Product Description
This is the software professional's handbook of methods and models of CASE. The emphasis is on practical applications and on making CASE tools work effectively together. The author teaches methods for employing CASE techniques through the entire lifecycle of a software product. MIS Managers, Software Developers and Planners will find this a usable tool for the transition from sample CASE environments to organization-wide installation. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Sometimes dry but informative and valuable
This book is a collection of papers that have changed the course of software engineering from the early 1960's to the late 1980's. In these papers you can see how software development proceeded from an experimental and somewhat nebulus concept into an engineering discipline.It is a great historical reference that gives us the context for modern software engineering. Some papers you might find a bit dated, others will renew your appreciation with concepts that are still valuable today. It will also familiarize you with some of the great minds that have blazed the trail for us and given us the software engineering disciplines. ... Read more

Product Description
This wide-ranging survey of actual projects illustrates the stunning capabilities of multimedia for developers and their clients. Readers will gain insights into the economic and technical aspects of award-winning multimedia projects, along with the triumphs and frustrations of design, development, and financing. CD-ROM contains the complete book in hypertext/media, animated video, soundtrack, and interactive features. ... Read more

Product Description
This book teaches beginners how to create interesting computer graphics. It takes a top-down approach that starts readers creating interesting computer graphics from the start using OpenGL.Interactive Computer Graphics, 3/e features a top-down, programming-oriented approach to computer graphics. Capitalizing upon this top-down and hands-on approach, the text quickly gets readers writing interesting 3D graphics programs. Angel uses OpenGL, a graphics library supported by most workstations, as well as the C and C++ programming languages, allowing readers to be aware of what is happening at the lowest levels of computer-graphics programming. This revision includes extensive 2-color art and graphics to bring important concepts to life. This book is ideal for programmers looking for a hands-on introduction to computer-graphics programming that allows them to start writing 3D graphics programs early on. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (26)

Not a good book
This is a very jargon-based book. The author likes to use symbols or what so called algebra representation for many of the mathematic terming particularly in matrix representation. This make the book not worthy to buy. Author should use number in mathematic representations rather algebra so that readers can have quick grasp over the topics, but the author didn't. Most often time you have to imagine yourself what are the 'pictures' that the author tries to tell you.

To me, a good book must not to be too jargon-based, no long story, straight forward, and use simple example but still can let one apply it to complex situation later. For example, why should use a + b = c by right it is best to explain it with 1 + 1 = 2? Because using numeric number as example is easier and faster to understand, once the reader understand, then automatically they can apply it using a + b = c. Unfortunately, this book does not fulfil this requirement. This is why I am not very happy with the book because what normally the readers wish from the book is to have as fast possible in grasping the knowledge and apply it as soon possible, but not to sit around to think and analyze things for long time.

Further, author assumes you know quite number of things(especially programming using OpenGL API) before you can start programming following the guide of the book. The book is not as comprehensible even for some of the advance graphic students as the examples given is really difficult to understand (particularly graphics algorithm). Again, without simple and comprehensible examples, you have to use your own imagination to figure it out and most often time you may not able to do so due to the complex nature of the theories.

Many computer science students have claimed that the computer graphics is a 'killer subject'. From the feedbacks I have gathered so far, I found that all they are using this book as a core text book. To be fair, this book may suitable for computer graphic students with one condition, that a good instructor who are really expert in this area is with you, as warned by the other reviewer before.

So, buy this book only if you are not learning computer graphic yourself, and you must have a very good instructor/teacher/lecturer in this area. Otherwise, do not buy this book!

A terrible textbook!
This is a very terrible text book. Don't ever look at this book if you are a newbie in OpenGL, trigonometry, calculus, linear algebra and the mathematic's dot product. I think this book is suitable only for the University which the author is lecturing in. My university is using this book as the core text book of the computer graphic course, the end result is that almost 95% of the student cannot code well using OpenGL by following guidance of this book, where everyone is looking for coding and references from Internet just for the assignment, how annoy it is. Further, the lecturer also cannot understand the book's content, they lecture only by using the powerpoint slaid which is from the author himself, which make the situation worst.

If I am not mistaken, the author has claimed that the book is to help the student to program graphics as soon possible using OpenGL. It is absolutely not the true. This book will lead you to hell if you don't prepare yourself well in C/C++ and of course, OpenGL API. And if your lecturer does not know well in OpenGL API or C/C++ as mentioned, may God bless you. Another thing, if you look at the exercises of each chapter, I wonder if anyone who is beginner in computer graphics and by solely depend on the book can solve the problems.

Anyhow, I rate the book one star do not mean that this book is not a good book. To my opinion, this is absolutely a good book for those who have very strong computer graphic background together with mathematic skills or those who are advance learner in this field.

