Posted: October 14th, 2008, 7:38pm CEST
Given SAP’s dominance in the enterprise resource planning (ERP) market, many companies and their managers encounter SAP AG applications in some form or another. Of those organizations, some utilize Activity-Based Costing/Management concepts to perform more accurate cost assignments or drive performance initiatives. Managers are then faced with trying to determine how Activity-Based Costing can be incorporated into the SAP environment. We have written this book to help business managers understand the capabilities of the SAP R/3 business application to support Activity-Based Costing, Management, and Budgeting. This book is not intended as a primer in Activity-Based Costing (ABC): many such conceptual introductions have already been written. In order to bring the focus on the application of ABC concepts to an SAP R/3 environment, it is assumed that the reader has knowledge of the ABC framework.
This book is divided into three parts: the conceptual foundation, the capabilities of SAP ABC, and integration with other tools.
Posted: October 14th, 2008, 6:46pm CEST
Windows Server 2008 is the first update to Microsoft’s server operating system in nearly five years, and among the major changes is the new Internet Information Services 7.0, which probably marks the biggest departure from previous IIS versions that we have ever seen.
Previous recent releases of IIS have concentrated on improving security and reliability and thus have mostly involved changes “under the hood.” For administrators and developers, adaptation to the new products had been relatively simple.
With IIS 7.0, however, Microsoft has fundamentally changed the way the product works, with new configuration, delegated administration, and extensibility options designed to address perceived feature weakness compared to competing products. At the same time, IIS 7.0 now has new, real-time diagnostic and troubleshooting features and absorbs functionality from ASP.NET (such as caching and forms-based authentication), making this available across all requests.
With the addition of a brand-new FTP server and FastCGI support, IIS 7.0 leapfrogs its major competitors in feature and flexibility options and indicates a clear effort by Microsoft to capture more of the public-facing web server market, in addition to its existing strong presence in the corporate sphere.
For administrators and developers, the fundamental changes in the way that IIS 7.0 works, is administered, and can be extended mean that the knowledge required to fully take advantage of IIS 7.0’s new features is substantially greater than in previous versions.
The authors have focused on capturing the very best of the new features in IIS 7.0 and how you can take advantage of them. The writing styles vary from chapter to chapter because some of the foremost experts on IIS 7.0 have contributed to this book. Drawing on our expertise in deployment, hosting, development, and enterprise operations, we believe that this book captures much of what today’s IIS administrators need in their day-to-day work.
Posted: October 14th, 2008, 6:43pm CEST
Creative Environments is a follow-up on the book Creative Space in the same series and by the same authors, serving this time as editors of a broader book on computational intelligence and knowledge engineering tools for supporting knowledge creation. This book contains four parts. The first part presents a further development of models of knowledge creation presented already in Creative Space, in particular the Triple Helix of normal academic knowledge creation and a new, integrated model of normal academic and organizational knowledge creation, called Nanatsudaki (seven waterfalls) Model. The second part presents computational intelligence tools for knowledge acquisition by machine learning and data mining, for debating, brainstorming, for roadmapping and for integrated support of academic creativity. The third part presents the use of statistics for creativity support, virtual laboratories, gaming and role playing for creativity support, methods of knowledge representation and multiple criteria aggregation, distance and electronic learning. The last part addresses knowledge management and philosophical issues and contains chapters: on management of technology and knowledge management for academic R&D; on knowledge management and creative holism or systems thinking in the knowledge age; on technology and change or the role of technology in knowledge civilisation; on the emergence of complex concepts in science; and the final chapter on summary and conclusions, including a proposal of an integrated episteme of constructive evolutionary objectivism, necessary for the knowledge civilization age.
Posted: October 14th, 2008, 6:43pm CEST
This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-proceedings of the International Dagstuhl-Seminar on Empirical Software Engineering, held in Dagstuhl Castle, Germany in June 2006. The purpose of this workshop was to identify the progress of empirical software engineering since 1992, to summarize the state-of-the-art in ESE, to summarize the state-of-the-practice in ESE in industry, and to develop an ESE roadmap for research, practice, education and training.
The 54 revised full papers in this state-of-the-art survey were carefully reviewed and selected from the presentations during the workshop, that provided a forum for a small but representative group of leading experts in software engineering with an emphasis on empirical studies from both universities and industry to meet and reflect on past successes and failures, assess the current state of the practice and research, identify challenges, and define future directions. The papers are organized in topical sections on the empirical paradigm, measurement and model building, technology transfer and education, as well as roadmapping.
