This book was excellent, it answered all my “What ever happened to … ?” questions. It recast public common knowledge into a very revealing and HUMOROUS set of mistakes at a strategic level with plenty of indisputable concrete examples (something that a lot of books lack). It deals only with the top players in the industry and is not explicitly about strategy for small start ups, though it does have many scalable concepts and excellent pointers for any development manager (vis-a-vie:Spolsky). I couldn’t put the book down till chapter 10 (regarding MS/Bill Gates).

I was shocked at the first 10 pages revealed that he was innocent of most the villainous accusations against him, but then it got spicy again with specific revelations into his anti-trust faux pas. Factually, I found only one mistake regarding the positive public opinion on Gates prior to Netscape (probably due to the seething from the cumulative conniptions induced by MS-Word crashes in the early 90s) … for the book, this is extremely minor and very forgivable given its educational and enjoyment value. It was an excellent book.

For all engineers and students coming to finite element analysis or to ANSYS software for the first time, this powerful hands-on guide develops a detailed and confident understanding of using ANSYS's powerful engineering analysis tools.
The best way to learn complex systems is by means of hands-on experience. With an innovative and clear tutorial based approach, this powerful book provides readers with a comprehensive introduction to all of the fundamental areas of engineering analysis they are likely to require either as part of their studies or in getting up to speed fast with the use of ANSYS software in working life.

Opening with an introduction to the principles of the finite element method, the book then presents an overview of ANSYS technologies before moving on to cover key applications areas in detail.

The need for natural and effective Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) is increasingly important due to the prevalence of computers in human activities. Computer vision and pattern recognition continue to play a dominant role in the HCI realm. However, computer vision methods often fail to become pervasive in the field due to the lack of real-time, robust algorithms, and novel and convincing applications. This state-of-the-art contributed volume is comprised of articles by prominent experts in computer vision, pattern recognition and HCI. It is the first published text to capture the latest research in this rapidly advancing field with exclusive focus on real-time algorithms and practical applications in diverse and numerous industries, and it outlines further challenges in these areas. Real-Time Vision for Human-Computer Interaction is an invaluable reference for HCI researchers in both academia and industry, and a useful supplement for advanced-level courses in HCI and Computer Vision.

Whether you’re a beginner, power user, or seasoned professional, Windows Vista: The Definitive Guide has everything you need to customize the operating system, master your digital media, manage your data, and maintain your computer — regardless of which Windows Vista edition you’re using.
Why this book and not some other resource? Bestselling author and Windows expert William Stanek doesn’t just teach you the steps you need to follow, he also tells you how features work, why they work, and how you can customize them to meet your needs. You’ll learn how to squeeze out every last bit of power out of Windows Vista, and how to make the most out of its features and programs,

We live in a noisy world! In all applications (telecommunications, hands-free communications, recording, human-machine interfaces, etc.) that require at least one microphone, the signal of interest is usually contaminated by noise and reverberation. As a result, the microphone signal has to be “cleaned” with digital signal processing tools before it is played out, transmitted, or stored. This book is about speech enhancement. Different well-known and state-of-the-art methods for noise reduction, with one or multiple microphones, are discussed. By speech enhancement, we mean not only noise reduction but also dereverberation and separation of independent signals.

These topics are also covered in this book. However, the general emphasis is on noise reduction because of the large number of applications that can benefit from this technology. The goal of this book is to provide a strong reference for researchers, engineers, and graduate students who are interested in the problem of signal and speech enhancement. To do so, we invited well-known experts to contribute chapters covering the state of the art in this focused field.