Indie developers and other people who work on games for a living face all kinds of interesting income tax and small business formation issues that more traditional businesses simply don't: not being geographically bound, relying on alternative funding, long periods of time with no income, and having multiple options for tax treatment of game development costs. The Definitive Guide to Taxes for Indie Game Developers addresses income tax issues that the average indie game developer is most likely to encounter, in the context of the American Internal Revenue Code and types of taxes. Written by a former tax law practitioner turned game developer and industry consultant with a decade of tax and accounting experience, the newly revised Second Edition includes key provisions of the 2018 tax reform such as the new qualified business income deduction, R&D credit expansion, and permanent reduction to corporate income taxes. In-depth explanations and examples are provided along with references to Tax Court and Supreme Court cases relevant to each tax benefit. Key Features: Includes authoritative sources with relevant IRS publications, Revenue Rulings, and Tax Court cases. Features easy to read, accessible and humorous language No legalese! Approaches how business decisions as an indie developer affect personal finances. Readers will gain a thorough understanding of taxation's role in managing a game studio of any size and going indie with any lifestyle. The accompanying companion website is a valuable resource that is annually updated to keep current on any tax reforms.

1. It is a practical guide to understanding and implementation 2. It assumes no prior in depth knowledge 3. It is written in plain language and may be understood by anyone, whether or not they are qualified or involved with IT. It is therefore equally suitable for senior management, IT practitioners, students and interested individuals.

At only nineteen years old Vitalik Buterin published a visionary paper outlining the ideas behind what would become Ethereum. He proposed to take what Bitcoin did for currency - to end the central control of governments and corporations - and apply it to society as a whole. Now, less than a decade later, Ethereum is the second-most-valuable cryptocurrency and has opened the gates for the extraordinary new world of NFT artworks, virtual real estate in the metaverse and decentralised autonomous organisations. The essays in Proof of Stake reveal Buterin as a lively, creative thinker, relentlessly curious and adventurous in exploring the fascinating social, economic and political possibilities of his invention, and will guide future generations of Ethereum's community of radicals and builders.

The deployment of software patches can be just as challenging as building entirely new workstations. Training and support issues can haunt even the most successful software launch for months. Preparing for the rigors of software deployment includes not just implementing change, but training employees, predicting and mitigating pitfalls, and managing expectations. Software Deployment, Updating, and Patching provides the skills you need to develop a comprehensive strategy for tracking and managing system configurations, as well as for updating and securing systems with the latest packs and patches. Written by two of Microsoft's top experts, this clear and concise manual demonstrates how to perform inventories of IT assets, test compatibility, target deployment, and evaluate management technologies. It also shows you how to create and implement your own deployment plans with recovery and remediation options, and how to recognize potential vulnerabilities.

New Work and Industry 4.0 have matured and this book takes a practical, experience-based approach to project management in these areas. It introduces methods and covers the practical aspects. It critically examines existing approaches and practices and shows their limitations. The book covers appropriate methods as well as human and social aspects. It contributes to the ongoing discussion of business practices and methods. It also aims to stimulate dialogue in the professional community. Digital Project Practice for New Work and Industry 4.0 begins by introducing basic concepts in the context of Industry 4.0 and discussing how they might influence organizational communication and impact the work environment. After examining the possibilities and challenges of remote work and collaboration in distributed teams all over the world, the book looks at a company's fundamental changes related to New Work from a practical business perspective as well as legal and ethical perspectives. It reviews the case of the VW emission scandal and recommends ways to improve corporate culture. Legal issues include New Work and hybrid forms of collaboration as well as liability for automated decisions (i.e., the potential need for an 'electronic person'). Other implications for the workplace include how: Industry 4.0 might influence the potential demand for "Digital Unions" Industry 4.0, and lean production, and their applications can change industrial practices Open Banking presents new approaches and new business models Work structures and systems can empower employees' work self-management This book also looks at how New Work effects individual workers. It addresses digital stress, introduces strategies for coping with it, and discusses related topics. It also explores the benefits of meditation and the economics of mind, body, and spirit. In essence, this book cover appropriate methods along with human and social factors. It also covers practice, different perspectives, and various experiences from all around the globe. Contributing to the ongoing discussion on business practices and methods, this book will nourish and stimulate dialogue in the professional community.

