Adigital flood is upon us. Content inundates us. It begins as bits of content swirling everywhere—a document, an image, a written corporate procedure, a web page, or an email. The binary mist mixes, combines, and rains down on us. It pools in laptops, on desktops, and in server farms. Creeks and streams meander to corporate reservoirs....

My first encounter with software configuration management was way back in the eighties while at university – and way before I knew that it was called software configuration management. We were doing a student project and were five people working on this group project. I was coding away, slipping into experiments that eventually took the...

IN TRADITIONAL COMPUTER GRAPHICS, 3D objects are created using highlevel surface representations such as polygonal meshes, NURBS (nonuniform rational B-spline) patches, or subdivision surfaces. Using this modeling paradigm, visual properties of surfaces, such as color, roughness, and reflectance, are described by means of a shading...

Algebraic geometry has found fascinating applications to coding theory and cryptography in the last few decades. This book aims to provide the necessary theoretical background for reading the contemporary literature on these applications. An aspect that we emphasize, as it is very useful for the applications, is the interplay between...

This book suits both graduate students and researchers with a focus on discovering knowledge from scientific data. The use of computational power for data analysis and knowledge discovery in scientific disciplines has found its roots with the revolution of high-performance computing systems. Computational science in physics,...

Is there a rational way to measure coder skills and contributions and the way that software teams fit together? Could metrics help you improve coder self-awareness, teamwork, mentoring, and goal-setting? Could more detailed data help you make better hiring decisions, help make performance reviews fairer, and help your software teams...

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,...

Why is astronomy considered a science while astrology is considered only a pseudoscience? In other words, how can we prove that a theory faithfully describes reality, and that this theory can then be used to predict unknown facts? Karl Popper, the well-known philosopher, studied these problems and summarized his conclusions in one...

“Which digital camera should I buy? What is the best holiday for me and my family? Which is the best investment for supporting the education of my children? Which movie should I rent? Which web sites will I find interesting? Which book should I buy for my next vacation? Which degree and university are the best for my...

The iPad 2 and the original iPad, taken together, are the biggest thing to hit computing in years. Drawing on the best of Apple’s iPhone and iPod touch products, and Apple’s Macintosh personal computers, while introducing a whole new way of seeing and interacting with information, the two new devices have grabbed the...

Crystallization from solution is a core technology in major sectors of the chemical process and allied industries. Crystals are produced in varying sizes ranging from as small as a few tens of nanometers to several millimetres or more, both as discrete particles and as structured agglomerates. Well- established examples include bulk...

The IBM i operating system running on IBM Power Systems is a platform in transition. Many think the system is obsolete, largely due to its infamous green screen. Nothing, though, could be further from the truth. When IBM embraced open-source software such as Linux, MySQL, and Zend PHP, the system cemented a formidable position in...