Flash MX provides the perfect platform to create fun games for Internet distribution. This book takes the reader through the entire process from creating the art and animation for these games, through to programming them ready for users across the world to enjoy the results. The book is split into four sections. The first section...

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...

Where does that kernel of inspiration come from? Does it hit you when you are in the shower or when you are driving on the turnpike? Wherever it takes hold of you, it marks the beginning of the process of making a piece of art. Some artists agonize step-by-step in the creation process. For some people the work fl ows seamlessly from...

Service-Oriented Architecture is becoming the leading architecture for IT, and it is changing the way organisations work. IT is slowly but steadily gaining maturity, and becoming the flexible yet stable and reliable support for business it should be. At the same time, IT is regaining its potential to create real business innovation. SOA will...

To capture...

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 Many think the system is obsolete, largely due to its infamous green screen.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...

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...

Fuzzy systems and neural networks have attracted the growing interest of researchers, scientists, engineers, practitioners, and students in various scientific and engineering areas. Fuzzy sets and fuzzy logic are based on the way the brain deals with inexact information, while neural networks (or artificial neural networks) are modeled...

This book is intended for anyone who wants to become a better Lisp programmer. It assumes some familiarity with Lisp, but not necessarily extensive programming experience. The first few chapters contain a fair amount of review. I hope that these sections will be interesting to more experienced Lisp programmers as well, because they...

Almost everyone has had the need at one point or another to keep a list of things that need to be done. Many people pick up a piece of paper every day and write down the things they want to attempt to accomplish that day. Such lists drive many people’s lives. Some people keep them in their heads, but as we get older, we need to...

The second, revised edition of this book covers all aspects of non-uniform rational B-splines necessary to design geometry in a computer-aided environment. Basic B-spline features, curve and surface algorithms, and state-of-the-art geometry tools are all discussed. Detailed code for design algorithms and computational tricks are covered, too,...