garden on a bright day. These tidbits are among the hundreds of anecdotes told by famous musicians–Jimi Hendrix, Paul McCartney, and Grace Slick among them–about their hit songs and compiled in Classic Rock Stories. If you can hum the song, you can likely find its story in this book, which is quite broad in scope. Editor Tim Morse fails to date the artists' comments, so it's occasionally difficult to put the tales in context, but fans of classic rock music should still find this an entertaining read. –Jordana Moskowitz

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Get ready to take flight as two certified flight instructors guide you through the pilot ratings as it is done in the real world, starting with Sport Pilot training, then Private Pilot, followed by the Instrument Rating, Commercial Pilot, and Air Transport Pilot. They cover the skills of flight, how to master Flight Simulator, and how to use the software as a learning tool towards your pilot’s license. More advanced topics demonstrate how Flight Simulator X can be used as a continuing learning tool and how to simulate real-world emergencies.

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Build a highly responsive a database so you can track, report, and share information and make more informed decisions. This comprehensive resource shows you how to design and develop custom Access 2007 databases–even if you have little or no programming experience. You'll learn to collect data from a variety of sources, share it securely with others, and integrate it with other Office applications.

Filled with detailed, easy-to-follow instructions, Microsoft Office Access 2007: The Complete Reference shows you how to take full advantage of all the new features, including the new ribbon user interface and navigation pane, new field types, and more. Create a reliable and versatile information management solution with help from this all-inclusive guide. As a bonus, you can gain hands-on experience by following along with the book's sample databases on the CD-ROM.

• Customize the user interface to suit your preferences
• Use the built-in database templates or design your own
• Create, modify, and relate tables
• Enter and edit data
• Write advanced queries to extract and manipulate information
• Create customized forms and reports
• Improve performance and back up your database
• Develop macros to carry out automated responses to user actions
• Import, link, and export data
• Enable a multiple-user environment
• Secure your database

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LightWave v9 Lighting is the only book on the market from a professional artist explaining the theory and application of lighting with LightWave 3D. The book has the following key features: Describes step-by-step everything you need to know about the qualities of light; Clearly explains modern lighting concepts; Steps through LightWave's impressive toolset, describing the qualities and uses of each tool and feature; Addresses lighting design issues, dealing with everything from the motivation of a light source to the emotional impact of color on the scene; Companion CD is packed with images and plugins, and includes a demo version of LightWave 3D version 9; Includes a 16 page color insert of lighting examples.

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Upgrading and Repairing Networks, Fifth Edition  is the definitive guide for anyone with a network, from home networking enthusiasts to professional network administrators. The book explains network architectures and protocols using plain English and real-world examples, and gives valuable insight for fixing network problems. This updated edition includes the latest on network planning and design, and building a network using wired, wireless, or both technologies. It covers the latest updates in Windows XP Service Pack 2, as well as Gigabit Ethernet, virtual LANs, Bluetooth, WAP, security, firewalls, and VPN use. (more…)

The migration of immersive media towards telecommunication applications is advancing rapidly.  Impressive progress in the field of media compression, media representation, and the larger and ever increasing bandwidth available to the customer, will foster the introduction of these services in the future. One of the key components for the envisioned applications is the development from two-dimensional towards three-dimensional audio-visual communications.

With contributions from key experts in the field, 3D Videocommunication:

• provides a complete overview of existing systems and technologies in 3D video communications and provides guidance on future trends and research;
• considers all aspects of the 3D videocommunication processing chain including video coding, signal processing and computer graphics;
• focuses on the current state-of-the-art and highlights the directions in which the technology is likely to move;
• discusses in detail the relevance of 3D videocommunication for telepresence systems and immersing media; and
• provides an exhaustive bibliography for further reading.

Researchers and students interested in the field of 3D audio-visual communications will find 3D Videocommunication a valuable resource, covering a broad overview of the current state-of-the-art. Practical engineers from industry will also find it a useful tool in envisioning and building innovative applications.

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Every Tool Explained. There are 130 pages which are full of knowhow, projects and tips on how to use Photoshop easily and how to get the best out of one of the best photo imaging programs out there.

Subjects covered in the book include:
Selection Tools in Photoshop:
Navigating and Editing Your Images
Using the Brushes and Pencil Tools
Using the Cloning and Healing Tools
The Gradient, Eraser and Fill Tools
Getting to Know the Effects Tools
Working with the Type Tool
Working with Paths, Vectors and Masks
Annotations, Notes and the Measure Tool
Creating Top Quality Artwork
 

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•    Master the Windows Vista user experience, including Windows Aero

•    Manage files and information using Windows Vista programs and Sidebar gadgets

•    Create your own movies, slides shows, and DVDs

•    Rip, manage, and play digital music and videos

•    Protect your computer from Internet or network intruders

•    Explore the Internet, send e-mail and instant message, and publish calendars on the Web

•    Customize, fine-tune, and administer Windows Vista

•    Set up multiple users and parental controls

•    Perform Instant Searches to quickly find files and programs

•    Prepare for the Microsoft Certified Application Specialist exam

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In this book, best selling author, Paul Sanghera, offers cohesive, concise, yet comprehensive coverage of all the topics included in the PgMP exam. With a laser sharp focus on the exam objectives, the Study Guide goes beyond just being an "exam cram." The material is presented in a logical learning sequence: a section builds upon previous sections and a chapter on previous chapters. All concepts, simple and complex, are defined and explained when they appear the first time. There is no hopping from topic to topic and no technical jargon without explanation. Because no prior knowledge of program management is assumed, this book will be useful for both: those new to program management, as well as individuals with years of experience. Although the primary purpose of the book is to help you pass the PgMP exam, it will also serve as a great reference for the program managers before and after the exam.

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Photoshop CS3 for Screen Printers details the features of Photoshop CS3 and is geared toward print facilities, mainly screen printers and similar types of graphic artists. Features important to these industries include creating a personalized interface, acquiring images from clients' disks, acquiring images by scanning existing artwork, importing and exporting images, and creating new images. Color separations also play a big role in these industries, as does printing on specialty films and papers. The Photoshop interface is also discussed, including the toolbox, the palettes, the menu and options bars, and the Adobe Bridge. Additionally, the finer points of printing are detailed, including adding and using crop marks, registration marks, and captions, and producing four-color separations.

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Written by one of the most popular and knowledgeable Microsoft Outlook MVPs, this book fills a void in the market for a professional-level Outlook programming book.
Explains how to use the many new features of Outlook 2007's object model and offers honest advice from the author on how to deal with common shortcomings and pitfalls of Outlook.
Addresses common workarounds for Outlook programming bugs and how to interface with Word, Excel, SharePoint, and Access.
Discusses the new Object Model, Outlook forms, COM add-ins, security, and more

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Professional SlickEditis the first guide to the award-winning SlickEdit tools, and is technically reviewed by the SlickEdit development team. SlickEdit expert John Hurst shares his years of experience in developing with SlickEdit to teach readers how to maximize the tool’s features, and to write and debug code faster than they have before. Additionally, the book includes a CD ROM with an extended trial version of SlickEdit not available anywhere else.

Professional SlickEdit is heavy on examples, making this a hands-on guide that will get readers up and running with the tools quickly. Topics include:

• Customizing the environment
• Staying organized with Workspaces and Projects
• Understanding Tagging
• Quickly navigating code
• Power editing techniques for text, code and data
• Taking advantage of Aliases and File Templates
• Slick-C Macro Programming
• Custom Language Support
• DIFFzilla and other tools

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Mike Harsh is the program manager on the Silverlight team at Microsoft. In Silverlight Essential Training, he gives viewers an insider's look into this powerful application. Mike teaches each step in the process of building interactive web applications using Silverlight, including how to add video, animations, and interactive features such as drag-and-drop functionality. Exercise files accompany the tutorials.

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It’s sometimes said that the true job of an Oracle database administrator can be summed up in one, essential skill: to be able to recover your database.

There’s much wisdom in that statement. Of all the things you are responsible for as a database administrator, nothing is more important than the data itself. Like it or not, the fearsome responsibility of protecting your organization's most critical data falls squarely upon your shoulders:

• Lose that data and your company could fail.
• Lose that data and you could be out of a job.

Scared? You should be. But there's help. You are not alone. Oracle experts Darl Kuhn, Sam Alapati, and Arup Nanda have come together in this book to show you the power of Recovery Manager, or RMAN, which is Oracle's backup and recovery tool of choice. RMAN Recipes for Oracle Database 11g helps you take advantage of all that RMAN has to offer by providing easy-to-understand solutions to business-critical backup and recovery operations.

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Delivering rich, Web 2.0-style experiences has never been easier. This book gives you a complete hands-on introduction to Microsoft ASP.NET AJAX 1.0, the new framework that offers many of the same benefits for Ajax development that ASP.NET provides for server-side development. With Programming ASP.NET AJAX, you'll learn how to create professional, dynamic web pages with Ajax in no time.

Loaded with code and examples that demonstrate key aspects of the framework, this book is ideal not only for ASP.NET developers who want to take their applications a step further with Ajax, but for any web developers interested in ASP.NET AJAX, no matter what technology they use currently. That includes JavaScript programmers who would like to avoid the headaches of writing cross-browser code. (more…)

CodeIgniter (CI) is a powerful open-source PHP framework with a very small footprint, built for PHP coders who need a simple and elegant toolkit to create full-featured web applications. CodeIgniter is an MVC framework, similar in some ways to the Rails framework for Ruby, and is designed to enable, not overwhelm.