Posted: October 14th, 2008, 6:20pm CEST
If you are a an engineer working for a telecommunications carrier or Internet service provider, or a manufacturer or student interested in communication technology and digital communications, this comprehensive overview of broadband access technologies is essential reading for you. The book offers you an in-depth understanding of unbundling for voice and data services, and provides expert guidance on hardware considerations and critical communication protocols.
You get extensive coverage of the various alternatives for the customer premises, including home networking, single equipment customer premises, and multi-equipment customer premises. Supported with nearly 250 illustrations and including over 120 equations, the book covers a wide range of key topics to help you with your work in the field, from telecommunication networks evolution, existing infrastructure and dial-up modems, and HDSL and ADSL, to the digital subscriber line access multiplexer, protocol architecture, and VDSL. Moreover, the book dedicates entire chapters to the emergent voice over video DSL, Wireless Local Loop, and Optical and EFM Access Networks.
About the Author
Maurice Gagnaire is an associate professor in the networking department at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Télécommunications, where he received his Ph.D. in computer science and networks. He is also a member of the IEEE Communications Society.
Posted: October 14th, 2008, 6:20pm CEST
The issue of identifying wetlands, quantifying their change over time, and characterizing the influences of nature and humans on them is a difficult one. Wetlands are a mix of terrestrial and aquatic systems that create a unique condition. Long of secondary interest in the minds of the public, scientists, and engineers, they have been evaluated on a systematic basis in detail only as of late. Now, a number of people are seeking knowledge of wetlands and techniques to better characterize, monitor, and maintain these unique features in the landscape. To that end, Wetland Landscape Characterization was written.
Posted: October 14th, 2008, 6:19pm CEST
During the final decade of the twentieth century, Microsoft achieved historic levels of marketing success in the computing business. Microsoft offered an alternative so economically appealing to the computing industry that resistance seemed futile in all but a few cases.
Two questions remain. First, “Is there a solution to the downtime and business interruption often associated with Microsoft Server platforms?” This alone is compelling enough for some computing environments in which the Microsoft solution is not considered acceptable.
The second question is “How can this solution cost-effectively increase the capacity of our data processing resources?” In other words, how can the Microsoft solution grow with future computing needs.
Clustering provides an answer to both of these questions.
For a moment let us turn to a story told by the late, great Rear Admiral Grace Hopper. Her words, in what we simply call the oxen story, provide an illuminating parallel to the computing system dilemma that we face. The story expressed her vision about the future of computing; Rear Admiral Hopper was, in effect, predicting the future in which we are now living. She has our deepest respect as an inventor and visionary in the field of computing. This story of hers really says it all.
Posted: October 14th, 2008, 6:19pm CEST
Stefan Voß and David Woodruff have edited a carefully refereed volume by experts on optimization software class libraries. The book focuses on flexible and powerful collections of computational objects for addressing complex optimization problems. These component class libraries are suitable for use in the increasing number of optimization applications that stand alone or are imbedded in advanced planning, engineering, and bioinformatics applications. Most researchers today use a number of modeling language software packages and a number of software solvers to solve computational problems. This book outlines packaged software class libraries to enable researchers to find cost-effective and efficient methods of getting problems coded into the computer, or into a modeling language package or into optimizing solvers - hence providing software coding solutions to whatever specialized needs a specific problem might require. Optimization Software Class Libraries provides the reader with a rich overview of the variety of components for framing problems. With the growing number of application-specific software systems and advance planning methods for specific classes of problems, class libraries for optimization are increasingly useful, practical, and needed. Benefits of Optimization Software Class Libraries are: Researchers will be able to invest more effort in examining better algorithms, performing experiments, and making use of problem-specific knowledge; The libraries that encapsulate general-purpose algorithms as reusable, high-quality software components are themselves significant contributions to ongoing research; and In addition to the research benefits, the libraries described provide substantial practical value to organizations that adopt them.
Posted: October 14th, 2008, 6:19pm CEST
Video Object Extraction and Representation: Theory and Applications is an essential reference for electrical engineers working in video; computer scientists researching or building multimedia databases; video system designers; students of video processing; video technicians; and designers working in the graphic arts.
In the coming years, the explosion of computer technology will enable a new form of digital media. Along with broadband Internet access and MPEG standards, this new media requires a computational infrastructure to allow users to grab and manipulate content. The book reviews relevant technologies and standards for content-based processing and their interrelations. Within this overview, the book focuses upon two problems at the heart of the algorithmic/computational infrastructure: video object extraction, or how to automatically package raw visual information by content; and video object representation, or how to automatically index and catalogue extracted content for browsing and retrieval. The book analyzes the designs of two novel, working systems for content-based extraction and representation in the support of MPEG-4 and MPEG-7 video standards, respectively.
