As a futurist, you can be fascinating at a cocktail party. Instead of dropping names, you drop facts and figures: We are expected to live well intoour 100s; the average age for young adults to marry in America is 30; the single male head of household is the fastest growing demographic group; and the...

Just today, a stranger came to my door claiming he was here to unclog a bathroom drain. I let him into my house without verifying his identity, and not only did he repair the drain, he also took off his shoes so he wouldn’t track mud on my floors. When he was done, I gave him a piece of paper that asked my bank to give him some money....

Web Search Engine Research, edited by Dirk Lewandowski, provides an understanding of Web search engines from the unique perspective of Library and Information Science. The book explores a range of topics including retrieval effectiveness, user satisfaction, the evaluation of search interfaces, the impact of search on society, reliability of...

The most authoritative guide to preparing for the ITIL Foundation Certificate in IT Service Management. It includes an extensive range of practice questions complete with explanations and key learning points and will greatly assist anyone sitting or intending to sit the ITIL Service Management Foundation Certificate. This new edition provides...

With the globalization of economies and growth of information and communication technologies (ICT), collaboration has become the key to survival. Just like individuals and mankind, business organizations also depend on collaboration for survival and growth.  The concept of departments, committees, teams, etc., which are so fundamental to...

It is common wisdom that gathering a variety of views and inputs improves the process of decision making, and, indeed, underpins a democratic society. Dubbed “ensemble learning” by researchers in computational intelligence and machine learning, it is known to improve a decision system’s robustness and accuracy. Now, fresh...

"The Rough Guide to the Philippines" is the ultimate companion for exploring this stunning Southeast Asian archipelago. Discover the Philippines' highlights in full-colour with information on everything from the sun-kissed islands of the Visayas to the lagoons of Palawan and the tribal villages of the northern Cordilleras. This...

In this compelling opus on reform, driven by extensive research, authoritative anecdotes, and insider interviews, eminent law professor and legal theorist Joel Bakan points out that as a legal and economic entity, the modern corporation is essentially pathological in nature, placing the profit motive above any social value or accountability....

Service-Oriented Applications and Architectures (SOAs) have captured the interest of industry as a way to support business-to-business interaction, and the SOA market grew by $4.9 billion in 2005. SOAs and in particular service-oriented computing (SOC) represent a promising approach in the development of adaptive distributed systems. With...

The Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) movement demonstrates how labour can self-organise production, and, as is shown by the free operating system GNU/Linux, even compete with some of the worlds largest firms. The book examines the hopes of such thinkers as Friedrich Schiller, Karl Marx, Herbert Marcuse and Antonio Negri, in the light of...

Large organisations can suffer badly when IT procurement goes wrong, but for Small to Medium Enterprises (SMEs), it can be fatal. This handbook is specifically designed to help SMEs understand and manage that risk throughout the entire procurement process. Whether it is identifying the changing IT requirements of the business, evaluating...