This book explains how to work with CodeIgniter in a clear logical way. It is not a detailed guide to the syntax of CodeIgniter, but makes an ideal complement to the existing online CodeIgniter user guide, helping you grasp the bigger picture and bringing together many ideas to get your application development started as smoothly as possible.

• Clear, structured tutorial on working with CodeIgniter
• Careful explanation of the basic concepts of CodeIgniter and its MVC architecture
• Using CodeIgniter with databases, HTML forms, files, images, sessions, and email
• Building a dynamic website quickly and easily using CodeIgniter's prepared code

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The Definitive Guide to the Microsoft Enterprise Library introduces one of the most exciting and popular .NET-oriented initiatives, the Enterprise Library. The EL offers nine classes of reusable code, or blocks, that are used to solve a variety of common problem spaces. These problems cover a number of topics, including configuration, data access, exception management, caching, application updates, UI separation, asynchronous invocation, logging, security, and XML-based information aggregation.

Author Keenan Newton, a senior consultant for noted Microsoft Partner Magenic, begins the book with an introduction to common challenges, explaining the conditions that brought about the creation of the EL. After an EL overview, subsequent chapters offer detailed information about each of the nine blocks. The book concludes by outlining the framework available for creating custom application blocks.

You'll be able to build .NET applications faster and more efficiently by taking advantage of readily available code developed and released by Microsoft's Patterns and Practices group. All book examples are based on a theme project that develops a point-of-sale application for a cosmetics company. You will be introduced to these technologies in conjunction with real-world scenarios.

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Advances in 3D visualization and physics-based simulation technology make it possible for game developers to create compelling, visually immersive gaming environments that were only dreamed of years ago. But today's game players have grown in sophistication along with the games they play. It's no longer enough to wow your players with dazzling graphics; the next step in creating even more immersive games is improved artificial intelligence, or AI. Fortunately, advanced AI game techniques are within the grasp of every game developer–not just those who dedicate their careers to AI. If you're new to game programming or if you're an experienced game programmer who needs to get up to speed quickly on AI techniques, you'll find AI for Game Developers to be the perfect starting point for understanding and applying AI techniques to your games. Written for the novice AI programmer, AI for Game Developers introduces you to techniques such as finite state machines, fuzzy logic, neural networks, and many others, in straightforward, easy-to-understand language, supported with code samples throughout the entire book (written in C/C++). From basic techniques such as chasing and evading, pattern movement, and flocking to genetic algorithms, the book presents a mix of deterministic (traditional) and non-deterministic (newer) AI techniques aimed squarely at beginners AI developers. (more…)

Millions of traders participating in today’s financial markets have shot interest and involvement in technical analysis to an all-time high. This updated edition of Technical Analysis from A to Z combines a detailed explanation of what technical analysis is and how it works with overviews, interpretations, calculations, and examples of over 135 technical indicators—and how they perform under actual market conditions. Enhanced with more details to make it easier to use and understand, this book reflects the latest research findings and advances. A complete summary of major indicators that can be used in any market, it covers:

• Every trading tool from the Absolute Breadth Index to the Zig Zag
• Indicators include Arms Index, Dow Theory, and Elliott Wave Theory
• Over 35 new indicators 

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Develop your own Multi-User Dungeon games! Multi-User Dungeon games are still going strong. It?s no wonder?they?re easy to create and easy to access. They also have an additional appeal for game programmers?they serve as the foundation for today?s Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games. In order to create an MMORPG, you need to know MUD programming. Get ready to build your foundation! If you have a basic knowledge of C++, "MUD Game Programming" gives you everything you need to know to begin programming your own MUD games. The fundamentals of network basics are put to the test as you work your way through a simple MUD program. Put your new skills to work as you wrap things up with a more advanced, robust MUD. Pull out all the stops and test your creativity with the flexible aspects of your new MUD engine. (more…)

OpenGL Graphics Through Applications is a practical introduction to Computer Graphics with an emphasis on understanding through practice. Throughout the book, theory is followed by implementation using C / C++ and complete programs are provided on the Springer website.

A procedural approach has been taken to algorithmic development while taking an object oriented approach when building artefacts from simple objects. The book covers a range of topics including:

image processing
artefact construction
introductory animation
texturing
curves surfaces and patterns

Robert Whitrow has taught computing courses from first year undergraduate to postgraduate MSc at a range of different institutions.

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This is the first book in the two-volume set offering comprehensive coverage of the field of computer organization and architecture. This book provides complete coverage of the subjects pertaining to introductory courses in computer organization and architecture, including:

* Instruction set architecture and design
* Assembly language programming
* Computer arithmetic
* Processing unit design
* Memory system design
* Input-output design and organization
* Pipelining design techniques
* Reduced Instruction Set Computers (RISCs)
The authors, who share over 15 years of undergraduate and graduate level instruction in computer architecture, provide real world applications, examples of machines, case studies and practical experiences in each chapter.

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You?re interested in programming games, but you don?t know where to begin. Beginner?s Guide to DarkBASIC Game Programming is here to help. You?ll be programming games in no time? and with DarkBASIC, you?ll be amazed at how little code you have to write! DarkBASIC features more than a thousand commands geared toward game development, giving you a powerful tool as you put your newfound skills into practice. You?ll get coverage of both DarkBASIC and DarkBASIC Professional, as well as the complete DarkBASIC Language Reference on CD. This completely self- contained book is designed to give you all of the skills you need to begin an amazing journey into the world of game development. (more…)

The Complete Reference to Professional SOA with Visual Studio 2005 (C# & VB 2005) focuses on architecting and constructing enterprise-level systems. Taking advantage of the newly released Visual Studio 2005 development environment, the book assesses the current service-oriented platform and examines new ways to develop for scalability, availability, and security (which have become available with .NET 2.0). You'll get to look closely at application infrastructure in terms of flexibility, interoperability, and integration, as well as the decisions that have to be made to achieve optimum balance within your architecture.

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Fully revised and beefed up with plenty of new material on today's Standard C++, the new edition of Bruce Eckel's Thinking in C++: Volume I is an excellent tutorial to mastering this rich (and sometimes daunting) programming language, filled with expert advice and written in a patient, knowledgeable style.

The effective presentation, along with dozens of helpful code examples, make this book a standout. The text first sets the stage for using C++ with a tour of what object-oriented programming is all about, as well as the software design life cycle. The author then delves into every aspect of C++, from basic keywords and programming principles to more advanced topics, like function and operator overloading, virtual inheritance, exception handling, namespaces, and templates. C++ is a complex language, and the author covers a lot of ground using today's Standard C++, but without getting bogged down in excessive detail.

The emphasis here is on practical programming, so there's basic advice on using header files, preprocessor directives, and namespaces to organize code effectively. Each chapter ends with exercises (usually about two dozen), and the entire text of the book is available on the accompanying CD-ROM. (So is the second volume, which tours Standard C++ classes and other advanced topics.)

Whether you have read the first edition of this book or not, there is much to mine from Thinking in C++. This new version continues to set a high standard as an approachable and thorough tutorial. –Richard Dragan

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Although MySQL's source code is open in the sense of being publicly available, it's essentially closed to you if you don't understand it. In this book, Sasha Pachev — a former member of the MySQL Development Team — provides a comprehensive tour of MySQL 5 that shows you how to figure out the inner workings of this powerful database. You'll go right to heart of the database to learn how data structures and convenience functions operate, how to add new storage engines and configuration options, and much more.

The core of Understanding MySQL Internals begins with an Architecture Overview that provides a brief introduction of how the different components of MySQL work together. You then learn the steps for setting up a working compilable copy of the code that you can change and test at your pleasure. Other sections of the book cover:

• Core server classes, structures, and API
• The communication protocol between the client and the server
• Configuration variables, the controls of the server; includes a tutorial on how to add your own
• Thread-based request handling — understanding threads and how they are used in MySQL
• An overview of MySQL storage engines
• The storage engine interface for integrating third-party storage engines
• The table lock manager
• The parser and optimizer for improving MySQL's performance
• Integrating a transactional storage engine into MySQL
• The internals of replication

Understanding MySQL Internals provides unprecedented opportunities for developers, DBAs, database application programmers, IT departments, software vendors, and computer science students to learn about the inner workings of this enterprise-proven database. With this book, you will soon reach a new level of comprehension regarding database development that will enable you to accomplish your goals. It's your guide to discovering and improving a great database.

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We crafted this book to grow with you, providing the reference material you need as you move toward Office proficiency and use of more advanced features. If you buy only one book on Office 2007, Special Edition Using Microsoft® Office 2007 is the only book you need.

If you own a copy of Office 2007, you deserve a copy of this book! Although this book is aimed at the Office veteran, Ed and Woody’s engaging style will appeal to beginners, too. Written in clear, plain English, readers will feel as though they are learning from real humans and not Microsoft clones. Sprinkled with a wry sense of humor and an amazing depth of field, this book most certainly isn’t your run-of-the-mill computer book. You should expect plenty of hands-on guidance and deep but accessible reference material.

This isn’t your Dad’s Office! For the first time in a decade, Microsoft has rolled out an all-new user interface. Menus? Gone. Toolbars? Gone. For the core programs in the Office family, you now interact with the program using the Ribbon–an oversize strip of icons and commands, organized into multiple tabs, that takes over the top of each program’s interface. If your muscles have memorized Office menus, you’ll have to unlearn a lot of old habits for this version.