In fourth edition, I really hope that the author will come out something such as 'International Edition' of this book which the content may vary from the original version. This is because the computer science syllabus may vary from country to country. Bear in mind that the Top-down approach is suitable well in author's University or country does not mean that it is suitable to other University or country. This is what I mean the book is suitable only for the university or college that the author is lecturing in.

Remember, buy this book only if you already well-prepared yourself in C/C++, OpenGL API, trigonometry, linear algebra, geometry and some calculus basic.

Why this book is used for an Intro Class is beyond me.
Dont buy this book if you are wanting to lern how to program openGL. Buy it if you know openGL and want to learn how it works.

It is not a book for the openGL newbie. So why many teachers use it for an intro to Graphics Programing class boggles the mind. Angelexplantions of theories are hard to follow at best. In one chapter he spends an whole large section explaning the theory behind a lighting model then states that openGL doesn't use this method for lighting. So why even cover it in an openGL book?? This is less a book about openGL and more about 3D modeling and lighting theory in general.

decent starting point to 3d graphics programming
having read many books and articles on 3d graphics, as well as general programming, i believe this book is certainly better than most.
while this books is aimed most certainly at an academic audience, it covers the fundamentals clearly and solidly. and while i still think foley is the standard, this book covers a lot more of the modern issues as well as providing a practical grounding using opengl. (the lack of which was the *major* downside of foley)

there are also some good introductions to more advanced issues in the latter third of the book, which makes for interesting reading.

perhaps my only concern with this book is the obsessive use of mathematics to explain simple concepts. often, the mathematical formulae provided offer no further explanation to the text, and simply serves to distract readers without strong mathematical backgrounds.
to quote one of my 3rd year math profs : "mathematics should be used as mathematicians intended - succinctly!"
(i can only imagine that the authors believed the formulae would "lend credibility" to the text.)

overall, i would recommend!

Ideal for me
For an amateur UNIX/Linux C programmer like me, this book is a
very good introduction to OpenGL. I have bought several graphics books,
but Angel is the only author I have come across who has
taken the trouble to provide a makefile to ensure his readers
can actually compile any program.Once you can do that, you
should be able to teach yourself with the guidance from the book.
If you have trouble understanding dot products then you cannot
blame this book if you find it hard.Ultimately you will only
learn OpenGL (or any programming) by experimentation. Don't
expect to read any single book and become an expert overnight. ... Read more

Product Description
A value-priced collection of the four most popular products from Apple: Macs, Mac OS X Snow Leopard, iPod & iTunes, and the iPhone

The runaway success of Apple's iPod, iPhone, iTunes Store, and Macs have led to unprecedented sales success, making Apple the global leader for portable media devices.

This collection of minibooks covers the four most popular products from Apple—Macs, Mac OS X Snow Leopard, iPod & iTunes, and the iPhone—and is essential reading for everyone from experienced Apple users looking to upgrade to Apple's latest offerings, or first-time Apple customers who may be new to Mac.

• A better value can’t be found! Four minibooks cover Macs, Mac OS X Snow Leopard, iPod & iTunes, and the iPhone
•   iPod & iTunes For Dummies gets you started with your iPod and shows you how to load it with songs, organize your music with playlists, browse and purchase content from the iTunes store, burn CDs, and more
• iPhone For Dummies helps you figure out all the essentials: browse the Internet, send and receive e-mail and text messages, watch movies and TV shows, import pictures—and even make phone calls
• Macs For Dummies walks you through the nuts and bolts of your Mac and explains how to navigate the Mac desktop, surf the Internet, e-mail photos to friends and family, create and print documents, and more
• Mac OS X Snow Leopard For Dummies offers advice for getting to know the Dock and Finder, working your way through windows and dialogs, and organizing and managing files and folders

Enjoy a bite of some of the most popular Apple products with this unique collection! ... Read more

Product Description
With the advent of computers, search theory emerged in the sixties as an area of research in its own right. Sorting questions arising in computer science were the first to be thoroughly studied. But soon it was found that the intrinsic complexity of many other data structures could be fruitfully analyzed from a search theoretic point of view. Worst case and average case analyses of algorithms have since become indispensable tools in many fields bordering on combinatorics and computer science.

Combinatorial Search gives an overview of the subject, ranging from such time-honored problems as the defective coin puzzle to some very recent advances in parallel computing. It stresses the strong connections with information theory, combinatorics, tree structures, order and graphs.

