When Linux or Unix gets adopted by computing groups that already have users working with a version of the Windows platform, administrators overseeing the network integration of the two operating systems look to Samba to make a connection. Sams Teach Yourself Samba in 24 Hours furnishes 24 one-hour essential lessons geared toward quickly learning Samba for administrators charged with the task of coupling Linux or Unix with Windows.

Authors Gerald Carter and Richard Sharpe dedicate most of this book to the processes of installing and configuring Samba, distinguishing between both Linux/Windows- and Unix/Windows-based systems. In particular, they discuss the mechanics of file sharing across the dual platforms and expertly outline the means necessary to remedy common problems. One remedy includes helping you identify which version of Samba you are running and where to look for the patch or bug fix you will need to resolve it. This includes assisting you with locating utilities like autoconf that automatically compile a system configuration file for you with common default settings.

The authors also address security and password issues, as well as peripheral support for server printers. If you are looking to get Linux or Unix dancing with Windows, you would do well to get a copy of Sams Teach Yourself Samba in 24 Hours. --Ryan Kuykendall

About the Author

Gerald Carter has been a member of the Samba Team, a group of people worldwide who develops and documents Samba, since 1998 and is actively involved in distributed network authentication solutions. His journey with Samba began three years prior while employed as a network administrator for Auburn University. Gerald has published articles with various web-based magazines such as Linuxworld and has authored instructional course for companies such as Linuxcare. Today Gerald spends much of his time teaching at conferences, writing, and developing Samba.

Gerald, known by his friends as Jerry, first became interested in computers in 1983 with a Commodore 64 and a copy of "Zork I: The Great Underground Empire," which he now carries on his Palm III (Zork I, not the C64). In 1997, he received his Master's degree in Computer Science from Auburn University, where one day he hopes to finish pursuing his PhD, also in Computer Science.

His hobbies include running, hiking, and playing music. Gerald presently resides near Lake Martin in Dadeville, Alabama, with his wife Kristi.

Standard Processors have been the fuel for the computer revolution over the last 50 years. A new technology called Custom Embedded Processors is fast becoming the key enabling technology of the next 50 years. In this book the reader will learn the basic theory, and practical examples of how this powerful new approach has been put to use. It's a must read for anyone hoping to build the next big thing in the 21st century. - Alan Naumann, President and CEO, CoWare, Inc.

A Million Processors for the Price of One?

Customizable processors have been described as the next natural step in the evolution of the microprocessor business: a step in the life of a new technology where top performance alone is no longer sufficient to guarantee market success. Other factors become fundamental, such as time to market, convenience, energy efficiency, and ease of customization.

This book is the first to explore comprehensively one of the most fundamental trends which emerged in the last decade: to treat processors not as rigid, fixed entities, which designers include "as is" in their products; but rather, to build sound methodologies to tailor-fit processors to the specific needs of such products. This book addresses the goal of maintaining a very large family of processors, with a wide range of features, at a cost comparable to that of maintaining a single processor.

· First book to present comprehensively the major ASIP design methodologies and tools without any particular bias.

· Written by most of the pioneers and top international experts of this young domain.

· Unique mix of management perspective, technical detail, research outlook, and practical implementation.

At last--here's a comprehensive book that puts full details on all short-range wireless-positioning methods at your command for instant access and use. This one-stop resource surveys each technique's theory of operation, advantages and disadvantages, applicability in different domains, implementation procedures, and accuracy to help you select the right technology for any application and ensure the best results possible. Real-life examples together with 161 diagrams help bring all options into sharp focus.

After introducing wireless positioning fundamentals along with various personal, commercial, and industrial applications, the book guides you step by step through radio signal time of flight methods, the signal strength method, the angle of arrival system, and the geometric use of distance measurement to determine location. It discusses location awareness applications and implementations using cellular networks. You are brought up to speed on fast-developing techniques involving local area networks (WLANs), personal area networks (WPANs), and radio frequency ID (RFID). Moreover, you find coverage of the distance measurement features in the new IEEE 802.15.4a spec for low rate wireless personal area networks. This practical resource offers detailed guidance on how to implement important technologies, including direct sequence spread spectrum, frequency hopping spread spectrum, and ultrawideband (UWB). The book also explores ways to counteract accuracy impairments caused by noise, multipath and fading, and limitations of antenna directivity and time measurement precision.