Ed Bott is an award-winning computer journalist and one of the most widely recognized voices in the computing world, with nearly two decades of experience as a writer and editor at leading magazines, such as PC World, PC Computing, and Smart Business. Ed has written many of Que’s all-time bestsellers, including Special Edition Using Office 2000, Special Edition Using Windows 98, and Special Edition Using Windows Me.

Curmudgeon, critic, and perennial “Office Victim,” Woody Leonhard runs the fiercely independent AskWoody.com website with up-to-the-nanosecond news, observations, tips and help for both Office and Windows. In the past 15 years, Woody has written more than three dozen books, drawing an unprecedented six Computer Press Association awards and two American Business Press awards. Woody was one of the first Microsoft Consulting Partners and is a charter member of the Microsoft Solutions Provider organization.

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VBScript is a Microsoft scripting language. It is useful both on client-side and server-side web programming, making it the primary language for programming ASP, and it can be used to program the new Microsoft Windows Script Host. The language itself has been gradually increasing in power and flexibility, and the newest release, VBScript 5.0 - which comes with IE5.0 and can be downloaded for IE3 and 4, or other hosts - represents a huge increase in functionality and usefulness.

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The landscape of doing SharePoint development has changed considerably in the last year, with the release of SharePoint Server 2007 and its related technologies. You need a contemporary reference to stay on top of the latest ways to combine .NET development techniques with your SharePoint development techniques, and SharePoint 2007 Development Techniques is your guide.

What makes this book unique are the topics that have never before been discussed in a SharePoint 2007 context. Learn how to incorporate the latest trends, capabilities, and enhancements in your daily SharePoint development activities.

• Using Windows Workflow Foundation to create workflows in SharePoint Designer
• Integrating business messaging with BizTalk Server 2006 into your SharePoint sites
• Developing list item relationships via a feature
• Creating and sharing database data by combining SharePoint with SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services
• Constructing queries using SQL full-text extensions

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Laptops–call them notebooks, portable computers, or whatever else you like–are tightly engineered items. It's hard to get all the required components to obey stringent performance and power-management requirements, and still fit into a small case. The job usually requires a custom motherboard and other specialized components, and so the laptop owner who wants to upgrade his or her machine faces a much more difficult task than the owner of a desktop machine with a similar wish. One can swap out the hard drive, add more RAM, and make tweaks in software, but almost everything else requires the addition of external components, which kind of defeat the purpose of a laptop. That's the message the reader takes away from Scott Mueller's Upgrading and Repairing Laptops. It's not Mueller's fault that such computers are hard to do much with, and that your best upgrade procedure is often a visit to an auction site. (more…)

Be a part of the best-selling Upgrading and Repairing series with the latest edition of the flagship book, Upgrading and Repairing PCs. Author Scott Mueller has taught thousands in his seminars and millions through his books, videos and articles. Since 1988, everyon from PC technicians and students to hobbyists, have turned to Scott Mueller's Upgrading and Repairing PCs books for help with computer problems. Upgrading and Repairing PCs, 17th Edition includes new and updated content covering the latest processors, motherboards, memory, and more, including a fully-loaded DVD with new video and reference material. (more…)

SQL Server Integration Services is groundbreaking. It exists for both the DBA and the developer, as well as that new role SSIS has created between the two—the data artisan.

Pro SQL Server 2005 Integration Services contains everything you could ever hope to know about this exciting new development from Microsoft: developer insight, Microsoft group manager–level access, personal experience of using the technology in the real–world, and fine–grained analysis. If you want to rapidly gain knowledge and context from your data, Microsoft’s latest and greatest interpretation of Enterprise Application Integration, SQL Server Integration Services, is for you. As part of the extensive SQL Server suite, Integration Services is a more serious and expandable interpretation of the integration paradigm than previously available. At once both simple to use yet incredibly complex, it goes far beyond being a reimagining and reengineering of DTS, and its all presented in a familiar Visual Studio context. It’s Agile, it’s service-oriented, it’s everything to everyone.

Written for the developer, the DBA, and the data artisan, Pro SQL Server 2005 Integration Services will show you how to develop and deploy enterprise SSIS solutions in multibillion–item environments. Its everything SSIS, explained for everyone!

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Backed by a tireless development community, PHP has been a model of language evolution over its 10+ year history. Borne from a contract developer’s pet project, these days you’ll find PHP powering many of the world’s largest web sites, including Yahoo!, Digg, EA Games, and Lycos.

PHP Objects, Patterns, and Practice, Second Edition shows you how to meld the power of PHP with the sound enterprise development techniques embraced by professional programmers. Going well beyond the basics of object-oriented development, you’ll learn about advanced topics such as working with static methods and properties, abstract classes, interfaces, design patterns, exception handling, and more. You’ll also be exposed to key tools such as PEAR, CVS, Phing, and phpDocumentor.

• Write solid, maintainable code by embracing object-oriented techniques and design patterns.
• Create detailed, versatile documentation using the powerful phpDocumentor automated documentation system.
• Gain new flexibility during the development process by managing your code within a CVS repository and using the Phing build system.
• Capitalize upon the quality code of others by using the PEAR package management solution.

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The GCC Book is a comprehensive tutorial and guide to using the newest version of GCC, the "GNU Compiler Collection". GCC is quite simply the most used and most powerful tool for programmers on the planet. It goes beyond just command line invocations and teaches you how to use GCC to improve the quality of your code (with debugging, code profiling, and test code coverage) and how to integrate other GNU development tools, such as libtool, automake, and autoconf, into your GCC-based development projects.
Download Description

• Provides a complete command reference and explains how to use the info online help system
• Covers material not covered in other texts: profiling, test coverage, and how to build and install GCC on a variety of operating system and hardware platforms
• Explains how to build and install GCC on Linux, UNIX, and Windows systems, whether you have an existing GCC or not

The Definitive Guide to GCC is a comprehensive tutorial and guide to using the newest version of GCC, the “Gnue Compiler Collection.” GCC is quite simply the most used and most powerful tool for programmers on the planet. It goes beyond just command line invocations and teaches you how to use GCC to improve the quality of your code (with debugging, code profiling, and test code coverage) and how to integrate other GNU development tools, such as libtool, automake, and autoconf, into your GCC-based development projects.

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Spring has made a remarkable rise since its conception in 2002. Users find Spring the ideal framework to build their applications in J2EE environments. Beginning Spring 2 is the first and only Spring-authorized book that takes you through the first steps of using Spring, and requires no prior J2EE experience. It discusses relevant integrated technologies that you should be aware of, and illustrates how Spring makes using them easier.

The book teaches the correct usage of Spring in applications, and lowers the learning curve on J2EE standards. It covers useful features of Spring without delving too far into complicated features. The authors take advantage of less complex alternatives whenever possible, and shows how Spring can make you more productive in complicated environments where J2EE technologies need to be applied. The book covers the complete Spring web tools portfolio and deals with persistence and transaction management. It also introduces 3-tier application design and how to test these designs.

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EDI is one of the next big waves in connected systems, as business becomes more dependent on working with partners, suppliers, and other organizations in a streamlined way. Microsoft BizTalk Server 2006 R2 offers an efficient, integrated way to deploy EDI solutions, and with Pro EDI in BizTalk Server 2006 R2: Electronic Document Interchange Solutions, you’ll see how EDI can be used in your business and how best to get it set up with BizTalk. With a cursory read of this book, management-level resources will be able to quickly determine the complexity of a BizTalk EDI implementation and the level of resources that will need to be made available. The developer will get an in-depth understanding of EDI and a detailed step-by-step approach to building and deploying projects.

This book’s unique approach sees an EDI project from end to end, through inception, into development, and finally through deployment. With this practical guide, you can set up and deliver a BizTalk 2006–driven EDI solution without getting caught up in the complexity of non-EDI items in BizTalk.

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Cisco® Security Monitoring, Analysis, and Response System (MARS) is a next-generation Security Threat Mitigation system (STM). Cisco Security MARS receives raw network and security data and performs correlation and investigation of host and network information to provide you with actionable intelligence. This easy-to-use family of threat mitigation appliances enables you to centralize, detect, mitigate, and report on priority threats by leveraging the network and security devices already deployed in a network, even if the devices are from multiple vendors. 

Security Monitoring with Cisco Security MARS helps you plan a MARS deployment and learn the installation and administration tasks you can expect to face. Additionally, this book teaches you how to use the advanced features of the product, such as the custom parser, Network Admission Control (NAC), and global controller operations. Through the use of real-world deployment examples, this book leads you through all the steps necessary for proper design and sizing, installation and troubleshooting, forensic analysis of security events, report creation and archiving, and integration of the appliance with Cisco and third-party vulnerability assessment tools.

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Essential Skills for Database Users and Professionals
* Create shapes and link them to data
* Summarize and analyze information using PivotDiagrams
* Use Data Graphics, Smart Tags, and SmartShapes to reinforce information
* Generate robust Excel, HTML, and XML reports
* Create custom, reusable templates, stencils, and masters
* Update and enhance diagrams with Reviewer's comments and markups
* Integrate Visio diagrams with other Windows applications
* Publish and securely distribute Visio documents and summaries
* Extend functionality using VBA macros, add-ins, and wrapper application

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This book describes the technologies involved in all aspects of a large networking system and how the various devices can interact and communicate with each other. Using a bottom up approach the authors demonstrate how it is feasible, for instance, for a cellular device user to communicate, via the all-purpose TCP/IP protocols, with a wireless notebook computer user, traversing all the way through a base station in a cellular wireless network (e.g., GSM, CDMA), a public switched network (PSTN), the Internet, an intranet, a local area network (LAN), and a wireless LAN access point. The information bits, in travelling through this long path, are processed by numerous disparate communication technologies. The authors also describe the technologies involved in infrastructure less wireless networks.