Each chapter contains a large number of exercises of various degrees of difficulty with an addendum of solutions to recommended exercises. There are also bibliographical notes to all topics discussed and all chapters are concluded with an extensive list of open problems. ... Read more

Product Description
Structure-based editors are software tools that aid in the development of programs through the knowledge and utilization of the underlying structure inherent in all graphcal and non-graphical programming languages. They have developed from the early, highly restrictive text-based program editors to sophisticated graphical tools supporting new languages, methodologies, representations, and views. The concepts used to create these powerful tools have now been incorporated into widely available commercial systems, moving them out of the domain of experimental research vehicles and firmly into the market place.
This is the first book to provide a comprehensive overview of structure-based editors and environments. The two world-renowned editors bring together papers from international researchers covering the underlying concepts, benefits, applications, problems and lessons learned from the on-going development of this highly complex class of tools. This book will encourage the reader to apply the structure-editing concepts to their own field of work and will identify common links to widely used programming environments such as Visual Basic, Visual C, editors for HTML, and, most recently, editors for Java, tools which are essentially structure editors although rarely identified as such. The book is organized into four sections, each with three chapters from authors who are currently working in the field.
Structure-based Editors and Environments will be essential reading for students and researchers studying Human-computer interaction as well as computer systems developers and software engineers working on highly interactive software.

Details the use of structure editors in many common commercial applications
Examines links between seemingly past concepts with very modern approaches
Clarifies the range of topics which fall under the umbrella term Structure Editing ... Read more

Product Description
"Introduction to Computer Performance Analysis with Mathematica" is designed as a beginner's guide to computer performance analysis and assumes only a basic knowledge of computers and some mathematical proficiency. The mathematical aspects have been relegated to a Mathematica program disk, allowing readers to try out most of the techniques as they work their way through the book. Ideally suited for this self-tutoring task, the use of Mathematica offers valuable properties such as visualization system for functions and data and a modeling and data analysis environment. However, no prior experience of Mathematica is required and readers should benefit from this book even if they bypass the Mathematica exercises. ... Read more

Product Description
The European Computer Driving Licence (ECDL) is a European-wide qualification that enables you to demonstrate your competence in computer skills. It covers a range of specific knowledge areas and skill sets, broken down into seven modules. Module 4: Spreadsheets covers the basic concepts of spreadsheets and the ability to use a spreadsheet application on a PC. Included are the basic operations for developing, formatting and using a spreadsheet, together with the use of basic formulas and functions to carry out standard mathematical and logical operations. Importing objects and creating graphs and charts are also covered. This study guide takes you through all the knowledge areas and skills required to pass Module 4 of the ECDL syllabus. Throughout we have used clear, jargon free, self-paced exercises to provide you with an understanding of all the key elements needed for the ECDL Test. ... Read more

Product Description
This paperback version of Brenda Laurel's 1991 hardcover classic features a new chapter that takes the reader through virtual reality and beyond to a new level of human computer interaction that is genuinely transforming. Provocative, practical, and thoroughly enjoyable reading, this book presents a new theory of human-computer activity.Amazon.com Review
When Brenda Laurel first wrote this book in the early '80s, itmay have seemed a bit far-fetched to most computer users: "What?How can my interaction with a computer have anything to do withtheatre? I'm typing!" But with the emergence of WebTV, VRML, andthe dawning of real online interactivity where our interface with thecomputer and others is not the keyboard, but instead our imagination and thesuspension of disbelief it requires, Laurel's ideas are finallycoming of age. Snotty digerati might sniff that this is anold book, but I would argue that it is a book that has finally come ofage. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Putting dramatic structure on the user interface
The idea that is perhaps most central to this book is that if you design the action involved in a user interface, the design of all other objects in the domain will follow. To support this, Laurel reconciles the seeminglydisparate and relates user interface design with producing a play intheater. For example, the way she brings in the Freytag triangle works verywell.

This said, I wish I wish that we would see a book from Laurel (orfrom one of her other usability guru companions) that treats withmorerecent issues-- particularly the Internet. I think she's one of thesmartest people out there in the field, and I try to read what she'swritten, but I'm getting tired of reading about Habitat, Guides, and theHolodek on Star Trek. That's not the fault of the book, given that it cameout pre-Internet hype, but it did inflect the reading experience with someweariness.

Perhaps this should be called the "Tao of Software Design"
... because it reminds me a great deal of Bruce Lee's "Tao of Jeet Kune Do." In that book, the reader is warned in the preface to approach the book actively with pencil in hand to jot notes and draw linesbetween connected ideas. I have done this with Brenda's book. It will takeabout 6-7 reads and lots of mental connections before everything starts togel.

It is a new "Way" of thinking, and, indeed, is so farahead of any way we design software now that many ideas that this booksuggests still need extensive research to even understand how to implement.(e.g. Freytag graphs as a way of structuring software/task flow to providea pleasing HCI, and Brenda's Principles of Intelligent Computer Agency as ameans for implementing truly AI agents with personality andemotions).

