The title says "for Absolute Beginners." By that, I mean absolute beginners at programming. My original audience was teenagers whom I hope will go to college, get degrees in Mathematics, Computer Science, or Electrical Engineering (or perhaps Technical Communication or Graphic Design), and then enter the software industry. However,...

The HTML5 canvas is revolutionizing graphics and visualizations on the Web. Powered by JavaScript, the HTML5 Canvas API enables web developers to create visualizations and animations right in the browser without Flash. Although the HTML5 Canvas is quickly becoming the standard for online graphics and interactivity, many developers fail...

Casino card games such as baccarat and blackjack differ significantly from casino games such as craps, roulette, and slot machines in that they are not indepen- dent trial processes-that is, the cards that already have been played do affect the odds on subsequent hands. Consider for a moment the game of blackjack, where the cards...

This petroleum and natural gas engineering two-volume handbook is written in the spirit of the classic handbooks of other engineering disciplines. The two volumes reflect the importance of the industry its engineers serve (i.e., Standard and Poor's shows that the fuels sector is the largest single entity in the gross domestic...

The important role that discrete structures plays in computer science is gaining recognition. Computing Curricula 2001 (CC2001), the latest curriculum recommendation for computer- related education, was a joint undertaking of the Institute for Electrical and Electronic Engineers/Computer Society (IEEE/CS) and the Association for...

Few technical lerms have gained such rapid notoriety as the appela tion "NP-complete." In the short lime since its introduction in the early 1970's, this term has come to symbolize the abyss of inherent intractability that algorithm designers increasingly face as they seek to solve larger and more complex problems. A...

This book is generally about software intellectual property and specifically about the field of software forensics. While you may never testify in a courtroom, attempt to deduce the true owner of a valuable program, or measure the intellectual property (IP) value of software source code, if you are at all involved with software you...

In several practical circumstances we have to solve a problem whose instance is not a priori completely known. Situations of this kind occur in computer systems and networks management, in financial decision making, in robotics etc. Problems that have to be solved without a complete knowledge of the instance are called on-line...