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Photoshop CS3 for Screen Printers details the features of Photoshop CS3 and is geared toward print facilities, mainly screen printers and similar types of graphic artists. Features important to these industries include creating a personalized interface, acquiring images from clients’ disks, acquiring images by scanning existing artwork, importing and exporting images, and creating new images. Color separations also play a big role in these industries, as does printing on specialty films and papers. The Photoshop interface is also discussed, including the toolbox, the palettes, the menu and options bars, and the Adobe Bridge. Additionally, the finer points of printing are detailed, including adding and using crop marks, registration marks, and captions, and producing four-color separations.

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LightWave v9 Texturing takes you behind the fine art of texturing and surfacing interesting and detailed textures for your 3D objects using LightWave 3D. Texturing and prepping your objects for texturing is a task that many artists find intimidating and/or confusing. LightWave v9 Texturing breaks down this process and makes it easier to understand by guiding you through LightWave's powerful surfacing toolset, tutorials, and exercises. LightWave v9 now offers a nodal shading system, which is the standard tool in the visual effects industry for the creation of surfaces. This book will show you how easy, yet extremely powerful and flexible this new system is, allowing you to dive in and create great surfaces immediately.

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I'm a fan of Java-based frameworks (such as Echo 2) and was looking forward to this book on ZK as a nice introduction to the framework.

The book is slim but delivers on exactly the kind of content I was hoping for. It starts with a great overview, and then has a few real world examples.

I would have loved to see more information on working in pure Java (richlets), but otherwise found the content to be great for the size.

The only oddity is that my copy appears to have been printed off a screen-resolution PDF - all of the text, images, etc. look worse than if I ran it off on my home laser printer. I'm going to chalk this up to an oddity of how this particular edition was run off, but I would hope that this is a rare QC issue that would be quickly fixed.

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As a Flex developer, you'll no doubt come across repetitive problems every day in your workwouldn't it be nice to have a library of solutions to turn to, to solve these problems quickly and easily? Well, this book provides just that, with over 100 solutions to common problems in one easy volume. In Flex 2 Solutions, renowned Flash and Flex expert Marco Casario assumes you know the basics, and dives straight into practical code examples that you could build up yourselves via step by step tutorials, and plug straight in to your own code, saving you hours of development time. Areas explored include Flex 2 components, charting, working with remote data, data validation, displaying data with list based controls, controlling the look and feel of your applications, application security, working with dynamic data sources (such as ColdFusion, PHP, and Java backends,) and much more. In each solution, Marco takes you through the workings of the example step by step, and then presents some expert's tips, which will take your understanding further, and give you unique insights into Flex development.

• Over 100 Solutions to common problems included
• Plug the code example straight into your own applications, saving hours of development time
• Covers the full spectrum of Flex 2 topics, from styling your applications, to security, and interfacing with databases.

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Want to take Ruby to the limit? Looking for new, powerful, and creative ideas that will take Ruby beyond Rails and web programming? If you’re comfortable with Ruby, you’ll be itching to go further–apply Practical Ruby Projects: Fresh Ideas with Ruby and become a master of advanced Ruby techniques.

Rubyist Topher Cyll brings several imaginative projects to this book, ranging from making generative music, animations, and turn-based games to implementing simulations, algorithms, and even an implementation of Lisp!

Art, music, theory, and games–this book has it all. Best of all, it’s all done with Ruby.

Each chapter, in addition to making you say “Cool–I hadn’t thought of that before,” looks at solving tricky development problems, enforces best practices, and encourages creative thinking. You’ll be building your own exciting, imaginative Ruby Projects in no time.

• Create imaginative and innovative Ruby programming projects.
• Learn how to solve tricky development problems, be guided by best practices, and be inspired to think creatively.
• Don’t waste time on the basics–it’s assumed you know the fundamentals of Ruby already.

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This book is for any Flex developer who has mastered the basics, but wants to take their skills to the top levelit is packed with essential practical techniques in use in a professional production environment, which you can learn from and use in your own Flex 2 or Flex 3 applications. Written by a team of expert developers from the Los Angeles-based Almer/Blank consultancy, the book takes you through exactly how they built the popular Rich Media X (RMX) application for Adobe user groups, step by step. Assuming the basics, they take you through planning the project, wireframing and application design, putting the basic structure together (including the PHP and MySQL backend,) customizing the look and feel of the application (to make it not just look like any other Flex application,) and implementing all the killer features that make the RMX great, such as blog, wiki, content aggregation from RSS and other sources, video, audio visualizer, events calendar, and advertising mechanisms.

• Learn how Rich Media X was built!
• A real-world Flex book, written by experts using the technology in their day-to-day work
• Contains all the killer features you need to build up your own web 2.0 Flex applicationblog, wiki, video, content aggregation, events calendar, and much more.

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If you want to create exciting dynamic web sites that will amaze your online audience, then the Flash platform is a great way to go, with it's many features, including powerful graphical and sound and video capabilities. To really harness the power of Flash though, you need to make use of ActionScript, Flash's coding language, to provide dynamic effects, enable user interaction, and manipulate data. Adobe just made things even more powerful with ActionScript 3.0. They've taken ActionScript and expanded it into a fully-fledged programming language, with full object-oriented capabilities, improved events, sounds and video support, and drawing capabilities, support for regular expressions, and much, much more. Whether you are an aspiring ActionScript developer, or an experienced ActionScript developer who wants to upgrade your knowledge to version 3.0, this book teaches all you need to know to start to harness the power of ActionScript 3.0 using Flash CS3, Flex 2 or Flex 3. It covers all the essential techniques from the ground up, allowing you to get up and running quickly and easily. The sensible layout of the book makes it easy to refer back to techniques when you need to, and there are even reference sections at the back of the book to allow you to look up syntax quickly. With this book as your guide, you'll be creating killer ActionScript powered Flash applications before you know it! (more…)

Whether you are an experienced Flash designer or developer looking for a guide to doing animation in Flash, or a novice to Flash who is looking for an effective way to create and distribute animations, this book will prove invaluable to you. Covering every aspect of Flash animation, the book is a fast-paced yet thorough review of the Flash animation process. Written by the Emmy-Award winning team at ANIMAX, this book not only reveals the step-by-step process followed by one of today's leading Flash animation studios, it gives you valuable tips and tricks to take your Flash animation to the next level. Divided into three phases of production (pre-production, animation, post-production) this book breaks the Flash animation process into smaller, more manageable steps. And because the authors approach the animation process from various perspectives (such as producer, animator, and editor) the book balances many of the real-world issues facing today's Flash animators, from artistic to technical to financial. The book starts off by looking at planning and designing an animation project, including working out your goals, and putting together character libraries and storyboards. Next up we look at the production phase, which includes using plug-ins to make your work more efficient, implementing your animation, and adding special effects. Finally, we look at post-production work, including how After Effects can be used effectively alongside Flash for tasks such as camera mechanics, how to make Flash not look like Flash, and tips and tricks from the experts. Whatever the reason, like millions of others around the world you've become interested in Flash animation. And you've come to the right place to learn more. This book is compatible with pretty much any fairly recent version of Flash. (more…)

This book illustrates how to infuse compelling and realistic action into game programmingeven if you dont have a college-level physics background! This book covers the basic physics and mathematical models and then shows clearly how to implement them basics to accurately simulate the motion and behavior of cars, planes, projectiles, rockets, and boats.

This book is neither code heavy or language-specific, and all chapters include unique, challenging exercises to solve. This fun book also includes historical footnotes and interesting trivia. The style will be light and conversational, and all physics jargon will be properly and clearly explained.

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As the price of servers comes down to the level of desktop PCs, many small- and medium-sized businesses are forced to provide their own server setup, maintenance and support, without the high-dollar training enjoyed by their big corporation counterparts. Upgrading and Repairing Servers is the first line of defense for small- and medium-sized businesses, and an excellent go-to reference for the experienced administrators who have been asking for a reference guide like this one for a long time! It's all here in one, incredibly useful tome that you will refer to again and again.

Inside is in-depth coverage of server design and implementation, building and deploying, server hardware components, network and backup operations, SAN, fault tolerance, server racks, server rooms, server operating systems, as well as SUN Microsystems servers. No other computer hardware book has ever dared tackle this enormous topic - until now!

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The most up-to-date and comprehensive introductory ASP.NET book you’ll find on any shelf, Beginning ASP.NET 3.5 in VB 2008 guides you through Microsoft’s latest technology for building dynamic web sites. This book will enable you to build dynamic web pages on the fly, and it assumes only the most basic knowledge of VB 2008.

The book provides exhaustive coverage of ASP.NET, guiding you from your first steps right up to the most advanced techniques, such as querying databases from within a web page and tuning your site for optimal performance. Within these pages, you’ll find tips for “best practices” and comprehensive discussions of key database and XML principles you need to know in order to be effective with ASP.NET. The book also emphasizes the invaluable coding techniques of object orientation and code behind, which will start you off on the track to building real-world web sites right from the beginning–rather than just faking it with simplified coding practices.