This book explores how to use generative adversarial networks in a variety of applications and emphasises their substantial advancements over traditional generative models. This book's major goal is to concentrate on cutting-edge research in deep learning and generative adversarial networks, which includes creating new tools and methods for processing text, images, and audio. A Generative Adversarial Network (GAN) is a class of machine learning framework and is the next emerging network in deep learning applications. Generative Adversarial Networks(GANs) have the feasibility to build improved models, as they can generate the sample data as per application requirements. There are various applications of GAN in science and technology, including computer vision, security, multimedia and advertisements, image generation, image translation,text-to-images synthesis, video synthesis, generating high-resolution images, drug discovery, etc. Features: Presents a comprehensive guide on how to use GAN for images and videos. Includes case studies of Underwater Image Enhancement Using Generative Adversarial Network, Intrusion detection using GAN Highlights the inclusion of gaming effects using deep learning methods Examines the significant technological advancements in GAN and its real-world application. Discusses as GAN challenges and optimal solutions The book addresses scientific aspects for a wider audience such as junior and senior engineering, undergraduate and postgraduate students, researchers, and anyone interested in the trends development and opportunities in GAN and Deep Learning. The material in the book can serve as a reference in libraries, accreditation agencies, government agencies, and especially the academic institution of higher education intending to launch or reform their engineering curriculum

Working with Sound is an exploration of the ever-changing working practices of audio development in the era of hybrid collaboration in the games industry. Through learnings from the pre-pandemic remote and isolated worlds of audio work, sound designers, composers and dialogue designers find themselves equipped uniquely to thrive in the hybrid, remote, and studio-based realms of today's fast-evolving working landscapes. With unique insights into navigating the worlds of isolation and collaboration, this book explores ways of thinking and working in this world, equipping the reader with inspiration to sustainably tackle the many stages of the development process. Working with Sound is an essential guide for professionals working in dynamic audio teams of all sizes, as well as the designers, producers, artists, animators and programmers who collaborate closely with their colleagues working on game audio and sound.

This book was created with the intention of informing an international audience about the latest technological aspects for developing smart agricultural applications. As artificial intelligence (AI) takes the main role in this, the majority of the chapters are associated with the role of AI and data analytics components for better agricultural applications. The first two chapters provide alternative, wide reviews of the use of AI, robotics, and the Internet of Things as effective solutions to agricultural problems. The third chapter looks at the use of blockchain technology in smart agricultural scenarios. In the fourth chapter, a future view is provided of an Internet of Things-oriented sustainable agriculture. Next, the fifth chapter provides a governmental evaluation of advanced farming technologies, and the sixth chapter discusses the role of big data in smart agricultural applications. The role of the blockchain is evaluated in terms of an industrial view under the seventh chapter, and the eighth chapter provides a discussion of data mining and data extraction, which is essential for better further analysis by smart tools. The ninth chapter evaluates the use of machine learning in food processing and preservation, which is a critical issue for dealing with issues concerns regarding insufficient foud sources. The tenth chapter also discusses sustainability, and the eleventh chapter focuses on the problem of plant disease prediction, which is among the critical agricultural issues. Similarly, the twelfth chapter considers the use of deep learning for classifying plant diseases. Finally, the book ends with a look at cyber threats to farming automation in the thirteenth chapter and a case study of India for a better, smart, and sustainable agriculture in the fourteenth chapter. This book presents the most critical research topics of today's smart agricultural applications and provides a valuable view for both technological knowledge and ability that will be helpful to academicians, scientists, students who are the future of science, and industrial practitioners who collaborate with academia.