About the Author

Alan Bensky is an internationally recognized expert in radio communication engineering. He is a practicing consultant and university lecturer who has developed products and managed wireless projects in both military and commercial sectors for over 30 years. His experience includes development of algorithms and prototype designs for distance measuring features to be used in short-range communications devices, and he is the author of a book on short-range wireless communications.

XHTML by Example explains the differences in syntax between HTML and XHTML, and the concept of 'well-formedness', which is underused in HTML but crucial and required in XHTML. Further coverage includes authoring guidelines for a smooth transition to XHTML, XML DTDs and Schemas, and how they relate to XHTML, how XHTML modularization provides content to non-traditional browsers such as Palm devices, pagers, and cell phones, adding custom XHTML modules to standard XHTML, XHTML document profiling, and plans for XHTML 1.1. The final chapters cover advanced features, including Extended Forms, XHTML Basic, and Profiling content for different types of browsers.

About the Author

Ann Navarro has published many previous books on web development, including HTML By Example. Ann is a principal architect of the XHTML language as a member of the W3C's HTML Working Group, composed of 18 acknowledged experts in the HTML world. As such, her experience with the language is unrivaled. She will be able to provide insight into the decisions made during the development of XHTML, and provide a look ahead at the work in progress within the group as the book goes to press.

Sams Teach Yourself Visual Basic.NET in 21 Days provides readers with 21 structured lessons with step-by-step guidance to real-world tasks. Each chapter also contains exercises that reinforce the lessons learned in each chapter. Tips, Notes, and Cautions provide additional advice from the authors on how to get up-to-speed and programming quickly with Visual Basic.NET.

About the Author

Duncan Mackenzie is an MCSD, MCSE, and MCT who works for the MSDN (http://msdn.microsoft.com) group at Microsoft out of Redmond, Washington. He is an excited Visual Basic .NET programmer who has an annoying habit of writing the occasional article. Duncan also has been active as a Visual Basic trainer and has taught many courses ranging from intermediate to advanced VB programming. Duncan has written and collaborated on a number of books on Microsoft technologies, including Platinum Edition Using Visual Basic 6.0 and Word 2000 VBA Programmer's Reference. He also speaks at many conferences focused on Microsoft development.

Kent Sharkey is an MCSD, MCSE, MCT, and MCP+SB. He currently works at Microsoft as a Technical Evangelist within its .NET Solutions Group, his current assignment being the .NET Framework and Visual Studio .NET. Before joining Microsoft, Kent had many years of experience as a trainer and consultant, concentrating on architecting and writing n-tier applications using Visual Basic. He has written and collaborated on a number of books on Visual Basic, including MCSD Fast Track: Visual Basic Exam 70 P175; MCSD Fast Track: Visual Basic Exam 70 P176; MCSD Fast Track: 4 in 1; and Beginning Visual Basic 6.0 Application Development. He is a regular speaker at various developer conferences focused on Microsoft development.

Written from the hacker's perspective, Maximum Windows 2000 Security is a comprehensive, solutions-oriented guide to Windows 2000 security.

Topics include:

Physical & File System Security,

Password Security,

Malicious Code,

Windows 2000 Network Security Architecture and Professional Protocols,

Web Server Security,

Denial of Service Attacks,

Intrusion Detection,

Hacking Secure Code in Windows 2000.

About the Author

Anonymous is a reformed hacker and programmer and is currently at work building one of the world's largest computer security archives. While running an Internet security consulting company, he also moonlights doing contract programming for several Fortune 500 firms.