Along with the wonderful head rush of compelling new theory,she also takes the second half of the book to explain principles ofsoftware design that you can implement in your programs _now_, and alsotakes the time to introduce you to fascinating HCI research offshoots likeProgramming by Demonstration.

It is wonderful writing, and her ideas andconcepts continually refresh and remind me why I am in such an excitingfield.

Good ideas, but I felt the book lacked a clear focus.
I finished reading "Computers as Theater" by Brenda Laural yesterday.The book has many good ideas in it, and it may well be worth reading just to pick these up.

It is also one of those books which does not do a good job of unifying its material, in my opinion.Rather than being a progression of ideas that builds to some intellectual climax, it meanders through various interesting points not quite aimlessly.The book introduces two useful diagrams: 'flying wedges' which describe how the space of possibilities in a drama go from the 'possible' to converge on the 'necessary', and 'freytag triangles', which measures the rise and fall of a plot.If these are used to describe this book (a slight abuse?), it doesn't fare well. The freytag diagram never peaks, and the wedge doesn't converge to the 'necessary'.This may be because the objectives for the book were not clear. As a reader, I didn't realize she was not (mostly) speaking to the modern commercial software world for quite a while into the book.The book also ended with two chapters about virtual reality (the substance, not the hype), and I was left wondering if perhaps *this* was what the book was really about (if so, I didn't see it coming).

All that said: there are many good ideas in the book, some of which will make you stop and think for a while (e.g. those diagrams).It is valuable because of this.As an individual, I simply wish the book had been better structured, for I'd have gotten more out of it.

Aristotle's Poetics applied to software design
Laurel is quite the scholar - she's got experience and learning in the fields of theater and human-computer activities. Laurl applies Aristotle's Poetics to computer software design. I especially liked her comparison of computers to theatrical production - a tremendous amount of action goes on "behind the scenes." As Laurel points out, dramatic expression is a type of virtual reality; anything we develop with computers has a very long heritage. A must-read for the digerati ... Read more

Product Description
The is the fourth volume in a five-volume series on Computers and Typesetting, all authored by Donald E. Knuth. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

--
Seven years after his 1979 book "TEX and METAFONT", at the start of a revolution leading to ubiquitous desktop publishing (first Macintosh in 1984), Knuth published a set of five books on TEX, METAFONT, and typefaces.

His purpose as teacher was to show a new way to write and document computer programs -- "literate" programming. In these volumes Knuth published two sizeable PASCAL applications for computerized typesetting and -- as a byproduct -- invented a documentation tool, CWEB, that both preserves the textual accuracy of the source code and improves programmer comprehension for debugging and maintenance purposes.

The peer review process implied by Knuth's demonstration, his careful attention to the tiniest details, and his gift of the source code to the public domain are all foundations of today's open source community.

This is hardly an introductory text on programming and very few of us read computer programs for fun. That said, a programmer with some experience could learn a great deal by thorough study and imitation of the master craftsmen (don't forget about John D. Hobby) at work here.

Useful in ways you wouldn't imagine
MF: The Program is a surprisingly readable batch of source code (at least partially co-written by John Hobby, by the way). Yes, you can reproduce (almost) the book from the source code (and get a printout that includes post-publication bugs fixes and enhancements), but it's not quite as convenient and lacks the page-by-page mini-indices. Whether the convenience is worth [the money] is up to you.

Where the book is especially helpful is for someone who's looking to see graphical algorithims spelled out by a master programmer in a literate and enteratining way. Me, I've got the full 5 volume set of TeX/MF books, but then, once upon a time, this was how I made my living. ... Read more

Product Description
This digital document is an article from Available For Acquisition: FirstList, published by Thomson Gale on December 1, 2006. The length of the article is 430 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Available For Acquisition; 59 -- Miscellaneous Retail; COMPUTER HARDWARE SALES AND SERVICE.
Author: Gale Reference Team
Publication: Available For Acquisition: FirstList (Magazine/Journal)
Date: December 1, 2006
Publisher: Thomson Gale
Page: NA

Distributed by Thomson Gale ... Read more

Product Description
You may know what your environmental compliance obligations are, but do you know how EPA sees them? Created by the EPA, this industry-specific handbook includes a comprehensive environmental profile, industrial process information, pollution prevention techniques, pollutant release data, and regulatory requirements unique to the electronics and computer industry. Use the information presented in this book to build a foundation for developing holistic solutions to environmental problems, research the electronics and computer industry and its environmental regulations, understand compliance issues, develop industry-specific training sessions/programs, or create and improve innovative pollution-prevention programs that would make any EPA inspector smile. ... Read more

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From the HOW TO series, a guide to creating and marketing software ideas, explaining how to identify and research the market, develop a marketing plan, write the software, launch a product, and how to gain and keep customers. ... Read more