By the time you’ve finished the book, you will have mastered the core techniques and have all the knowledge you need to begin work as a professional ASP.NET developer.

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Covering the fundamentals of rendering, animation, and modeling, instructor Chad Perkins demonstrates how to push the limits of 3ds Max 9 for stunning effects. Chad starts with the application's basics, then goes on to discuss many of the key features of 3ds Max 9, as well as important principles of animation. He teaches users about creating and editing mesh, modifiers, architectural modeling, texture mapping, keyframe animation, rigging, basic kinematics, and much more. Exercise files accompany the tutorials. (more…)

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Looking for facts? Look no further than the new 2008 Encyclop?dia Britannica Ultimate DVD-ROM. Written by Nobel laureates, historians, curators, professors, and other notable experts, it is your trusted resource for research. Whether you are an entry-level, advanced, or student researcher, you will easily find what you need—simply select the version that is right for you. Three complete and easy-to-use encyclopedias designed for every age give you the most content available with over 100,000 articles.

Britannica is always striving to exceed its own high standards of quality, excellence, and accuracy, and this year is no exception. New features such as Great Minds and Britannica Workspace enhance this unbeatable resource. Along with Merriam-Webster Dictionary and Thesaurus entries, a complete world atlas, rich multimedia, and historic timelines, the 2008 Ultimate DVD-ROM provides extensive internet resources and indispensable tools for school.

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Modify gameplay, add textures, and integrate amazing effects

Develop intense environments, then share your design with players online

How cool would it be to build your own levels and customized weapons for Half-Life 2? This book will get you ready to mod so you can enjoy the ultimate gaming experience. You'll find out how to create your own maps, strategically place high-tech military equipment, and modify your levels for smoother play.

Discover how to

• Design maps and playing levels
• Load your creation into the game
• Expand your map with additions
• Include armor and weapons
• Distribute levels on the Web

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Discover how to:

• Perform ethical hacks without compromising a system
• Combat denial of service and WEP attacks
• Understand how invaders think
• Recognize the effects of different hacks
• Protect against war drivers and rogue devices

Become a cyber-hero - know the common wireless weaknesses ""Reading a book like this one is a worthy endeavor toward becoming an experienced wireless security professional."" –Devin Akin - CTO, The Certified Wireless Network Professional (CWNP) Program Wireless networks are so convenient - not only for you, but also for those nefarious types who'd like to invade them. The only way to know if your system can be penetrated is to simulate an attack. This book shows you how, along with how to strengthen any weak spots you find in your network's armor.

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Written for experienced developers, this guide explains how to work with the .NET framework classes of controls and build custom controls for Windows forms and web form pages.

One of the reasons I wrote this book is to address the needs of .NET developers who require controls that don’t yet exist. Most businesses have specific needs that only a custom control can satisfy—from custom corporate e- mail plug-ins, to a custom control that manages user security in various applications, to a reusable intranet control that tracks customer calls and routes them to the appropriate location.

Another reason I wrote this book is that you might just have the next “big idea” for a commercial control that can be sold to developers around the globe but don’t know where to start. The booming market for controls shows there is always room for another tool that saves developers precious resources.

And finally, I wrote this book to satisfy the intellectual curiosity of advanced developers. If you’re like me, you thrive in finding and understanding the cornucopia of new classes and methodologies in .NET that can’t be found in other books. Understanding the .NET Framework classes for controls and designers not only makes you a more valued professional but also allows you to take an idea from one source and meld it with another in ways not done before—the so called ah-ha effect. If you fall into any or all of these three categories, this book is for you.

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The authorized guide to the latest edition of the #1 business intelligence software product - Crystal Reports. More than 16 million licenses of Crystal Reports have been shipped to date. This book is a reference designed to provide hands-on guidance for the latest release of the product suite. The latest version of Crystal Reports and the Business Objects enterprise reporting suite delivers vast product enhancements and a tighter integration that will drive upgrades from licensees. Brand new features (e.g. Dynamic and Cascading Parameter Generation) will also appeal to new audiences. Over 1 million new Business Intelligence licensees will be migrating to the Crystal Enterprise Reporting platform, as this is the first release of the software with the existing Business Objects (BO) products being integrated into the Crystal infrastructure. As Business Objects insiders, the authors bring unique and valuable real-world perspectives on implementations and uses of the Crystal Reports product. The book also includes content, tutorials and samples for reporting within the Microsoft Visual Studio.NET and J2EE development environments and also on top of the SAP Business Information Warehouse (BW) and the Peoplesoft platform. Advanced content on report distribution and integration into the secured managed reporting solution known as Business Objects Enterprise XI, is also now included in this definitive user guide with coverage on the new Web Services SDK. (more…)

Vista is the most radical revamping of Windows since 1995. But along with all the fantastic improvements, there are a couple of things that drive you up the wall. Maybe you're not seeing the performance you expect. Security is better, but boy, is it annoying. And what's with that interface thing that's just in the way? Well, you can fix all that. When you and Steve Sinchak are finished, you'll think Microsoft designed Vista just for you.

How to improve the view

A few of the things you'll learn to do

1. Tweak logon screen settings

2. Build custom Sidebar gadgets

3. Personalize Aero Glass with themes and visual styles

4. Customize Internet Explorer® 7

5. Configure BIOS for maximum boot speed

6. Crank up Windows® Explorer

7. Turn your PC into an HDTV Media Center

8. Fine-tune your firewall

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GPS For Dummies gives new meaning to finding yourself. In fact, with a GPS (global positioning system) receiver, you can determine precisely where you are anywhere on this planet. If you’re are planning on buying a GPS receiver or if you have one and want to get your money’s worth, this guide tells you what you need to know, including:

Basic GPS principles and concepts such as waypoints, routes, tracks, and coordinate systems

• Recommended features for GPS receivers to be used in various types of activities, including hiking, mountain biking, cross country skiing, geocaching, hunting, ATVing, mapping, and more
• How to do digital mapping on your computer, including software packages you can use to work with aerial photos, topographic maps, and road maps
• The main providers of digital map data for the U.S. and their Web sites
• The scoop on geocaching—a high-tech treasure hunt

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The Wireless Metropolitan Area Network is a promising Broadband Wireless Access (BWA) technology that provides high-speed, high-bandwidth efficiency and high-capacity multimedia services for both residential and enterprise applications. Mobile WiMAX: Toward Broadband Wireless Metro-politan Area Networks examines the basic concepts, recent advances, and latest standard specifications pertinent to WirelessMANs, placing emphasis on IEEE 802.16-based WiMAX. After introducing the basics of WirelessMAN, the book addresses topics in three accessible parts. The first part focuses on radio frequency (RF), signal processing, multiple in-multiple out (MIMO) technology, and identifying challenges and possible solutions in the physical layer. An examination of protocol issues follows, including those involving medium access control (MAC), quality of service (QoS) in point-to-multi-point (PMP) and mesh networks, cross layer optimization, mobility management, handoff in heterogeneous networks, energy management, and link adaptation mecha-nisms. The final part considers issues regarding security, economy, and system capacity in the WiMAX.

Mobile WiMAX: Toward Broadband Wireless Metropolitan Area Networks is an important resource for those interested in understanding all aspects relevant to the technical, practical, economic, and policy issues concerning WirelessMANs. It offers comprehensive practical and technical guidance on the fundamentals and recent advances in general WirelessMAN, as well as the latest standard specifications in IEEE 802.16a/c/d/e families.

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DB2 Express Edition for Community (DB2 Express-C) is a no charge data server for use in development and deployment. DB2 Express-C supports a full range of APIs, drivers, and interfaces for application development including PHP, C/C++, and .NET. In addition, DB2 Express-C V9 contains advanced XML features. DB2 Express-C provides ISVs an ideal starting database server for Web, enterprise, and eBusiness applications.
This IBM Redbook provides fundamentals of DB2 application development with DB2 Express-C. It covers the DB2 Express-C installation and configuration for application development and skills and techniques for building DB2 applications with XML, PHP, C/C++, Java, and .NET. Code examples are used to demonstrate how to develop a DB2 application in a different language. By following the examples provided, you will be able to learn DB2 application development with XML, PHP, C/C++, Java, and .NET in a short time.

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The Internet is almost synonymous with change–that's one of its charms, and one of its headaches. You may think you know the Internet, but are you really up to speed on internet telephones, movie and TV downloading, blogging, gaming, online banking, dating, and photosharing?

This utterly current book covers:

Getting Online. Readers will have all the information they need to decide what kind of broadband connection works best for them, which browser they should use, and what kind of spyware-fighting and virus-and spam-protection measures they need to protect themselves.

Finding Information. Google may be the leading search site, but it's certainly not the only game in town. This book introduces a diverse and useful collection of sites that help uncover everything from health care information, to shopping, travel and finance, to dependable reviews and ratings.

Movies, music, and photos. The Web's teeming with entertainment–and not just the sort of postage-stamp sized videos that only a geek could love. Learn where to download movies, watch TV online, listen to music, play games, and post and share photos with friends.

Keeping in touch. Email's only the beginning. This book introduces readers to the many tools that make the modern Internet such a great way to stay connected. From Web-based discussion groups to instant messaging programs, and from blogs and podcasts to Internet-based phone calls, this book will help you join the conversation.