Features of the book include:
- Overview of MPEG standards;
- A working system for automatic video object segmentation;
- A working system for video object query by shape;
- Novel technology for a wide range of recognition problems;
- Overview of neural network and vision technologies
Video Object Extraction and Representation: Theory and Applications will be of interest to research scientists and practitioners working in fields related to the topic. It may also be used as an advanced-level graduate text.
Posted: October 14th, 2008, 6:18pm CEST
Sams Teach Yourself Visual C++.NET in 21 Days, 2nd Edition is a time-saving guide walking you through Visual C++ tools and wizards for building applications and places VC++ in the context of the new Visual Studio.NET environment. This book emphasizes using Visual C++ tools and wizards to generate code. Code examples are augmented with C++ language sidebars: Readers who need a refresher on the language or want to go further "under the hood" will have a context, while those who don't can easily skip that coverage. The revision includes more information throughout on Microsoft Foundation Classes (MFC), how Windows applications work, and how MFC abstracts the Windows functionality to simplify building applications. Chapters on managed code, ATL functionality, and interacting with VB and C# components will help users begin to master the new .NET aspects of Visual C++.
About the Author
Davis Chapman first began programming computers while working on his Masters Degree in Music Composition. While writing applications for computer music, he discovered that he enjoyed designing and developing computer software. It wasn't long before he came to the realization that he stood a much better chance of eating if he stuck with his new-found skill and demoted his hard-earned status as a "starving artist" to a part-time hobby. Since that time, Davis has focused on the art of software design and development, with a strong emphasis on the practical application of Client/Server and Web/Internet technologies. Davis was the lead author for Building Secure Applications with Visual Basic, Sams Teach Yourself Visual C++ 6 in 21 Days, Web Development with Visual Basic 5 and Building Internet Applications with Delphi 2. Davis was also a contributing author on MFC Programming with Visual C++ 6 Unleashed, Special Edition Using Active Server Pages, and Running a Perfect Web Site, Second Edition. He has been a consultant working and living in Dallas, Texas, for the past 12 years. Davis can be reached at davis@chaperada.net.
Posted: October 14th, 2008, 8:48am CEST
This book has been a long time in the making. The origins of the ideas in this book lie in 1990 when I attended a NATO-funded Advanced Study Institute in Las Navas del Marqués in Spain on ‘Cognitive and Linguistic Aspects of Geographic Space’, organised by Andrew Frank and David Mark. After a long gestation, I started to write the first draft in the spring of 1995 when on a term’s sabbatical leave from Birkbeck College, London. At that, time I thought I would simply update and expand my 1989 edited collection on three-dimensional GIS. However, despite my best efforts I was unable to finish the book before returning to Birkbeck after my sabbatical. Perhaps that was for the best, as over the course of the next year doubts began to grow that my 1995 book outline was the right one. I attended the NCGIA GIS and Environmental Modelling Conference in Santa Fe, New Mexico in January 1996 and I helped to organise the ESF-funded GISDATA meeting on ‘Spatial socio-economic units’ in Nafplion, Greece in May 1996, where new ‘multidimensional’ ideas took root.
The rest is history. I dipped my toe in philosophy, I gathered material on spatial and temporal representation from many disciplines outside geography and informatics, and four years went by while I developed the new outline. I eventually began writing again in earnest in the summer of 1999 and I finished the manuscript in July 2000. Over its five years of development, this book has been written in a variety of places with help from many different people. During my 1995 sabbatical, I wrote substantial parts of the book at the Environmental Spatial Analysis Group (GASA) in the New University of Lisbon, and at the US National Center for Geographic Information and Analysis (NCGIA) in Santa Barbara. I would therefore like to thank Antonio Câmara of GASA and Mike Goodchild of NCGIA for their hospitality and support. I also wrote parts of the book at the Palacky University of Olomouc in the Czech Republic, at GISDATA conferences in Rostock, Nafplion and Strasbourg, at the NCGIA Initiative 21 meeting in San Antonio, at the NCGIA Varenius initiative on Discovering Geographic Knowledge and backstage at the Theatre on the Bay in Cape Town! Fittingly, given the location of the case studies in part II, some of the book has even been written in the Hut on Scolt Head Island!
Posted: October 14th, 2008, 8:48am CEST
Deductive Databases and their Applications is an introductory text aimed at undergraduate students with some knowledge of database and information systems. The text comes complete with exercises and solutions to encourage students to tackle problems practically as well as theoretically. The author presents the origins of deductive databases in Prologue before proceeding to analyse the main deductive database paradigm - the data-log model. The final chapters are dedicated to closely related topics such as prepositional expert systems, integrity constraint specification and evaluation, and update propagation. Particular attention is paid to CASE tool repositories.
Posted: October 14th, 2008, 8:48am CEST
Find the right site, set up an account, and play to win!
