We wrote this book because we love games. We also love sound and music, and we love what they can bring to games to make them thrilling, involving, and moving. We want you to be able to try out your sound and your music in a real game. For a book whose examples are based exclusively around one piece of software, it may appear...

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Although speech is the most natural form of communication between humans, most people find using speech to communicate with machines anything but natural. Drawing from psychology, human-computer interaction, linguistics, and communication theory, Practical Speech User Interface Design provides a comprehensive yet concise...

Embedded computer systems are electronic systems that include a microcomputer to perform specific dedicated tasks. The computer is hidden inside these products. Embedded systems are ubiquitous. Every week millions of tiny computer chips come pouring out of factories like Freescale, Microchip, Philips, Texas Instruments, Silicon Labs,...

The origin of queueing theory and its application traces back to Erlang’s historical work for telephony networks as recently celebrated by the Erlang Centennial, 100 Years of Queueing, Copenhagen, recalling his first paper in 1909. Ever since, the simplicity and fundamental flavour of Erlang’s famous expressions, such as his...

Recently, the rapid and fundamental advances in computing technologies have been driving the role and scope of software systems to a new level. A number of new types of software systems are emerging, among which service based systems, cloud computing, pervasive computing, and Internet of Things are eminent examples. For these systems,...

was very pleased to be asked to produce the sixth edition of my artificial intelligence book. It is a compliment to the earlier editions, started over twenty years ago, that our approach to AI has been so highly valued. It is also exciting that, as new development in the field emerges, we are able to present much of it in each new...

Knowledge Management is fast becoming a hot topic of discussion and research. The capture, use, production and storage of knowledge is an issue of paramount importance for businesses, universities, public and private organizations. Because this is such an important topic, it is essential for researchers, academicians and managers to...

Non-photorealistic computer graphics is a multidisciplinary field in the research community, involving computer arts, computer graphics, computer vision, digital image/video processing and visual cognitive psychology. It aims at the computer generation of images and animations that are made in part “by hand” in appearance,...

Thwart malicious network intrusion...

There are many examples of the amazing evolutionary adaptations in the animal kingdom that aid survival, but the ability of animals to hibernate is one of the most incredible. Most vertebrates must keep warm, because hypothermia or loss of body heat is potentially fatal, but some have evolved to withstand a massive drop in...

The Blender 3D suite is probably one of the most used 3D creation and animation tools currently in existence. The reason for that popularity is both its tool set and the extraordinary fact that it can be downloaded free of charge. Blender has been around since 1998 but it was not until it entered the GNU General Public License, open source...