Ideal for anyone just venturing into cyberspace, this book is also perfect for more experienced users who could use an update to today's most exciting internet applications.

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How the Internet Works promises "an exciting visual journey down the highways and byways of the Internet," and it delivers. The book's high quality graphics and simple, succinct text make it the ideal book for beginners; however it still has much to offer for Net vets. This book is jam- packed with cool ways to visualize how the Net works. The first section visually explores how TCP/IP, Winsock, and other Net connectivity mysteries work. This section also helps you understand how e-mail addresses and domains work, what file types mean, and how information travels across the Net. Part 2 unravels the Net's underlying architecture, including good information on how routers work and what is meant by client/server architecture. The third section covers your own connection to the Net through an Internet Service Provider (ISP), and how ISDN, cable modems, and Web TV work. Part 4 discusses e-mail, spam, newsgroups, Internet Relay Chat (IRC), and Net phone calls. In part 5, you'll find out how other Net tools, such as gopher, telnet, WAIS, and FTP, can enhance your Net experience. The sixth section takes on the World Wide Web, including everything from how HTML works to image maps and forms. Part 7 looks at other Web features such as push technology, Java, ActiveX, and CGI scripting, while part 8 deals with multimedia on the Net. Part 9 shows you what intranets are and covers groupware, and shopping and searching the Net. The book wraps up with part 10, a chapter on Net security that covers firewalls, viruses, cookies, and other Web tracking devices, plus cryptography and parental controls. –This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. 

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Like all books in the Bible series, you can expect to find both hands-on tutorials and real-world practical applications, as well as reference and background information that provides a context for what you are learning. However, to cover every minute detail of every command of this very complex product would consume thousands of pages, so it is the second goal of this book to provide a concise yet comprehensive guide to SQL Server 2005 based on the information I have found most useful in my experience as a database developer, consultant, and instructor. By the time you have completed the SQL Server 2005 Bible, you will be well prepared to develop and manage your SQL Server 2005 database.

Whether you are a database developer or a database administrator, whether you are just starting out, have one year of experience or five, this book contains material that will be useful to you. This book is written so that you can learn from my experience and the experience of the co-authors. Each chapter begins with the assumption that you’ve never seen the topic before, and then progresses through the subject, presenting the information that makes a difference.

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Replication is a way of copying and updating information in a database. This allows all users to see the same information and any changes made to it. Replication also duplicates the database across a number of computers so that, if one computer goes down, the information is not lost and can still be accessed. Pro SQL Server 2005 Replication, written by Sujoy Paul, a Microsoft Certified Professional for SQL Server, focuses on this most critical and complex of data management tasks.

This book is for Microsoft database developers and administrators who want to learn about the different types of replication and those best suited to SQL Server 2005. The book will also delve into advanced topics like replication of SQL Server with heterogeneous databases, replication of different database objects like stored procedures, backup and recovery of replicated databases, plus performance and tuning. This book is an ideal read whether youre a novice or advanced replication user.

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This book shows you just how powerful, and yet easy to use, the new Web development environment from Microsoft really is. Visual Web Developer 2005 Express Edition, along with the relational database SQL Server 2005 Express Edition, allows you to build great Web sites using drag-and-drop techniques, wizards, and a huge range of developer-friendly tools and controls. The book demonstrates this by leading you through the creation of a fully featured and highly interactive e-commerce Web application, like those you are used to seeing on the Internet today.

This is not a reference book. You will not find listings of the objects, classes, properties, and methods of each feature in ASP.NET. Instead, this book is task-focused to provide you with the experience of working in Visual Web Developer, quickly getting to grips with the environment and ASP.NET, and learning how to achieve the kinds of requirements you will meet every day as you build your  applications. For example, after a brief section on installing Visual Web Developer and an introduction to the development environment, Chapter 1 gets you building pages that display and allow you to edit the data in a database.

As you progress through the book, you will learn about the following:
- Designing the structure of your Web site
- Implementing the database
- Displaying and editing data
- Building a shopping cart
- Publishing your finished site

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ant to supercharge your website with the latest searching, mapping, shopping, and imaging tools? Now you can build amazing mashups with help from this step-by-step guide. How to Do Everything with Web 2.0 Mashups shows you how to remix the best of Google, Amazon, Flickr, and eBay to create customized applications. You'll learn to use essential Web 2.0 technologies–including XML, JavaScript, XHTML, and REST–and seamlessly integrate them into your own innovative mashups.

• Build dynamic mashups using XML and JavaScript
• Use MySQL with PHP to retrieve data from databases
• Receive data via RSS and Atom
• Learn to use XMLHttpRequest, XML-RPC, REST, and JSON
• Structure your mashup pages using XHTML
• Incorporate Google searching and mapping technologies
• Integrate Amazon Web Services
• Include Flickr photos in your mashups
• Tap into eBay tools and map the locations of eBay sellers
• Successfully manage multiple technologies in your mashups

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Let this in-depth professional book be your guide to Blender, the powerful open-source 3D modeling and animation software that will bring your ideas to life. Using clear step-by-step instruction and pages of real-world examples, expert animator Tony Mullen walks you through the complexities of modeling and animating, with a special focus on characters. From Blender basics to creating facial expressions and emotion to rendering, you’ll jump right into the process and learn valuable techniques that will transform your movies.

Let this in-depth professional book be your guide to Blender, the powerful open-source 3D modeling and animation software that will bring your ideas to life. Using clear step-by-step instruction and pages of real-world examples from talented Blender users, expert animator Tony Mullen walks you through the complexities of modeling and animating, with a special focus on characters. From Blender basics to creating facial expressions and emotion to rendering, you'll jump right into the process and learn valuable techniques that will transform your movies.

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O’Reilly has answered the call for help with a practical introduction that shows how to install, configure, and manage SNMP. Written for network and system administrators, the book introduces the basics of SNMP and then offers a technical background on how to use it effectively. Essential SNMP explores both commercial and open source packages, and elements like OIDs, MIBs, community strings, and traps are covered in depth. The book contains five new chapters and various updates throughout. Other new topics include:

* Expanded coverage of SNMPv1, SNMPv2, and SNMPv3
* Expanded coverage of SNMPc
* The concepts behind network management and change management
* RRDTool and Cricket
* The use of scripts for a variety of tasks
* How Java can be used to create SNMP applications
* Net-SNMP’s Perl module

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Now 100 percent updated for the latest technologies, this is today’s easiest, most visual guide to Cisco® networking. Even if you’ve never set up or managed a network, Cisco Networking Simplified, Second Edition, helps you quickly master the concepts you need to understand. Its full-color diagrams and clear explanations give you the big picture: how each important networking technology works, what it can do for you, and how they all fit together. The authors illuminate networking from the smallest LANs to the largest enterprise infrastructures, offering practical introductions to key issues ranging from security to availability, mobility to virtualization.

What you always wanted to know about networking but were afraid to ask!

• How networks and the Internet work
• How to build coherent, cost-effective network infrastructures
• How to design networks for maximum reliability and availability
• What you need to know about data center and application networking
• How to secure networks against today’s threats and attacks
• How to take advantage of the latest mobility technologies
• How virtualizing networks can help businesses leverage their network investments even further
• How to combine messaging, calendaring, telephony, audio, video, and web conferencing into a unified communications architecture

This book is part of the Networking Technology Series from Cisco Press®, the only authorized publisher for Cisco®.

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Realize the full potential of Oracle Database 11g with help from the experts. Written by Robert G. Freeman, and with insightful commentary throughout from Arup Nanda, this Oracle Press guide offers full details on the architectural changes, database administration upgrades, availability and recovery revisions, security enhancements, and programming innovations. Every new and updated feature is covered and presented with screenshots, code samples, tables, and charts. Find out how to take full advantage of all the new and improved capabilities of Oracle Database 11g, including:

• New Oracle Automatic Storage Management features, such as Fast Disk Resync, Compatibility Attributes, Preferred Mirror Read, and Rolling Upgrade components
• Improved Automated Memory Management capabilities
• New database design features, such as virtual columns, tablespace encryption, and true table-level data compression
• New Database Advisors for data recovery and repair, partitioning, and streams performance
• New tuning features, such as Automatic SQL Tuning and SQL Performance Analyzer
• Enhancements to Oracle RMAN, including active database duplication and UNDO backup optimization
• Improved auditing and security capabilities
• Advanced BI, data warehousing, and partitioning features
• New SQL and PL/SQL enhancements

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David Freeman brings you the inside scoop on how to apply the Emotioneering(TM) techniques he's so well known for. These powerful techniques create a breadth and depth of emotion in a game, and induce a player to identify with the role he or she is playing. Mr. Freeman's techniques are so highly sought after because they're the key to mass market success in today's competitive game market. The over 300 distinct Emotioneering techniques in this book include (to name but a few): ways to give emotional depth to an NPC (non-player character), even if the NPC has just one line of dialogue; techniques to bond a player to a game's NPCs; and techniques to transform a game into an intense emotional journey. In a warm and crystal-clear style, Mr. Freeman provides examples which demonstrate exactly how to apply the techniques. He also shows how some of these techniques were utilized in, and contributed greatly to the success of such games as "Grand Theft Auto: Vice City"; "Deus Ex"; and "Thief" I & II, among others. The book is packed with striking art by some of today's top concept artists and illustrators, including an eight-page color section and a four-color, fold-out cover. When you've finished this book, you'll be equipped to apply Mr. Freeman's powerful Emotioneering techniques to artfully create emotion in the games you design, build, or produce. (more…)

Practice tests are one of the best ways to prepare for your certification exam. examworx's realistic exam simulations are the hard-working tools you need to tackle testing. With Learning and Certification Modes and free Flash Cards included with each practice test, examworx will help you figure out what you know and learn the answers to what you don't. Certification is a challenge but you can handle it - and examworx guarantees it.

