This book is about "threads" and how to use them. Thread" is just a name for a basic software "thing" that can do work on a computer. A thread is smaller, faster, and more maneuverable than a traditional process. In fact, once threads have been added to an operating system, a "process" becomes just...

The substantial effort of parallel programming is only justified if the resulting codes are adequately efficient. In this sense, all types of performance tuning are extremely important to parallel software development. With parallel programs, performance improvements are much more difficult to achieve than with con ventional...

Up until the mid-1950s President Dwight D. Eisenhower believed that waging all-out war against an enemy threatening to end your national existence was right, natural, and necessary. In the wake of World War Two this was hardly a controversial position, as memories of Munich, Pearl Harbor, and Adolf Hitler had made the notion of just...

Graph rewriting systems have come of age. In autumn 1994, the 25th anniversary of the first publication in this area was celebrated at the 5th Workshop on Graph Grammars and their Applications to Computer Science. In the interim, the subject has evolved. The current situation can be described by a three-stage model. At the very low...

Computer vision seeks a process that starts with a noisy, ambiguous signal from a TV camera and ends with a high-level description of discrete objects located in 3-dimensional space and identified in a human classification. In this book we address this process at several levels. We first treat the low-level image-processing issues of...

Natural language processing is often called an "Al-complete" task, in the sense that in order to truly process language (i.e. to comprehend, to translate, to generate) full understanding is required, which is itself the ultimate goal of Artificial Intelligence. For those who seek solutions to practical problems, this is not a...

Your encounters with GIS to date may be similar to those of a Martian arriving on Earth and being faced with a motor car. Imagine a Martian coming to Earth and stumbling across a motor car showroom. Very soon he (or she) has heard of a ‘car’ and may even have seen a few glossy brochures. Perhaps you are in the same...

Welcome to Introducing Autodesk Maya 2012 and the world of computer-generated imagery (CGI). Whether you’re new to 3D graphics or venturing into Autodesk’s powerhouse animation software from another 3D application, you’ll find this book a perfect primer. It introduces you to Maya and shows how you can work with Maya to...

SolidWorks as a topic of learning is a huge, sprawling expanse. There is a lot to know, and a lot to write about. While I have made every effort to be complete in this book, I'm sure there are some niche topics that have gone untreated. New in 2011, I have taken this book from a single volume of an immense scope to two individual volumes,...

In 2002, Web services were a hot topic and the concept of serviceoriented architecture (SOA), while not a new idea, was beginning to pick up steam. It did not take long for organizations to realize that Web services mandated the concept and organizational model of SOA to guide their selection, design, implementation, and management....

The book addresses the problem known in the literature as Open and Distance Learning (ODL). ODL describes new concepts of the process of learning-teaching organization. ODL is becoming very popular at universities that offer education via online and/or distance learning, both in synchronous or asynchronous modes. More precisely, the...

Whether you've been successfully hacked already, else...