Requirements engineering (RE) has long been recognized as a major factor for achieving high-quality...

The phenomenal growth of the Internet has resulted in the availability of huge amounts of online information, a situation that is overwhelming to the end-user. To overcome this problem personalization technologies have been extensively employed across several domains to provide assistance in filtering, sorting, classifying and sharing...

I can tell you how much I enjoy being a geek. I can tell you how fascinated I was with the punch-cards my dad showed me back in 1985. I can tell you how I got my first computer when I was seven. And I can tell you that I’ve loved programming since 1989. I can tell you a great many things about all that, but I’m not sure how...

My interest in this subject started when I joined the broadcast equipment manufacturer, Chyron. For a few years I was the product manager for their playout automation and asset management product lines. These were one of the first applications that gave television broadcasters the means to manage the ingest, storage, archiving, and...

The stats tell us that people are switching from Windows to the Mac in record numbers, but those stats don’t tell us why. Perhaps it’s because Windows users would like to actually enjoy using a computer for a change. Perhaps it’s because Macs just work: you take them out of the box, plug them in, and within minutes...

Linear Programming deals with the problem of minimizing or maximizing a linear function in the presence of linear inequalities. Since the development of the simplex method by George B. Dantzig in 1947, linear programming has been extensively used in the military, industrial, governmental, and urban planning fields, among others. The...

Anticipatory optimization for dynamic decision making relies on a number of different scientific disciplines. On a general level, the foundations of the field may be localized at the intersection of operations research, computer science and decision theory. Closer inspection reveals the important role of branches such as simulation,...

One of the most important things an architect can do is reflection. That is, examine systems, organizations, people and ask “What alternatives were considered and why was that particular decision made?” Thinking about the response gives an architect insight into the motivations and decision processes that others have used...

ICALP 2011, the 38th edition of the International Colloquium on Automata, Languages and Programming, was held in Z¨urich, Switzerland, during July 4–8, 2011. ICALP is a series of annual conferences of the European Association for Theoretical Computer Science (EATCS) which first took place in 1972. This year, the ICALP...

#^ecause you are reading this, 1 assume that you have recently become interested in database. Perhaps you would like to impress your friends by casually tossing out some big words that they have never heard before — words such as semantic object model, denormalization, or maybe even tuple. Perhaps your boss at work has just informed you...

A variety of problems m machine learning and digital communication deal with complex but structured natural or artificial systems. Natural patterns mat we wish to automatically classify' are a consequence of a hierarchical causal physical process. Learning about the world m which we live requires mat we extract useful sensor)'...

Determining the best way to pose a subject—a way that is simultaneously flattering, appropriate, and visually appealing—can be one of the biggest challenges in designing a successful portrait. This is especially true when creating portraits of brides, where the photographer may be called on to create anything from a very...