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Camtasia Studio 5: The Definitive Guide introduces readers to the latest features of Camtasia Studio, including the revamped Recorder application, automated zooming and panning with SmartFocus, and upload via FTP. Readers learn the entire process of creating top-notch software tutorials, marketing spots, and demonstrations, beginning with developing goals and determining the audience to scripting, recording, editing, producing, and sharing the video. Appropriate for users at all levels, this book provides a practical guide to getting the most out of Camtasia Studio.

Learn how to:

- Record audio and video streams and add special effects with Camtasia Recorder.

- Extend and split media clips, add callouts and Flash hotspots, and create quizzes and surveys.

- Enhance your videos with a picture-in-picture track.

- Convert your PowerPoint presentations to Camtasia Studio recordings.

- Produce your videos for distribution via CD, DVD, the web, and portable media players.

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VMware ESX Server in the Enterprise is the definitive, real-world guide to planning, deploying, and managing today’s leading virtual infrastructure platform in mission-critical environments.

Drawing on his extensive experience consulting on large-scale ESX Server implementations, Edward L. Haletky brings together an unprecedented collection of tips, best practices, and field-tested solutions. More than any other author, he illuminates the real issues, tradeoffs, and pitfalls associated with ESX Server–and shows how to make the most of it in your unique environment.

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Microsoft Office Project Server 2007 Unleashed provides a comprehensive and in-depth overview of Microsoft Office Project Server 2007 and Enterprise Project Management (EPM). This book should be used as a reference to guide you through system capabilities and the use of more advanced product features in the context of your business processes. In this book you will find cutting-edge information, including the necessary framework and approach to implement a complex project management software product. Find practical, real-world guidance on how to plan, install, configure, deploy, use, manage, and customize your EPM Implementation. This book is your only in-depth source for Microsoft Office Project Server 2007!

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Learn how to think before you animate. Thinking Animation is a one-of-a-kind book that emphasizes how artists can use traditional animation techniques and principles with the computer generated animation technology of today. Written by seasoned animators with experience in both 2D and CG, Thinking Animation is an exquisite guide aimed at experienced animators; however, the skills taught within are still accessible and valuable to the novice animator. This full-color book includes numerous interviews with experienced contributing authors from a wide range of backgrounds, including stop-motion, visual effects, traditional animation, and CG. Thinking Animation is non-software specific. It contains a history of the field of animation as well as insight into how CG studios operate. It embraces the future of animating with the computer while still retaining the core values that traditional animators use as formulas and principles. (more…)

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This book, Videogames and Art, is one of the first books to provide a complete overview of the field of videogame art – that is to say, art produced with or influenced by videogames. In selecting the essays and interviews to be included in this book, we have sought not only to give an indication of the current state of videogame art – and its major practitioners and genres – but also to place this work in a broader critical context. Its intention is to show that even though this area of digital art is comparatively young and exhibits a wide variety of different styles and techniques, it none the less forms a distinct and coherent artistic movement – united by shared aesthetic concerns – and is therefore worthy of being taken seriously as an art form. As we have pointed out previously, in our paper for the Level Up games conference, videogames are most people’s first point of contact with computers. Videogames have also, through their immense popularity, become part of our shared cultural capital. As such, they are often recognizable even to those who have never played the original game and may also carry connotations beyond their original content, context and meaning. It is therefore inevitable that artists have used them firstly as inspiration and as a source of material, and then, over time, sought to create their own games and modifications to existing games. Videogames have become a popular area of academic research and have spawned many books and conferences, so why then is a book needed specifically on videogames and art? The reason is that videogame criticism (whether from a background in ludology or narratology) has tended to concentrate on the mechanics of the videogame, rather than its aesthetics. As a result, the theoretical discussion has tended to revolve around how these factors contribute (positively or negatively) to the gameplay and/or the narrative of the game, rather than as qualities to be assessed and/or appreciated on their own terms. While this is a valid theoretical approach to take, implicit in this type of analysis is the assumption – whether made consciously or not – that what is being looked at is game design, rather than game aesthetics. In other words, it is game craft rather than game art. (more…)

Business Intelligence is a method of storing and presenting key enterprise data so that anyone in your company can quickly and easily ask questions of accurate and timely data. Effective BI allows end users to use data to understand why your business got the particular results that it did, to decide on courses of action based on past data, and to accurately forecast future results.

This book explains how best to use Analysis Services, SQL Server Integration Services, SQL Server Reporting Services, and SQL Server Data Mining. It also describes best practices for implementing end-to-end BI solutions in small, medium, and large business environments. And it provides important information about integrating BI with various client tools, including Excel, Business Scorecards, Proclarity, and SharePoint Portal Server. Developers, end users, and even managers will find this an enlightening guide to the power and promise of SQL Server 2005 BI.

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Programming Game AI by Example provides a comprehensive and practical introduction to the “bread and butter” AI techniques used by the game development industry, leading the reader through the process of designing, programming, and implementing intelligent agents for action games using the C++ programming language.

Techniques covered include state- and goal-based behavior, inter-agent communication, individual and group steering behaviors, team AI, graph theory, search, path planning and optimization, triggers, scripting, scripted finite state machines, perceptual modeling, goal evaluation, goal arbitration, and fuzzy logic.

This easy-to-follow book provides a comprehensive and practical introduction to the basic AI techniques used by game developers, leading you through the process of designing, programming, and implementing intelligent agents for action games using C++.

This easy-to-follow book provides a comprehensive and practical introduction to the basic AI techniques used by game developers, leading you through the process of designing, programming, and implementing intelligent agents for action games using C++.

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OpenGL ® SuperBible, Fourth Edition, begins by illuminating the core techniques of “classic” OpenGL graphics programming, from drawing in space to geometric transformations, from lighting to texture mapping. The authors cover newer OpenGL capabilities, including OpenGL 2.1’s powerful programmable pipeline, vertex and fragment shaders, and advanced buffers. They also present thorough, up-to-date introductions to OpenGL implementations on multiple platforms, including Windows, Mac OS X, GNU/Linux, UNIX, and embedded systems.

Coverage includes

·         An entirely new chapter on OpenGL ES programming for handhelds

·         Completely rewritten chapters on OpenGL for Mac OS X and GNU/Linux

·         Up-to-the-minute coverage of OpenGL on Windows Vista

·         New material on floating-point color buffers and off-screen rendering

·         In-depth introductions to 3D modeling and object composition

·         Expert techniques for utilizing OpenGL’s programmable shading language

·         Thorough coverage of curves, surfaces, interactive graphics, textures, shadows, and much more

·         A fully updated API reference, and an all-new section of full-color images

You’ll rely on this book constantly–whether you’re learning OpenGL for the first time, deepening your graphics programming expertise, upgrading from older versions of OpenGL, or porting applications from other environments.

Now part of the OpenGL Technical Library–The official knowledge resource for OpenGL developers

The OpenGL Technical Library provides tutorial and reference books for OpenGL. The Library enables programmers to gain a practical understanding of OpenGL and shows them how to unlock its full potential. Originally developed by SGI, the Library continues to evolve under the auspices of the OpenGL Architecture Review Board (ARB) Steering Group (now part of the Khronos Group), an industry consortium responsible for guiding the evolution of OpenGL and related technologies.

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Whether you’re creating animation for television, advertising, games, or multimedia, [digital] Character Animation 3 can help you bring your imagination to life. In this updated classic, both newcomers to digital animation and old hands looking to hone existing skills will find essential techniques for creating lively, professional-quality animation that are applicable to any software application. Combining the fundamentals of modeling, rigging, and animation with advanced-level information on characterization, directing, and production management, author George Maestri has created an essential resource for digital animators.

[digital] Character Animation 3 is packed with beautiful new artwork and Maestri’s invaluable expert tips. Along with clear instruction on the theory and practice of foundation techniques such as rigging, walk-cycles, and lip-synch–the tutorials and exercises in this book let you practice what you’ve learned. Maestri also offers in-depth information on creating nuanced characters that feel “alive” and win audience empathy and attention. The book’s final chapter guides you through the entire filmmaking process, from story development through voice casting and animation directing.

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Have you ever seen players' eyes light up as they explore the worlds that you've created in your games? If you have, then game development probably has you hooked firmly in its grasp! If you’ve never taken your games beyond the PC, now's the time! "J2ME Game Programming" is a hands-on guide that teaches you how to create games for micro-devices. You'll be amazed at just how cool the games you create can look and play. Focusing primarily on mobile phone game creation, you'll jump right in and create your own games as you work your way through the book. The thought has surely crossed your mind that it would be nice to make some money off of this cool hobby of yours. J2ME offers real opportunity to profit from your games. Learn how you can earn revenue from your games by taking them to market. If you have a basic understanding of Java, then you're ready to explore all that "J2ME Game Programming" has to offer! (more…)

To even try to keep pace with the rapid evolution of game development, you need a strong foundation in core programming techniques-not a hefty volume on one narrow topic or one that devotes itself to API-specific implementations. Finally, there's a guide that delivers! As a professor at the Spanish university that offered that country's first master's degree in video game creation, author Daniel Sanchez-Crespo recognizes that there's a core programming curriculum every game designer should be well versed in-and he's outlined it in these pages! By focusing on time-tested coding techniques-and providing code samples that use C++, and the OpenGL and DirectX APIs-Daniel has produced a guide whose shelf life will extend long beyond the latest industry trend. Code design, data structures, design patterns, AI, scripting engines, 3D pipelines, texture mapping, and more: They're all covered here-in clear, coherent fashion and with a focus on the essentials that will have you referring back to this volume for years to come.