- Centers artificial intelligence as a pathway for media studies students, scholars and practitioners to navigate the broad terrain of software practice. - Examines the impact of software on everyday life as it traces the industrial development and migrations of AI and the connectedness of play to broader cultural, social and economic forces. - Connects history and theory to practice through a number of illustrative, culturally relevant media objects and case studies that will be familiar and engaging to many students. - With its focus on applied artificial intelligence in popular and public culture, it bridges the fields of software studies, science and technology studies, and video game studies.

The Game Music Toolbox provides readers with the tools, models and techniques to create and expand a compositional toolbox, through a collection of 20 iconic case studies taken from different eras of game music. Discover many of the composition and production techniques behind popular music themes from games such as Cyberpunk 2077, Mario Kart 8, The Legend of Zelda, Street Fighter II, Diablo, Shadow of the Tomb Raider, The Last of Us, and many others. The Game Music Toolbox features: Exclusive interviews from industry experts Transcriptions and harmonic analyses 101 music theory introductions for beginners Career development ideas and strategies Copyright and business fundamentals An introduction to audio implementation for composers Practical takeaway tasks to equip readers with techniques for their own game music The Game Music Toolbox is crucial reading for game music composers and audio professionals of all backgrounds, as well as undergraduates looking to forge a career in the video game industry.

There is considerable connection between growth of the personnel in the organization and the ability for the company to compete over time. Looking outside for help training may be required but looking within for opportunities for enhanced training and growth, will foster a continually improving and growing organization. This book examines the opportunities for learning, within the organization and its' activities, along with the connection to motivation. Additionally, it provides information on the characteristics of organizations that are able to quickly disseminate, along with approaches for improving this distribution of that learning throughout the organization.

This textbook offers a tutorial introduction to robotics and control which is light and easy to absorb. The practice of robotics and control both involve the application of computational algorithms to data. Over the fairly recent history of the fields of robotics and control a very large body of algorithms has been developed. However this body of knowledge is something of a barrier for anybody entering the field, or even looking to see if they want to enter the field - What is the right algorithm for a particular problem?, and importantly: How can I try it out without spending days coding and debugging it from the original research papers? The author has maintained two open-source MATLAB Toolboxes for more than 10 years: one for robotics and one for vision. The key strength of the Toolboxes provides a set of tools that allow the user to work with real problems, not trivial examples. For the student the book makes the algorithms accessible, the Toolbox code can be read to gain understanding, and the examples illustrate how it can be used -instant gratification in just a couple of lines of MATLAB code. The code can also be the starting point for new work, for researchers or students, by writing programs based on Toolbox functions, or modifying the Toolbox code itself. The purpose of this book is to expand on the tutorial material provided with the toolboxes, add many more examples, and to weave this into a narrative that covers robotics and control separately and together. The author shows how complex problems can be decomposed and solved using just a few simple lines of code, and hopefully to inspire up and coming researchers. The topics covered are guided by the real problems observed over many years as a practitioner of both robotics and control. It is written in a light but informative style, it is easy to read and absorb, and includes a lot of Matlab examples and figures. The book is a real walk through the fundamentals of robot kinematics, dynamics and joint level control, and covers both mobile robots (control, path planning, navigation, localization and SLAM) and arm robots (forward and inverse kinematics, Jacobians, dynamics and joint level control). "An authoritative book, reaching across fields, thoughtfully conceived and brilliantly accomplished!" Oussama Khatib, Stanford

Auditory Interfaces explores how human-computer interactions can be significantly enhanced through the improved use of the audio channel. Providing historical, theoretical and practical perspectives, the book begins with an introductory overview, before presenting cutting-edge research with chapters on embodied music recognition, nonspeech audio, and user interfaces. This book will be of interest to advanced students, researchers and professionals working in a range of fields, from audio sound systems, to human-computer interaction and computer science.