The fun and easy way® to take poker online and win!
Passionate about poker? This easy-to-follow guide gives you the lowdown on the hottest games around — including Texas Hold 'Em, Omaha, and Seven-Card Stud. Read up on how to find the best sites, put your money online safely, size up your opponents, and take your poker game to the next level.
Discover how to:
- Set up an account
- Make secure online bets
- Devise a winning strategy
- Follow online etiquette
- Participate in online tournaments
About the Author
Mark "The Red" Harlan and Chris Derossi are avid poker players and the masterminds behind the next-generation poker software licensed to Gamesgrid.com.
Posted: October 14th, 2008, 8:48am CEST
AutoCAD "X" For Dummies is being updated to reflect the new features in the latest release of AutoCAD.
Get acquainted with AutoCAD, one piece at a time
Take a quick tour of AutoCAD, see what's new, and start making real drawings
If ever there was a software package that could use some down-to-earth explanation, it's AutoCAD. Thank heavens for this book! It's all here, from the basics of what AutoCAD does and how to set up a drawing to adding text and dimensions, printing (or plotting, in AutoCADese), and playing nicely with other AutoCAD kids.
Discover how to
- Compare AutoCAD and AutoCAD LT
- Create basic drawings
- Manage metric units
- Use dynamic blocks
- Re-use with blocks and xrefs
- Add multiline text
About the Author
Mark Middlebrook used to be an engineer but gave it up when he discovered that he couldn’t handle a real job. He is now principal of Daedalus Consulting, an independent CAD and computer consulting company in Oakland, California. (In case you wondered, Daedalus was the guy in ancient Greek legend who built the labyrinth on Crete. Mark named his company after Daedalus before he realized that few of his clients would be able to pronounce it and even fewer spell it.) Mark is also a contributing editor for
Cadalyst magazine and Webmaster of markcad.com. When he’s not busy being a cad, Mark sells and writes about wine for Paul Marcus Wines in Oakland. He also teaches literature and philosophy classes at St. Mary’s College of California — hence “Daedalus.”
AutoCAD 2006 For Dummies is his eighth book on AutoCAD.
David Byrnes is one of those grizzled old-timers you’ll find mentioned every so often in AutoCAD 2006 For Dummies. He began his drafting career on the boards in 1979 and discovered computer-assisted doodling shortly thereafter. He first learned AutoCAD with version 1.4, around the time when personal computers switched from steam to diesel power. Dave is based in Vancouver, British Columbia, and has been an AutoCAD consultant and trainer for fifteen years. Dave is a contributing editor for Cadalyst magazine and has been a contributing author to ten books on AutoCAD. He teaches AutoCAD and other computer graphics applications at Emily Carr Institute of Art + Design and British Columbia Institute of Technology in Vancouver. Dave has tech edited six AutoCAD For Dummies titles. AutoCAD 2006 For Dummies is his first chance to make his own errors.
Posted: October 14th, 2008, 8:47am CEST
JavaScript 1.5 by Example starts with a taste of JavaScript – what it is, what it's for, and what readers need to get started. The book then explains how to add JavaScript to existing HTML pages, leading readers into the fundamentals of the language including JavaScript syntax, notation and conventions, communicating with users via input and output, manipulating variables and data, logic statements in JavaScript, and object programming with JavaScript. The book progresses to an explanation of JavaScript's role in Dynamic HTML, and how that power can be exploited to create animation, navigation, forms processing and more.
About the Author
Adrian Kingsley-Hughes and Kathie Kingsley-Hughes have been using and abusing JavaScript ever since Netscape Navigator 2.0 and Internet Explorer 3.0. They are writers, trainers and speakers in the fields of Internet Development and Microsoft Office integration. In addition, Adrian is technical director of two UK-based companies; Kathie is Managing Director of a UK development company and partner in a UK-based design firm. They previously contributed to Wrox Press's VBScript Programmer's Reference and XML Applications and have written training manuals for online teaching at ZDU and SmartPlanet.com, in topics such as VBScript and cascading style sheets.
Posted: October 14th, 2008, 8:47am CEST
This book emerged from teaching a graduate level course in propagation and smart antennas at the Naval Postgraduate School. In its present form, it is suitable not only as a graduate level text, but also as a reference book for industry and research use. The area of radiowave propagation and smart antennas is highly interdisciplinary, extracting material from electromagnetics, communications, and signal processing. This book is useful to workers in electromagnetics who would like to supplement their background with relevant communicational aspects and to workers in communications who would like to supplement their background with relevant electromagnetic aspects. Anyone with a basic understanding of probability, wave propagation, digital communications, and elementary signal processing should be able to appreciate the contents of the book.