Maximum Security, Third Edition, 0-672-31871-7, $49.99, Sams, May 2001

Maximum Linux Security, Second Edition, 0-672-32134-3, $49.99, Sams, June 2001

Mark Burnett is a consultant specializing in IIS and Windows 2000 security. He is the original founder of Xato Network Security, and is currently managing editor of the IIS Security Insider newsletter.

L.J. Locher is a network administrator, programmer, security consultant who has written articles for Windows 2000 Magazine and contributed to several books for Microsoft Press and others.

Chris Doyle is CEO/managing consultant for Coneth Solutions, a leading IT consulting firm in northern California.

Chris Amaris is the chief technology office and cofounder of Convergent Computing, a Bay Area consulting firm specializing in security, performance tuning, network/systems management, infrastructure migration, and messaging.

Rand Morimoto is a well-known author, consultant, and speaker on subjects ranging from electronic commerce to electronic messaging to Internet security.

Evolutionary scheduling is a vital research domain at the interface of two important sciences - artificial intelligence and operational research. Scheduling problems are generally complex, large scale, constrained, and multi-objective in nature, and classical operational research techniques are often inadequate at solving them effectively. With the advent of computation intelligence, there is renewed interest in solving scheduling problems using evolutionary computational techniques. These techniques, which include genetic algorithms, genetic programming, evolutionary strategies, memetic algorithms, particle swarm optimization, ant colony systems, etc, are derived from biologically inspired concepts and are well-suited to solve scheduling problems since they are highly scalable and flexible in terms of handling constraints and multiple objectives. This edited book gives an overview of many of the current developments in the large and growing field of evolutionary scheduling, and demonstrates the applicability of evolutionary computational techniques to solve scheduling problems, not only to small-scale test problems, but also fully-fledged real-world problems. The intended readers of this book are engineers, researchers, practitioners, senior undergraduates, and graduate students who are interested in the field of evolutionary scheduling.

Mark Weisers vision of computers moving out of our focus of attention and becoming oblivious devices that occur in large numbers and provide smart computing und communication services to individuals as needed is still far from being reality.

This book puts the larger vision of ubiquitous computing in the context of todays mobile and distributed computing systems and presents innovative solutions at all system layers ranging from hardware over vertical and horizontal infrastructure services and novel middleware techniques to various types of application software.

Some chapters address core properties of ubiquitous applications including mobility, self-healing and self-organisation of both technical and social-technical systems. Other contributions deal with common facilities like secure e-payment or semantic web techniques and business solutions like wireless asset management or e- maintenance. Distributed systems management with self-monitoring capabilities, Internet congestion control, and novel security solutions coping with denial of service attacks against mobile agent systems and software- and hardware-based data encryption methods are further topics addressed.

This book is the fifth in the successful line of Intelligent Agents volumes published in LNAI. It is based on the fifth workshop on Agent Theories, Architectures, and Languages (ATAL'98) held during the Agents World conference in Paris in July 1998. The 25 revised full papers included were selected from a total of 90 submissions during two rounds of reviewing. Also included are an introduction by the volume editors, two summaries of panel discussions held at the workshop, a classification of all papers published so far in the five Intelligent Agents books, and a subject index. This state-of-the art survey is essential reading for anyone interested in agent technology.

First published a decade ago, the Theory and Practice of Relational Databases gained fairly noticeable popularity, particularly amongst those readers to whom it was primarily addressed—the students. After a decade, however, any book needs reviewing, for the field will have developed, presentation could be improved, choice of topics might be reflected upon and, importantly, the comments from the readers addressed.

Databases evolved into a classic component of computing degrees. The subject became well supported by a wealth of research, exceptional industrial experience and numerous books covering a wide range of topics. However, books on databases run into voluminous proportions and tend to cover the whole spectrum of the subject thus constituting a monographic source of reference rather than being a learning aide.

The book we are presenting now is meant to be just that—a tutorial text that assists the process of learning. It is supposed to have a technological bias, to present the chosen topics in a concise manner, and to incite better understanding through explanations and illustrative examples. In short, the book is meant to retain those features that made the previous edition successful.