'Natural Language Processing in the Real World' is a practical guide for applying data science and machine learning to build Natural Language Processing (NLP) solutions. Where traditional, academic-taught NLP is often accompanied by a data source or dataset to aid solution building, this book is situated in the real-world where there may not be an existing rich dataset. This book covers the basic concepts behind NLP and text processing and discusses the applications across 15 industry verticals. From data sources and extraction to transformation and modelling, and classic Machine Learning to Deep Learning and Transformers, several popular applications of NLP are discussed and implemented. This book provides a hands-on and holistic guide for anyone looking to build NLP solutions, from students of Computer Science to those involved in large-scale industrial projects. .

As long as humans write software, the key to successful software security is making the software development program process more efficient and effective. Although the approach of this textbook includes people, process, and technology approaches to software security, Practical Core Software Security: A Reference Framework stresses the people element of software security, which is still the most important part to manage as software is developed, controlled, and exploited by humans. The text outlines a step-by-step process for software security that is relevant to today's technical, operational, business, and development environments. It focuses on what humans can do to control and manage a secure software development process using best practices and metrics. Although security issues will always exist, students learn how to maximize an organization's ability to minimize vulnerabilities in software products before they are released or deployed by building security into the development process. The authors have worked with Fortune 500 companies and have often seen examples of the breakdown of security development lifecycle (SDL) practices. The text takes an experience-based approach to apply components of the best available SDL models in dealing with the problems described above. Software security best practices, an SDL model, and framework are presented in this book. Starting with an overview of the SDL, the text outlines a model for mapping SDL best practices to the software development life cycle (SDLC). It explains how to use this model to build and manage a mature SDL program. Exercises and an in-depth case study aid students in mastering the SDL model. Professionals skilled in secure software development and related tasks are in tremendous demand today. The industry continues to experience exponential demand that should continue to grow for the foreseeable future. This book can benefit professionals as much as students. As they integrate the book's ideas into their software security practices, their value increases to their organizations, management teams, community, and industry.

Software Security: Concepts & Practices is designed as a textbook and explores fundamental security theories that govern common software security technical issues. It focuses on the practical programming materials that will teach readers how to implement security solutions using the most popular software packages. It's not limited to any specific cybersecurity subtopics and the chapters touch upon a wide range of cybersecurity domains, ranging from malware to biometrics and more. Features The book presents the implementation of a unique socio-technical solution for real-time cybersecurity awareness. It provides comprehensible knowledge about security, risk, protection, estimation, knowledge and governance. Various emerging standards, models, metrics, continuous updates and tools are described to understand security principals and mitigation mechanism for higher security. The book also explores common vulnerabilities plaguing today's web applications. The book is aimed primarily at advanced undergraduates and graduates studying computer science, artificial intelligence and information technology. Researchers and professionals will also find this book useful.

Digital Image Processing with C++ presents the theory of digital image processing, and implementations of algorithms using a dedicated library. Processing a digital image means transforming its content (denoising, stylizing, etc.), or extracting information to solve a given problem (object recognition, measurement, motion estimation, etc.). This book presents the mathematical theories underlying digital image processing, as well as their practical implementation through examples of algorithms implemented in the C++ language, using the free and easy-to-use CImg library. Chapters cover in a broad way the field of digital image processing and proposes practical and functional implementations of each method theoretically described. The main topics covered include filtering in spatial and frequency domains, mathematical morphology, feature extraction and applications to segmentation, motion estimation, multispectral image processing and 3D visualization. Students or developers wishing to discover or specialize in this discipline, teachers and researchers wishing to quickly prototype new algorithms, or develop courses, will all find in this book material to discover image processing or deepen their knowledge in this field.

Every day millions of people capture, store, transmit, and manipulate digital data. Unfortunately free access digital multimedia communication also provides virtually unprecedented opportunities to pirate copyrighted material. Providing the theoretical background needed to develop and implement advanced techniques and algorithms, Digital Watermarking and Steganography-

- Demonstrates how to develop and implement methods to guarantee the authenticity of digital media

- Explains the categorization of digital watermarking techniques based on characteristics as well as applications

- Presents cutting-edge techniques such as the GA-based breaking algorithm on the frequency-domain steganalytic system.