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New Riders' [digital] series is performing a tremendous service to the computer animation and graphics community. The newest addition to this family is [digital] Lighting & Rendering. Author Jeremy Birn has long been regarded as a talented computer graphics artist and generous writer, and he's been sharing his techniques and discoveries for years.

Using computer graphic and 3-D tools to create accurate images is easy; using them to produce beautiful, inviting, memorable images requires more than technical skill. [digital] Lighting & Rendering introduces reasons and techniques for using light, shadow, texture, and composition. The book is not software-specific, but demonstrates techniques that are applicable to almost any 3-D graphics application. It is assumed, however, that your 3-D software of choice supports such basic rendering features as soft shadows, light maps, colored gels, depth-of-field blur, motion blur, and so on.

The first half of the book discusses lighting and shadow: lighting workflow; light types; using lighting rigs, such as three-point lighting; shadows and shadow type; and light quality. Lighting–how it's used, where it's placed, the kind of shadow it casts, its intensity–is critical to any image, whether you're creating a photorealistic computer re-creation or a surreal fantasy picture. [digital] Lighting & Rendering explains not just how to use various lighting techniques, but why.

An outstanding chapter on color and its use through composition and lighting offers insight into how colors are perceived and how color affects a scene. The importance of color, hue, and saturation should not be underestimated, and the examples in this chapter, like in every other, drive home that point.

Additional chapters cover exposure, composition and staging, materials and textures, and compositing. There is no accompanying CD-ROM, but the platform-generic nature of the book (and of the subject matter itself) makes it unnecessary. The book is designed to educate and inform; it is up to readers to apply what they learn to their own projects.

Although fewer than 300 pages long, [digital] Lighting & Rendering is an informative and important book, useful to any computer graphics artist. Each page is filled with fascinating, immediately helpful information about the craft. The publisher spared no expense on the book's production, either–every page is in color, with at least one color photo per page illuminating the text. Mr. Birn's experience and insight are not to be underestimated, and this book is not to be missed. –Mike Caputo.

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If you have to write business letters, but have never been trained to write them, this book will teach you how. By following a number of simple steps, you will be able to create an effective business letter. You will learn how to lay out each section so that you communicate clearly. "Before" and "after" examples are included.

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C++ has grown rapidly in response to the practical need for a programming language that is able to efficiently handle composite and diverse data types. Today, C++ dominates the commercial market and is favored among application developers.

Introduction to C++ Programming and Graphics offers a venue for rapidly learning the language by concisely revealing its grammar, syntax and main features, and by explaining the key ideas behind object oriented programming (OOP), with emphasis on scientific computing.

The book reviews elemental concepts of computers and computing, describes the primary features of C++, illustrates the use of pointers and user-defined functions, and analyzes the construction of classes. Distinctive features include:

• An effective selection and presentation of topics and supporting examples

• A tutorial on the usage of MATLAB® functions in C++ code

• Tables for translating MATLAB® and Fortran 77 into C++ code, illustrating syntactic differences between these languages

• Chapters on graphics and GUI programming based on the VOGLE library and the GLUT, GLUI and GTK+ utility toolboxes

This invaluable resource provides a basic, concise introduction to C++ for the novice, allowing the reader to easily grasp the necessary concepts, rather than trying to absorb an extensive reference book. Scientists, engineers, professionals and students familiar with the general principles of computer programming and proficient in an easy programming

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ASP.NET 3.5 is the latest version of Microsoft’s revolutionary ASP.NET technology. It is the principal standard for creating dynamic web pages on the Windows platform. Pro ASP.NET 3.5 in C# 2008 raises the bar for high–quality, practical advice on learning and deploying Microsoft’s dynamic web solution.

Seasoned .NET professionals Matthew MacDonald and Mario Szpuszta explain how you can get the most from this groundbreaking new technology. They cover ASP.NET 3.5 as a whole, illustrating both the brand–new features and the functionality carried over from previous versions of ASP. This book will give you the knowledge you need to code real ASP.NET 3.5 applications in the best possible style.

The book will teach you ASP.NET 3.5 starting with core concepts to more advanced topics. You will learn

    * Core concepts of ASP.NET 3.5. Why it’s special. What it’s fundamental principals are. The basics of Visual Studio. How ASP.NET 3.5 controls are created, and how they fit into ASP.NET 3.5 pages, ultimately creating full applications
    * Data access details. The intricacies of ADO.NET and how to perform data binding to many sources from databases to file streams to XML. We include LINQ coverage so you’re on the bleeding edge
    * Security. Once considered the Achilles heel of all Windows web applications, security has vastly improved and is a cornerstone of ASP.NET 3.5. This section explains the various forms of available security, and how to best apply them
    * Taking things further using advanced user interface techniques. This includes user controls, customer server controls, client–side JavaScript, and GDI+.
    * Web services. In an increasingly connected world, working with web services grows in importance. This book will show you how to work with them.
    * ASP.NET AJAX, with an emphasis on comtemporary web development techniques
    * Development using Internet Information Services 7, Microsoft’s premier web hosting platform.
    * And much more.

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Access Data Analysis Cookbook is about solutions to real-world problems. This is not a book about designing forms, learning about primary keys, or discussing the use of built-in wizards to make easy queries or reports. This book is about applying Access to the business grindstone.

Within the dozens of recipes contained in this book, you will learn new ways to query data, how to move data in and out of Access in several different ways, how to calculate answers to financial and investment questions, and much, much more.

I would not suggest this book for brand-new Access users, but anyone with some Access experience should do well with it. As long as you understand how to get around the Access user interface, basic table structures and relations among them, and  how  to  construct  simple  queries,  you  should  be  able  to  follow  along. Even seasoned developers will pick up new tips and techniques. Considering that many recipes center around business issues rather than technical issues, everyone should be  able  to  gain  some  smarts  about  analysis  and  reporting—the  world  that  users inhabit.

Access Data Analysis Cookbook focuses on data. The recipes provide example queries, programming tips, and a smattering of math, all with a view to getting answers from your data.

Foundations of Security: What Every Programmer Needs to Know teaches new and current software professionals state-of-the-art software security design principles, methodology, and concrete programming techniques they need to build secure software systems. Once youre enabled with the techniques covered in this book, you can start to alleviate some of the inherent vulnerabilities that make todays software so susceptible to attack. The book uses web servers and web applications as running examples throughout the book.

This book serves as a great complement to the courses that make up the Stanford Center for Professional Development (SCPD) Security Certification Program. The book explains in detail how to defend against a wide range of attacks, and teaches principles of secure system design.

This book is written for programmers. Whether you are studying to be a programmer, have been a programmer for some time, or were a programmer at some point in the past, this book is for you. This book may also be particularly interesting for web programmers, as many of the examples are drawn from the world of web servers and web browsers, key technologies that have and will continue to change the world in ways that we cannot necessarily imagine ahead of time.

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The Internet and mobile commerce bring with them ubiquitous connectivity, real-time access, and overwhelming volumes of data and information. The growth of data warehouses and communication and information technologies has increased the need for high information quality management in organizations. Information Quality Management: Theory and Applications provides solutions to information quality problems that are becoming increasingly prevalent.

Information Quality Management: Theory and Applications provides insight and support for professionals and researchers working in the field of information and knowledge management, information quality, practitioners and managers of manufacturing, and service industries concerned with the management of information.

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Create complete 3D games using Microsoft XNA Game Studio Express and this hands-on guide. Written by experienced game developers, Microsoft XNA Game Studio Creator's Guide details the fundamentals of great game programming and offers detailed examples.

Inside, you'll learn to program a game engine, write shader code, create and animate 3D models, and add fluid motion and special effects. You'll also find out how to launch ballistics, add realistic scenery and terrain, and integrate lighting and textures. Step-by-step tutorials on underlying C# code and explanations of vector and matrix techniques are included.

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CliffyB, Epic Games

"This is riveting journalism from an unbiased source. Takahashi provides a rare peek behind-the-scenes of the rollercoaster video games business."

Rob Wright, TwitchGuru.com
"You could argue that no one outside of Microsoft knows more about its Xbox game business than Dean Takahashi."  

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Proving once and for all that standards-compliant design does not equal dull design, this inspiring tome uses examples from the landmark CSS Zen Garden site as the foundation for discussions on how to create beautiful, progressive CSS-based Web sites. By using the Zen Garden sites as examples of how CSS design techniques and approaches can be applied to specific Web challenges, authors Dave Shea and Molly Holzschlag provide an eye-opening look at the range of design methods made possible by CSS (Cascading Style Sheets). By the time you've finished perusing the volume, you'll have a new understanding of the graphically rich, fully accessible sites that CSS design facilitates. In sections on design, layout, imagery, typography, effects, and themes, Dave and Molly take you through every phase of the design process–from striking a sensible balance between text and graphics to creating eye-popping special effects (no scripting required). 

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