Naturally, the book does not aspire to cover all aspects of databases nor does it pretend to present the relational theory in its entirety. The focus is on a coherent, systematic coverage of database design. The primary objective of this book is to present a reasonably comprehensive explanation of the process of the development of database application systems within the framework of the set processing paradigm.

Designing from Both Sides of the Screen: How Designers and Engineers Can Collaborate to Build Cooperative Technology is a must-have book for anyone developing user interfaces (UI). The authors define a seemingly simple goal, the Cooperative Principle for Technology: "[T]hose who are designing, building, or managing the development of technology should teach their products to follow the same basic rules of cooperation that people use with each other."

In the first section, they show lots of good and bad UI examples from different devices (PC, PDA, photocopier, even a dashboard). Bad examples include confusing pop-ups, crowded menus, and hilarious error messages like this one from Yahoo! Messenger: "You are not currently connected. Please click on Login and then Login to login again."

The book gives succinct design principles like, "Treat clicks as sacred." A violation of this would be those dreaded "Do you really mean it?" pop-ups. Using a butler as an analogy, they point out that he'd soon be out of a job if he questioned, "Madam, are you sure you want me to answer the door?" A design guideline says, "If you have an Undo feature, there is no need to break the users' flow to ask them whether they really want the program to do what they just asked it to do." Design guidelines like this appear in the margins throughout the book for easy reference and are gathered in a handy appendix.

The second section goes into detail on the creation of the authors' own project, Hubbub, a multidevice instant-messaging application. Whenever a step in the process reflects the application of a design principle, it's called out in purple in the text. Thus, the book itself is an example of a cooperative UI that helps readers keep ideas organized as they read along.

Even if you're not developing user interfaces, you'll enjoy this book. There are many moments of recognition when you see just how flawed your favorite, or most hated, everyday application/operating system/Web site is, and how easily it could have been improved. And you may even find the principles of Cooperative Technology informing nontechnological areas of your life. The authors make politeness and the anticipation of the needs of others seem logical, feasible, and elegant. --Angelynn Grant

Written from the perspectives of both a user interface designer and a software engineer, this book demonstrates rather than just describes how to build technology that cooperates with people. It begins with a set of interaction design principles that apply to a broad range of technology, illustrating with examples from the Web, desktop software, cell phones, PDAs, cameras, voice menus, interactive TV, and more. It goes on to show how these principles are applied in practice during the development process -- when the ideal design can conflict with other engineering goals.

The authors demonstrate how their team built a full-featured instant messenger application for the wireless Palm and PC. Through this realistic example, they describe the many subtle tradeoffs that arise between design and engineering goals. Through simulated conversations, they show how they came to understand each other's goals and constraints and found solutions that addressed both of their needs -- and ultimately the needs of users who just want their technology to work.

About the Author

Ellen Isaacs is a technology design leader at AT&T Labs. She has been designing user interfaces for over 12 years at such companies as Sun Microsystems, Excite@Home, and Electric Communities, where she worked on systems for Palm PDAs, the Web, Windows, and OpenWindows. Active in the human-computer interaction community, Ellen has designed and studied the use of innovative applications that help people communicate, collaborate, and manage their information. She has a Ph.D. in cognitive psychology from Stanford University. Ellen can be reached at ellen@uidesigns.com.

Alan Walendowski is a software engineer at AT&T Labs. He has been writing software for 15 years, working for companies such as Sun Microsystems, 3dfx, IBM, and ComputerVision. A "general purpose" programmer, he has developed device drivers, graphics engines, distributed systems, and user interfaces on various platforms, including PalmOS, Solaris, Linux, and Windows. Alan has a bachelor's degree in computer science from Boston University. He can be reached at alan@uidesigns.com.

The authors have developed a Web site to continue the discussion started in this book. Please visit www.uidesigns.com to contribute your comments and questions.