The popularity of digital media continues to soar. The theoretical foundation presented within this valuable reference will facilitate the creation on new techniques and algorithms to combat present and potential threats against information security.

Step into the Animus and prepare to be transported to the world of Assassin's Creed! With 40 recipes across ten full menus - each inspired by the times and places where the most famous Assassins lived and fought - you can relive the highlights of the Italian Renaissance, the French Revolution and even Victorian London. Follow Altair, Ezio, Arno, Evie, Jacob and all the Assassins of the Brotherhood while enjoying their most celebrated dishes: Masyaf Moutabel, Davenport Homestead Soup, Boston Apple Pie, Colonial Coleslaw, Meringues Mirabeau, Rooks' Bread Pudding and many more.

Cloud based Multi-Modal Information Analytics: A Hands-on Approach discusses the various modalities of data and provide an aggregated solutions using cloud. It includes the fundamentals of neural networks, different types and how it can be used for the multi-modal information analytics. The various application areas that are image-centric and video are also presented with deployment solutions in the cloud. Features Life cycle of the multi- modal data analytics is discussed with applications of modalities of text, image, and video. Deep Learning fundamentals and architectures covering CNN, RNN and its types for learning for different multi-modal networks. Applications of Multi-Modal Analytics covering Text , Speech, and Image. This book is aimed at researchers in Multi-modal analytics and related areas

*The most comprehensive up-to-date student-friendly guide to translation tools and technologies *Translation Tools and Technologies are an essential component of any translator training programme, following European Masters in Translation framework guidelines *Unlike the competition, this textbook offers comprehensive and accessible explanations of how to use current translation tools, illustrated by examples using a wide range of languages, linked to task-oriented, self-study training materials

Introduction to Programming with Java: A Problem Solving Approach teaches the reader how to write programs using Java. It does so with a unique approach that combines fundamentals first with objects early. The book transitions smoothly through a carefully selected set of procedural programming fundamentals to object-oriented fundamentals. During this early transition and beyond, the book emphasizes problem solving. For example, Chapter 2 is devoted to algorithm development, Chapter 8 is devoted to program design, and problem-solving sections appear throughout the book. The third edition introduces several new Java language features, most of the end-of-chapter GUI sections and the final GUI chapters use JavaFX, and almost all end-of-chapter exercises are new.

Stunning Digital Photography is much more than a book; it's a hands-on, self-paced photography class with over three hours of online training videos and free help from the author and other readers. That's why award-winning author and photographer Tony Northrup's book quickly became #1 photography e-book of 2012 with over 100,000 readers.

This book gives you four innovations no other book offers:

1) Free video training. Watch over three hours of fast-paced, hands-on video tutorials integrated into the book to support and reinforce the lessons. View the videos using any web browser or by scanning QR codes with your smartphone.

2) Hands-on practices. Complete the practices at the end of every chapter to get the real world experience you need.

3) Classroom support. Join an author led private community of supportive, helpful people who also want to improve their photography.

4) Free ebook with updates. When you buy the book and join the private Stunning Digital Photography readers group.

Computer vision-based crack-like object detection has many useful applications, such as pavement surface inspection, underground pipeline inspection, bridge cracking monitoring, railway track assessment, etc. However, in most contexts, cracks appear as thin, irregular long-narrow objects, and often are buried into complex, textured background with high diversity which make the crack detection very challenging. During the past a few years, the deep learning technique has achieved great success and has been utilized for solving a variety of object detection problems. However, using deep learning for accurate crack localization is non-trivial. This book discusses crack-like object detection problem in a comprehensive way. It starts by discussing traditional image processing approaches for solving this problem, and then introduces deep learning-based methods. The book provides a comprehensive review of object detection problems and focuses on the most challenging problem, crack-like object detection, to dig deep into the deep learning method. It includes examples of real-world problems, which are easy to understand and could be a good tutorial for introducing computer vision and machine learning.